Crossing the Blues
I said it already several times. But thank God for the New York Social Diary!!! Always nice articles with fantastic pictures. Here's a new reportage. I saw already some work of this fantastic artist.

Enjoy them as I do after a long day of work. By the way I am always very busy because beside my normal job I am preparing together with my boyfriend a bed and breakfast in our house. Will share some pictures with you this week.

But lets keep ourselves focusing on this little wonders.















Gill woke me up absolutely ecstatic. She'd found my shaver recharger. And it wasn't what I'd remembered what it looking like. Friends, this is what senility looks like. You are CONVINCED that the trimmer lead you are looking for is two-pronged and has a curly flex. You look everywhere and at one stage find the old one which does look like that... but the jack on the end fits your old, now dead, trimmer. You have the vision that the lead you are looking for is curly and has two prongs, and look everywhere for it. Your wife looks everywhere. Your wife finds all sorts of things which were lost, some of which are very welcome finds. You go to great lengths to get another one, as your beard continues growing and you don't want to look like a hairy monster... just a well groomed one. You even bother a friend who customises another piece of equipment to enable you to charge the bally thing.

Then the next morning Gill looks at a mini transformer doodah which has been sitting on a shelf in plain view all the time with various other bits of electrical nonsense... it is three pinned, has a straight flex... and it has 'Remington' written on the back. An OMG moment when you realise that you are fallible, have a faulty memory which leads you astray (no pun intended) and that you cannot totally trust your brain anymore. This must be what senility feels like.

So, I took my trimmer off Ben's charger, and tried to trim my beard. I managed half of it before the trimmer died on me. Ben's charger hadn't worked. So I plugged the gadget into the newly found charger and the green LED came on, indicating it was now charging.

I was disappointed that the weather was really nice and I could not help going outside and tidying. At lunchtime I came in and on a freecycle message, saw that someone was offering a garden parasol, something which Gill has been hankering after for a while. So I messaged the offerer and got a message back quite soon from my friend Linda, saying yes, I could have it. I hadn't recognised her freecycle name. She had got it from another freecycler but had realised it was too big for her little yard. So I said I'd go over within the hour to pick it up.

So I cycled over to South Bank and Linda was pleased to see me, and she was on good form, looking lovely and healthy and happy. The parasol looked perfect. Linda showed me her little compost bin, which she said I inspired her to have, and it was looking good too (not quite as attractive as Linda!) but good looking nevertheless. I offered to riddle it for her, to create a small sack of material to top-dress her many pots and planters. I'll do this in a few weeks when it's convenient for her.

So, home via Country Fresh where I picked up a box of gubbins and a sack too. I then spent some time down the garden, I dug out an old pallet bin and put all the contents in a builders one tonne bag. This allowed me to start filling the newly emptied pallet bin. Which is good as Gill was doing a lot of pruning and tidying, and had produced a lot of vegetation for this.

But I'm feeling torn as I really should be shutting myself away and sorting out the website which is going live soon. But I cannot let a good day go, and I've seen the weather forecast for tomorrow... rain all day! Which means I should be able to do the website...

I'd soaked some beans and boiled them on the stove last night, and Gill mixed this with some tomato/onion stuff, to have with rice. It was delicious.

After this I went round to Ben to give his big transformer back and he showed me that it would have charged the trimmer if I'd have put the voltage up a bit. He had also sourced a solar charger which might do the beard trimmer and will probably do mobile phones. He didn't want this and gave it to me... so I'll give him some more dried fruit, which he and Jill really like.

When I'd collected the 'resources' from Country Fresh I'd found perhaps 40 pears of usable condition in one of the boxes. So I spent over an hour loading up several drying racks with sliced pears. So I was again not in bed til after 2am.

Had quite a busy morning, up just after 9 and dealt with a slight hangover by having a large coffee and 2 paracetamol, and a shower.

I needed to be in tip top condition for work... Professor Fiddlesticks had been booked by Anna, the organiser of today's 'Multi Sports Day' near the Fulford end of the Millennium Bridge, which was due to run from 2 til 4pm. So I had an early lunch and got going with my bike trailer full of the usual gear at just after 1pm. I also took a couple of bags of dried apple rings for the LETS stall, and the York World Naked Bike Ride leaflets.

Stuff was already happening when I got there, and I secured a place on the path with my bike propped up against a lamp-post and immediately there were youngsters wanting to have goes on the unicycles. So I was busy for over 2 hours, unicycling and helping people with the 4 wheel unicycle, 2 wheel unicycle and occasionally the one wheeler. Oh, and rewarding people with balloons and doing some unicycle and devilsticking demos.

But it wasn't a perfect day... we had gusts of wind, strong enough to lift up some of the gazebos, rain showers and even a hailstorm, but several nice patches of sunshine. There were at least 100 people there, possibly up to double that, and it seemed that everybody had a good time. I was pleased to see quite a few of my friends, including Tony my WNBR friend who had collected the Yorkshire WNBR leaflet, half of them for Sheffield, half for York, and he'd also got some flags. These will be available on the York Ride, at a slightly discounted rate.

I packed up soon after 4pm as I'd had a phone call just before I'd set out from Randall, who wanted me to help fill in a Risk Assessment for the forthcoming CarFree Network Street Party, and he was due to come round at 5pm. I got in at 4.50, and then got a phone call from Rand saying he'd been moving paving slabs around with his bike trailer and would prefer not to have to cycle from Acomb to Hull Road... so could we do the meeting by Skype?

So we had a 1 hour 45 minute Skype call, filling in the documentation and raising several important questions. At the end of it Gill gave me a bowl of home-made celery soup which was delicious, and then home-made 'stuffed crust' pizza with salads, also delicious. Gill is an awesome cook, and knows it, and loves it. She's always saying how much she likes being a mother and looking after us. We are all damn lucky.

I visited Ben as he had offered a CFL bulb on freecycle which would fit our ceiling light socket in the front room (downlighters) and he also might have a solution to my shaver conundrum. He'd found a large heavy transformer, a box with knobs on which changes mains power to whatever voltage you set the dial at, and analyses whether things are shorting, etc. In return, I'm taking a box of waste metal to the recycling site for him.

Later I did the washing up and sorted through the bananas and set about 30 of them to dry, and left my shaver charging on Ben's machine.

Well, Gill and I slept in, after a very long drawn-out game of Scrabble til 3am, which Gill won.

But I'd already arranged to meet Sarah or Sarah's housemate Jasmin at midday at the Scarcroft allotments with a trailer load of compost, so I had to get my skates on and have a quick breakfast, go and get the compost from down the garden, and loaded 7 sacks into my trailer. I also got 4 carrier bags of riddled compost for Country Fresh.

My other reason for heading into town today was to try to get a recharger lead for my beard trimmer. On the way into town, I met Ben and Jill and Ben had a quick dive into his room full of cables but found nothing... he suggested Argos, or failing that, eBay.

So, I dropped off the riddled compost at Country Fresh and got to Scarcroft Allotments on the dot of midday, and Jasmin was there waiting for me. It turned out that she is the daughter of a friend of mine, and has memories of having a Fiddlesticks party as a little girl. So I dropped off the compost and visited her allotment, and helped her pull out a bit on encroaching couch grass.

She invited me round to her house, actually a shared house owned by another friend of mine, in order to pay me for the compost. We had a cup of hot chocolate and a chat, and for someone so young, she has a really wise approach to life. She takes after her mother in this respect. I was really pleased to have got to know her a little bit.

Then I cycled into town to go to E. Roy, who has a tiny shop near the market, which sells all manner of electricals. But they didn't have the 240v to 3v dc converter with the 3.5mm jack, and he said I wouldn't be able to find it anywhere. I looked in Argos... but they only sell complete sets, minimum price is £20 for a new beard trimmer.

Called in to Country Fresh on the way back and they had a surfeit of bananas, so I now have a full box of ripe bananas to deal with.

I did a bit in the garden as it wasn't raining too much, and after a pasta-based tea, I went out to see my favourite local band, The Falling Spikes.

They were playing at a night called The Fuzz Club at City Screen. The first support band, Mon Mon, were not to my liking as there was too much shouting. The second band, Insect Guide, were better, with an interesting start. The guitarist got his iPhone which had a recording of a commentary from an Apollo mission or something similar, and he pressed the iPhone against the strings so the recording played through the guitar pickups. He used his effects pedals to do things with the sound too... very inventive! I also liked the fact that they had made their own backing video, which was projected onto the band. But I couldn't hear the female singer's words and I wasn't moved by this band.

However, The Falling Spikes, which is a six-piece... Rich my greengrocer buddy on drums, Moz on synth, 3 guitarists and a singer, they blew me away. I love what they do. There is so much going on... a wall of sound and lots of polyrhythms, an assault on the senses. This has the effect of making me very happy; it transports me to a different level of consciousness. At one stage, all the band walked off, leaving guitars up against the amps, giving shuddering feedback mixing with the synth playing some early Eno-esque or perhaps Kraftwerky noise. Brilliant.

I was pleased to meet Jan whom I met many years ago at Cafe No 8 on Gillygate, and Jenny, who looked happy with Moz, and filmed the whole gig on her mobile phone!

I got home at about half midnight. Tired and needing sleep.




The cuschion is for sale; please contact me if you are interested.
ilaria.chiaratti@gmail.com
Available in different colors.

Il cuscino e' in vendita; contattatemi se siete interessati.
ilaria.chiaratti@gmail.com
Disponibile in vari colori.



                                                      elizabeth dinkel
                                                          
                                                    never, Never, NEVER give up.
                                                                  Winston Churchill

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Spent most of the morning writing. I did two Press Releases, one for the York World Naked Bike Ride and the other for the forthcoming website launch.

In the afternoon I cycled down to town to get some train tickets for next week, and then went to Boots to see if they had a replacement beard trimmer lead. They didn't, but the assistant gave me the phone number of Remington, who make the trimmer... and when I got home I rang them and was given another number for 'Shaver Spares'. So I rang them...and they didn't have a lead either.

On the way back from town I popped into Country Fresh and Martin was happy to load me up with several boxes and bags of stuff gone mouldy... so after phoning Shaver Spares, I did a lot of compost heap building. I spent quite a bit of time riddling compost too, as the shop needs re-stocking so I filled about 15 carrier bags with good fine rich compost. I'll take it down tomorrow. I might go to town again and see if E.Roy has a charging cable for the trimmer.

So, a quiet day.

View of the Columbia River Gorge from the Portland Woman's Forum Scenic Viewpoint. Vista house is on the cliff to the right.

The Columbia River Gorge is a pastoral beauty that changes gradually with the seasons. It has sweeping vistas, a plethora of waterfalls, and giant slugs. What is not to like? While I-80 now zips through the gorge, to really see it, you need to take the history highway that starts in Troutdale and which winds lazily through the countryside. This was a great route to take my parents on. Most of the sites are easily accessible a short walk from the car. Below are a series of pictures from the trip.

Looking towards Portland from the Vista House

Looking down the gorge from the Vista House

A close up of the vista house and the mountains beyond

Could this be a brown specimen of the nefarious Banana Slug?




Latourell Falls




Common Camas (Camassia quamash)





Wahkeena Falls



Multnomah Falls








Bonneville Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant. The roar was something to behold

This Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) was unafraid of our car and my camera.

A quiet day... spent most of the morning sending photographs to my colleague in Canada, so he can help me decide which ones are suitable for the website, and doing publicity for the Fifth York World Naked Bike Ride. Oh, and washing up!

In the afternoon I planted about 20 sweetcorn plants in the raised bed... I needed to remove the old purple sprouting broccoli plants (which I fed through the shredder), and removed lots of American Land Cress which had self seeded itself all over. I left the self seeded perennial Spinach Beet and the self seeded Rainbow Chard. Then I broke up the hard ground with a fork, and sprinkled a sack of riddled compost all over this, and created a sort of grid of planting holes around the Chard and Spinach. I put a dollop of riddled compost in each of these and dug it into the base of the hole, then popped the sweetcorn into them, and watered them in. I hope we don't have any late frosts!

I did a load of pruning too, a renegade beech hedge, some unruly loganberry which has got to the wrong side of a fence and is making access to a water butt difficult, and I took a low hanging branch off the walnut too. All this was shredded and put in a tumbler with loads of waste fruit and veg stuff.

So, a busy day... too busy to remember that I should have gone to a lecture at the University at 6.30. I remembered at 10pm, too late to do anything about it. Duh me.

Hello blog-land,

Life is full of papers!!! Busy doing my paperwork every evening. I wish we had somebody who did all this. Nevertheless, it's not because I do working-days of 12 hours or more that I don't have time for art, antiques or just nice things. Here is a proof, I collect old blown glass globes. I am fascinated by them. And what is nicer than to fill them with nice objects. Here is the first one I made. You can see a collection of shells.

Do you like them. When I have some more time I will make some more.



I like the World Wide Web, is full of inspirations and sometimes when you are looking for something the answers arrive unexpectedly from a blog or from a website. That's what happened to me a couple of weeks ago. As soon as possible I would like to open my own Etsy shop, but I have no ideas about how, when and so on. I was reading on of my favourite blog, " The Yvestown Blog" (http://www.yvestown.com/) and I was hit on on a post that she wrote (http://www.yvestown.com/archive/2010/05/an-excellent-book-year.html). I found "my answer"!! The book "The Handmade Marketplace" by Kari Chapin, a book for people that want to start an online shop (as me!). In a couple of minuts I found the book on Amazon.uk and I ordered it!
After 8 days is arrived and now I'm looking forward to to read it!



Ilaria Chiaratti 2010


Mi piace il World Wide Web, è pieno di ispirazioni e talvolta, quando si è alla ricerca di qualcosa le risposte arrivano inaspettatamente da un blog o da un sito web. Questo è quello che è successo a me un paio di settimane fa. Appena possibile vorrei aprire la mia pagina Etsy, ma non ho idee su come, quando e così via. Stavo leggendo uno dei miei blog preferiti, " The Yvestown Blog" (http://www.yvestown.com/) e sono rimasta colpita da un post (http://www.yvestown.com/archive/2010/05/an-excellent-book-year.html). Ho trovato "la mia risposta"! Il libro "The Handmade Marketplace" di Kari Chapin, un libro per chi vuole iniziare un negozio online (come me!). In un paio di minuti ho trovato il libro su Amazon.uk e l'ho ordinato!
Dopo 8 giorni è arrivato e ora non vedo l'ora di leggerlo!

The woman who creates edible perfection like this.







(a cake for twins--isn't this a great idea??)


Can you believe she's self-taught and has only been baking since February 2007?? Unbelievable, right?  She emailed me a few weeks ago and asked for some design advice about her living room, but  when I looked at her blog, Bella Loves Pink, I was totally blown away.  I told her she should go on one of those Food Network cake shows, and then she told me she's only been baking since 2007--unbelievable, right? Here's more of her story in her own words . . .

  At the time, I was still at home with our young daughter and was watching a lot of Food Network when Ace of Cakes became popular; I was immediately hooked.  Since my daughter's 1st birthday was in September, I committed to making one cake per month to try and hone my skills enough to make an amazing birthday cake.  It worked and the rest is history.  To date, I still think it's one of the best cakes I've made.
My medium of choice is fondant, but I also make buttercream cakes.  I like making gumpaste figurines and have recently begun dabbling in modeling chocolate.  I generally don't think I'm very artistic or creative (WHAT??????), but I love a good challenge and seeing things through to the end, good or bad.  I'm always looking to improve and learn new skills and look forward to my monthly visits to the local cake supply store.  I bake from my home, mostly for friends, family and coworkers.  My husband is my biggest cheerleader and if cake scraps have been promised, a handsome and quite adept assistant.

I can't believe she doesn't think she's creative, but the proof is evident!  If you're lucky enough to live in the Phoenix, AZ area check her out for all of your party/event/special celebration needs!  There are so many beautiful looking cakes & cupcakes, you have to go here to see more.

                                           

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A good visit to York Cemetery today. I'd arranged a visit to John Waterston the Warden at 11am regarding the website which I'm collaborating with. I needed to take some photographs, but needed permission, and I also wanted to talk to him about some of the practices used in this cemetery.

We walked around the large Cemetery, which I know well as Gill and I have a plot booked, and about 20 years ago I planted a few trees on the new section. John told me assorted tales about life as a Cemetery Warden, and his plans, and how he deals with the public, and his employers the Trustees. All very interesting and I'll be able to say more once our website is launched.... not long now!

After the chat I took a few photographs with Gill's little camera, and I hope that my colleague in Canada likes some of them, and then the Warden allows us to use the ones that we want to use. Whilst wandering round, I chatted to a woman who was tending the grave of her parents, and I asked her if I could take a couple of photos, and I got her contact details in order to get permission to use these. Complicated stuff, but probably easier than having to purchase the rights to use images.

After the Cemetery, I called in on Alligator for three small bags of compostables, and then on into town as I needed to purchase a new journal/notebook. I'd been given a £10 WHSmith token over a year ago by one of Gill's sisters, and Gill had found it recently, so that's where I went. There were plain paper notebooks in 3 areas in the shop, and I eventually found one for £7. I queued up to pay for it, and was told that they didn't give change. Oh bother... what to do? I then spent another half hour trying to find something useful for as little over £3 as I could, and found lots of lovely books for around £20, but finally plumped for a tiny book called 101 Grow to Eat Ideas, by Gardeners' World Magazine, for £5. This checkout person told me that I could have put the £3 on a a card to spend later.... but I decided that as I'd spent half an hour trying to find the £5 book, I might as well have it. So, it took me an hour to spend a £10 token and a £2 coin. You can see I'm not very good at shopping.

Home via Country Fresh, where Richard's brother, Martin, who owns the shop, told me a woman had come in and bought all the carrier-bags of compost that I'd taken in... about 6 of them I think, and had given him £15 for the lot. Gill says this is a good price as in the Co-op, you can get an entire grow-bag for £1.15... but methinks this must be peat-based, and my stuff is really rich and needs to be mixed with other less rich soils, or top-dressed on existing growing media. So I was happy with my £15 and Martin asked me to bring in more bags. I'm delighted it's being used!

Home by about 2pm, lunch and some quiet indoor time, before doing a little bit outside.

In the evening I had a meeting at The Black Swan with my two friends from the World Naked Bike Ride.... we discussed publicity and permissions and stewards and many other things. It is all coming together well.

Home by 11pm, lit the stove, hot water for Gill to soak her feet and me to do the washing up, a pretty normal evening.

A reasonable day... both boys have a tummy bug and are off school, but they just read and did stuff on their computers/DS. Gill too was achy and found a that the medicine she is taking to deal with her painful ankle is affecting her kidneys and making her ankles swell up... back to the drawing board on that one then.

I spent the morning doing assorted emails, a Fiddlesticks booking, and a phone chat with the Cemetery Warden who has agreed to see me tomorrow. Also a brief chat with my Aunty who might be visiting this neck of the woods soon... she hasn't seen where we live so that would be nice.

But I spent most of the day in the garden... a bit of planting but I got distracted by a compost bin which needed emptying... well, two did, the finished bin, which is an old tumbler which has come off it's stand and is effectively a static barrel, and when I'd unloaded this into several sacks, I transferred the dalek-bin contents which have been sitting and rotting quietly for a year or more into the now available barrel. The tumbler, whilst in use (before I rescued it from a skip) had been gnawed by rats, and they had made one of the aeration holes a bit bigger. So I utilised this hole to carefully put a courgette plant in, so it will grow (I hope!) directly into the compost as it continues to rot down. I'm quite pleased with that!

I also got distracted by ground elder, which I now need to eradicate from the raised beds next to where the hedge was and is now replaced by the wall. I will need to remove the roots for several years to get rid of this weed.

After tea, which for me included some very stringy purple sprouting broccoli, the last of, I unicycled down to the Co-op for cereals for me and muffins for the children. I couldn't be bothered to get my bike out, nor could i be bothered to walk, as I wanted to get back for 9pm to see the Science programme on TV.

Spent some time on the new website later on, to edit a few bits. We'll be launching it next week!



Here's how I decided to use these fabrics I posted about yesterday.  The latice fabric was used to cover a modern wingback chair, the creme linen for the upholstered headboard with nailhead trim, the brown & creme striped linen for 2 x-stools at the foot of the bed, and the paisley was used for custom drapery (forgive my rendering, but believe me when I say that it's much better than my last one).  These boards may look simple, but they require a fair bit of time when done correctly.  In addition to carefully matting each item, we also have to create specification notebooks full of scale drawings, furniture overlays, schematic plans, product specs and client details (statements, concepts, & synopses).   Here's a peak at mine:









While this class has been a lot of work, I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute.  I originally began exploring interior design programs because I wanted to fill the gap between what I knew and where I wanted to go.  I still have a few weeks before my first quarter is over, but I can truly say that I know it was the right decision for me.  I finally feel energized and excited about what I'm doing, and I know all of my hard work won't be going to waste.  It's safe to say that I'm really enjoying these design board projects.
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I think it was quite a good day... I did get quite a bit done and nothing terrible happened.

Although I went to bed at 3am last night, I was up just after 9 this morning and feeling fine, and soon got myself on my bike with the paperwork needed to pay our Council Tax and re-subscribe to Resource Magazine, which is always a good read.

So I got cheques out and then went to the City Treasury to pay in half of our annual Council Tax. We have the opportunity to use PayPoint in a local shop, but this would be connected to our bank account, and I don't pay the Council Tax from this... I always pay from my Fiddlesticks income, from the Fiddlesticks Building Society account, so I'll continue to pay twice a year, using a cheque from this account. I did find out though that I could get a cheque out made payable to The Post Office, and use a card (which is being sent to me) to get that paid on to the Council. I had a 20 minute wait at the Council Treasury, as they no longer have the numbers of staff that they used to, so I might use the Post Office option next time.

I visited Dylan at Millers Yard, but someone else had taken his last bag of orange halves, shock horror, for their allotment. I was delighted!

Then back through town, collecting halved lemons from the lemonade stall, and visited Rich at Country Fresh and came home.

After lunch I did some paperwork (an invoice, emails, several phone calls) and sent a reply to the US Composting Council about the Sierra Club's new proposed policy on composting and then outside, yet more foodplant stuff, getting the last tomato plant potted up, and some of the squashes and beans outside in the radiator raised beds.

At teatime I was informed that our eldest had to take 500g of cooking apple into school tomorrow for his 'food technology' so he can make apple crumble, so I cycled down to Country Fresh again and got two cooking apples (550g, allowing 10% waste for peel and core... clever, eh?) plus a large load of blood oranges which are past their best, bruising a pale powdery blue colour... They'll be absolutely fine on my compost heap, though.

So, finance, paperwork of the electronic kind, phone calls, assorted eco activism on the web, making potting mix, planting plants, riddling compost, collecting compostables, building another layer on the heap, seems like a good active day.

During the evening I told all my German friends about the forthcoming screenings of The Age of Stupid in German, had a discussion about vaccination and immunisation on facebook, stimulated by my delight that Andrew Wakefield has been struck off the Medical Register for unethical practices, and played a bit of Scrabble... and washed up, and washed and blanched grapes ready for drying into raisins.

Oh, and watched the Community Channel on Freeview to see assorted Age of Stupid stuff. Which as usual had me in tears. Wonderful, still!

Today is the last day of our lovely long weekend here at home. Off course I am all the time on the terrace or in the garden. So here is a picture of me in the mirror in our living-room.

Enjoy the end of the weekend :-)




I've been working all weekend on a master bedroom project featuring the fabrics and carpet above.  I'm happy with the selections I made and am excited to present my project this morning--needless to say, I'm a bit light on posting. In the meantime, if you want to see some great thrift store finds you must pop over to AB Home Interiors and check out the stuff Amanda found while on vacation last week (at her parent's lake house, no less!). Lucky for her she has access to a trailer, so she's bringing it back home to show it a little love.  As much as I love Atlanta, she's got me wishin' I was living in Missouri!  :)

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