Yarn

A resurrected post from an old blog that I got in my inbox through one of those reminder email things, and still info I think is good to know!

notes for future crafting:
- you can make yarn out of nettles and it's similar to hemp yarn
- other fibers to find: recycled silk, banana, flax, bamboo, natural cotton
- yaks make yarn, too!
- added to sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, rabbits, fuzzy cats, camels
- i wonder if hairy cows make down? or, like, buffalo or elk or moose or something like that?
- and alaskan musk oxen! (called qiviut)

info to find:
- how to spin all these renewable natural fibers myself / how much of each plant is needed to make a viable amount and still have growing populations?
- how to recycle things that have already been clothified into new yarn
- is there such a thing as a home-built mill? how do you do it?
- directions for building home-made looms
- directions for building home-made spinning wheels
- places to get these lovely things on the cheap to figure out how they work...
- how to raise yarn animals, how many are needed, and what else they can be used for (milk? maneure? meat? pest-plant control? oils, like lanolin?
random other things i don't know about?)

Video: Doctor Who Is A Religion

Help make the Ars Magica game a reality!

You may or may not know that I'm a writer and sometimes editor for Black Chicken Studios. We now have a new project, and we could really use a little Kickstarter love to make it real. What do you think?

Black Chicken Studios, working under license from Atlas Games, is delighted to present a new simulation role-playing game for the PC. After 25 years and 5 editions, Ars Magica will at long last be paid tribute in a single-player, turn-based video game. Authentic to the original, this is a faithful, beautiful, and accurate depiction of covenant gameplay and the RPG’s legendary magic system during a dangerous century in the Stonehenge Tribunal. With your help, we’ll bring Ars Magica: Years of Conquest and its tapestry of wars, intrigue, invasion and, above all, magic to life!

Quote - Eckhart Tolle

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."

- Eckhart Tolle, German born best-selling author.

Source: TheDailyLove.com email newsletter

Babysitter Tales - Ball

The baby, A2, and I were out in the carport to get some sun, and he decided he wanted to play a game. We had the basketball, but he gets bored with that because he isn't all that good at bouncing it yet, and he isn't strong enough or tall enough yet to make baskets, so he came up with a new game.

It goes like this:

He has two rocks, a big one and a small one, and he moves them up and down the stairs in some sort of pattern while I hold the basketball and wait on him. When they both get down to the ground, through whatever arcane logic goes through a two-year-old's head, then he runs over and grabs my skirt from behind and moves me back and forth and up and down the driveway until I'm just where he wants me to be. Then, he pushes on my butt with both of his hands and yells "go!" and I have to shoot the basket. Meanwhile, he runs around me and picks up this big stick with all these skinny little branches at the end and tries to catch the ball as it comes down, but he won't look at the ball when it's in the air because it's too sunny and so he has his eyes all squinched up and his head turned to the side. 

Then we start all over again.

We did this for maybe half an hour. Normally, the baby's repetitions get to me after a few times; I know he's learning things for the first time, but it gets tiresome. This, though, was actually fun, and he was so cute as he moved me back and forth just so.

It's the newest game on the block. Everyone'll be talking about it.

Musing: Do I have to trade not being depressed for being well-informed?

I'm under stress* and that probably makes me more likely to be depressive anyway, and also to be jaded and pessimistic, but I keep running up against this question. Watching and reading the news gives me panic attacks and stomach aches--I don't need to know the exact details of how crappy the world situation is to understand that it's crappy. But when I outright avoid the news for my own sanity, I miss the important world events that everyone is talking about, the things that actually do apply to me in some way other than just, say, making me horrified to be human.

And have you noticed, the people who are the best informed are also usually bitter--or angry all the time over everything--or half-crazy with drastic ideas on how to fix it? I don't want to be any of those things, and I have a tendency to at least the last one already, and it's a bad space for my mind to be in.

So I'm left with this: am i obligated to sacrifice mental balance to know what's going on around me? Because that's what the whole news system feels like it's telling me--if I'm happy, it's just because I didn't know that there was this new genocide, this new environmental collapse sign, this new political threat.

And I don't buy that. I don't think the purpose of the news is to scare people, though that seems to be exactly what they're aiming to do these days. I don't think I should have to daily consume exactly what I know will drive me off the wall when I'm already barely keeping it together with my own life. I don't think that internalizing someone else's biases is good for me.

But when I don't, it's like I've missed out on a huge chunk of the country's shared consciousness.

How do you solve this problem?



*We're moving. Again. And the babysitting hours are getting longer, which makes them harder. And I still have very little income and less and less in my bank account. And I'm getting over a cold. And I'm coming up on the deadline for my next fifty pages.

Om Yom - Peanut Layered Gooey "Bars"

This is a recipe I found on Pinterest somewhere and I just had to try it. You take a box of devils food cake mix, an egg and a half cup of melted butter and make a thick, like, brownie batter out of it. Spread it into a nine by thirteen greased and parable it for eight minutes.

Crush up pretzels until you have a cup or so, and throw that on top of the base, then a cup each of honey roasted peanuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and Reece's pieces. Top the whole thing with a whole can of sweetened condensed milk.

Bake it for another fifteen or twenty minutes until its gooshy but set and let it cool as much as you can stand before you dig in. We didn't wait long enough and it wasn't the least bit bar like but it was delicious. Like, heavenly. A muddy wonderful mess!

Shonagonisms - Ten random facts about me

1. My favorite color is a very specific range of greens, so I tend to wear more blue because I'm less picky about it
2. I will willingly and cheerfully watch videos of cats getting stuck in small spaces for hours
3. I used to have such a heavy Scottish accent that when we visited family in the US, they couldn't understand what I was saying
4. I don't believe closets are the best way to organize clothes; I'd rather have a room without a closet and a wardrobe, a clothes track and a series of hooks on the wall
5. I would rather live in the UK than anywhere I've found here
6. I feel most at home when I'm in an airport waiting on a plane
7. I can't remember a damn thing without writing it down, and so I almost always have a pen and paper on me--and go a little bonkers when I don't
8. I am a sucker for sweets recipes that include sweetened condensed milk, especially things like Magic Cookie Bars and variations on them
9. I never thought I'd enjoy working out, but I actually do, and it weirds me out a little
10. I'm pretty sure that English needs more compound words for things that are always used together-- evenif, afterall, lastnight, etc

What ten facts about you will you share?

Pic: The Perils of Companionship from Hijinks Ensue

2012-10-10-the-perils-of-companionship.jpg (820×482): http://hijinksensue.com/comics/2012-10-10-the-perils-of-companionship.jpg

Monday Inspiration: Alice Walker

"Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful."

- Alice Walker, author and poet.

This is part of a weekly series. Click the tag for more inspiration!

Info:

Alice Walker By Bloom, Harold (EDT) (Google Affiliate Ad)