At the beginning of the year when we were setting down our New Year Resolutions, me and Alaric realised that we were still stuck with exactly the same stitches for kniting and crochet that we started with three years ago. All our projects have been variants on a theme.
We also wanted to move forward with the home stedding stuff, having added chickens and allotment since moving house. So here is my first cheese - it is a soft spreadable thing but I am very proud of it - I might also have accidently made a butter but that's cool too and is being used 🙂
The other skill we've been meaning to try has been soap making and we thought this would tie in really well with the yarn craft side of things. So the easiest way of learning the stitches is to knit or crochet squares but I have to be making something or else it wont happen - I've never been good at practice - learning yes but practice no!
Anyway we are basically knitting and crocheting flannels or face/wash cloths to go with the soaps. Here is my first crochet attempt - I think it is double with single as the edging - it is lumpy and bumpy and miss shappen but I am so happy - of course it took me like a month to create.
This is the current one - a single crochet - lets hope I can remember how to carry on with it now Mum's gone home - I really struggled with the double when she wasn't about.
I have also added on four different rag rug making techniques to the skillz I haz, recently, plus improvisational comedy and sketch writing so I am feeling quiet chuffed. I am also nerviously awaiting proof copies of a book which is more painful than I would have thought!
Every year I help coordinate a poetry writing challenge called WoPoWriMo or World Poetry Writing Month - in Feb. On the site there are writing exercises and ways to get around being blocked, plus inspirational words from other poets.
There are also reviews and events listings.
If you are a poet or a writer of any kind, then has become a good resource - I know I helped build it but I also use it - alot!
Also for those of you who are local to Gloucestershire, I shall be organising a couple of meets through out the month, were I will bring the stickers and some extra bits along for you all 🙂
For those of you who want to read my actual poetry - then go to Turquoise Monster.
Last year our yogurt maker broke - in truth it had been not quiet right for a while plus only Jean and Al could eat it. But then I saw that the thermos had been reduced and decided to buy another one - after all the first one had lasted 10 yrs!
With everything settling down health wise as well I thought I'd see how I handled yogurt and seemed to be ok with it. So I put a batch order in taking advantage of sales and what not. I had wanted to get warm bath type yogurt maker but they are really expensive 🙁
I also picked up a soft cheese maker which is basically a strainer and something I could have improvised but I figured I was more likely to get around to the actual cheese making with a special thing to help. I also added vegan rennet to the shop as I want to make proper cheese that is Alaric friendly and also Mary safe cheese!
This year is going to be about the cheese making 🙂
RIP Lilly the Chicken 🙁 Was clucking around this morning went for the pre-Jean home from school check and there was a sadly still form. She was the one who grew her feathers back last, and the one who had not laid a proper egg - last few months after a bout of being so ill we thought she would be gone before Christmas (she's the one we were keeping in the shower) she began laying the smallest little perfect eggs and her plummage was at last brown and full like the others. I hope the last year an a half outside of the battery farm was good to her.
Not sure how Jean is going to take this 🙁 She has been looking after them and is very proud of what a good job she has been making (hence I check up on them because she is only 9 and she sometimes forgets stuff like water). And of course Lilly was her chicken specifically.
It's no secret that I'm a busy person; often, when I decide to do something, a few years pass before I actually get to do it. So the only way I keep afloat is by the judicious use of computers to track my task lists. I rely on automatic systems to make sure I always know what I need to do today, and what are the most important things I need to do "sometime" that I can do right now. There's no way I could keep all that in my head without forgetting about things and letting people down, or feeling stressed because I'm juggling too much in my mind, or not being able to find the best thing to do when I have a free moment.
As I've mentioned before on here, I want a personal information management system based on predicate logic, so I can express complex relationships between things easily, and tell the system how to infer knowledge automatically. However, "build one of those" has yet to hit the top of my TODO list, so for now I'm using emacs' legendary org-mode. This lacks the rich semantic power of my proposed PIM, but it's already implemented and has a nice editing interface 🙂
A few people have asked about what I've done, so here's my attempt to document it.
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Alaric, Animals, Building Maintenance, Domestic, Gardening, Knitting, Recipies, Sarah | sarah | 
Mon 2nd Feb 2015 11:03 am | 
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