infryq

This past week off work has been full of much-needed rest! I’ve been on a pattern of doing something semi productive in the morning or early afternoon, then playing Factory Town or napping until dinner. Although lbr it’s mostly Factory Town. Very sticky.

Wednesday we went to the coop and got baking ingredients and some fresh vegetables. A lemon, an orange, bell pepper, green beans, rice flour, sorghum flour, almond meal, brown sugar, candied ginger, coconut oil, vegan butter, hazelnut milk, and coconut-almond creamer.

Thursday I had a cavity filled.

Friday I made a gf flour blend from the rice and sorghum flours and corn starch, then made pie crust.

Saturday I made mince pies and attempted Canadian butter tarts. The orange and lemon peel went into the mince finely shredded, plus some of the juice, diced candied ginger, a pile of spices, toasted pecans, and the dregs of the bottle of wild ferment cider we’d been working through. Simmered until gloppy. Lined muffin tins with pastry, ran out of dough, made more. Filled and baked. Used the rest of the pastry to line mini muffin tins. Made butter tart batter with gf roux instead of the egg, and half brown sugar half maple syrup. The batter is ridiculously delicious so I’m a bit miffed I overbaked them into sortof toffee tarts instead, still edible but I want to try again. The mince pies are 💯, and I froze most of them so anxietybrain doesn’t freak out about their moist contents.

Sunday I washed my hair and did laundry, and clicked buttons to help N fix the survey machinery for work.

Monday I rescued some of the botched intermediate survey results from Sunday, and documented the process for N to complete. I took down the hem in P’s wool pants, which have shrunk by over two inches in the wash over time. I may decide to put the rest of the yardage through a warm cycle before making another pair. Anyway he tried them on to mark a new hem and they were still borderline too short, so I added a band of fabric to the bottoms. I made a new leather thimble (the other I’d made too small) for the finishing work.

Today I plan to complete the new hems and make paper snowflakes.

I am off work all this week! Over the weekend I did some pleating tests for a curtains sewing project. Cartridge pleats look the best with this fabric, but unfortunately they’re a lot of work so I’m thinking about alternatives. I’m also thinking about trying to make my own header tape but that also seems pretty fussy so we’ll see. Sunday was busy: the last farmers market of the year (potatoes, apples, onions, peppers, kale, carrots, mushrooms), I got my flu shot and COVID booster, then we spent a nice afternoon with the Ws and taught them Fluxx and Scopa. Yesterday I was completely out recovering from vaccines (moderate fever, aches) and P got his booster. I did however land on the perfect ratios for Persian-style mujadara by accident; I’ll have to try it again while actually measuring.

Yesterday I cleaned, oiled, and installed most of the remaining knee lever parts. The Conjurer Fellstone trilogy continues reasonably well, if a bit pat. I washed my hair after lunch and let it dry twisted up in a towel until dinner, resulting in some nice beachy waves but weird puffiness around the part. Crossword after lunch, scrabble after dinner (629, no bingos but we did score 96 on an optimally-placed “quiz”), then Wynonna (major body horror cn on episode 8), snack, and sleep. Dreamt of a physical manifestation of the onion router, hamsters, bulk foods in five-gallon buckets, distributed social computing, fig-bearing vines, Austrian exchange students, blueberries, and being mysteriously unable to locate any kind of recipe for Hyderabadi sour dal.

Yesterday I wrote and submitted recommendation letters for K, ran meme battle support for A while she got her vaccine, and watched a few episodes of Little Witch Academia. I finished Mr Kiss And Tell. Crossword after lunch, scrabble after dinner (580), then started watching Bridgerton on Netflix. It’s okay; the costumes are on point and the race play is refreshing but they’re doing the ugly=unintelligent/evil thing which I could really do without.

Yesterday I continued with the White. I cut a spacer from some tubing, but wasn’t able to get it narrow enough to fit. Instead, I coiled some wire two or three times around a spare bit of shaft, and it seems to work great. The rest of the afternoon went to cutting and shaping the linkage between the lever and the spur gear.

P got his first dose of Pfizer on Tuesday, and started to feel some minor effects in the late afternoon. A nap helped.

I ordered almond butter and hand sewing needles from the internet. Paprika and slippers (P’s finally gave up) are next.

Dinner together, trash, crossword, Universe, snack, sleep. Dreamt of translating hieroglyphics, pottery puzzles, a big potluck to celebrate someone’s birthday, and slightly disused woodland trails.

Yesterday I washed the socks, did some recreational ironing, and got interviewed by a group of high school students working on a machine learning project to try and automatically track occupancy in stores. Dinner together, crossword, then Universe, snack, and sleep. Dreamt of a really terrible herb and book shop, being a private detective, and trying to duplicate the effects of a starkly-lit photograph in a solar photogram.

Yesterday we ran out of oatmeal, so I made grits for breakfast. I did a bunch of research on screw thread pitch gauges and ordered a set, as well as some other tools I’ve been missing (a steel bench block, a scribe, a more-different pin vise). I went to clear out the oven mitt drawer to make room for the new ones, and discovered some old mouse droppings 😕 and put off dealing with that for the rest of the day. P discovered the iPad is still under warranty, and arranged to ship it back to fix the dead row of pixels. I shipped the gifts to my folks. The new oats arrived. A lovely card from C&R arrived. I’ve started thinking about an abbreviated New Years zine. P did the errands; Dylamato’s is shut until the new year so he went to the coop and got carrots, peppers, mushrooms, vegan butter, gf flour, half and half, a soft-ripened cheese, mozzarella, fresh pasta, pizza sauce, green onions, poblanos, string cheese, bok choy, a nice baguette, and some other sundries. It is always rough when he has to go to a larger store for things; there’s always folks who don’t believe in social distancing. We submitted the vegetable order for Thursday. I cut out two more dish towels and started hemming over SG-1. Dinner, no scrabble, SG-1, snack, sleep. Dreamt of a community effort to develop ocean-friendly soap recipes.

Yesterday I wrapped more gifts and wrote more cards. I drilled screw holes and one access hole in the brass housing, and test fit them together. Works great, no slippage. Now I need to either find counter-sunk washers, machine screws of the proper thread pitch, or (eek) counter-sink the holes in the brass.

I wrote a bio for a talk I’m giving next month to the girls robotics team, and helped resolve two small fires at work.

We did the crossword after lunch (ugh we are not good at catching anagrams and the awards thing was disorienting), scrabble after dinner (560s), then SG-1, snack, and sleep. Dreamt of teaching and taking college classes, losing a small comfort icon, escalators, dining halls learning to be better community members, non Euclidean paths to the ceramics studio, Korean-style kick wheels.

Yesterday I discovered I’d assembled the prototype gearbox backwards/inside out. I cut out another set of pieces, fixed a misalignment in the plans, drilled holes, and glued it up.

I took out the rags and am both delighted and amused by the results. I don’t think I’ll do it again any time soon, but it was fun to try something different. Photo on Instagram.

I spent the afternoon watching Avatar and hemming. Finished the hem after dinner and crossword, then snack and sleep. Dreamt of getting lost in a maze of freeway interchanges, then of a massive ice cream food court. Best flavor: flax caramel ripple

Yesterday I unpacked the nuts.com order, diced and roasted most of the rest of last week’s apples, washed robes and towels, and otherwise watched Avatar and hemmed dish towels. I am On Vacation and it is Great.

The crossword was a miserable slog, but I dreamt of being creative director for a fashion magazine version of Conflict Kitchen, so that was fun.