String Notes

Interweave’s annual book sale is upon us.

Their server seems a bit melty this morning.

I have little green tomatos! And strawberries! And the black raspberries are starting to shade into pink.

I’m also in the midst of a five-week string of houseguests, and a couple of very large deadlines. And Complex Weavers is Real Soon Now. (Yay, but yikes!)

I keep finding fun things to share with you all, making notes, and not posting them. Today at least I will get a few out there.

1. Kyle Cassidy says some astute things about becoming a professional artist. He’s a photographer, but most of what he says is more broadly applicable. Kyle says a lot of insightful things, and takes beatiful photos. His blog is well worth a browse. He’s on the list of people I’d like to meet some day.
2. A couple of Viking cooking resources popped up today. The Viking Food Guy blog looks more promising than its name would suggest, and the Eldrimner blog also looks interesting.
3. “Phiala” is both a brand of barstool and a genus of moth. I haven’t found any photos of the latter – any moth experts out there?

It’s never been such a year for roses: red, pink, lavender. Even the roses that never bloom are covered in flowers.

It may have snowed less than three weeks ago, but late May is the time for tomatoes – cross your fingers for me, okay? I went out to Tait Farm last week for my plants. I like the idea of starting my own seeds, but I’ve never had good luck with them, and the cat eats my seedlings. Tait Farm has excellent plants. I spent a long time walking up and down the row of heirloom tomato plants, reading all the descriptions and reminding myself that I do not have room for one of each. I settled on six heirloom tomatoes of all different sizes and shapes and colors: Brandywine, Great White, Yellow Pear, Red Pear, Cherokee Black, and Lime Green.

The World’s Smallest Pea Patch has grown quite a bit: it’s now about four times the size, with enough space to give all the new plants a comfortable home.

I couldn’t resist some other things while I was picking out plants. There are three hot pepper plants, and half a dozen herbs: two parsley and an oregano, a regular basil plant and two interesting ones: a Greek columnar basil visible at the back of the bed in the above photo, and this lovely African Blue Basil. I’m looking forward to pretty pesto with my rainbow of tomatoes.

I also forsee pie in my future.

Everything seems to be settling in nicely. I should even get a strawberry in the next day or two.

I was in New Hampshire most of last week for work [now the week before last!]. Work looks a lot like this:

We worked a couple of 13-hour days in torrential pollen and got home a day early.

Everyone was happy to see me.

After an intense week I was ready to relax a bit, and was very excited to return to a box of Elizabeth Bear books.

Writing the text and uploading the photos is not so useful without also posting them, it seems.

Today was filled with an all-day meeting, but the roomful of visiting and local scientists did manage to get outside for a while, to check out the local watershed from top…

… to bottom.

This is a nasty invasive – multiflora rose – but the bee didn’t care where it came from and had collected huge quantities of pollen.

We saw many educational and occasionally lovely things before returning to the second half of the meeting.

I’d planned the long catch-up, with copious photographs, but this isn’t it. Turns out the business is busier than it has ever been, which is great but leaves no time for much else.

And, let’s see… I was in New Hampshire most of last week, then came home and spent the weekend building bookshelves and planting heirloom tomatoes, and dyeing silk. Pretty, all of them. But you’ll just have to wait for the photos to be sure.

For your entertainment: Go Fug Thyself.

Have a good weekend!

(I keep forgetting to post this.)

Every so often my webpage is linked by something completely unexpected. A few years ago my braiding page was linked in a page about audio cables, and the author was kind enough to let me know, while asking a question.

This time, it’s something equally unstringy: Karbyn emailed me to let me know that my braiding instructions were linked in How to Make an Onion Braid.

Neat! And thanks for letting me know.

The braiding page is one of the ones most in need of updating – the pictures date to 1994 or thereabouts, when I scanned in my hand-drawn handout! Graphical technology has improved just a bit since then, and updating the text and diagrams has been on my to-do list for several years.

I’m coming to the conclusion that there is no possible way to accomplish everything that I need to do. I thought I might get to take a couple days off in late April or early May, but if I do that then I won’t have enough vacation hours to manage later days that I’m already committed to. But if I don’t take time off, then I’m afraid I won’t be able to finish the things I need to meet those time-sensitive commitments. I’m reasonably on top of things at work; it’s purely a vacation hours problem.

The weather isn’t helping – it’s cold and wet out, and I just want to snuggle on the couch with the cat instead of accomplishing things.

Cold, see? That was yesterday. Today has been colder – it’s 39F right now – but was overcast and frost didn’t settle.

Despite the weather, things continue to develop in the garden.

That’s a perennial coneflower (Centaurea montana).

My roses didn’t overwinter well. My benign neglect might be a bit too neglectful and not sufficiently benign, but the first flower is already open.

And now… off into the cold rain, home to work on things for the business. I’m starting to seriously contemplate hiring a minion. Any readers both local and interested in a very part-time job playing with string?

I was over at a friend’s house last night, for food and drink and conversation. I always take a project since I get fidgetty without something to occupy my hands. Last night it was spinning, since I still hadn’t done anything with the spindle I brought back from the Netherlands. I didn’t take enough wool with me, and ran out before the evening was over.

What to do? I wanted to end up with a three-ply yarn. I could use the Andean plying technique, but didn’t want a two-ply. With such a short skein, and with no equipment, that left Navajo plying. I’d never done more than try out that technique, where you make chain-stitch-type loops in a single strand of yarn as you ply it, and never gotten it to work right. But why not try again? The same looping technique that is used for Andean plying works fine for feeding just one end off your wrist, and after a bit of fiddling I got the chain stitch part working smoothly too.

My conclusion: the secret to Navajo plying is MEAD!

I have a cute little skein of three-ply yarn, all done on a spindle with no other equipment.

This weekend is the AAUW book sale, the largest used book sale on the East Coast, or nearly. Prices are very good and selection is enormous – it’s held in the ag arena, and the entire space is full of books and people.

The bag is all fiction; the crate is nonfiction. Not a bad haul!

I’m afraid the tulip photos are over for the season. They didn’t fare well in the big rain and wind storms we’ve had this week.

There’s still plenty to look at in the garden, even though today the weather is too nasty to want to do so.

That’s a different azalea bush, one that hasn’t appeared on the blog yet this year. I have lots.

Happy Mother’s Day to those of you responsible for human lives.