World's Best Cat Toy

Day 48: Are you looking for the perfect gift for your feline friend? My resident expert assures me that there is no better toy than a Pink Spring! It bounces, it rolls, it behaves unpredictably, and it can provide hours of fun (or at least until Mama wears out of tossing it). And yes, it must be pink. The green ones, blue ones and yellow ones from the same package aren't nearly as interesting.

Such has been the story with several of my companions over the years, and I'm sure that with cats at least, that the preference for pink has something to do with their vision. On the other hand, my Cockatoo had pink feathers in his crest and around his beak, and birds' colour vision is much better than our own. I could understand "like attracts like" as it related to his preference, although it meant that he had a pink blanket and pink toys despite my aversion to the colour. Science tells us that cats can see blue and yellow wavelengths, but not red. Why, then, does Tippy prefer pink, as Skunk did as well? Given a pile of toys in the kitty toy box, the pink ones were those my cats would select for play. In any event, I still have trouble finding the pink springs when he swats them around the room. At least they don't break easily when I step on them.

Split-Ring Tatting

Day 47: When you say "tatting," most people (at least those who don't think it's the same as crocheting) will picture rings and chains with lots of lacy, single-thread loops called picots in between the stitches, but it doesn't have to be that way. Quite frankly, trying to press hundreds of picots on a doily is similar to climbing a mountain. You take two steps, slide back one. In the case of picots, it's "flatten two, have the first one turn the wrong way while you're trying to flatten the third one." I usually pin picots to starch my pieces, but that's another story. Today, we're talking about split-ring tatting, and the only picots we're going to make are going to be extremely small: just big enough to insert a #13 crochet hook to make joins. Now of those people who understood what I meant when I said "tatting" (the ones who realize it's not crochet), only about one in ten will know what split-ring tatting is. See? We're narrowing this down to a very select group! Split-ring tatting can be done with either a shuttle or with tatting needles, and one way or the other, by the time you've made a few rings, you'll see that you can't leave one thread attached to the ball as you'd do in regular tatting. You're going to be working with two long tails, and you'll be making part of the ring going clockwise, and the other part going counter-clockwise. It's not always half-and-half, either. It all depends on where the next ring begins. I won't explain the whole process. There are plenty of books out there if you're curious. Personally, I like the look of tatting without picots, and split-ring tatting opens up a new dimension on the art.

Picotee Beauty

Day 46: Every year at this time, I'm faced with a problem. I don't think it's proper to play favourites in any event, but when my Christmas cacti start blooming, I lean toward whichever one is flowering at the moment. Yellow has gone through its cycle now, and White is still open. Picotee just popped and...well, there's that dilemma I was talking about. Certainly, Picotee is the showiest of the three, but Yellow is the rarest, and White is both unusual and dramatic. And, if I want to be perfectly honest here, I do have a couple of the standard colours which, although they're brought out to the living room for show, never draw quite the same admiration as my three "best kids."

Pot Pies

Day 45: Here's something else you can do with turkey leftovers: make pot pies. No, not THAT kind of "pot" (you should know me better than that!) Pot pies are are a single-serving dish, and don't really need any other accompaniments. You'll find a commercial variety in the freezer case of your grocery store, and tend to be a little on the skint side when it comes to the protein in the filling. Make them yourself, and put in as much meat as you'd like. You'll need six four-inch pie tins for the amount of dough in the recipe.

The crusts are a hot-water pastry. I use John Kirkwood's recipe (below), which I will repeat here. You can find more of his recipes on YouTube. You will need the following:

400 g all-purpose flour
170 ml hot water (almost boiling)
90 g butter
100 g shortening or lard
1 tsp salt

Melt the butter and shortening in hot water. Combine the flour and salt, and ake a well in the middle. Add the water and melted butter/shortening, and stir in with the handle of a wooden spoon until the pastry comes together. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and be sure that all the flour is incorporated. Form the dough into a ball, divide into two parts (2/3 to line the pans and 1/3 for the lids), cover closely with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour and a half. You want the dough to be cool, but not so cold that it's difficult to handle. Divide each dough ball into six pieces. Roll them out to a bit under 1/8" thick to line the tins and trim the edges. After you've added the filling, dampen the rims of the crusts, and add the lids, pressing the dough together all the way around. Crimp the edges for a nice look, and poke a hole in the center to vent steam. Brush the tops with a wash made from one egg yolk and a little water.

The filling isn't rocket science. It can be ad-libbed at your discretion. I used turkey, partially thawed frozen mixed veg and a dollop of chicken-flavoured cream gravy. You need to put about 1 Tbsp of gravy in each pie (not too much, or the crusts will go soggy), but make plenty. You'll want it to pour over the pies when you serve them. Bake the pies at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, or until the tops are nicely browned. They freeze well, and can be reheated in the oven or microwave.

Moon Over The Mountain

Day 44: You have to understand that in the Pacific Northwest, you don't usually get opportunities to view celestial events or, for that matter, to observe a blue sky, so when this spectacular combination presented itself through my living room window, I grabbed the camera without thinking twice. Plunging through a tangle of chest-high snowberry bushes intermixed with dry blackberry vines, I picked up a few thorns en route to a position which avoided power lines, poles, fence posts and a significantly ugly display of political statement mounted on a truck parked mid-pasture, and managed to make it in and out of the maze without tripping on the frost-slick ground. It was at great hazard to life and limb that I made this photograph for you when I could just as easily have generated it with open-source AI. Apparently, there's a lot of that going on right now. It will never happen here. I promise you that.

Wedged In Wisteria

Day 43: Over the course of years, I have attempted to identify the crustose lichens growing on the trunk of my wisteria, but have not been able to nail them down. I rather doubt I'd have any better luck putting a name to the wisteria's newest accessory, an LBM of medium size which has sprouted in several locations about a foot and a half up from ground level. Since 'shrooms are decomposers, I'm inclined to believe that this means my wisteria isn't as healthy as it appears. Fungus generally appears on weakened wood. The wisteria has never been particularly happy with its northside location, producing only a few flower clusters over its thirty-year life span. It may be time to change up the front yard landscape.

Ruffed Grouse

Day 42: Boy, Mr. Grouse! You picked a bad day to come strolling through the neighbourhood! The guy next door to me wouldn't think twice about adding you to his Thanksgiving dinner menu, so it's a good thing that you were hiding in the woods on my side of the fence late Wednesday evening. That said, I am beginning to wonder if the Game Dept. has started releasing farm-raised fowl up here. Just this year, the first California Quail appeared (at least two), and this is the first Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus) I've seen locally, and this one doesn't look like he's missed any meals. It's always a treat to see new species in my yard.