Silken . . . part 2 ~ the Blues

I have been trying for a long time (try over three hours 😦 ) to edit a post on the new blog. Alas! Something isn’t working. Hope it isn’t Mum’s computer . . . but everything else seems fine.

An old favourite, ‘though I first read it as an adult. Published in 1906, when my Mum’s mother was fifteen and living in North Dakota; her Dad was sixteen and still in Lillehammer; my Dad’s oldest sister a wee baby living with her parents on a communal farm in Russia.

Anyway, I will share some news here now and edit that post later. I hope 🙂

I have been busy in spite of wanting to curl up in my shawls and read, with hot drinks nearby (I confess, I have done a bit of that, too . . . temps down near -39C with the wind . . . and next week apparently we get several days above freezing)

Second of four books in a good mystery series. His Lou Boldt series are his best, but he seems to have moved on to other characters. Ridley Pearson often refers to Seattle in winter as being in ‘the rinse cycle’. If you have ever been on the coast in winter anywhere from northern Oregon to Haida Gwai’i, you know what he means. 😉 Mysteries are good for keeping the mind occupied and distracted from compulsively checking the temperature on the iPhone app to see if it’s T-shirt weather yet . . . who, moi?

Ok, back to sharing my busyness:

Yes, that’s a batch of scarves turning blue . . . holding their breath? No, just dyeing . . . 😉

Just before I began with the blues, I poured half of the green dyestock into an old jam jar (Mum likes strawberry jam and for some reason I like the jars and have been squirreling them away; well, now I have a reason 🙂 )

Why e-books will never replace the real thing . . . On my way to look for more favourites to re-read, I spied this treasure! I would never have known of it if I was unable to browse, letting my eyes do the walking. Such serendipity! I may yet survive ’til spring . . . assuming such a thing exists; on days colder than -30C, my faith is flimsy . . . Non-fiction, this is the story of Ray Bradbury’s months spent near Dublin in 1953, when he was writing the screenplay adaptation of ‘Moby Dick’ for John Huston, who was a genius. After reading the first chapters, though, I could see why he was married five times . . . Written in Bradbury’s unique voice, it is a very different look at Ireland just after the War. The advice he is given on bicycling at night is startling: keep your lights off and ride on the wrong side of the road, so as to avoid accidents. He is a genius himself, Bradbury, well worth re-reading for the joy of his way with words and language, nevermind his stories that take your mind ‘where no mind has gone before’ (well, except Ray’s) 😉

Then I added more green as well as some yellow and cooked it all again. What do you think of the new green?

Maybe that last picture shows the colour difference better.

Here is the Happy Hibiscus again. I think it’s feeling a bit tentative about opening those buds . . . it’s right next to the frosty glass doors and we keep the temperature down here.

Today those buds looked like this up close:

That’s not a sky full of clouds behind the HH, it’s the artistic work of one J Frost.

From the kitchen you can see the colour beginning to show . . .

Need a smile?

Listen to The Tortoise

Those are my other favourite singers. Well, two of them, anyway. I have a lot of favourites.

Were you wondering what happened to the silky bits?

Here they are, cooling off in Mum’s second bedroom and attaching to the last of the dye. As to how they have turned out . . . for now, we’re keeping a lid on it . . .

😉 😉 😉 😉 😉 😉 😉

This song is for . . . you know who you are 😉