P&PS

Time flies when you're having fun, that's for sure. I started an entry on Saturday, but I never got around to finishing. The nice weather was calling to me. I've been doing a lot of cleaning. I packed up and shipped out a lot of stuff to local charities and finally got around to recycling all the paper little old packrat me had saved. It's nice to have the space to store the stuff I've started collecting, especially the glass jars, wicker baskets, and ceramic bowls. I also helped clean out a couple of the flower beds outside, although we've still got a bunch of work to do. Hopefully we'll get most of it done by the time I've managed to coax my seedlings into plantable size. Which as of now is still quite plausible as nothing has actually sprouted yet. I keep hoping I'll wake up to little green shoots, but that might be a while off.

matted 4X12 orange creamsicle triptych by phoebec Well I'm long overdue for a post. I'd love to say I've been off crafting up a storm, but things have been pretty quite on that front. I did do up a couple of scarves, and a few more of the mini-notebooks, but other than that it's been a lot of cooking. I made up a bunch of crepes last week Monday and was pleasantly surprised with the results. The recipe was easy; flour, eggs, and water, and they went perfectly with the strawberries I had on hand. What was most exciting for me though is the fact that it's another recipe I can add to my local foods list. Now all I've got to do is wait for strawberries to come into season. Which is going to be hard. I'm all for local food and fully support the 100 mile diet but it's so hard to resist when you walk into the supermarket and see a whole display of California strawberries and prepackaged shortcake. The farmers' markets should be opening soo...

Shut Down Day is this Saturday May 3. There's still time to join in if you're interested. I know for me it doesn't seem like a big deal until I try and do it. What's a day without a computer? It's something about voluntarily giving it up that makes it so hard for me. Sure if I'm too busy or if I've got something better to do it's not an issue. Staying off the computer on an unplugged night isn't usually much of an issue either, but staying off for a whole day? It's going to be interesting. Especially since it's on a weekend this year. It'll be me, my camera, and my ipod for most of the time. Maybe I'll even get around to finishing Kitchen Literacy. And while we're on the subject of unplugging, there's a great article over at electrolicious (the home of 52 nights unplugged ) on etsy, the alchemy feature, and a jacket.

I spent a lot of time this week poking around homesteading and gardening sites. I looked at everything from square foot gardening , to container gardening, and building houses on rural homesteads. All in all a very interesting bit of research, I learned a lot but I still haven't decided what I want to grow. I know I want to start some herbs inside on the window sill, basil, parsley, thyme, coriander and some stuff for my tea, mint, lemon balm, chamomile, maybe some stevia . Thing is I haven't decided what and how I want to grow stuff outside. All I know is I want to grow something, and badly. I'll figure it out eventually. I'm not too worried, although I'm hoping I don't get sick of it the second the temperature gets into the high eighties. I also spent a lot of time this week on etsy looking for birthday presents for a couple of friends. I haven't found exactly what I wanted, but I found a bunch of really cool stuff in the process. Jack - Swirl Bub...

Leafy Tree Pendant from OneElf Earth Day’s fast approaching and I’m super excited. My ‘hug a tree’ shirt’s ready and waiting and I’m impatiently counting down the hours. Yes I’m a giant geek, but it’s the one day where spreading the green love is totally socially acceptable. Although I will still try and refrain from yelling at people who chuck plastic bottles in the trash; I will not refrain from rolling my eyes at people who look at me funny when I remove perfectly good rolls of wrapping paper from the trash. It’s going to be fun. However since it is Earth Day I know everyone’s being berated with things like ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ and ‘turn the water off when you brush your teeth’. Important, yes, but I think there’s a bit of a bigger picture that gets missed in all that, so I’m going for something different. I’m not going to talk about it, at least not today. Today I’m talking about worms. Yes, I’m finally writing a real entry about something, and yes it’s about worms. ...

It looks like I'm going to be playing catch up for awhile so I figured I'd hop over and update before I got started with all of that. I managed to make it to a local rummage sale last weekend and found a lot of really interesting stuff, some for myself and a couple of things for projects I wanted to start.  They had a couple of old cookbooks that I snagged and a few Mary Higgins Clark books to add to my collection. I haven't gotten around to binding any more books although I'm hoping to soon as I made up a couple of thicker sheets for book covers in my last batch.  I think I might have actually found a more efficient way of drying the paper, but we'll have to see how it holds up for a second time. Things on the crocheting front have died down a bit now with the backlog of hats I have to post.  I might save them for next season, although we'll see.  I'll get the paper listed in a week when things calm down a bit and we'll go from there. I have...

I finished up another batch of paper last night.  I finally got around to using the pressed flowers I had lying around.  I only wish the paper would dry faster so I'd have pictures to show everyone.   I love paper with pressed flowers and to be able to say I made my own was realy exciting. The process reminded me of reading Hamlet back in high school, or at least the character Ophelia.  I always found her death to be just as beautiful as it was tragic; something of the frality of both life and nature.  Watching the flower petals float in the water reminded me of watching eddies flowing in streams and milkweed in wind. Needless to say, I can't wait till stuff starts blooming around here so I can get some more flowers and leaves to dry.  Until then I'm going to have to tide myself over with some more crocheting and maybe some book binding.