Category: Earth versus World

In the Biesboschen …

In the Biesboschen
Four hundred begettings ago,
Hunting, fishing and gathering
We people followed the narrow under-tree paths
of deer and swine.

Otter-Wijf might then have been my name.
Hung with bones, herbs and a wisert’s skin
I walked and walked and walked the cool under-tree paths
Of our home range.

— — — —

With this painting and poem I’ve tried to manifest a dream in which I had the clearest sensation that I walked through sand–making those little squeaks–in an ancient Dutch setting. Otter-wijf was my name and I wore a leather shoulder bag with dried herbs in it, and a leather wrap about my shoulders.

It was the uncanniest thing when I woke, no longer wearing the wrap or the bag when only seconds before they felt as real, as the bed-sheets a few seconds later.

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.

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.