mouse_rants

People keep going on about how Rick Perry was nominated to lead a department he was going to eliminate (if only he could remember what it was).
What interests me is that, according to his testimony in the hearing, at the time he proposed eliminating the Department of Energy, and at the time he agreed to lead it, he had no idea what it really did.  No clue, until someone briefed him on it (apparently he thought the secretary was a sort of ambassador for American oil and gas...which does make you wonder why a Texan would want to eliminate it). Now he knows what it's all about, he allows as how it's pretty important, and should be kept.

One has to wonder how many of our PP's nominees actually do know what the organization they would be leading does...and indeed, if he has any idea himself.

(Today's secret word:  Ch-ch-ch-chia!)
I love kombucha.  I'm not big on sweet drinks, but I do like some fizz, so kombucha is perfect - tart with bubbles.  I like it so much I have started making myself, so now I can have it every day.  (I have no position on health benefits of kombucha, but I figure starting the day with a pint of kombucha instead of 4 oz of orange juice is at least keeping me better hydrated).

Kombucha, the basic stuff, is actually pretty easy to make.  The effervescence - that's the hard bit.  The standard technique is to ferment your basic kombucha, decant into bottles and add whatever flavoring - fruit juice or whatever.  Cap bottle tightly, let it sit for a couple of days, and the little kombucha bugs will eat up whatever sugar there is in what you have added and produce CO2.  Sometimes this happens, sometimes not so much.

Naturally, I decided to deal with this by making things more complicated.  My favorite commercial kombucha has a selection of kombuchas with chia, which I also quite like.  I especially like their appearance - all those chia seeds suspended evenly in a jewel-colored liquid.  How hard could it be?

The first question was how much chia to add.  Found something that said 2 tsp/1 cup made a drinkable solution, so I figures I would try that.  My first batch was a sort of super-anti-oxident mix (e.g., whatever I had around):  pomegranite juice, beet juice, orange juice and some blackberries.  That seemed a bit tart, and I had a nearly-empty bottle of ginger syrup right there on the counter - so I added about 1/2 tsp of syrup to each bottle.  And 1 T chia (they are 1-pint bottles, but I figured I had quite a lot in them already).

And I got fizz!  LOTS of fizz - as in "have a glass ready to hand and open the bottle over the sink and hope you can get some of it in the glass as it all fizzes over".  I figured it was the ginger syrup, as that had sugar, and I never usually add sugar.

So the next batch, I just used pomegranite juice, and the full 4 tsp of chia.  Now, usually I let the bottles stand on the counter for a couple of days, and then move them into the fridge day-by-day as I drink the bottles from the previous batch.  But I had already finished the previous batch, so I put 2 bottles in the fridge right away..  Chia was not real nicely distributed;  half of it was on the bottom and half on the top, but if I turned the botlle over a couple of times before I opened it, things seemed to distribute pretty well - at least long enough for me to drink it.  No fizz, but I wasn't expecting much, chilling the bottles so soon.

Last night, when I came home, I noticed that one of the bottles on the counter had lost its cap, and it (and its neighbors, and in fact everything for about a foot around) was covered in kombucha and chia.  Clearly, there had been fizzing, and the bottle had blown its cap (still haven't found any side of the cap).  So I cleaned it all up...and then I looked up:

Yes, that is chia on the kitchen ceiling...4-1/2 feet above the counter top.  That, my friends, is SERIOUS FIZZ.

All I can think is, the cats must have had an exciting day....

:

I'm sure a million people will have a much better response to this than me, but I really need to get this blog going again.  So:  this morning I heard this story, about the cast of "Hamilton" making an appeal to Mike Pence, following the show.....and our prospective president's response, in which he characterized the speech as "harassment", demanded an apology from the cast...and said "The Theater must always be a safe and special place."

One:  Someone needs to give our prospective president a crash course on the Constitution he is going to be swearing to defend in 2 months, starting with the First Amendment (yes, there is one before the Second!)  It guarantees us, not just free speech, but the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".  Mike Pence, for better or worse, is now part of the Federal government, and he was being informed of a serious grievance the people have - the fact that so many of us are afraid that the new administration, based in large part on the things Pence has said and done, will not protect our legal rights, will indeed make inroads into them.  Mr. Pence should have been grateful to have this presented to him in such a thoughtful way.

Two:  Theater is indeed special, but the best of it (and "Hamilton" is very much in that tradition) is NOT safe.  Great theater challenges us; ; it presents us things and viewpoints that we may not want to see;  it forces us to reconsider our beliefs, our world-views, our governments and their policies (see:  Athol Fugard and many many others).  I saw a play the other night, "Miss you like hell", that addressed the problems of illegal immigrants and their families, and gave you sympathy for a character that our prospective president (I'm just  going to start calling him "PP") would undoubtedly consider should be immediately deported.  And it ended with a scene at the part of the wall that already exists, on the San Diego/TIjuana border, that our PP and his cohorts should really see, because it reminds you that this policy has very human costs.  THAT'S theater.  Not at all "safe".

If you do something wrong, it doesn't matter how many other people did it too, you are still wrong.
If you insist on dragging in the faults of all those other people, you aren't making an apology, you are making excuses.

I have a pair of tree ferns in front of my place, they are quite distinctive markers.  They have rather lost their fronds after this last summer (what with the drought we have had, and the heat, and the fact that the landscaping company has really cut back on watering, which is apparently where they got all their water), but I was hoping the winter rains would bring them back.  Then I got a letter from the HOA telling me that they were "basically dead" and I have to remove them.  I've been trying to argue that they should be given a chance, and then it occurred to me to contact the San Diego Master Gardeners to see if they could help me out...and they said tree ferns have an expected life of 20 years.  Mine are at least 40.  So they are probably really gone. :(

Been thinking about cat beds lately.  Years ago, I made a batch of cat beds, all of which Angelina tested out...but as soon as I finished making them, she stopped using them.  So I decided I should give them another chance.  She's been sleeping on a box in the corner of the bedroom, so I found her bed and put in on the box for her.  Came in later to find her crouched on the very edge of the box, so she wasn't touching the catbed.  But was still on her box.  So I reminded her that this was her catbed, that I made for her personal use.  She looked at the cat bed while I explained this...then looked at me...then looked at the cat bed....then looked at me....then looooooooked at the catbed........................then looked at me.  And I put the catbed on the floor, so she could sleep on her nice box.

wow...amazing how adding a couple new hobbies can eat up the time.  Especially the coloring seems to eat up the time...I figure I will color for a few minutes, until X...and then suddenly it's time for bed.

So it seems both the alpaca and the llama got sheared and I got a good-sized bag of each.

The alpaca is mostly dark brown, with a few bits of white , and the llama is assorted sort of off-white.  The llama wool is much longer, so starting with that - wash a couple good-sized handfulls today, have it out to dry, and then will try combing it out...of course, the spindle I ordered hasn't come yet, and I want to start with a proper (i.e., commercial) skein of roving...this is going to be a bit of a process

OK...What did you do with my photos??.

Ah, here they are - here is the alpaca:  (the white is really white, the two tan spots are sunlight)



And this is the llama:

So I had my hair done this moring, and it turns out that my stylist's neighbor has a pet alpaca.  And she has harvested the wool from it.
But.
She doesn't knit or crochet or do anything crafty, so she doesn't know what to do with it.  My stylist thinks she just has it in a bag lying around her house.
So of course I volunteered to take it off her hands.
No, I don't know how to spin.  I've thought about it but so far resisted because a) I do NOT need to start adding roving to my gigantic stash of yarn and 2) I can just imaging what learning to use a drop spindle with the assistance of cats will be like (has to be a drop spindle, no room for a wheel).

But the cats are actually pretty good with the knitting, and if someone just _gives_ you a mess of alpaca wool....well, what can you do? (not that she's actually given it to me, so holding off on buying a spindle till I actually get it.  If I do.)

So I stopped by the library to see if they had any books that would cover all the basic steps (it's raw wool, so would have to be washed and carded and everything). (Of course, this means she has probably already done something with the wool and I will be left brimming with knowledge and enthusiasm and nothing to spin.)  On the shelf above the spinning books were books on beaded crochet.  One of the many things I collect is beads, and I have all sorts of odds and ends of laceweight yarn that could be used for such projects - so grabbed a few of those.  (And 3 Aaron Elkin books because OMG there are Gideon Olivers I haven't read!).

Speaking of cats, I realized as I was working on the stash basket that a really short one would make a perfect cat bed, and the yarn is washable acrylic, which means one should be able to wash cat hair out of it.  I have been making my brother lovely catbeds out of felted yarn but when he washes them, the cat hair just becomes incorporated into the bed.  So after I finished the basket, I started to make a catbed out of the remainder of the skein.  Unfortunately it became clear that there wasn't enough yarn left to complete the bed, which meant I could either finish one of the other projects and hope there was enough yarn left over from them....or go to Michael's for another skein.

I did limit myself to just ONE more skein.

But the last time I was there, I noticed all these adult coloring books, but I didn't get one because 1) that's just silly and 2) there didn't seem to be any crayons or colored pencils I could find.  But this morning in Weight Watchers the subject was "making time for yourself" (which is always a bit of a poser for me because there is only just me, so I spend all my time on myself anyway), and one person mentioned working on adult coloring books (which turn out to be a thing), and the leader told us about something called Zentangle.  SO...there were the coloring books, and this time there were pencils right next, so I got 2 coloring books (mandelas and Art Deco designs - maybe I can use one of them for a beaded crochet project!), and of course some Zen tangle books (which seems to be sort of directed doodling, and I already have _two_ books on freeing your inner artist and that one book cost more than the other two plus the pencils but....eh.)

First, however, now that the weather is actually cooling off a bit, I need to get on the hobby of making the garden look like something other than a wasteland.

When will I learn to stay out of Michael's? I went in for shopping list pads, and came out with 7 huge skeins of extra-bulky acrylic(!) yarn, and plans for 3 new projects. But one of them is a stash basket, so that makes it all even out, right?

At least the projects should go fast. I think this is a reaction to spending too much time making very large shawls with very thin yarn on very small needles....