2 February 2007 I drove downtown, parked at the library, and walked to the stationer's to buy notary seals for the embroidery class next Friday. Alas, the largest size was just a tad smaller than the smallest seal that would just barely do. Oh well, said the fox, plain paper is easier for the children to write on. Bought two paperbacks and a hardback at Bishop's, and checked out five books at the library. Started to take an old book to read, then grabbed the rest of the set so they wouldn't get thrown out at the next weeding. The automatic check-out was malfunctioning again. What a waste of money! They've put up a sign telling you to go to the counter if you have trouble; they should just put up an "out of order" or a "not completely invented" sign. Dave was headed to Fort Wayne to see his dermatologist the last I saw of him. I was surprised that I left later and got back sooner, then remembered that he planned to have lunch at Mad Anthony's, then get the oil in the truck changed, and then stop at Spring Creek on the way back. 3 February 2007 All quiet in the Beeson house -- when I crawled out of bed after my nap, Dave and Al crawled in. I've got a pan of rolls in the oven -- a bit early; I think I was supposed to use a teaspoon of yeast, not a tablespoon. The pan is still a tad big: a cup of water with as much flour as it will take up makes eight rolls, and a square pan should take nine. They were a trifle small as it was. I put them around the edges, like the eight on a domino, and they filled up the hole while rising. Perhaps next time I'll put them in one of my larger loaf pans, or the little cake pan that goes with the toaster oven. Or make a loaf; I've so many loaf pans that one must be the right size. Or I might oil a cookie sheet and make flatbread. 7 February 2007 I made a loaf; most of it is gone now, but there are still two biscuits of the eight. I bought two loaves of "real bread" when I went to Aldi's yesterday. Dave came in from taking core samples of the snow rather pleased: you have to slide something under the cylinder after taking a core to keep the snow from falling out, and he's just discovered that a dust pan is perfect: "It even has a handle!" Another night darning socks alone. But I've got another pair of socks in the drawer, and before sitting down to darn I took out a ruler and some labels that I'd brought along for the purpose and drafted an embroidery guide to work eyes for the hooks on my wool pants. And any other unfinished pants that come along. Wish I knew what the half-moon table stored in the ramp room is for. It's half a circle with a notch on one side, low enough for small children, and just barely small enough in diameter that an adult can wash the whole thing while standing in the notch: I checked, because I'd got pencil marks on it while drawing guide lines on my labels. Found some glue spots that suggest that children have, in fact, been using it. Perhaps children are seated around the periphery and an adult sits in the notch ready to help. 8 February 2007 I'm so glad I'm not a fireman any more! It's 0F, and there's a mutual-aid house fire somewhere along Old 30. I saw three fishing shacks on the ice yesterday, and some children skating before that -- no evidence that they had shoveled themselves a rink, and they were falling down a lot. Time to start getting my backpack ready for the embroidery class. The evening paper said the fire was at 800 Buffalo Street -- the other side of town from Old 30 -- and, Dave says, not too far from Wildman's Laundry. (Wildman is our next-door neighbor.) They laid a wreath on the Kosciusko monument at tonight's SAR meeting, hastily because of the weather, but Dave says he may be in tomorrow's paper. Then they went to the library, elected a president, and choose uniforms: A "hunting shirt", hat, and sash-and-garter set from Townsend's, and black pants from Big R. Struck me as a quite sensible uniform. Dave says there is supposed to be an 18th-Century long rifle with it, but he's not going to get one. I wonder whether I should buy a roll of duct tape and a pattern for stays. One can use corrugated cardboard and duct tape to test a pattern for stays, and I've heard that cardboard stays hold up quite well for one-day events. Only if I ever get caught up with my twentieth-century sewing. Couldn't find the unused piece of osnaburg, so I'm having to wash an old curtain. Good thing I looked for it today instead of tomorrow! I've put three and a half yards of orange cotton-linen in with it, and intend to bleach it severely, in the hope of fading the linen enough to use as underlining. If it gets thinner as well, that's all to the good. The dress I quit working on last fall is currently underlined with crinkle gauze, but I'd given a piece of it to Dave to use for a tea bag, and after he boiled it every day for weeks he got tired of it wicking the tea out of his pot and gave it back, so I washed it just to see how fast tea dye is -- I'd meant to bleach it; perhaps I should throw it in with the osnaburg and linen blend -- and it came out with all crinkles intact. So I don't think the underlining will *stay* ironed; the crinkles must be spun into the thread, rather than put in after weaving. So I'm planning to pick the gauze off and replace it with the orange linen. I forgot to bake bread today. 10 February 2007 Had a lot of fun yesterday -- Jakob Jones made a very presentable medallion, and taught me a little about embroidery. In the room I set up in, which is the Kiddie Kollege computer room, there was a table just like the one in the ramp room, with a computer on it facing the notch. It looked like a case of improvisation, however. All the computers had dust covers as a subtle hint that they were not to be messed with. On the other hand, we dug out our ski boots not long ago, and the soles on mine have disintegrated. Dave's are leather, and are still intact. Not to mention that just as I've come to think of having fingernails as normal, they've gone fragile on me again. Tolerable on the left hand, and almost uniform, but no nail on my right hand extends more than the width of a thread beyond the quick. Maybe they'll grow back. I baked flat bread today -- it looked temptingly like a pizza as I was patting it out on the griddle -- but if I make a pizza, I'll use white-wheat flour, and leave out the oat bran. How did I ever manage to cook before we found that griddle! I cut the dough into squares with the pizza cutter: the first practical use I've had for it. It doesn't cut pizza worth a nickel; much easier to hold the pizza down with a spatula and cut it with a chopping knife. 12 February 2007 Made bread from the white-wheat flour for the first time: one cup of white flour, one cup of water, one teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of yeast, a cup and a half of white wheat. Plus whatever olive oil got worked in while I was forming the loaf. It came out of the oven just before Dave left on his walk, and we deemed it cool enough to slice when he got back. Markedly more delicate than the "organic" whole wheat I've been using -- but then I also put a tablespoon of oat bran in that. We still have a couple of squares of the flat bread I made from the organic wheat. I have yet to open the big bag of stone ground flour Dave got at Spring Creek. It looks intermediate between the health-food flour and the white-wheat flour. 13 February 2007 On days like this, it's really nice to be retired, and to have a freezer full of food. Maybe I'll finally sort some of the pile of books in the parlor. I think the main body of the storm is going to miss us. Drifting is merely ornamental, so far, but if the village snow plow hadn't passed me three times as I was going to the church and back, I might not have considered the weather so pleasant. On the way back, when I'd got to the corner of Chestnut and Columbia, I had to talk a policeman out of driving me home. Do you suppose the snowplow driver called him? Took me three fourths of an hour to suit up for the ten-minute walk! (Twelve minutes to suit up to go back, but that included stitching to a good stopping point, putting everything back in the bag, and visiting the ladies room.) And it probably took at least fifteen minutes each way, since I was careful where I stepped. Still no customers; I'm thinking of staging a beginner's embroidery night to give me an excuse to have an announcement during the service. At any rate, I got out of the house, I got my minimum daily requirement of walking, and I got started on sewing hook-eyes on a pair of pants that was otherwise finished years ago. 14 February 2007 Happy Valentine's Day, all. Milestone: the nails on my right hand have grown long enough that I found dirt under three of them today. Follow up: bleaching the osnaburg made it very difficult to draw a thread out of it. The orange linen came out much prettier. Today's mail included a postcard from Becoming an Outdoorswoman Workshop to say online registration for this year's event begins March 1st. Dave got an invitation to the 50th reunion of his high-school class at Ramada Plaza next August. 15 February 2007 I'd like to take someone with me to the workshop, but all my great nieces are married or in college, and I'm *not* taking my great-great niece unless her mother comes too! Made the last of the health-food flour into a loaf of bread yesterday. I've started one made entirely of white wheat today. Whole-wheat flour makes a much thicker sponge than white flour. Seems to me that equal parts of white flour and water used to be thicker than straight water. 18 February 2007 With white flour in the sponge, it takes a cup and a half of whole-grain flour to make a dough -- it took only one cup of flour to finish the batch mentioned above. Which makes me think that one cup of white flour is equal to half a cup of brown flour. Part of it is that I sift the white flour into the cup -- I keep it in an antique flour dispenser -- and dip the brown flours out of cannisters, but I don't think it makes quite *that* much difference! I wanted to wear my wool hose this morning, but they weren't in the drawer. Perhaps I left them hanging in the laundry the last time I washed them? Finally put on my long johns and black corduroy instead, went into the closet for my black slip -- and there were the pantyhose! I'm wearing slacks under my dress anyway. 21 February 2007 We went to Pierceton yesterday and got something for everyone at Townsend's: Dave got a shirt, sash, and garters toward his SAR uniform, I got a horn comb, and Al killed the sack. Dave has bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone, and canceled his Centennial service -- so if you have his cell phone number written down anywhere, draw a line through it. I may yet get pushed into getting one. 26 February 2007 Made pizza yesterday, for the second time. Emptied the cannister of white-wheat flour and started the second of the three sacks. I browned a chorizo, mixed it with salsa, and added chopped onions and peppers, and two mushroom slices and some chopped broccoli out of the frozen stir-fry vegetables. Quite good; Dave said it tasted like corn meal; I said, unconvincingly, that it might be the sesame oil I'd greased the griddle with. I checked the chorizo wrapper when I emptied the wastebasket today; no corn in it. I think I'll make pizza every Sunday. Saturday, I finally realized that the sore spots on my feet were corns, put a corn plaster on one: instant relief. Laundry today: I wonder why I never get anything else done on wash day. It takes all day, but ninety percent of the time is spent waiting for the next step. 1 March 2007 Made oatmeal bread today. I boiled a quarter cup of steel-cut oats and a teaspoon of salt in a cup and a quarter of water, then let it sit on the counter overnight. Added a teaspoon of yeast and a cup of flour in the morning, which made such a stiff dough that I could barely work all the flour in -- though it was still very sticky. Much to my surprise, it was nearly as soft as a normal sponge when it had raised, and absorbed about a cup and a half more flour. (This was Spring Creek's whole-wheat bread flour.) Acted like normal bread dough from there on. I sprinkled some rolled oats on the loaf before the third rising, just for decoration. Doesn't seem to be substantially different from the all-wheat bread I made the last time, just fresher. Next time, I think I'll soak the oats overnight, without cooking them, so as to make lumps in the bread. Streets are clear enough that I drove the Buick when I went to Aldi's yesterday. Forgot that I'd left the canvas bags in the truck, so I unloaded the cart directly into the back seat. Probably easier than bagging the stuff, though I used bags -- a knitting bag and an easter basket, since Dave was gone in the Toyota when I got back -- to carry the stuff into the house. While putting the groceries into the car, I noticed that the nail on the middle finger of my right hand had grown out to normal length. Unfortunately, it was a tear that extended well into the quick that brought that nail to my attention. On the other hand -- well, on the same hand -- the other four nails are almost long enough to file, and only one nail on the left is broken. And I've finally filed that one enough that it has stopped snagging on my glove. Dave put goop on his face for the last time tonight, so the sore spots should heal up reasonably soon. Ice on the lake still looks solid, but I don't think I'll go hiking out there. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)