Someone donated handknit socks to the Volunteers of America store! It makes me sad for whomever spent hours knitting them, but good for me.
I washed them (with soapnuts) because I don't want to catch sock cooties.
Here's a picture of them
The color is inoffensive.
I do want to darn one little bit before I wear them. It looks like a toae segment may be separating from the rest of the sock in one stitch. I would feel super bad if they unraveled on the first wearing.
If it turns out they are bogus socks, I'm going to make killer sock monkeys.
Also, please people! STOP PUTTING YOUR WOOL SWEATERS IN THE FREAKING DRYER. I see so may lovely wool sweaters at thrift stores. Only now, they are mitten size and felted. Cripes. I should post how to wash a sweater. Maybe I'll do that.
This blog entry is just because I noticed that there are some good entries in my favority frugal/eco/simplicity blogs of late.
I'll link them so you can enjoy, rather than stealing their ideas which was my first thought:
Living in 100 square feet on The Good Human
This is about living in TINY homes and includes a couple of videos.
I've been fascinated with these particular tiny homes, Tumbleweed homes, for a while. I don't think I'll ever buy one because of the cost, but you never know. I will take design ideas from them.
My friend Laurie's shop, Flyright Gifts, is interesting in it's own right so please visit her blog. AND it's been featured on Apartment Therapy!! Another of my favorite sites because they focus on tiny apartments and homes and how they can be fabulous.
Why do I like the tiny? It's simple and it's frugal. You don't pay as much to heat/cool/clean/maintain/build a small home. AND it's simpler because you have less stuff than a big home can hold. You choose what to put in a small home (though some will always choose more than others) more carefully than what to put in a large home. My trailer is about 1000 square feet, but no basement, no attic, no extra storage. Thus, I had to choose fewer things to go in it than went in my house. The house had similar square footage on the main floor, but ALSO had a basement, attic, and garage to store more crap. Now it's in Pam's basement...sorry Pam.
The apartment is also small, though large for the price, and has 2 closets and a sort of storage area in the stairwell. So, less stuff (though more stuff than I need).
Anyway, here are a couple more interesting blog posts on frugality and simplicity:
SquawkFox, a blog about frugality, has an interesting call for input in this entry: What are your three worst financial decisions. Interesting how many people say "buying a house." There are also interesting comments about how the worst financial decision can be the best personal decision.
And I'm going to mention one blog that is no longer active, but it's the one that got me inspired to start blogging. It's Frugal for Life. The author brought herself out of deep debt and wrote about enjoying the freedom of debt free living. She's not adding to it anymore, but the posts are still up and she only retired it a few weeks ago so the ideas are fresh.
That's probably enough for now. I'll leave the "why the tanking economy doesn't scare me" stuff for another day.
OK, not 2 actual fat ladies in person, the best best best cooking show EVER is "The Two Fat Ladies."
It's British and excellent. I ordered it off the Netflix (not an endorsement, just what I personally use) and it finally got here. There was quite a wait for it. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get obscure foreign shows.
Anyway, the show was great. They made traditional Brit fare...fatty, lumpy, doughy, greasy things. And the personalities, Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Jennifer Paterson, are wonderful. They ride around Brit-land in a motorcycle with sidecar and talk to the locals while makinging their food.
Here's a shot of the girls:
I think if my sister and I ever get that cooking show done that we made (just one episode and it is stuck in post), we would be similar. Not so much in the fat...but in the weird women make sort of "off" food way. Not that either of us is underweight, but you know, we're more about the weird.
OK, I'm going to settle in and watch it by candlelight (not to be romantic, I'm just using candles in my bedroom more than my electric lamp (which sports a CFL) to see how I'll get by when I finally get to move off grid and not have electric lights...so a voluntary simplicity thing).
I'll blog as I watch...ready...
Already fabulous! They start out talking about shark fins and one thinks it will be bad because sharks are evil fish. And they pat their motorcycle when they pass by.
Sorry it's been so long. I was sick. And busy. When I wasn't being run off my feet, I was asleep.
Wednesday I was so tired, I had to pull off the road and sleep in the car for an hour after a meeting up in Sandpoint Idaho! Some sort of cold/flu thing that is going around.
I got over it in about 3 days due to hippie cold/flu care (no sugar, no dairy (which is actually standard for me), sinus rinsing 3 times a day, vitamins, lots and lots of herbal tea). Others have been sick a week or more so I'm pretty cocky about the hippie cold care practices.
I was really only gross sick on Tuesday, Weds and Thursday. Not bad. Our office assistant was knocked out for a full 7 days. She probably ate candy. Or was sicker than me. Whatever.
The sinus rinsing is gross, but so effective.
I recommend the neti pot to everyone. Mine looks like this one:
You put some salt (sea salt...not the iodized table salt), like a 1/2 teaspoon or so, in there and add hot (boiled for sanitary reasons though when I'm in a hurry I just use warm water) water. Let it cool to body temperature. Then you pour it up one nostril and it comes out the other. About half way through the pot of water, you switch nostrils.
The stainless steel pots are better because the outside of the pot is the same temperature as the water (with ceramic ones you end up sticking your finger in the water to check the temp..and introducing germs off your finger), and it doesn't release toxins like the plastic ones. Also, you want one large enough to do both nostrils unless you want to spend twice as long waiting for water too cool in the pot.
When I'm being good, I do this every morning. Since I used to have a pretty much permanent sinus infection, avoiding dairy and rinsing my sinuses are worth it to me. I can actually breathe through my nose now. After nearly 4 decades of being a mouth breather, in my late 30s I finally found out that people can breathe through their noses. I remember asking my gramma when I was about 4 what noses were for (mine only seemed to get me in trouble for sniffing or having snot come out of it unexpectedly). She told me people breathe through them and I was pretty sure she was lying to me. I decided we had noses because people would look funny without them. Later, I decided that was not it because if no one had noses, we would not think that looked funny, we wouldn't know any different. ( I was an odd child ).
Anyway, that is why I'm willing to forego dairy and run water through my sinuses like a hippie. I can now breathe. I've almost got my boss convinced to try the neti. He has terrible allergies and noticed that I no longer seem to suffer from mine (I also use a homeopathic anti-allergy item during the main pollen season...more on that some other time).
Here is a bit of research on the neti for those who are doubters:
http://www.webmd.com/allergies/neti-pots?print=true
And just to answer the questions I get in real life:
No, it is NOT like when you get water up your nose swimming. Once you get the salt/water mix right and the temperature neutral, you can't even feel the water in there.
Yes, sometimes gross things come out. But if you keep the sinuses clean then no gross things come out or they are too small to see.
Wierd things I've noticed:
If you're tense, the water won't flow through even if your sinuses are clear.
You have to blow your nose gently several times when you're done to dry out the sinuses a bit (but not totally dry them out!)
Sometimes, it seems to also rinse my eustacion tube and I get ear crusties. BUT my inner ears itch much less than they used to.
Enough with the grossness. I will now drink some herbal tea and go to sleep.
(Bad title! It's all I got)
I spent yesterday down on the rez canning.
I made spiced crab apples and some golden plum jam.
The apples are pretty. Only a few have the skins split so far. Probably more will go before I eat them. I have no idea how they taste and I'm supposed to wait a month or two before I try them.
I swore last year I'd never do the golden plums again....but the trees were LOADED to the point the branches were about to break. It took me about 20minutes to pick 5pounds or more (plenty for jammin'). I forced them through a cherry pitter this year rather than shaving the pulp off the pits. It wasted more pulp...and I think it killed the pitter. But it was faster.
The jam is GORGEOUS. Bright orange. And SOUR!!
I used it in the breakfast bars with double the usual apple sauce and only a little sweetener. They turned out delicious
I took a jar of each (along with some apples I picked on the rez too) to a friend. She handed ME a jar of golden plum preserves. Must have been the weekend for those plums. They are tiny...like large cherries. And definitely NOT freestone. I'm going to clean up some of the pits and plant them. The trees are clearly hardy. The freestone purple plums (huge and easy to pick and process) were devoid of fruit this year. As were some of the apple trees.
I'm definitely learning which trees are the hardiest by picking the free fruit around the rez. Those cherry trees are still doing well. I'm going to plant pits again this year. BUT I'm also going to mark the plantings better and maybe protect with rebar so the kids who mow the lawn won't kill them (but they probably will kill them).
The raspberries in the backyard, that have spread over from the neighbor's patch, did quite well again this summer. Enough to eat, but not to can or jam. One of these years. Especially if I move the landlord's junk pile which is blocking the spread of the berries and is in the best gardening spot in the yard. But the odds of me moving that junk pile is zero.
It is nice to know I'll have 2 kinds of jam to get me through to next summer (huckleberry and plum). I didn't want to buy fruit to can/jam this year so my variety is more limited. I still have some from last year to finish up.
I'll let you know how the spiced crab apples turn out. They look pretty and I left the spices in the jars so I'm thinking they will be a bit overly spiced.
NPR's Science Friday is running a segment on worm composting today.
I'm quite pleased.
Today someone who got worms from me is passing on a batch to another person. We're like the Heifer International of worms (with Heifer the recipients of help agree to pass on some of the progeny of their livestock or other assistance).
I've given worms to three people. The person passing on today has passed on one or two other times. It's like a Vermi-Ponzi-scheme! How cool.
Anyway, the worms are lovely, though housed temporarily in my office in paperbags in a Walmart bag. At least the WalMart bag is being re-used...sigh. I don't condone WalMart but I'm not taking the worms out because they would get worm juice on the carpet. Worm juice is pee. Plants like it but I bet custodians don't.
My worms are doing quite well. They like squash so fall is a good season for them. I did notice that the person passing on these worms has citrus peels in there. I don't feed mine citrus as it can get toxic and my bin is pretty small. I really need to split it into two or get a larger one. Probably 2 is better so I can let one sit and finish twice a year while the other is still going. If you leave them for a month or so with no new food they eat all the remaining bits and go through the bedding so you have pure worm dirt (poop). Then you don't have to pick through it as much.
Anyway, just happy to be passing on worms today.
