A ‘Blast from the Past’

Trying to get into an organized frame of mind … we’ve been warned there is to be a Fire Drill this morning, and also I should/must get my new mobile phone SIM installed that I have already done the online stuff for.

Now just waiting for the old SIM to stop working … no that’s not right … they’ll first send me a code that I’ll need to put in somewhere. Then wait for the phone to stop working and THEN change the physical SIM card. Something which I will need help with.

My weak old fingers can’t even get the case off the mobile, let alone negotiate the teeny tiny fork to open the little draw, to then insert the minuscule card! None of this stuff was invented with old people in mind. And times like these, I really do feel like the geriatric aviatrix (IE the geriatrix negotiating the virtual skies of the web) I sometimes write about.

I stopped thinking of myself as any kind of surfer about the time I did the research about surfing I needed to be able to write knowledgeably about the process in MONGREL. I knew just ordinary body surfing was simply giving myself to the power of the water to take me, straightened in a torpedo shape, with itself to the shore. Surfing using a board was a whole other process.

As a child in the 1950s I was pretty sure that one day I would be a pilot. I collected cigarette cards of planes, identified planes going over (not nearly as many as these days) and imagined being a pilot by extrapolating from my father’s actions at the wheel, driving his first car.

Which was a share car, by the way. The two families owning the car used to take turns going on camping holidays.

This example from http://www.simoncars.co.uk/coachwork/woody.html

As near as I can recollect, the sides of our woody were all wood panel, that there no windows in the sides of the back. And of course it was old and decrepit. Traveling in it, if I wasn’t staring out the front at the horizon, between my father driving and my mother in the passenger seat, I’d be car-sick, the smell of petrol pervasive. As it was originally a tradesman’s van, there were no seats in the back, and we kids had pillows and an old mattress to sit on. And I do seem to remember that my mother and father sat in old arm chairs.

What happened to the dream of becoming a pilot? A girl, in the 1950s? It was kindly explained to me that girls did not become pilots, but that I could become an air hostess instead. I grew and grew. By 1960, even that dream went by the way. There was a height restriction of 167 cm, 5′ 6″ for air hostesses in the days of low cabin-ceiling prop planes. I was too tall!

And that was only the first fly-away this morning.

Reading my emails and posts, I side-tracked into Susan Cornelis website again this morning, this time about her Norwegian memories. She quoted the Garrison Keillor sign-off from A Prairie Home Companion,

“I couldn’t help but remember Garrison Keillor’s sign off on Lake Wobegon “where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average”.”

That was so familiar, I can practically hear Keillor say it, a radio show I used to listen to way back when. I clicked away from what I meant to do and to the website, and it’s all still there.

Not that I’m listening to anything right now other than the sounds of people in the corridor. Next, the announcements and the siren … the cat shot under the couch … and it’s time to gooooo!!!

While down on the podium, and after signing my name off, a kind person with strong hands helped me by getting my phone case off.

Now. Off across to the shops where I’ll get the SIM changed.

Indigo

Indigo by Daniel Smith is probably the watercolor I use most, and is also my favorite to experiment with … if that makes sense. This indigo is so finely milled it’s the smoothest paint I own and yet it’s capable of amazing gymnastics. Below a wet layer of indigo over a failed experiment (which is represented by the pink tones) with phthalo blue dropped into it.

The Indigo, being smooth and light (weight) allows granulars such as sodalite, and heavier colors such as phthalo blue, to react spectacularly.

Getting shades by dipping a brush into water after a stroke, indigo will last longer than any other color and make the most wonderful greys.

One of the newsletters I subscribe to is Books on Books curated by Robert Bolick (https://books-on-books.com/2025/03/23/books-on-books-collection-louis-luthi/)

This month’s letter took me to a link (https://sites.rutgers.edu/motley-emblem/indigo/) where I discovered some interesting facts about indigo. So far about 200 plants have been discovered that yield indigo, and it is nearly the only color-fast natural plant dye.

The two hundred plants is quite a surprise as the Japanese indigo cloths are quite expensive and said to be made from a rare plant. Several cultures in Africa also use indigo to dye cloths. I’m wondering now whether the original processes make these products expensive, there is bound to be a lot of processing necessary to make dyes from scratch.

My only experience extracting color from wild plant materials to dye wool, has been using lichens to make a dark red, and that was by boiling the lichen and the yarn in ammonia, then setting the pot in a sunny place for three weeks, stirring it daily. Reading how indigo was/is extracted, it seems a similar process.

Following the links, the Brooklyn Museum webpage presented me with Catherine McKinley’s article on indigo’s influence in women’s culture, where Indigo is spoke of as rare … as in “the rare, refulgent dye and the commodities spun from it.” from (https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/stories uncovering_a_womens_history_of_african_indigo) while Bloomsbury Press offered me one of McKinley’s resulting books https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/indigo-9781608195886/

In Asia, cultures such as Javanese batiks and ikats, and Japanese aizome also made indigo famous.

Nowadays ammonia is one of my no-no’s in that I’m allergic to everything with chlorine in it, though fabric dyeing has remained one of my interests. It was only a small hop to watercolor painting on cotton paper.

Wikipedia’s article on indigo, in particular growing the plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigofera_tinctoria

Food: GF Bread

‘Falling off the Wagon’, is a phrase that originated in the Temperance Movement, according to Wikipedia.

Meaning falling of the water wagon back into alcoholism. Getting back onto the wagon means getting sober again. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new.

Every so often I fall off my gluten free, dairy free, lowFODMAP and sugar free penny-farthing-bicycle and then I am in pain and discomfort.

Getting back onto my penny-farthing bicycle is a matter of figuring out where the bad stuff has crept in. While one teaspoon of gluten-containing flour in a loaf of bread is not going to cause any problems, a cup of 100% wheat flour will. And I’ve been mixing spelt flour in my baked goods to encourage yeast action.

And having that bread daily. Having anything you’re sensitive to daily, is another no-no for people with a lot of allergies, intolerances and sensitivities.

Having a particular food once every three days usually prevents a build up of the bad chemicals in the body. But sometimes all I want is to be able to eat something without worrying what it will do to my chemistry.

That’s when my penny-farthing slams to the ground and I fall by the wayside.

Which is why I’ve started experimenting with baking my own bread. Commercial gluten free breads tend to have a ‘stampede of ingredients’, and the breads that are any good aren’t always available. The phrase ‘stampede of ingredients’ … so appropriate to food intolrances … comes from the MooGoo people, who make natural skin care products.

Cutting gluten-containing flour from my diet only half-fixed my problem. I came to the conclusion yesterday it has to be a capsule filler causing me grief. I’m now taking 0.9 mg LDN daily, either a (3 x 0.2 + 3 x 0.1) dose equaling 6 capsules, or (4 x 0.2 + 1 x 0.1) equaling 5 capsules.

Meaning, I’m taking a lot of Avicel cellulose filler. And I’ve been reading in a pertinent group that this stuff gives a lot of people grief. They either have their capsules compounded with a different filler and that’s a minefield I don’t want to go into right now, or they throw the contents of their capsules in water. The LDN dissolves and the Avicel is the residue at the bottom of the glass, and then drinking the water.

That’s what I’ll be doing. I still have about one hundred and fifty capsules to work through before I can ask for a different filler. It’s a real “Good Grief, Charley Brown!” situation.

Lunch … couldn’t wait any longer. Wilted greens, avocado, a few olives and the equivalent of approx 2 slices of newly-baked bread. A third of an apple. A jug of hot salted water.

After stopping the bread machine for a minute, I hauled out the bucket and scooped out the equivalent of two slices of bread. Bucket back in to finish the cycle, 28 minutes to go. Going on the texture of the bread, it looks like it will be my most successful loaf yet.

Avatar Remaindered 18

Having a problem posting Avatar Remaindered 18, which I meant to put up yesterday. It obviously didn’t stick. Today the same trouble.

Let me put up a picture. The chapter is called Into the Chasms … Working on it.

Well, it worked. Whatever I did. Really not sure and–you know how it is–I’d rather not touch it in case it disappears again.

18. The Chasms, posted Download