Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Lego: Building Sideways

I saw in the stats for this blog that interestingly—some would say co-incidently—the original MILS plate post was once again dug up from the archives.

Due to some house rules I have up to now ignored, I can no longer display my Lego creations on the hall table in the corridor.

I’m hoping there won’t be any complaints if I display on the pilaster beside my front door. Where usually only names and seasonal things are stuck.

Hence now attempting to invent a vertical MILS plate

A first trial vertical MILS plate only partially covered. With a very basic version of men at work starting the build

The question is how much weight I can hang off such a structure keeps me experimenting. Second, how easy or hard will it be to change the displays?

That up there is a thirty-two stud base plate stuck to the wall with five velcro-type fixings. Not ideal as I have already found, as all the places where there aren’t fixings are hard to press down on.

And after being bent in, they bend back and the thing being connected jumps off. It’s even awkward to fix on small plates such as eg 4 x 8s with stuff on them.

I think I need to get a bunch of 16 x16 plates. build on them, and stick them to the baseplate with strips or 2 x 4 plates. Something like that.

While I’m waiting for a postal delivery, I might break out some old ladders from the vintage fire engine and get the characters onto the next level, since at the moment it reminds me of an old fashioned arcade game.

Touch …

This crystal-topped staff hand-made by Alys Shilo (photo made in 2014) from various natural and machine-made objects, no plastic involved.

Caroline Ross’s post on Touch was a serendipitous discovery this morning, after a few weeks of thinking about my sense of Smell and Taste, worrying about them not coming back after the medical procedures I had last month. Both okay now, with my interest in how we use them enlivened by their possible loss.

Her list of five things to touch every day seems like a good start … Abbreviated to their headings by me … if you’re interested you can see the examples Ross gives in the article linked below.

  1. Entirely unmade
  2. Unmade but modified
  3. Handmade but unmade material source
  4. Machine made, unmade material source
  5. Machine made, artificial or mixed source materials

https://carolineross.substack.com/p/ultra-processed-things

Although it’s still only noon here, I’ve already touched dozens of objects in category 5 (table, couch, laptop, etc etc)nand quite a lot fewer in the first four categories.

Quite a few things I touch every day need a bit of analysis. For example, the carpet in these units is said to be wool. It’s obviously machine-made. But does it have a plastic backing? Yes. So it’s another thing in category 5 and here I thought I was walking on a natural substance.

Definitely in category 1 is my bit of polished wood that I picked up from Raglan Beach, North Island NZ about 50 years ago, and keep in my pocket.

2. Unmade but modified. Hmmm. The examples are “ground coffee, stone paperweight, wooden walking stick, dried apple rings, raisins, a fallen log to sit on.” At breakfast I had currants on my cereal … and seeds, and various other unmade food-sources. Another easy one where food is concerned. Lol, a fallen log to sit on. Up here in my Level Two unit? Maybe not.

3. Handmade but unmade material source … that’s a hard one as I haven’t painted yet today and haven’t yet used ochre. or a handmade paint brush.

4. This one is easy for me. Machine made, but unmade material source. Wearing anything other than cotton, linen, silk, or viscose gives me hives and or eczema. Cotton, linen and silk are all unmade material sources.

That’s my five. How did you go?

Brain/Mind

Getting my mind back after an anesthetic, even one of only 25 minutes duration was always going to be an interesting experience. One of my tests for regaining normal brain power is doing a crossword puzzle, and I have to confess that seven days after the fact, I’m still floundering in that respect. I successfully solved the Decoder Puzzle but am having a lot of trouble thinking up the required words for the Crossword Puzzle.

The eight letter US state had to be Arkansas in the end. Delaware just didn’t give me the right letters.

I remember my mother, Hendrika, complaining about a fuzzy brain after an operation in her eighties. It took her fully three weeks to remember, after knitting four or five false starts, how to knit socks. When she did finally remember the pattern, she never knitted anything else apart from 10 cm squares in the last three years of her life.

A few of Hendrika’s grandkids wearing her socks. She knitted about a thousand pairs in her later eighties, donating them to charitable groups after the family were supplied.

It has been suggested that as eldest daughter it would be fitting that I undertook that same project, but I’m afraid I might’ve built up a bit of steam and blown that suggestion out of the water. Seriously? I love knitting, but don’t have my mother’s fortitude to be knitting the same pattern over and over, and for years on end producing two or three pairs a week.

In fact, I like to invent patterns as I go. I started on a vest with the new yarn. Knitted a few experimental squares but decided in the end to go with diamonds. More on that project in a post.

Knitting

Treated myself to some new yarn …

And the beginning of a new project. This little knit is a trial piece … can I knit a square by starting with a 4 cm centre and pick up stitches at each corner every round?

It’s working so far, though not yet looking particulrly tidy at the corners. I like how the patterning seems to be twisting. I haven’t worked out yet why it’s doing that.

When I imagined it the sides growing from the centre were straight. It’s possible that something totally different will eventuate if/when I knit a square all in purl. Wild times ahead.