Thursday 22nd July - Catching up with my Commonplace Book

 I've kept a Common Place Book for a number of years. I was originally inspired by John Julius Norwich's 'Still More Christmas Crackers'

which I found in a very cheap bookshops full of 'end of run' books. I love it - full of snips and snaps, often rather intellectual, sometimes in Greek or Latin or French or Italian with the assumption that a translation was hardly necessary (google translate to the rescue). He collects all sorts of morsels; letters to country newspapers about the first cuckoo in Spring, anecdotes about various more-or-less-famous people, quotations, epitaphs from tombstones... selects the best and has them privately published as a Christmas present for his family and friends.    

Here's the sort of thing that made me laugh;

Clearly pre-dating Janet and John, Peter and Jane, Biff and Chips! All they ever did was go shopping or play in the park.

There are various published Commonplace books around. I have just downloaded a sample of Dale Carnegie's Scrapbook

Reading from a Kindle or a tablet makes it so easy to high-light a passage and email it to yourself, or to screenshot a page to copy out later. Half of me says 'why bother to copy it out? Just save it to a folder!'  But copying out is half the pleasure; a fine notebook, real fountain pen and real ink out of a bottle...

Writing the words out brings them back to life, like watering one of those strange resurrection plants that I used to by from an amazing catalogue full of  the wondrous and the weird

The wikipedia site  has a very short time lapse video of this poor brown mess reviving over three hours 

I had several weeks' worth of accumulated emails, photographs and screenshots to deal with. Here are a few pages from the current book...

 

Wednesday 21st July 2021 - Taking a line for a walk

 

Paul Klee Quotes;. 

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

A line is a dot that went for a walk.

Battle - Gefecht
https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/news/2019/object-of-the-month-gefecht-battle-by-paul-klee.html

Here's a snap-shot of the opening sequence of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from the film Fantasia 2000. The cartoonist obviously felt the same about music; 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie-TS-BitnQ

and so do I, which was why I was so pleased to see this. I love the piece, but I don't care so much for the rest of the cartoon. I have heard that Gershwin hadn't finished composing the piano part on the opening night, so made up quite a lot of it...

Knitting feels a bit the same; taking the end of a ball of wool for a walk

This is going to be a pot-holder, according to the pattern instructions and the picture. The fuschia tail is where I cast on, and then by some kind of alchemy and incantation I seem to be creating a square spiral. I'm now knitting the last couple of squares so that there will be nine in all, and then I need to wash it violently in hot soap water to make it all felt up into a felted up square. We shall see. Here's the picture on the (free!) pattern.

I have had three goes at doing the spiral one, but haven't managed to get past the fourth row yet. 

I spent this afternoon immersing myself in you-tube tutorials to sew your own tee-shirt, using a favourite old one as a pattern. You place your favourite tee-shirt, folded lengthwise, and take your pencil for a walk around the outside. Seems simple enough... and then you have to consider the stretchy neck band, and how to sew stretchy fabrics with a very basic sewing machine, 

I think I've absorbed most of the instructions, top tips, do's and don't's, one-directional and two-directional stretch etc... so maybe tomorrow I will take a pair of scissors to the skirt I bout about ten years ago but have hardly ever worn.

I want to let all the information settle before I start, so I went and took the hose for a walk, watering the garden after another baking hot day. 

Tuesday 20th July - The Hottest Day So Far?

 I thought yesterday was the hottest day of the year, but it turns out it's today.

I've had a very pleasant morning - a piano teaching friend and colleague dropped by on her way to work. She's still teaching in schools as term hasn't officially ended, but had time for a breakfast cup of tea before her first lesson at about ten.

And then another friend came round for coffee as arranged last week. 

In the Spring it is a bit irritating that the sun doesn't reach the patio near the house until very late morning. At Mid-Summer this might be around eleven. Now, in July, in this heat, I am grateful that this area was still shaded at noon, even if it was warm enough for all the chocolate chunks in our biscuits to have melted. 

I was wearing the blue dress I made earlier this year. As usual, instead of making up the next Summer dress in June while the weather was miserable, so I could wear it in July when the heatwave the tabloids have been warning us about hit, I waited for the hottest day of the year.

 So while lunch was being prepared by my wonderful husband, I set to work.

The glass in the background contains cold tea - just steep a mild teabag in water overnight, in the fridge. I use green tea or white tea, and try and buy the kind of teabags that don't contain any plastic (you can't tell just by the feel of them) so that they can go in the compost. 

I'm still having to extract the remains of all the Twinings and other teabags I threw in the compost bin a couple of years ago. It's a bit like when you eat sweetcorn - the evidence re-appears...

Anyway, I am wearing the completed dress that I started this lunchtime, having finished it, washed it by hand to remove any loose dye or coating that might have been used in the manufacturing process, and hug it out to dry. In this heat, and in a light breeze, it dried in an hour.

So, this post is in the way of being a bit of a gloat...

It is the same pattern as the other dress, but I left off the sleeves. I discovered some ancient bias binding in the bottom of the sewing drawer which simplified my life considerably! 

More Monday - I said there would be 'catch-up' posts - Drawing

 I've downloaded a book onto my Kindle called 'Learn to Draw in 30 Days'. After a break of several months I'm back in drawing mode, and just starting painting mode. 

This could possibly be due to the Summer holidays being on the horizon - as term draws to a close I find I have less and less energy and enthusiasm for anything more than endless games of Free cell as a form of mind-less mind-fullness after teaching and then writing up notes and then answering emails to do with teaching.

Anyway, this book;

absolutely seems to do what it says on the cover. I'm up to lesson 18 now. I just spend a few minutes in the morning doing whatever the day's lesson is.

Lesson 1,2 and 3 were  spheres.

The it moved on to cubes. 

As a treat we did a cuddly koala (and also texture) followed by bowls and a strange rose

Lesson 12; constructing houses

and more houses

today was contour lines, and 'Contour Kid'

I am so enjoying this! The author, Mark Kistler has the same idea about teaching as me; break things down into fool proof steps and just Do it!.

It's the hottest day of the year - don't I just know it. Clouds are building up on the horizon, the sort that suggest a thunderstorm, and torrential rain, but only if we water the garden first.

Monday 19th July - Hello, did you miss me?

 Today is the day Covid restrictions are lifted and we can all do as we please. Except where we should follow guidance. Or common sense. Or whatever is most expedient at the moment.

That's all I am going to say on the subject, as it makes absolutely no difference to me - well, us two, as if he goes out on the razzle and brings the virus home with him, then I'm up some creek or other without a paddle. I'm not sure if this situation was what we had in mind when we made out marriage vows, but then, life is full of surprises.

So, what have I been doing these past three weeks? Loads of stuff, none of it remarkable.

I'll save the little micro incidents of our daily life to pad out a whole series of blog posts...

Let's talk sour dough.

I have flushed my two jars of sour dough culture away. What a good job I didn't give them names. The problem is, that apart from the bread machine method I haven't been able to produce anything except ballistic missiles. It seems to go like this - feed the starter every day, weigh out and mix the ingredients, knead it until it looks plausible, prove overnight, bake, cool, slice, and throw away.

You also have sour dough 'discard' to use; I love sour dough crackers, but my home-made ones tasted of cardboard. The sour dough cinnamon spiced loaf tasted bland. The sour dough scones - I'll tell you what happened to the sour dough scones.

One of the cats, at the ripe old age of ancient, is not so creaky that she can't jump up onto the work surfaces if she thinks she won't get caught, and the smell of sour dough has proved to be an acceptable substitute for catmint, as far as I can tell. So she sampled the sour dough scones. We knew, because that resulted in them being rearranged from rows on the cooling rack to an untidy heap on the floor.

That was the last straw - why spend hours messing about with pale beige sludge when there is a new bakery opened up in town and friends will buy a beautiful loaf for us which we can slice and freeze.

As for That Cat, now that there is no sour dough to hunt down, she turned her attention to the empty butter dish, and was caught crouched in the sink, drinking buttery water...   

That Cat - looking as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth

1st July - Thursday - Winding up as we wind down for end of term

 Confusing metaphors - I am now winding things down as I prepare to wind up this term's teaching for the Summer Holidays... tallying up my accounts for the term, setting the students up with 'easy' and 'fun' things to do over the holidays and generally taking a relaxed approach to lessons. I've 'done' all the exams, except, possibly one, that is to say, the students have done their exams, but as they are recorded in lesson time over zoom it feels as though I have been doing them too.

I reckon the last student's exam will spill over into the end of July - but apart from him I've set an 'end of year date for July 18th and That's That.

I've removed the anti-fox poo trays, on the advice of a friend who pointed out the the vinegar would eat its way through the foil tray then instead of being 'failed-fox-deterrent' would start becoming 'efficient weedkiller'. It seems to be a good slug-killer though, there were several pickled slugs (I feel a slight pity for them) in the trays Poor foolish molluscs. 

I have an idea;  pour the rest of the vineage over the solid paving and pebbles, which are supposed to be weed-free, as combined a weedkiller and mild fox deterrent and slug destroyer. 

The foxes had better find an alternative route soon, as the package of 'Scoot' has arrived, so we are upping the level of aggression... A neighbour told us that people further down the road are FEEDING the foxes 'oh, they are so sweet, we love to watch them playing in the garden in the evening'. Grrrr.

What else? 

We've bought some new bathroom scales. Un remarkable, except this seems to have coincided with me suddenly gaining 3 pounds. The old scales were bought with Green Shield Stamps

Remember them? People are selling them on ebay! For money! Do people still collect them? Can you still get things with them? You don't have to answer but I'm not sure that I really need to know this. 

The scientific hypothesis is that the springs of the old scales have become stiffer (rusty?) with age and therefore are 'weighing light'.  

What else?

My father and my Uncle came round for lunch in the garden - the forecast that said 'rain at lunchtime' was luckily incorrect - the other forecast said 'rain later in the afternoon' which is what did happen, so we had a very pleasant time and then did not need to water the garden.

There was a strange beeping noise from the kitchen while we were sitting over our coffee; McCavity the cat (at 19 years old she is the same age as my father, if you get what I mean) was engaged n a stealth raid on the cooking trays for the fish and chips, had sampled the fruit sponge pudding and had settled her attention upon the cream pot. We have an induction hob, and she had crouched down with her paws on the control panel. The beeps were because the cooker was objecting to being instructed to heat up rings which didn't have steel pans on them. 

It's a good thing that the pans were on silicone insulating mats otherwise pans and paws may have become rather warm...  

After today I will have just two weeks of teaching and then I can look forward to going nowhere for the next six weeks. 

If I am going to have to stay home for a while longer, I am jolly lucky to be living here.