I'm Warped!

But we knew that... Actually, I'm referring to this:



I still don't know what I'm doing, but I've managed to get the yarn onto the loom. That's a start, right?

Comments

When setting up this blog, I took the advice of some of the long-time bloggers I read and turned off "Anonymous Commenting." This means that you must create an account with Blogger and log-on in order to leave a comment. Definitely a hassle. One of the main reasons I did this was fear of "comment spam," where spammers or their spam 'bots leave advertising messages in a blog's comment file. Not only do I not want to have to go through deleting spam daily, I don't want you, Gentle Reader, to have to wade through it, either.

Perhaps as a result, few have chosen to leave comments to the posts in these pages. Some have sent me emails with suggestions of things they'd like to see, or comments on posts they liked or disliked. One Gentle in particular has been particularly helpful in pointing out grammatical and typographical errors I've missed during editing (Thank you, E. Please continue sending those privately!). The point, Gentle Reader, is that these pages are also intended to be an educational tool. If you have experience in a topic I've covered, feel that I may have missed a point, or can direct us all to a resource, please share that in the comments for that post. I read all the comments and try to respond.

As an experiment, I have turned Anonymous Commenting back on. If I start getting a lot of spam, I'll turn it back off. Comments are not moderated, but I reserve the right to remove any that violate my Original Disclaimer. With that said, I encourage you to click on the Comments link at the bottom of posts. Perhaps we can get some discussions going!

Yarn Question #3

Yarn Question #3 - How in the bloody blue blazes can I cut yarn to a single length?

After much trial and error, I finally got frustrated enough to ask Seamas this question. He's never tried to do what I'm doing, but he does have some weaving experience. His reply, while not exactly what I was looking for, gave me the clue I needed to come up with this...



The dowels are screwed to the boards, then the boards are clamped into position. I can position the dowels half the length of the string I want, then make a single cut. If I've kept the same tension on the yarn while winding it around the dowels, it will all be the same length. Sounds great in theory, and it actually worked pretty well in practice. The beauty of this method is that it's completely portable and is highly adjustable for length. Another benefit, which I haven't yet tried, is that it can be set up vertically, which should allow me to better judge the tension of each string.

This Autocrat's Attitude - Part 4

My goodness! Judging from my stat counter, several folks have been particularly interested in Autocratting today. Welcome! I hope you find other topics of interest within these pages as well. Meanwhile, below are a few more things I’ve found to be useful when organizing an event.

If you’ve missed the other articles in this series:
Click here to read Part 1.
Click here to read Part 2.
Click here to read Part 3.


Cultivate the Merchants
• Make every effort to attract merchants and support them. Merchants travel a lot. Happy merchants attract people to next year’s event!
• Set aside a place for merchants near a high-traffic area, such as the feast hall or the fighting field. If possible, assign someone in your group to help them set up and tear down.

Support the Heralds
• A poorly-heralded event is a disaster. Herald all areas – sleeping, fighting, merchants, hall, other activity areas – make sure no one is left out.
• Wake-up calls must take place every morning. If your guests are still asleep on Sunday morning, the fact that your site closes at noon means nothing.
• Keep your Site Herald informed of updates/changes in the schedule. Remember, events run on HST (Herald Standard Time). If your Herald doesn’t know about something, neither will the majority of your guests.
• Make sure your Site Herald has plenty of help. Your site may be large enough to need more than one Herald. If your Herald is getting tired or feels pressed for time, he may resort to “Drive-By Heralding,” which does no one any good.
• Seamas has more on Site Heraldry on his SCAdia site. Type www.scadia.org, or click on the link at right under "Recommended."

Garden Complete?

While no garden is ever quite complete, I at least have all the available space filled...for now. The girls and I stopped in at the nursery we pass most every day on our way home and picked up a few additions. Then we had to rush home and plant them before it started raining!

We added:

• rosemary - 1 plant. What can I say? Rosemary is obligatory in my herb garden. I simply had to find the right plant.


• chives - 1 plant. Yes, I planted chive seeds last week. I'm impatient. I'm also thoroughly enjoying the ones I used to top the potato I'm eating while typing this post.


• petunias 2 plants, one pink, one purple. These are the wave variety that have become so popular for hanging baskets in recent years. We planted them towards the back edge of the planter to encourage them to cascade down the back of their respective sides of the deck. They should be really pretty by the middle of next month.

I also found a variety of tomatoes that called itself a "patio tomato." Apparently, this variety is supposed to grow as a low, compact bush with approximately 2" fruit. How could I pass that up? I put two in a container as an experiment.






This afternoon, I noticed the tarragon, thyme, and chives all have sprouts in their respective pots. So far, so good! I also noticed that the basil has new growth coming from the areas I cut when I topped the plants late last week. While this is great - new growth means bushier plants - it's also a bit disturbing. It appears that two stalks are growing where I cut only one. Do I have an herbal hydra on my hands?

Garden Planting

Buying plants during my lunch hour was a mistake. All I could think about on Tuesday afternoon was getting home to put the new plants into my re-built garden. The fact that I had them on a corner of my desk because it was too hot to leave them out in the van didn’t help. The basil smelled wonderful!

Newly planted:

• basil - 6 plants. There were three in each pot, so I wound up with nine plants when I thought was getting three. Oops! Perhaps I’ll put the remaining three plants in a pot and put them on my filing cabinet at work.
• curled-leaf parsley - 6 plants. I like the curled-leaf parsley better than the flat-leaf variety. The flat-leaf parsley tastes more bitter, especially if it doesn’t get enough water. Six plants sounds like a lot, but parsley is a favorite food of black swallowtail caterpillars. The butterflies are so pretty, I don’t mind sacrificing a few parsley plants, so I always buy extra in the hope that the caterpillars will leave enough for me!
• sage - 1 plant. I’ve only tried sage once before, and it didn’t grow very well. Perhaps this time it’ll grow better.
• marigolds - 2 plants. My mother-in-law likes to get these for the children every spring. The three of them have fun transplanting the flowers into pots, then we bring the pots home, set them outside, and usually forget about them by July. This year’s marigolds’ chances of survival just increased ten-fold…

The corner spot is reserved for a new rosemary plant. The girls and I will start looking for one over the weekend. For now, I’ll probably fill the other holes with colorful annuals until I decide what, if anything I’d rather do with them.

Later in the evening, I also planted seeds - chives, thyme, and tarragon. We’ll see what happens. If my gardens had to rely on my ability to grow plants from seed, I probably would have completely lost heart years ago. Still, if the chives grow, I’ll likely plant them near where the marigolds are now. The thyme and tarragon will probably go into their own separate pots. I’m planning to put a small plant stand in another corner of the deck, which is where I’ll put my potted herbs. Then, I can just sit back and watch things grow!

(shhh...yes, if all goes well, and the seeds actually sprout and grow, I'll have parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme in my herb garden, but let's not tell anyone, OK? I get that song stuck in my head often enough as it is…)

Herb Garden Re-Construction

Whew! With all that's been going on, sitting down with the computer has had no appeal this past week. On the plus side, my herb garden is returning!

The deck outside our kitchen has a built-in planter that runs along two sides. When we moved in, I immediately determined this planter would be my kitchen-herb garden. The previous owners had left some garlic, which is how I became aware of garlic's run-away abilities, and I planted a few other herbs to try. Over the years, I've done less and less with the herb garden. This was due partly to the demands of my growing family and partly to the planter's decreasing ability to hold water. My biggest gardening sin is under-watering, so having to water on a daily basis turned this delightful garden into a chore. I certainly don't need any more chores. Finally, all that remained was a lonely rosemary plant and some dried-up weeds. When the rosemary died over the winter, I decided enough was enough. This week, I made major progress towards doing something about it.

I began by recruiting the children to help me remove the dirt from the planter. This was a big chore that required many trips to the new dirt pile by the back fence. I should mention that the deck (and the planter) is roughly 5 feet off the ground, only accessible by two flights of several steps each. At the bottom of the planter was a layer of mostly flat rocks which ranged in size from 1/2 to 5 inches wide. Rock removal didn't require as many trips to the new rock pile, even though I was using smaller buckets. The bottom and sides of the planter were lined with something I was unable to identify. It resembled something between roofing paper and compressed cardboard, but it mostly served the purpose of keeping the dirt from eroding from the planter.

Once the dirt, rock, and paper were removed, I lined the planter with a lightweight landscape fabric weighted with paving bricks. These bricks should be a lot easier to deal with the next time I decide moving 16 bags of dirt is a good idea. I filled the bottom half of the planter with a clay-heavy topsoil mix, added a layer of agrosoke crystals, then topped it all off with a potting soil mix. From the soaking I gave it afterwards, it looks like this mix is going to hold plenty of water, but the planter still seems to drain well. This is important since so many herbs prefer well-drained soil. I may need a bit more dirt after the next heavy rain, but for the next few years, I'll probably need to do little more than add a bit of compost in the fall.

The following pictures aren't the greatest, but they'll do to show the stages of re-construction:
Landscape fabric and paving bricks.


The three layers - heavy soil, agrosoke, light soil


A view of the corner - ready for planting!

Camp Cookery – Boiled Omelette

Those who know me well are aware that my mundane life is a bit busy, and that I rarely bother to eat formal meals. One of my favorite quick suppers is scrambled eggs with ham and cheddar cheese thrown in. Kind of a "scrambled omelette," if you will. It's quick, tasty, and provides a reasonable amount of protein. It also dirties a bowl, a plate, two forks, and a skillet.

I had read about a low-mess method of cooking eggs while camping, but never remembered to give it a try until I received an email from a friend earlier this week. So, I tried a little eggs-periment.

Break two eggs into a Ziploc freezer bag (or equivalent). Add ham, shredded cheese, or whatever you think sounds good. Squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible, and zip it up tight. Mush the bag with your hands (gently!) until the yolks are broken and everything is thoroughly mixed. Drop the entire bag into a cauldron of boiling oil pot of boiling water, and boil for 13 minutes.

The result was a very tasty roll of egg with ham and cheese in the middle. I was afraid it would taste of plastic bag, but it didn't at all. Best of all, cleanup consisted of dumping the pot of hot water, washing the single fork and plate, and tossing the Ziploc bag into the trash.

This would be an excellent meal for a camping trip, especially with children. I'll bet my two would love to dump their own ingredients into a bag, mush it around, and drop it into the water. Even better, the basic preparation could probably be done at home. Best of all, there's no mess, very little cleanup, and several "omelettes" can be cooked at once.

Yarn Question #2

Yarn Question #2 - It's been days since I washed my yarn and it's still wet. May I put it in the dryer?

Believe it or not, this actually worked. I honestly expected to remove a fuzzy tangled mess from the dryer. Instead, I got yarn that is only slightly damp. How? I cheated. My dryer has a low heat setting and a drying rack that remains stationary within the drum. The yarn did not tumble and had warm, not hot, air moving around and through it. No snarls, no fuzzies!

Gentle Reader, please be warned - I do not know what I'm doing; I am making this up as I go along. Perhaps this method will work every time, perhaps I just got lucky this time...

Yarn Question #1

I decided I'd better number these, because I'm sure there will be more.

Yarn Question #1 - "Must I wash my cotton yarn before I warp my loom?"

I asked myself the above question this evening. Instead of consulting my designated expert, I decided to experiment instead.



The answer? Emphatically, YES!