My brother turns 34 today. He’s always been the best big brother, pulling me around the yard on a sled when we were little and taking car of my car now that we’re grown up. Have fun today, brother!
Karen
Posts by Karen Kaminski:
Friday Unrelated Information
1. The story of Moses the camel being rescued from a sinkhole by Oregon firefighters makes me happy. And it reinforces my desire to date a firefighter–brave, strong, able to cook, and kind to animals to boot? Sign me up!
2. I think “curate” is the new “to gift” that’s going to drive me bonkers. People: You don’t “curate” a book or a blog. You write it, edit it, compile it, or collect it.
3. I’m finally going to the fair this weekend. I had planned to go last weekend but got hit with whatever cold is going around. My brother already gave me the report on my entries, but it will still be nice to go see the goats and the horses.
Look What I Have
Canning: It Also Rquires Measuring
When I posted that Thing #28 was “easy,” I didn’t mention that I did it with my mom, at her house, with lots of supervision. Well, pride goeth before a fall, and lack of spatial awareness goeth with my second canning attempt.
I had half a box of peaches and big plans to make jam with some and then just can the rest in syrup. I imagined jars full of lovely peach halves like little suns. I planned the steps carefully. I peeled the peaches beautifully. And then the halves didn’t fit in the jars and I had way too many.
As it turns out, I had half pint jars that I thought were the larger one pint size. Never in all the planning and peeling did it occur to me that the peaches were almost as big as the jars. No, I was convinced I had pint jars; peach halves fit in pints; it would all work out.
This wasn’t a total canning fail, because after I cut everything into smaller pieces and kept going, it all worked out. (I ended up slicing and freezing the leftovers.) It’s just that I now have seven successful single servings of peaches, laboriously canned.
Seven servings! I’m stocking up for the long winter!
You know what goes well with peaches? Bourbon.
Tuesday Project Roundup: In Which My Inner Hippy Is Victorious
Introducing the hippy dress to rule all hippy dresses:
(Yes, Toby has his space heater out already.)
Pattern: Hippy dress from France, modified a lot–I took about seven inches of fullness out of the back and adjusted the sleeve pieces in order to raise the neckline.
Fabric: Liberty of London “My Little Star“
Verdict: Awesome. I haven’t been worn stars and comets on my clothing since a Rainbow Brite t-shirt in 1985.
It’s Monday
We need a sonnet:
Vertigo
by Adrienne Rich
As for me, I distrust the commonplace;
Demand and am receiving marvels, signs,
Miracles wrought in air, acted in space
After imagination’s own designs.
The lion and the tiger pace this way
As often as I call; the flight of wings
Surprises empty air, while out of clay
The golden-gourded vine unwatered springs.
I have inhaled impossibility,
and walk at such an angle, all the stars
Have hung their carnival chains of light for me:
There is a streetcar runs from here to Mars.
I shall be seeing you, my darling, there,
Or at the burning bush in Harvard Square.
Friday Unrelated Information
1. Speaking of rats, I just found out that they’re being used to sniff out landmines leftover from conflicts in Africa. They don’t weigh enough to trigger the mine and their sense of smell is as good as a dog’s. Also, they’re called HeroRats. Awww!
2. Sunday at 8:00, the organ fest at the Cathedral of the Madeleine starts. It goes bi-weekly through the beginning of November, but the organist this Sunday is from Notre-Dame in Paris.
3. And here’s James Dean in glasses with a kitten. What more do you need? Nothing!
Ratty!
My suspicions of an r-a-t visiting the spilled food underneath the bird feeder were confirmed last night. I spent about fifteen minutes thinking I had to get rid of the rat, now, because…it’s a RAT! But then I realized a few things:
1. Quail, doves, a blue jay, a family of raccoons, and a family of squirrels that live under the neighbor’s garage all visit the yard. None of those bother me.
2. I know I don’t have rats inside my house. Toby is probably a good guarantee that I never will.
3. The rat sat up bravely and watched me with its little face and it looked JUST LIKE THIS:
So enjoy the sunflower seeds, Ratty. But stay out of sight of sight of the landlord because I doubt he has a laissez-faire policy for rats.
Well Said, Dr. Sagan
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and decay.
From The Demon-Haunted World, 1996. Reading this and then going to yoga and talking about the infinite heart and how we’re all made of love is a recipe for cognitive dissonance. (Although we are made of star stuff.)
Tuesday Project Roundup: And Now It’s Fall
Hooray for long weekends and patterns you’ve made before! Here’s a skirt and a blouse that I’m calling the first of the fall sewing. (What makes these floral prints more autumnal than any other prints that I’ve used? Um, they have red in them.)
I used the same pattern for this skirt as I did for the green dot one back in the spring, and the fabric was also from Yellow Bird Fabrics. Easy, unlined, stretchy, and fast.
And here’s another button-back blouse, using some of the fancy international Liberty of London fabric. This time, I drafted a Peter Pan collar for it. I think I have this pattern out of my system now.