I finished the pyramid thingy on the Village Quaker. This week I have to tackle a vase full of flowers that I just started.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Tiny Needle Tuesday
Monday, March 18, 2024
The Leftovers
What do you do when you send The Mister to the store for some buttermilk to make soda bread and he comes back with a half gallon of the stinky stuff?
24 hours later and the Buttermilk soap smelled like.....nothing. It's unscented and that nasty burnt milk smell that came from the chemical reaction with the lye was gone. I was also very happy to see I didn't get a gel ring in the center that you can get with milk soaps if they get too hot. I even dared to add a dollop of honey so I was really taking a risk with the sugars heating up on me. I did keep the lye solution in an ice bath and soaped when it as at 56 degrees. I had my doubts but it seemed to have worked.
And......the Sludge soap seemed to have also turned out better than expected. The original Aleppo/Laurel Berry recipe calls for all soft oils but it takes a 6 month cure. This time around I used my regular hard butters and some extra hard kokum butter. It's already a rather hard bar so I'm hoping 6 weeks will be long enough.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit!
This is the very first St Patrick's Day that I can celebrate while knowing that I am 14% Irish. I had no idea. I was pretty sure I was plain ole English but it seems I'm not. 16% Scottish. 9% Welsh. How interesting.
Happy St Patrick's Day!
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Sticker Shock
I haven't been to the MDSW in quite a few years for one reason or another so when I got an email from the festival this week I was surprised as heck to see that admission was $15 dollars per person per day this year. If you want this catalog it's an additional $5.
The last time I attended it was a $5 suggested donation and for the past 20 plus years before that it was always free. Catalogs were found all around the grounds, in boxes for the taking.
It's a wonderful festival and I can imagine it takes a lot of effort and money to make it happen so I don't begrudge them a penny of it but I can still feel a little shocked. I hope to be there this year but I'm all too aware that life seems to happen in ways that I can never predict anymore. I don't need a thing to add to the stash but I could use a dose of inspiration. That's always in short supply these days.
Friday, March 15, 2024
Quelle Horreur
Look closely at this official photo of Riddari. Notice how the colors change in the yoke? The dark brown changes to a tan, right? Well, I didn't exactly notice that on the chart and I knit three long rounds in the WRONG COLOR.
It's always something.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Can You Dig It?
Guess what we did again yesterday? As soon as we could move our old bodies we took off to a big name hardware store that had a bigger garden department than our mini Walmart has. It didn't disappoint. $150 later I had a few more fancy shrubs, some perennials, some pansies and three more little pots of narcissus to put in the ground. We spent the day once again digging holes and hauling bags of dirt and mulch. Whew....it didn't help that it was sunny and in the high 70's. That's crazy for March around here and too hot for me.
See where I'm going with it? This was a test run and it was too big for my little journal so I'll be cutting those hexies smaller before I do any more gluing.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Wednesday WIPs
I'm going to show off some knitting progress today but I can assure you NO knitting happened yesterday. You know all those bags of mulch and dirt in the back of our truck? They are on the ground after a day of planting shrubs. It was a long, hard day. Before that I managed to bind off the ribbing at the bottom of the Worsted Gray Blob so it's now the sleeve's turn for attention.
I got that shipment of sock yarn from WEBs yesterday. This will be the warp for a scarf I am going to weave-when I can catch my breath from all this yard work.
And....yet another Barbie showed up for my collection yesterday. Meet the Empress of China, Wu Zhao. I had almost all ethnic groups represented by Barbies but I was missing an Asian doll. She's so beautiful that I hate to disturb her and take her out of her lovely box but it has to be done. Maybe tomorrow-when I'm not a dirty mess from working outside all day.
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