A poem for my friend

Did I hear your whispered confession, in the center of my heart

Those softly spoken sorrows forced through the remnant of you soul,

That night they nearly killed you with their weapons of control?

Was it you that i heard? Where are you now? 

What cast you down so close to me in that dreamland of astonishment we both inhabited? 

That place where I felt your wretchedness at having been left behind,

With me?

Elann Yarns and pattern

Did I do this already? Ha! I'm meeting myself coming and going. Mutter,mutter... Waiting for workmen is not good for mentation!

I think I'll go knit some socks but for right now, despite the grainy ugly picture, isn't this little hat lovely? That yarn is white, of course, and a delicious pink, although it shows up as a sort of orange sherbet pastel! it's a true and lovely pink.

I want to make two hats that are warm. My daughter made me a very soft blue and purple highlighted hat that's very warm and cozy, and I'm hoping these two turn out like that one. Maybe I'll knit a soft mohair of white or pink in with the angora. I have white, at least, in Kidd.  The pink might take some exploring of yarn shops.

Last night, feeling the need to escape, we watched two Men in Black movies and had raw veggies, beer and popcorn for supper. Sometimes you just have to break out and be a little wild, you know? Otherwise you would soon leave for the quickly disappearing Pacific Northwest Rain forests and nail yourself to a tree or something to keep it from being clear cut and sent to Japan or Korea as a log.

My sister, brother (who is visiting) , DH and I went looking for some Douglas fir to replace an overhang, and what is sold here is trash. We get the trash, m'love. Go figure. Wow, this became a "Forest Forever!" rant. I'll stop now and go knit. Ta!

Steven Fry... ya baby!

Shamelessly Stolen from Fuzzarelly.

Click through to YouTube so you can see this at it's best.

Did I say that correctly?

Another Eppie and two tiny new baby succulents, and the backyard nest report.

First the Bird Nest Report:

The doves have been rousted out of their nest building so many times by the roofers working near by that they haven't set any eggs they protected from the jays, who are very good at stealing unguarded eggs, and even take nestlings. The jays, Mocking birds and cats must make it Nesting Hell for the the mourning doves and sparrows.

Sparrows of all kinds nest in the neighbor's very dense Cape Honeysuckle bushes; I feel sorry for the poor little sparrows. The same misguided folks that brought over cats brought starlings and pigeons a little later on. More food for the native falcons!

Unfortunately, it's very bad to have cats where bush nesting and ground nesting birds were so vulnerable. Some people actually think cats are part of nature's balance but that couldn't be more false than in California and the rest of the West.

Newest Bloom

The Fall and Winter rains were so very kind to the Eppies, and so many of them which haven't bloomed in the drought felt the energy to put out blossoms.  The one I'd hoped for the most is the beautiful Bronze but so far, no joy there.  This a slightly different shade of deep pink than the other one that bloomed earlier.  I like rose and pink so cannot complain.  I want the yellows to bloom, too, but they may be too wild root now.  I'll need to replace them.


The two potted succulents are in pots no bigger than a female adult human can fit a thumbprint into. I love how succulents produce these little surprises all the time.

These are very small

Well, back to my knitting!

I love sewing pattern sales

Today it is rainy. It also rained last night but I'll still have to water the plants. It's lovely we are getting any rain this late in Spring.

I've started into the pattern on the two Tosh socks, and will concentrate on getting them finished in June. I plan to do a lot of knitting in June as it's the very last fairly cool month we will have!


The picture of the new patterns has a little story. I waited and waited for Simplicity 3571 to go on sale. I had a Butterick - the pattern with the heads cut off up there in the near darkness- but it didn't have the detail of commercial PJs, and that's what I wanted.

I used to do things without patterns and swapped pattern pieces etc, but that was when I was young and frisky. Now I'm just into comforting and babying my brain and saving all that mental energy for the really important stuff, like World Peace and other incredibly illusive enterprises.

All that aside, I bought 3571 after months of waiting for it to go on super-sale. I was afraid it would disappear before I slapped down $9.00 for it, at 40% off two weeks ago! Well, one week later.... In came the JoAnn's ad that had Simplicity patterns on sale for $1.00 a piece. I got even. I spun through the on-line site and marked every one I'll ever want out of the current offering. I believe the sale is on until Monday. I might get a few more. hehe

You have to take your revenge when you can! It's a harmless form of aggressive (Combat?) shopping. Generalissimo Zippi has taken her shopping to a new level.

The Pink Echinopsis finally bloomed.

These two little plants-the white and this pink - were given to me several years ago by a neighbor who has since passed away. I took the giving of them for a good sign.

Both are now in a cactus garden with other cactus, and are doing pretty well. I love the delicate blossoms that these little Echinopsis make. The pink is called Echinopsis x Los Angeles. It's a hybrid made in the 60's by a famous hybridizer, though they are so widespread due to popularity that they are in no way rare.

I try to weed carefully but still get stuck. So, remembering that I've got a hemostat that looks like it's for removing tonsils, I will try that on those pesky weeds that have wedged themselves in close to the cacti, and between the weed cloth.

Cupcake Wax/sawdust fire starters the Girl Scout way....

Rho wanted the recipe just in case she should come across some sawdust, so here it is. This time without pictures because I have trouble finding sawdust these days. :+)

This is how you make the cupcake/sawdust starters.  It's an old Girl Scout crafting thing that we did back in the day, so we would have starters for campfires on our camp outs.

You'll make the sawdust ones by melting wax the same way as the others.  It's much safer to use a double boiler type of set-up on a low flame on the stove.  Besides, the double boiler will keep the wax fluid longer so that you don't have to struggle to get everything done before it's too cool.  Of course, as per the pictures in the last post, that dbl boiler went to the kitchen table for ease of handling.

1. Make some little paper twists for a wick for each cake and set them aside. 

2. Set up a muffin pan with some cupcake papers.  Then melt some wax.  An old pillar candle will do for this, too. 

3.Take the paper twists and dip one end of them into the melted wax and set aside again.  (these are the wicks).

4. Into the melted wax you mix about enough sawdust to make it like a soft cookie dough. 

5. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake papers in the pan.

6. Stick the UN-waxed end of the prepared twist into the center of each one before the wax/sawdust hardens.

And you are done. 



Very easy.. see?

Homemade Fire Starters from recycled stuff.......... Whee!

 The finished product

When my brain goes into overload and dwells (wallows) in the past, I have to remember what is important and where I AM, now.  Thank you Ellen.  And, where I like to be best is knowing that I am a handicrafter who likes to get my hands dirty and likes to have fun.

This idea was bandied about in Ravelry sometime before Christmas a couple years ago, so I started saving the ingredients for Firestarters. I never can get my hands on sawdust very easily anymore ( you know how  to make cupcake fire starters with wax and sawdust and a cupcake paper) so I started saving lint from towels and cotton sheet drying in the dryer - well blue jeans,too, as they are cotton denim.

I noted, while making these that they began to look like fire crackers, in fact I was hoping as I was putting them together that I wasn't making some sort of little bomb like thinga! Wouldn't that be special? We've had potatoes that exploded in a fire, and that was fun.

When I showed the first one I wrapped to Hubster, he commented that it looked like a big firecracker. I could see the gleam of "little boy" in his eyes.

The "dry ingredients"   The little basket will be their "carryall".

Melted wax in the Double boiler.  When I dipped these I poured a little bit of wax down into the fuzzy stuff in the middle, and then down the sides. The next step is to cover both ends and pour a little wax into the center of the tube if none ran Then......... on to the other end.

.

Here they are, all covered with wax except to that one little rascal in the second row.  I went back and got him.

Here are some wrapped and some about to be wrapped.  I wanted to have some that were for "festive occasions" like birthday campfires or something, so therefor the two Stars and Moon (Celestial) ones.  When we use these we'll pull out the end papers to have something easy to light.

I Hope you liked the tutorial on making these.  I feel that they will save a whole lot of angst and blue language when it comes time to start a fire on a drippy day out camping.

I also got my hands dirty transplanting four African Violets yesterday.   It's good to get your hands dirty.

The Fledgling Scrub Jays

This little guy hit the big window in a swooping rush, and then sat there outside trying to figure out this new limitation that the world had thrown up to hinder his flight path. It's sibling remained in the Honeysuckle bush, safely tucked up amongst it's high branches.

Sorry for the fuzzy piccie.  I didn't want to get too close and give him a bigger fright.

I was worried about this fellow but ran to get my camera first, of course. He/she ended up back in the honeysuckle with his/her fledgemate after a few "legs up" from the handy lemon tree. They scoot right up a tree with headlong crashes upwards.

The parent birds are practically tame enough to take food from the hand, though I don't do that. They raid a neighbor's dog's food dish often enough, and don't need more handouts than that.

I'm headed to try for a nap after getting to sleep at 3 am and waking up at 5:30. Gah! zzzzzzzz What a day, yesterday.

Childhood Memories, the good the bad and the monsters

I'm reading a book called My Old Man and the Sea.  It's an excellent book about a father and son who go around "The Horn" in a 25 foot sailboat called "Sparrow".  In it, one of the authors, the son, describes what happened to him emotionally when he decided he had to shoot his own elderly and blind dog rather than have her euthanized.  This brought my reading to an instantaneous halt. 

The Second Anniversary of Jasper's death passed on May 16th, and even though I cried a lot I kept my feelings to myself and my appetite intact.  I ate my whole allotment of chocolate for the week five days early as some sort of consolation.  DH came in from outside a few days ago,  and I thought he had been sneezing but no; he, tender heart, had came across memories of Jazz in the RV.  There was Jazz riding home for the first time, a tiny ball of fuzz, curled up in the passenger's seat, and there were the toys he always played with, his first and favorite was a little devil that he'd chewed to bits but still preferred over all others.

Only two times have I lost my appetite .. one when my mother passed away, and then when Jazzie died.

I had undergone a brutal training as a child specifically to not show - any emotions - no matter what happened anytime but especially at meals.  Our terrible father would hit my tiny 2 year old brother hard enough do knock him out of his high chair and give him a black eye, but I wasn't allowed to even react without receiving a beating myself.  I learned to keep eating, and to show no emotion.  I learned to swallow food almost whole.


My other little brother died when he was five.  I know Mother carried that sadness in her heart the rest of her life.  I don't know how people survive losing a child.  I do remember that Mom became terribly thin.  I think I know she felt trapped. 

My brother and I talk about things sometimes.  We were all good kids who just had a terrible father, and in a time that women had so few choices that it was destructive for them as well.  I rejoice that my daughters and I have had choices.

Nature in the Garden..

The Scrub Jays brought their fledglings to the Cape Honeysuckle. They must have been up there for a couple of days because the parents have been flitting around, bringing what looks like dog food in from another yard to feed them. If you make the picture as big as possible, and look towards the right above the midline, you can see one baby very well.  You will have to look sharpish for the second baby, which is  to the left of the one that's easy to see. There is no nest in the honeysuckle, so these little birds flew in with their parents. The nest was knocked down last year by a neighbor.

 

Poko Ono is building her nest hole. She always digs here. If a possum, raccoon or skunk doesn't dig them up, we will.

 

NEED TO KNOW | Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims ...

This is amazing!

Blogger has a head ache

PJ, I am sorry that your two comments didn't make it here.  Blogger was down for more than a day and obviously they haven't cleared all the bugs out of it yet!

You said, on the flowers: 

"I'm so late coming back to blogland, but very well said on Mother's day...I watched a mother robin make her nest (now this was after starting FIVE times!) talk about Mother Earth's determination! Love your flower pictures! They make me smile!"

Thank you!  And I hope that the robin mother is settled in with her eggs by now.  We used to have robins here but now they haven't been around for years.  I miss them.

You also said, about the little boxes:

"I love this...your probably the only blog I can come to and learn to make a box :) I may be coming to you for advice...I'm going to make my first socks! My daughter sent me sock yarn 'Cuddle Muffin'!"

I am happy to give any advice you may need on boxes.  And you DD has sent you sock yarn?  I have to go look up Cuddle Muffin!  It sounds like a very soft and lovely yarn.

Now, I'm going to go check to see if Blogger (Google) fiddled with my settings.  How rude to spiff comments off into space when they are supposed to be posting them.  They need some new Wranglers!

Greenware to finish... what I've been up to....

This is the Greenware for the self watering pot in which I plant  African Violets.
This part is the part that holds the water.

Here you see the interior pot in which the violet is planted.

These are the finished pots which have been glazed in Duncan Crystal Glazes
I don't like Duncan Crystal glazes as well as Maaco, because the chips in them are too big.  They make a mess of the colors and there are too few colors in that brand.  But, sadly I can't get my hands on Maaco products locally anymore.

Can you help?

Audubon is trying to save the southern California segment of this bird population, which used to number in the tens of thousands  but now is rare.  It's the Tri-colored Black Bird.

To learn more, please go to Audubon's Page on this wonderful bird.  And please pass this along to anyone whom you believe would help this campaign as well.  This is a beautiful bird. 

There were thousands of Tri-Color that over wintered , probably ten thousand in Santee Valley when I first moved to the San Diego Area in the 60's.  Now you just do not see them anymore.

Sierran Magazine

I get this every month.   Well, no duh, I suppose...

You can't get around politics when Big Business is bleeding the population dry and stealing common decency from the the working classes, even white collar workers who support this sort of theft with their votes.  I mean, come on, what is our support getting us but more hatred around the world?   We try to live on real money that becomes like play money more and more every day. 

But the Sierran had this pie chart from Environmental Law Institute that pretty much sums up what President Obama was saying in his State of the Union message where he talks about the oil companies doing "pretty well on their own", and presumably not needing anymore taxpayer's money.  I say, "Right On!"

  I wonder just what pork barrel legislation went into supplying BIG oilygarcs with this $70.2 BILLION sum?

Knitter's have always had a lot of time to think about stuff because that's what knitting does, calms down the mind which then has the opportunity to "think things through."   We've been getting a lot of nothing from the ruling elites at the trough for a long time.  It's time to follow the money and take it back.  It's OURS. 

My hands hurt too much lately to knit, so, like that famous Orangutan,  "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits".  Cheers!

Now, "if you feels like it",  go write a letter to a CEO at Shell or Exxon, and get in his face.  Yah, send him the pie chart, too - knit him a little replica of the $952 BILLION check he and his whole industry sucked off the top of our pittances in the last 10 years.  And,  while you are at it, be sure to ask him if he has a great health plan or retirement.

Tag it for language, but I just had to do this....

And this after the brilliant slap down of the banks in a way that brought them back into the corral with hardly any bulldoggin'.  YeeHaw, President Obama. 

I think FEMA will review Texas' requests which have to be updated to include the damages from Tornados as well as fires.

this and that... sock chart chat

I wanted to point out that I've put a new link on that  Spinney glass-like sidebar button.  It now goes to a blog that has some fairly accurate looking measurements for all sorts of sock sizes, Men's , Women's, Kidlet's. For instance, I measured one of my itty bitty friend's feet the other day, and her size 6.5 measures pretty much what the button site's list said it should.  I've done my feet, too but I've not scampered out to get the DH's numbers yet.   But, it does say that Men's 6.5 has the same measurements as my 7.5 women's, and since  that's what I wear in men's shoes,  I rest my case!

So, I started the Tosh sock with renewed confidence, if anything like that can exist.  Socks are so bad when they are generic.  They fight like demons when going over the instep, or they pinch toes, or they dangle down around the ankles after a couple minutes on the foot, etc.  That's why we knit them to fit the ONE person, in billions of human beings, that they are for - meaning  that One unique and wonderful person.  This is the Sockmeister's Manifesto, more or less.      

And here is a flower that I dashed out to get a picture off in completely inappropriate light this morning.  It's a new pink color, and shape of blossom, and the roofers were starting to work around the roof nearby and I thought, "it's now or never!".  I missed it yesterday when both of the blossoms were full and gorgeous.  These are the only two buds on the plant.  The white bloomed again, Yay!, but you've seen that one.

A little rain on the roof

Yesterday was very pleasant, though overcast, and we spent it with our local family members. And then about 8pm it started to rain.

We have a flat roof and when there is only tar paper down on it, that's really no roof at all. And so began a marathon of furniture moving, mopping and dragging out every large pot, pan, bucket, and plastic wastebasket we owned.

I think I fell asleep about 4 am when I just couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. The rain stopped around 3 am I think. It was either that it stopped or that I had become deaf, dumb and blind by that time of morning. I slept on the couch, thinking that if the DIN didn't wake me up, water dripping on my face would.

So, today I offer you some flowers because that's what the rain is good for. I never wish rain away, ever, and count myself lucky that we get what we get here.

This is yet another picture of "Apricot Nectar", my own rose that I just adore!

This picture is from the Arboretom in San Francisco, a huge spray of lavender Daisies which is always a pleasure to behold. ETA: Make this one as big as possible for the full glory of it!

Three tiny roses, mini roses, the first and third are my sister's little beauties, and the one in the middle, looking for all the world like Blush, is a Mother's Day gift from my sil. Make them big and enjoy!

Happy! Happy!

Whether we mother (baby) our plants, or pet birds, or scaly pets, or care for fur babies, or our kicky little two legged offspring the rest of the year, this is our special day,  Mother's Day.  This day is for all the very special people who mother any living thing that  needs some help growing up or staying upright!

Remembering what this day stands for, too,  we should also remember all the women before us who marched for and believed in Planetary Peace.  Mother's Day was part of the Peace movement.

More roses from the Rose Garden at Barona Resort

I thought I'd named these, but alas.  The two at the top are beautiful roses for a bride's bouquet,  Luscious colors in the palest pink in the top photo.  More pink - sort of peaches and cream rose in the next picture.  And the one on the bottom does have a name.  It's called Cherry Parfait.  And, the last is called  "Dolores Hope".  This garden is so fabulous in early Spring,

A day in the life of......

We got away from the construction noise yesterday for a few hours, and my knitting of a sock for an itty bitty foot is now back on track. One of the members of the Ceramics Club is a tiny gal with an itty bitty foot! So, she obligingly let me measure her heel height, draw around her wee foot, and measure from the base of her big toe joint to the tip. Yay!

Now there are some real measurements to go on! I'll take these measurements and work out a pattern for my friend who has very kindly sent me a couple of treasure troves of straight needles in recent months. Yay!

When Sis, DH and I last went to the club, we stopped at the library to return a book for her. I found the most amazing book on how to identify and to propagate cacti and succulents. Someone, who had it before me, was careless because the pages were gritty. As I read it, I realized that what they had done was taken the book to their garden potting bench and used it as a reference for re-potting some of their plants! This books can drive you mad with pent up spring fever if you are already half gone over succulents and cacti, I presume.

I've read it through twice since and found that this amazing book was one I really did need for my own. DH reluctantly found it on the web, used, for me, and if all goes well, I will be grafting and propagating my own lovely specimens of succulents and cacti this summer. I say DH did it reluctantly because he is sure that there are far too many plants around here already. I figure, since I really cannot afford the water bills for a rose garden, I can afford these plants as landscape, and want them with a passion that has never abated since I was a child.

You see, when I was a pre-schooler my family lived across from a huge nursery for cacti and succulents called Cactus Pete's. My dad worked part time there, and I was able to wander amongst the plants for as long as I liked. I fell in love with these amazing little plants because I was shown how to make a new plant from just one fat little piece of donkey tail sedum. or how to get the "baby" plants off of an Echeveria, or Hen and Chicks.

The only reference I can now find is to a place called, "Cactus Petes", which is a huge gambling casino somewhere in Nevada. Casinos seem to be cropping up in my life lately!

I'm off to knit a swatch of "Tosh" for the socks on "0" needles, and read a little more of the mystery series I'm hiding from you until I get more books out of the library. There aren't very many copies! A new program called "Link" can now suck local books right out of California to, presumably, anywhere on the planet. Anyway, it made me paranoid!

Here is a picture of one of our cacti- blooming yesterday-and called an Echinopsis. Enjoy!

Two More Roses from the Garden at Barona Resort.

A David Austin Rose

You can get a free catalog of David Austin Roses HERE, just by signing up.

A Day at the Barona Rose Garden

Barona Resort and Casino has the perfect spot for a rose garden, and they have hundreds of roses. Here is a LINK to the information about this garden, which is a test garden for new hybrids of old fashioned rose varieties as well as old favorites like "Honor", "Mr. Lincoln", and "Angel Face".

There are so many roses out there it a real treat to see. It is indeed a wonderful place to visit before it gets too hot, though there is bottled water provided in what must be a refrigerated bucket atop a ceramic pot, upturned.

Another David Austin Rose

Double Delight Rose

Paradise Rose

There is a mini rose in this color.  Gurney has one Z!

The Entrance to the garden

Nice and Icy little water bottles

A bird Bath and drink station for the feathered beings

Okay, that's the last edition for the night!  Hope you enjoyed this and there are a few more roses to show you as well.  For another time...  The whole earth is a garden if we just know how to look at it.