#making a sampler square but it’s taking hours

[mochiwei]

Knitting humbles me

[alex51324]

Today I got started on a big craft project, finishing a quilt that my late stepmother started.  It’s what I learned as a “typing paper quit,” but I recently found out most people call a “string quilt.”  

Here are a couple of images of completed ones, borrowed from the website for Heartstrings--a virtual sewing circle that makes string quilts for charitable causes--just to give you the idea:

I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to piece mine with sashing (as in the second picture) or straight block-to-block, as in the first picture.  

To make a string quilt, or typing paper quilt, you take squares of paper and sew strips of fabric together across them, usually diagonally.  Here are some strips and the paper squares from my stepmother’s work bag:

The big advantage of this method is that you can use strips of varying widths and lengths, using the paper foundation to trim the squares down to uniform size.  That way, you’re spared a lot of fiddly measuring and cutting at the beginning of your project.   

And here are some finished squares:

My stepmother had done 78 of them.  Judging by the amount of paper and strips left, she may have meant to do a lot more, but I worked out that I can make a reasonably-sized quit with eight rows across and ten down--it’ll be a little smaller than a twin size, but I can add sashing and a border to bring it up to size.  That left me with only two more squares to piece. 

 The two on the left are the ones I did--you can see they look just about as good, but it took me about three hours just to do those two.  The back side of the squares show a little more about how the process works, and the reason my two squares took so long:

The uppermost square, on the right, is my stepmother’s piecing; the one on the left/underneath is mine.  She machine-pieced, but I never got the hang of using a sewing machine, so I’m stuck hand-piecing.  Hand-sewing through a stiff piece of printer paper is kind of a pain in the ass.  (You can buy special paper that is easier to work with, and if I end up needing to piece more squares, I’ll get some.)  

When you tear the paper backing off, the back of the square looks like this:

This is one of my stepmother’s; I haven’t dared tear the paper off mine yet.  Here’s the right side of the same square, for comparison:

The most usual size for squares in this type of quilting is 8.5 inches, the square you can most easily make out of a piece of typing paper.  My stepmother, however, did 6.5 inch squares.  I’m planning to start by piecing them into groups of four--I’m not sure if that’s what she was planning to do or not, but the 6.5 squares would then yield 12-inch blocks which is a fairly standard size for quilt blocks.  

Here I laid some out to get an idea of how it’ll look:

The corners will meet more neatly when it’s actually sewn. 

If I decide to go with sashing, it’ll be around those four-square blocks.  My stepmother’s stash for this project includes several big pieces of the neutral fabrics, including this dark brown.  I’m guessing she was thinking of using those for sashing, but I’m not actually sure. 

Once I get a few of the four-square blocks pieced, I’ll lay them out, with the different sashing fabrics and without sashing, to figure out what I want to do. 

Besides the materials for this quilt, I also inherited two big totes full of fabric, and her quilting hoop and sewing box.  The fabric includes a fair few pieced blocks left over from various other quilts she did.  Once I get this quilt done, I’m planning to assemble those into a sampler quilt--I did that once before, with blocks I found in a thrift shop; it’s a little tricky because of the blocks not being all the same size, but it turned out OK.  

I found it sort of meaningful, finishing that quilt that was pieced by a stranger whom I guessed had probably passed away, and didn’t have anybody in her family to finish it for her, so I think it’ll be nice to do this.  

[somediyprojects]

Tradewinds stitched by Sally Sheridan. Pattern ($6.99) designed by Teresa Wentzler.

In 2003 I showed my dad the TW Tradewinds leaflet and asked if he'd like it for his home office.  He wasn't a fan of the sampler section, but very much liked the ship, dolphins and mermaid. Bonus was that the smaller rectangular sized would fit on his office bookshelf. 

This project was much larger and more complex than anything I had stitched before. I had dozens of needles threaded with colors and blends. The stitching took me 282 hours over 10 months. I presented the completed and mounted Tradewinds to my dad at Christmas 2004.

Tradewinds graced dad's office for 9 years. When he passed, I reclaimed it and put Tradewinds on my bookshelf. When I moved 2 years ago Tradewinds found a spot on my dresser where I see it daily. And it started whispering to me that I should start stitching again.

I could not have completed Tradewinds without the information and encouragement of the Teresa Wentzler BB and Rotation Stitchers BB groups. Those bulletin boards (BBs) pre-dated Facebook as we know it today.  Now this TW Cross Stitch SAL group serves that purpose. And I’ll be happy to share what I learned with anyone interested in Tradewinds.

Framed Dimensions: 17.5” wide x 11.25” tall

Stitch count: 114H x 210W Fabric: 28 count Confederate Gray Cashel by Zweigart Floss and threads: 59 DMC colors per floss list on leaflet, plus some Kreinik blending filament Modifications to Tradewinds design: • Excluded sampler alphabet, compass and corresponding portion of side borders (sadly this included the mermaids’ tails) • For sparkle added metallic threads to waves under the ship, sun, moon and stars (modification from TWBB) • Over 1 stitches added detail in mermaid faces and flesh (modification from TWBB) New-to-me things that made the project easier: • Gridded the fabric with Sulky in 20 thread (10 stitch) blocks • Stitched on a scroll frame and floor stand • Ott light with 3x magnifier (useful for accuracy, and essential for the over 1 stitches) • Made working copies of the design, marking progress and next step with multiple colors of highlighters • Needle organizer to manage dozens of needles loaded with the threads • Organized the cut floss for blended colors in small baggies with labels

Oh my gosh! Those sails!! <part of a post I wrote in Oct. 2003 after about 20 hours of stitching> I read many posts in TWBB while I was kitting up Tradewinds. And I saw the warnings about the sails. But I thought folks were complaining because the white was boring and there is a good bit of it. Well, I apologize to all those who went before me and survived the sails. Tonight I picked Tradewinds back up and seriously started on the sails. Oh my gosh! Confetti stitching in shades of white/ecru/beige that I can barely distinguish one from another. It begs the question of whether there can be such a thing as too many colors. And blocks of pattern from one sail to the next that are almost the same, but not quite. I started with the jibs, and had initially planned to do the sails mast by mast. Now I'll divide the "sail making" into more parts. <fast forward to Nov. 2020> Now each time I look at the final result I am in awe of Teresa Wentzler’s use of colors in a design. All those colors and confetti stitching are challenging, but well worth the effort.

To avoid burn-out as I tackled my first piece of this size I set monthly goals and rotated between 2 projects: Tradewinds and a small fun stitching project. Another key to success was breaking the work into “bit-sized” portions and the taking a moment to appreciate each accomplishment. Like many of TW’s designs Tradewinds lends itself to this approach: a couple sails at a time, one border panel at a time, the moon and the stars, etc. Completing a discrete item is much more satisfactory for me than working a square inch at a time. Sharing accomplishments and cheering on others in a stitch-along group also kept me engaged.

[spacenutspod]

As NASA explores, innovates, and inspires through its work, agency inventions aimed at monitoring atmospheric pollution, studying samples from asteroids, extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, and revolutionizing flight have been named TIME’s Inventions of 2023. TIME announced the honorees on Oct. 24. “For more than 65 years, NASA has innovated for the benefit of humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “From turning carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars, to delivering the largest asteroid sample to Earth, helping improve air quality across North America, and changing the way we fly, our MOXIE, TEMPO, OSIRIS-REx and X-59 Quesst missions are proof that NASA turns science fiction into science fact. It’s all made possible by our world-class workforce who, time after time, show us nothing is beyond our reach when we work together.” Improving Air Quality Data NASA graphic showing basic path of TEMPO scanning. Image Credit: NASA NASA’s TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) mission is the first space-based instrument to measure pollution hourly during the daytime across North America, spanning from Mexico City to Northern Canada and coast-to-coast. Launched in April 2023, TEMPO provides unprecedented daytime measurement and monitoring of major air pollutants. The first-of-its-kind instrument can monitor pollution within a four-square-mile area and is helping climate scientists improve life on Earth by providing openly accessible air quality data for studies of rush hour pollution, the transport of pollution from forest fires and volcanoes, and even the effects of fertilizers, and it also has the potential to help improve air quality alerts. Making Oxygen on Mars Technicians lower the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover. Photo credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech In September, a microwave-size device known as MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover generated oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for the 16th and final time.  Extracting oxygen from the atmospheric resources found on Mars via In-situ Resource Utilization processes will be critical to long-term human exploration of the Red Planet, providing explorers with breathable air and rocket propellant.  Since Perseverance landed in 2021, MOXIE has proven far more successful than expected, generating more than 130 grams of oxygen, including 9.8 grams on its final run. At its most efficient, MOXIE produced 12 grams of oxygen an hour – twice as much as NASA’s original goals for the instrument – at least 98% purity. Asteroid Sampler Curation teams process the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in a cleanroom, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Photo Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber On Sept. 24, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a sample from asteroid Bennu to Earth. The sample is the first asteroid collected in space by NASA, and the largest ever collected from an asteroid. The rock and dust represent relics of our early solar system and could shed light on the origins of life. Early analysis of the sample at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has revealed high carbon content and water, which together could indicate the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock. The Bennu sample will be divided and shared with partner space agencies and other institutions, providing generations of scientists a window about 4.5 billion years into the past. Quiet Sonic Thumps The X-59 Quesst aircraft is rolled out at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Palmdale, California. Photo credit: Lockheed Martin NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft, the agency’s first purpose-built, supersonic X-plane in decades, is currently scheduled to take to the skies in 2024. The centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, the agency will fly the X-59 to demonstrate the ability to fly faster than the speed of sound while reducing the typically loud sonic boom to a quieter “sonic thump”. NASA will use the X-59 to provide data to help regulators amend current rules that ban commercial supersonic flight over land, opening the door to greatly reduced flight times. NASA will fly the X-59 over several U.S. cities in the final phase of the mission, gathering public input to the hushed sonic thumps.  The TEMPO instrument is managed by NASA Langley’s Science Directorate in collaboration with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It was built by Ball Aerospace and integrated onto Intelsat 40E by Maxar. The MOXIE experiment was built Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the project for the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched on Sept. 8, 2016, was led by the University of Arizona. It is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, under the agency’s Science Mission Directorate’s New Frontiers Program.  The Low-Boom Flight Demonstration project is managed by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, the X-59 Quesst is managed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and both efforts are led by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. For more information about the agency’s missions, visit: https://www.nasa.gov

[fromcenotaphy]

Rest Ye Merry - a christmas bunkerfic

Rest Ye Merry

It's the most wonderful time of the year and given that they've somehow managed to beat God, rescue an angel from a void dimension, AND keep the world from utter ruin one more (hopefully last) time, Dean thinks they've earned an all-out Christmas. String lights and mistletoe and cookies and presents, all of it.

A Christmas in the Bunker fic. Takes place post season-15; canon divergent after 15.18 "Despair".

5.3k words; Dean/Cas and Sam/Eileen

based on this tfw 2.0 christmas post I wrote

*

Dean has been baking for what feels like 24 goddamn hours, as he expresses to Cas between enthusiastic kisses, and he deserves, he deserves, to eat the last scrapings of the cookie dough if he goddamn well pleases.

“Dean,” Cas burrs, the sound vibrating up through the corner Dean’s jaw due to Cas currently being occupied exploring that general angle with his mouth. “I’ve been reading about salmonella, and it’s very serious—I think you should really be careful about it.”

“Cas, I’ve been human for a lot longer than you have,” Dean tells him, arching his back midway through the rebuttal as Cas does something exceedingly clever with his hand. “I think...ah, I think I know how to not die of food poisoning.”

“Disrespectful,” Cas breathes, nipping roughly at his jaw. “Fortunately for you, my current priority is distracting you enough to get the health hazard out of your hands. Which I’ve just done.”

(Which is how Dean ends up chasing Cas around the kitchen, hurling handfuls of flour at him and trying to grab the cookie dough bowl back before Cas can get it to the sink.)

*

In the library, Eileen and Sam have about 6 gallons of popcorn overflowing out of all of Dean’s good serving bowls and they are stringing it together on yards and yards of thread, signing at each other and snickering between kernels. The floor is a mess of tiny popcorn fragments, because Dean apparently lives with friggin' animals.

Cas, as it turns out, has bought everyone socks. He makes a circuit of the room, handing out lumpy hosiery with giant balls of knitted footwear shoved into the toes.

“Stockings of stockings,” he explains, looking disgustingly pleased with himself. “It’s wordplay.”

“Oh, I know about stockings,” says Jack happily. “It’s a Christmas tradition.”

“After the stockings,” Cas says, taking the seat next to Dean’s, “there’s usually a fawn that gets slaughtered—I don’t think Dean and Sam partake in that bit, which is good because I don’t think we could find a fawn willing.”

“Nobody partakes in that bit, Cas,” says Sam, scandalized.

“Hmm?” says Cas. He looks at them, squints a little in thought. “Oh, that may have been the Picts. Sorry, the traditions get adapted so fast.”

“Don’t ever change, pal,” Dean says to him. He concentrates diligently on untangling his stocking of stockings. If he doesn’t concentrate he’s going to reach for Cas again, because he’s had three peppermint beers—alright, that overpriced holiday craft shit Sammy picked up is pretty good—and Cas looks endearing as hell right now. (There’s a smudge of brown sugar on Cas’s temple and god help him, he wants to lick it off right here in front of everyone.)

“Oh, these are going to go great with the Christmas sweaters,” Sam crows, holding up his socks, which are emblazoned with tiny snowmen.

“You didn’t,” says Dean in horror. His socks have tiny slices of pie on them, which is objectively awesome.

“I did, and everybody is wearing them for dinner. Yours has some very beautiful felted poinsettias on it.”

“We’ll see who’s laughing when you have to try on the Christmas clown pajamas I got you,” says Dean, which shuts Sam up pretty quick. He points at the sheaf of mistletoe they picked up from the florist that morning. “Where do we want this?”

“Doorway,” Eileen chimes. She cracks open a second beer and points with the bottle. “Right there.”

Dean tosses the branch to Sam. “All yours, you giraffe.”

Cas watches Sam standing on his tiptoes to affix the mistletoe. “That’s not for summoning the old gods of devastation to our hearth, I’m assuming.”

“Dude, no,” says Dean. He picks up a stray scrap of the mistletoe from the floor and glances over in time to catch Cas’s smirk. “Oh. You’re joking.”

“Yes, Dean.”

“Ass,” says Dean. He tucks the mistletoe behind Cas’s ear.

Cas smiles at him. “I learned from the best.” His expression is so achingly fond that Dean has to drop his eyes. He tangles his fingers in Cas’s, under the table.

“Cas, what is this?” says Eileen, sorting through the beginnings of the gift pile at the other end of the table. She picks up a glossy atrocity that looks more as though someone crumpled up an entire roll of gift wrap versus anything that actually contains a present.

Cas looks aggrieved. “You can’t see the object inside,” he says. “Isn’t that the only stipulation?”

Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas—he thinks that might be the gift he and Sam had picked out for Jack, actually, and Cas was supposed to wrap it, not embed it in a square yard of scrunched-up laminate.

(They’d driven to the general store in Lebanon two days ago, Dean handling Baby carefully around the snow-dusted curves. Caitlin had waved to them from outside the diner, on her way in for the afternoon shift. A handful of kids he didn’t even recognize had called out a holiday greeting from the sidewalk as they drove past, and damn, Dean still can’t get used to people around town knowing who he is, even if it’s under a fake name.

“What the hell do we get him,” he’d muttered to Sam as they stood in the toy aisle. “This one says...ages eight and up. Is he older or younger than eight?”

“Let’s just...get him some candy,” Sam had said, and they’d picked out the largest sampler box they could find.)

Eileen blows a strand of hair out of her face and pokes at Cas’s wrapping paper disgrace. “I need to show you how to make an accordion fold,” she laughs, hands flitting demonstratively through the air. Her phone chimes, interrupting her. “Oh—the tree’s ready for us to pick up, Sam.”

Continue reading on AO3

[do-you-have-a-flag]

Destiel shippers come get ya’ll juice!

SO @deadwright​ and I were inspired by Some Tumblr Posts and the twitter Roadhouse  Wedding stuff and keep writing headcanons about Thee Destiel 2021 Married Ever After S16 SPN Romantic Event Of The Season, so here’s that. 

Arranged in order of marital chronology and cutting out us keysmashing too much:

oh man imagine all the burgers they get catered for the reception dean got it done himself he would’ve been so particular about the catering bridezilla cas would probably be THEE bitchiest bridezilla

it's also definitely that trope where all the other hunters ect KNOW that that many of them and the wedding party are essentially a target for trouble so everyone spends the 24 hours leading up to the vows taking out every beastie who shows up on a revenge kick out of sight because they'll be damned if they let ANYTHING stop this wedding and Dean and cas are both having their marital jitters oh god im not good enough what if something goes wrong about mundane things while monsters are getting their ass kicked outside AWWWWWWWW for sure for sure, they’re hunter royalty this wedding is a big deal like half the attendees are nursing injuries but grinning widely

they don't do the can't see eachother before the wedding thing because you KNOW dean would be fixing cas' tie last minute

dean wears a blue pocket square to match cas' tie cas wears a FLANNEL SQUARE

I’m obsessed w the idea of cas giving dean a little bit of his grace in a small bottle on a chain for him to wear or like a wing feather or some part of him god the grace in a bottle breaks me every time in fic dean probably builds cas something but every time i try to think of something specific i choke up

i was thinking like what if trading grace is as close to a romantic gesture as angels have and he's like..... technically i left some grace behind in your mark when i dragged you from the pit and dean is like ARE YOU SAYING WE'VE BEEN MARRIED THIS WHOLE TIME? 

they are so sweet i’m on the verge of tears the ability to do anything by halves in their relationship was burnt out by like the second return from the dead moment they are too insane to be anything less than All In And Then Some

at one point someone was like hey cas do you want to run your vows by someone as practice? and he started reading what he'd prepared and it devolved into Biblically Grand Statements Of The Power Of Love And The Redemption Of - ect ect ect and it's because unlike the confession scene he's had TOO much preparation and overshot into uncanny angelic vibes he makes some edits because he know the expressions he gets when he reads it aren't what he intended

dean writes page after page after page of unused drafts, none of them are particularly floral

he does the cliche of ripping up his vows and improvising at the altar, something he gets mercilessly teased for because he swore he wouldn't but it classifies as a chick flick moment

THAT’S SO PEAK HIM OH MY GOD and you knoooooow you just KNOW it’s beautiful and emotional and everyone is crying

god the NOVELTY of dean being emotionally honest in front of people......im gonna faint YEA yeah... ONE TIME ONLY DEAL he thinks loudly at Sam's smug expression

anyway, at the wedding dean is the one who spends the whole ceremony with like crying cat meme eyes after the confession scene i’m pretty sure the minute the vows start cas is in the same boat USELESS HUSBANDS dean gets passed a handkerchief for his tears and immediately goes to use it on cas' face and they both laugh sob love the idea that everyone individually thought they were too tough to cry but they all broke at various stages yeah sam definitely starts to choke up just standing up there with his brother sam chokes up before the ceremony even started, like probably when he was pinning on dean’s corsage

anyway, Jack dancing with his two dads at the reception CAS’ BEST MAN / FLOWER BOY FLOWER MAN let him heelie down the aisle with the flowers LITTLE MAN GO NYOOM who makes him a little flower crown he wears with a proud lil smile? claire ofc, with those hair braiding skills? she makes it BEAUTIFUL flower crown: on nails: painted dads: MARRIED!!!!

when they say i do and kiss and everyone is cheering you can't convince me that someone doesn't let off what is either a gun or a dubiously legal firework in celebration jack pops a few lightbulbs in his uncontrollable joy

Dean and Cas can't let go of each other, it's at LEAST one point of physical contact for the rest of the reception PERIODT

CAN YOU IMAGINE THEM DANCING TO AIR SUPPLY

they definitely didn't do the wedding gifts thing but a few mysteriously show up anyway; discuss waffle iron from sam bc he remembers the becky incident meanwhile claire gets them flavoured lube because she’s an insane little mean girl she gets them a sampler package with like novelty flavours, gotta spring extra for a wedding PIE FLAVOURED LUBE

it’s gonna be the party of the century omfg you KNOW it! that dancefloor going OFF the BAR is FLOWING

dean gets dragged up onto the bar to make a speech and there's a moment at the end where he drags cas up there too and they're being playfully yelled at not to scuff it and there's hooting and catcalls as dean and cas kiss and dean gestures rudely before almost falling backwards off the bar before cas grabs him and climbing down is less romantic or dignified but he couldn't care if he wanted to

meanwhile sam and claire are outside defacing the impala with silly string and lewd graffiti and tin cans tied to the bumper for the going-away oh it is one hundo percent a just married atrocity there's enough condoms hidden in the car that they're still finding them months later

anyway wanna hear my disgustingly soppy honeymoon roadtrip concept? YOU KNOW I DO OKAY SO

you know at some point dean must have said some sad thing like for the longest time he never thought he'd live long enough to get married and the only circumstances he could imagine was hooking up drunkenly with a stranger at some vegas wedding scenario like that's the best he would ever get and he thinks it's mostly forgotten but then during their cross country honeymoon roadtrip castiel does in fact navigate them to las vegas and quietly mutters that the legal veracity of the little chapel on the city limits is dubious at best and they're already married so it couldn't do any harm and they get officiated by an elvis impersonator and a woman wearing more sequins than fabric throws cheap confetti over them

and after that they stop into every venue they can find that would be friendly to them to pretend they're eloping and at one point dean even pulls out the fbi id badges and the officiant is under the impression he's facilitating some sort of covert workplace romance 

one place is a kitchy little house that's clearly just the couple who run it opening their strange home to anyone who needs it and have been since the 70s and Castiel thinks for a moment when they're asked to pin something to the collection of stuff on the walls and ceiling before pulling the receipt for the pie they'd shared earlier in a dinner out and scrawling his and dean's name on it to be added to the clutter 

and at one point they stand ankle deep in a pond while some old hippie lady wraps their clasped hands together with soft fabric and chants something that dean knows isn't real magic but hey he's not going to tell her that and after the ceremony they sit on the grass and feed each other sweet bread to complete the binding or whatever and it's nice but it doesn't compare to the ranch where they both tossed their cowboy hats in the air and were given a horse to ride to their camp site

i thought about riverboat gambling for point one seconds and now i know in my bones that one of their many weddings was on a riverboat, they made the captain officiate after cornering him on deck in like five minutes, the crew sent them complimentary champagne and they threw fries at the birds following the boat while sharing it straight out of the bottle

if destiel can go canon multiple times they can get married multiple times CHANGE MY MIND THEY GET MARRIED SO MUCH the MOST married i just want them to get gay cowboy married

eventually i want them to end up at the beach bc dean has canonically never been to the coast their road trip is to get to the other coast

they send just married postcards back to sam from every stop sam stops feeling hurt he was left out of their vegas elopement wedding by the third wedding postcard he recieves sam saves them ofc bc GOD can you imagine them looking at the postcards on their 30th anniversary or s/t 🥺 showing their grandkids and recounting the story of each wedding there's a seashell taped to the last one

cas gets a terrible sunglasses tan and dean gets burnt on the tips of his ears and there's sand on sand on sand in all their clothes and at one point dean is blinking away salt water and cas is gripping his arm and saying something about the coral by them in the water and dean thinks that he likes floating beside cas a lot better than flying

dean has cas pick ice cream for them from a truck and hustles at carnival games enough to win them both big novelty foam hats and they both go back to their room and pass out immediately post shower sprawled across the bed and still smelling like sunscreen and salt water

dean tucks a little cocktail umbrella behind cas’ ear

cas spends most of the next day in dean's zepplin shirt and a pair of shorts they only picked up once they got there because neither of them thought to bring beach clothes, they sit on the balcony and dean sips his beer and idly plays with the ring on cas' finger and they play a game of what fictional monsters could they beat in a fight

cas’ true form is the size of the chrysler building he can fight king kong easy that's what he says and dean's like okay but what about mothra and castiel is like how would YOU defeat mothra and dean just goes "bugspray." GDJSGSHSGSHDSJ DEAN WOULD

in honour of misha putting his whole pussy into the role, cas wears a dress in at least one of their weddings

it's at one of those theme parks that's just historical re-enactments and people get their vows renewed there and there's costumes for the photobooth and the staff are like how long have you been married? castiel says two weeks, three days, eighteen hours, and twenty five minutes................ approximately.  and the photo is cas in a classical wedding gown and dean is wearing the veil with his old timey suit and there's a moose head on the wall behind them wearing the top hat he was given and they send that print with an arrow pointing at the moose with sam written next to it

i keep thinking bitch!!!! you KNOW WHAT!! you KNOW that dean is the type a guy who's heart races every time he feels his wedding ring/is always fiddling with it in the weeks after the wedding, like an anchor to remind him they really got married this is real he would NEED that physical reminder that he can have good things

he’s never ever going to take it off, the tan line will be permanent

how funny it would be if dean gets injured on a hunt and the monster guy is about to kill him and then the lights blow out and the monsters are like what was that and dean is just like "[spits blood] that's my husband." and nek minnit cas has just ripped through them thanks to teleporting in angel style and is just like Cas: [heals dean] "you're late for movie night" Dean: "Well if you'd gotten here earlier i would have been on time." Cas: >:| [kisses him]

cas is like i didn’t burn the popcorn this time you BETTER be alive to see it

[texastheband]

Texas V Wu-Tang Clan

Interview by Steven Daly Photography by Peter Robathan Taken from The Face - December 1997

It’s the pop story of ’97, the most unlikely end to a weird year: TEXAS collaborating with the WU-TANG CLAN. First, a Scottish rock band on the verge of slip-sliding away into a tasteful obscurity was reborn via a slew of hit singles and a glut of stylish imagery. Now, in New York, their Brit-cool meets hip hop in a mutually beneficial deal. For everyone concerned, it’s all they need to get on…

Sharleen Spiteri took the call in her front hall. "Yo, Peach," growled a strange voice over transatlantic wires. The gentleman caller was none other than Ol’ Dirty Bastard, court jester of New York hip hop dynasty the Wu-Tang Clan. Apparently Mr Bastard fancied working with Spiteri and her band, Texas. It all started in August, with one of Texas’ managers discussing Land Rovers with someone called Power in New York, who turned out to be the manager of the Clan. A video of Texas’ "Say What You Want" was dispatched, and prodigiously gifted Wu-Tang chieftain RZA signed on to do a re-recording of the single for a prospective single project. Original rapper OI’ Dirty Bastard was replaced by Method Man, the next Clan member with a solo album scheduled.

The hook-up with the Wu-Tang Clan is the perfect climax to a year that’s seen Texas rise from a tumbleweed-strewn grave to grab the pole position in British Pop. A year in which Glasgow’s Sharleen Spiteri has stared out, defiantly remade and remodelled, from every magazine cover and TV show. From a media point-of-view, Texas’ – Spiteri’s – reconfiguring of music and fashion has been the year’s dream ticket. Ever since Bryan Ferry took the innovative step of getting Anthony Proce in to design Roxy Music’s wardrobe in the early seventies, successive phases of pop’s history have thrown up performers who use the fashion photographers, stylists and designers du jour to present The Package. It is these performers who most often capture the youthful mood of their time: that’s why you can see the vulgar glamour of the Seventies in the cut of Ferry’s sleazy lounge-lizard jib; the naive aspiration of the early Eighties in the box-suited and pixie-booted "style" of Spandau Ballet; and the onset of the late-Eighties mixing and matching of different cultures in Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance. When we look back at 1997 we will see in Texas’ sound and vision a new mix, all to do with living the high life but keeping it real. Catwalk and street, the designer and the understated, Prada and Nike; the slick and the cred. Ten years’ gone Scottish guitar outfit and this season’s bright young labels (in both senses). The setting too, has helped. Fashion, again, is big cultural business. Clever pop stars (Goldie! Liam!) want to be seen by the runway and hanging out at fashion parties; young designers yearn to be visible on the stage or the podium (viz. Antonio Berardi’s autumn London show at Brixton Academy). Factor in a paucity of self-motivating, button-pressing, songwriting, photogenic women in British music, and you have a ready-made media phenomenon.

Sharleen Spiteri is holding court at a New York restaurant with a gang of Calvin Klein employees who’ve just accompanied her to the VH-1 Fashion Awards. The annual ceremony is a mutually convenient arrangement, a TV cluster-fuck where the music and fashion industries exchange credibility and cachet. Texas are contemplating just such an exchange themselves, having recently been given the OK by CK. (Tommy Hilfiger has also made overtures.) Spiteri is to have an audience with Klein himself; she’s already been bribed with a trunkful of CK merch, including the streaked black dress – "inspired by [the artist] Brice Marden" – she’s wearing tonight.

Someone suggests that Texas would be perfect for Fashionably Loud, an MTV special where models strut on stage as the hot bands of the moment rock out. "Forget it," quips Spiteri. "there’s only room for one star up where we play." If Spiteri were to join Kate Moss and Christy Turlington on the Calvin Klein payroll it would not, as she sees it, detract from Texas’ music. "Fashion and music have always been connected, and now more than ever," says the singer. "You couldn’t have one without the other. If there’s shit music at a runway show it just doesn’t work."

Meanwhile, there’s the songs. With "White On Blonde", Texas’ fourth album, the music takes care of itself. Radio-friendly unit-shifters abound, helped on their way by producers Mike hedges (manic Street Preachers) and Manchester’s Grand Central. The singles have been, in sequence, nu-soul fresh ("Say What You Want"), springy pop ("Halo"), Motown-sunny ("Black Eyed Boy") and winter warming ("Put Your Arms Around Me"). The B-side remixers have covered all bases in these dance-savvy late Nineties, ranging from of-the-moment talents like the Ballistic Brothers and Trailerman to old stand-bys like Andy Weatherall and 808 State. Texas, patently, lost their dancefloor cherry by cherry-picking the brightest and the best.

Of course, while the singles have all enjoyed heavy airplay and gone top ten, and while "White on Blonde" has sold two million copies (more than its two predecessors put together), the remixes haven’t necessarily helped those sales. As the go-faster stripes of credibility on the solid saloon car, though, they’ve still been essential to The Package; all part of the thoroughly modern mix.

So now, the Wu-Tang Clan. To many, though, this latest development could smack of opportunism. One group are renegade roughnecks who mythologise themselves in epic hip hop anthems; the others are fastidiously tasteful Scots with an eye for perfectly modern consensus-pop. The Wu-Tang Clan are certainly among the aesthetically correct names that Texas always drop in interviews, but can there possibly be a legitimate connection between the two? "A lot of the Wu-Tang backing tracks have the feel of soundtracks, and we’ve always gone for a cinematic sound," says Johnny McElhone, Spiteri’s genial songwriting partner and bass player. "And I’ve always liked Al Green, and they use a lot of Willie Mitchell, Al Green, that whole Hi Records sound, and make it modern. And Marvin Gaye: Method Man, in that duet with Mary J. Blige, used ‘You’re All I Need To Get By."

Having dominated the charts in Europe this year, Texas are now, logically, turning their attention to America: the country that has always inspired them, whether it’s the dusty, pseudo-roots sound of their first three albums, or the iconic-soul and post-soul sounds of Memphis and Staten Island that they give props to now; the place where success has always eluded them. Yet given the commercial momentum of "White on Blonde", their approach to the Wu-Tang Clan is surely not driven by desperation. They are, then, viewing the collaboration with a combination of fan-like wonder and disbelief.

"Method Man is just a wicked, wicked rapper," enthuses Spiteri. "I can’t wait to hear the combination of my vocals and his – I‘m really excited about it. I have a kind of sweet, virginal thing going on, and he’s got this dirty sex vibe. It could be the perfect marriage."

It’s a Saturday night in Manhattan, and ten storeys above Times Square, Sharleen Spiteri sits on the floor of a recording studio, tinkering with her latest high-tech gadget, a Philips computer about the size of a TV remote. Across the street, three ten-foot high electronic ticker-tapes provide testimony to Monday’s stockmarket crash. No matter how much Spiteri plays with her new toy, there’s still that nagging worry: what if the Wu-Tang Clan won’t show? They’re supposed to be on a tour bus returning from a gig in Washington, DC today, but these, after all, are the original masters of disaster. The crew whose normal modus operandi seems to be chaos. The band that recently quit a national tour because only five of the nine members could be relied upon to turn up.

The studio has been booked since six, so Spiteri and McElhone breathe signs of relief when RZA and his posse finally roll in around ten. Among the dozen-strong throng, they’re surprised to see Wu-Tang member Reakwon, a stout fellow with a Mercedes cap and a Fort Knox of gold dental work. Several cigars are hollowed out, their contents replaced with weed; bottles of Cristal champagne and Hennessy are passed around as the air grows thick with smoke.

Half an hour later, method Man makes his entrance. Stooped over, he looks deceptively short – maybe only six-four in his Hilfiger fleece hoodie. "I’m John-John," he tells Sharleen, referring to his alias, Johnny Blaze. Pulling out the big blunt from behind his ear, Method Man considers the job at hand. "She got a nice voice," drawls the laconic giant. "This band not exactly my type of listening material, but they going in the right direction, if you ask me, by fucking with us. I’m waiting for RZA to put down a beat, hear how the vocals sound melded with the track before I come with ideas. I’m one of those guys."

As his friends get on with the serious business of partying, RZA goes to work, feeding a succession of sample-laden discs into a sampler. He has a diffident, genius-at-work charisma about him as he sits with his back to the room, keyboard at side. With a flick of his prodigiously ringed hand he reaches out and conjures up a brutal bassline. The speakers pulse violently. RZA takes a sip of Hennessy. "Record this, right here!" he tells the bewildered-looking engineer.

RZA has decided to dispense with the original master tapes, shipped over from Britain. He wants a completely new version, recorded rough-and-ready without the standard safety net of a time-code. This convention-trashing, wildstyle approach to recording elicits some consternation from the studio’s engineer, a central-casting white guy who warns RZA: "You won’t be able to synch to this, you know." RZA waves him away and turns to Johnny McElhone. "This riff is in E," McElhone tells RZA. "Maybe we should try it in the original key, D." "What are you saying? I understand no keys," says RZA. "You want me to sing the whole song straight through?" asks Spiteri, trying to divine RZA’s intentions. He orders the lights turned down, and offers Sharleen some herbal inspiration. She politely declines and walks to the vocal booth. "What’s her name? Sheree?" asks RZA as Spiteri warms up. The engineer wants to know if he should maybe start recording. "Always record everything!" exclaims RZA. "Ready, get set, go! Play and record, play and record!" Spiteri rattles of a perfect new version of ‘Say What You Want’, grooving along by herself and passionately acting out every word, even the ones borrowed from Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing". Now it’s time for Method Man, who at this point is so herbally inspired that he can hardly open his eyes. He jumps up and lopes around the main room, running off his newly written rhymes and clutching a bottle of Crystal. Method walks up to the mic and opens his mouth, and that treacly baritone sets a typically morbid scene: "Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest…" The Texas duo just look at each other, shaking their heads in awe.

The hours and the rhymes pass. Around 6am, things are starting to get a little weird. As Method Man snoozes on the sofa, RZA bounces off the walls, dancing like a dervish. "These are the new rhythms," he yells. "These are the new dances from Africa. I learned them when I was there last week!" McElhone and Spiteri crack up. The engineer probably wishes he were in Africa right now; he further draws RZA’s ire by making a mistake as he runs off some rough cassettes. As everyone says goodbye, RZA decides that he’s taking the studio’s sampler – he already has two of the $3,500 items, but at this point it’s all about the wind-up. The engineer, though, having last seen the end of his tether a good few hours ago, has had enough. By the commencement of office hours that morning, the rest of the session will have been cancelled and the band and Clan banned from this studio.

After a few frantic phone calls later that morning, a studio is found that is prepared to let the Wu-Tang Clan through the door. With one precondition: only two of them are allowed in the studio. Now it’s midnight, and four-fifths of Texas watch a trio of RZA-hired session men go through their paces. They shift effortlessly through a handful of soul and funk styles, and the Scots mutter approval. These are the kind of players that are so good they can get away with wearing questionable knitwear.

Soon, another couple of Wus pop in. Then another couple. In the control room RZA orders up a bottle of Hennessy and talks about hearing "Say What You Want" for the first time. "I didn’t fully understand the sound of it," admits the soft-spoken maestro. "It was obviously a popular song, a radio song, and my sound is the total opposite. But I thought that the artist had something, so I thought: "Let’s take her and rock her to my beat."

"Sweet soul, that’s what her stuff sounded like to me. Smooth. It reminded me of the Seventies: in those days, they did songs that would fit anywhere. If you went to a club getting high it would fit; if you was cleaning up your house it would fit. That’s when you’ve got a real great song right there." Whether or not "Say What You Want" is a great song, it’s not quite coming together tonight. Despite the best offers of the studio management, a full complement of Wu posse members ended up in the house. As the night drags on the trio of musicians don’t get with the track, and by eight the following morning there is little in the way of usable material. But everyone stays upbeat. Texas will work on the track in Glasgow, and send it back to RZA to finish, along with a new song based around one of his samples. After vowing to stay in touch, everyone stumbles out into the Manhattan morning light together, the Scots with an American name, and the Clan without a tartan.

From a distance the collaboration will continue. But it’s only a different kind of distance. Culturally, creatively, the gap between the Wu-Tang Clan and the old twang clan is considerable. Yet so it goes, this cross-cultural exchange programme. Whether it’s The Stones copping blues movies, Bowie digging the Philadelphia Sound, Lisa Stansfield getting soulful with Barry White, Sting getting doleful with Puff Daddy… Whether it’s Todd Terry reviving Everything But The Girl or Armand Van Helden making Sneaker Pimps the unwitting jumpstarters of speed garage, naked opportunism and risk-taking innovation have always been confused. Now, with genres blurred and tricknology proceeding apace, anything is possible and everything is permitted. Perhaps it is this, the sheer unlikeliness, that makes the Texas-Wu experiment the most illuminating collaboration of the year. Whether it works or not.

"If you play her stuff in a club, everybody be dancing, but it’s a clear room and you can see everybody’s face," RZA reflects on the departing Sharleen Spiteri. "But if you play mine, the room is smoky." And perhaps it is here, among the clouds and the clarity, between the smoke and the mirrors, where a new sound and vision lies.

Text originally posted on texasindemand.com

[abysmalll]

Hi. I know it’s been a while. I try to stay active on here when I can, and I reblog photos I like or poetry that resonates with me, anything really, every now and then. I can’t believe I’ve had this blog since I was 14 years old. I’m turning 25 next month. It feels like I’ve lived an entire lifetime on the internet.

I’m writing this because I need to write about it. I need to accept this experience that I am having for what it is and putting words to it helps me. It helps me cope. And I don’t care if anybody reads it. Tumblr is a dead art anyway. This is me writing to the abyss of the internet, a love letter if you will, to myself, about a traumatic experience.

It has been a week since I accidentally drugged myself with 500 mg of delta 8 cannabinoid (in the form of a gummy). I bought this “sampler pack” of what I thought to be CBD gummies a couple of weekends ago while a friend was visiting from Florida. The shop did not seem sketchy, it was a legitimate dispensary, and the men behind the counter were wearing lab coats and seemed pretty knowledgeable about THC and CBD products. Originally, I bought the sampler pack thinking it was CBD isolate only. I didn’t even think the dosage was that high, maybe 25 mg tops. You know, CBD. The thing you can buy in lotions and bath bombs at those kiosks in the mall. The safe weed alternative: suitable for relaxing muscles, calming mind and body, and relieving anxiety. The sampler pack that I bought did not have many descriptions on it: just the brand and that it was a CBD + delta 8 gummy. I did not realize that delta 8 was another form of THC. I did not know that it was a synthetically / lab altered version of a part of the weed plant or anything that would cause me to get extremely high. When I saw the packaging, I just thought, cool CBD gummies. This will help me have a relaxing night, maybe a good night’s sleep. I never bought them with the intention to get fucked up. I never would have bought them if I knew what delta 8 actually was. To be fair, it was completely misrepresented to me by the men at the store I bought them from. I was under the full impression that this was a relaxing CBD gummy sampler. I did not know that, in reality, what myself and a friend were about to consume was 1000 mg of straight cannabis product (500 mg CBD + 500 mg delta 8). From all of the research I’ve done on delta 8 (now having experienced what I experienced), in reddit forums and the like, experienced users of the weed alternative say that they stay away from anything stronger than 100 mg. 100 mg is enough to fuck you up pretty heavily. To clarify, I took 1000 mg (half CBD / half delta 8). I basically had 25x the “strong” amount for experienced users. Now some people have a hard time getting high, their tolerance is pretty up there, and they need up to 400 mg to really feel it and feel it hard. To clarify again, I still had much more than 400 mg. Now to the experience:

My friend and I had just gotten back to my place after spending the day at a town festival (nothing big due to COVID, just a couple of booths set up of people selling their handmade products, animal shelters and sanctuaries giving out informational pamphlets and volunteer lists, etc.) We got lunch with a third friend after that. I was feeling totally normal. I had a beer at lunch, but pretty sober to say the least. We parted ways with our third friend and headed back to my house. I had originally given the gummies to my friend to hold on to (we would’ve taken them a few weeks prior when I originally bought them but we ended up not that specific night) and she brought them back to me so we could try together. I hesitated at first. I held the gelatinous square in my hand, thumbed it around a bit, a little anxious at the thought of “well I hope this isn’t TOO strong” and thought “what the hell”. And I ate it. She ate the other one. Little did I know how strong it would actually turn out to be. (For context: I am a very light smoker. I have a CBD pen that is 1:1 THC but is very mellow, and I smoke J’s every now and then because I don’t like the feeling of getting too high from bongs or other methods. My friend who ate the other gummy is a daily user. She smokes CBD joints and regular weed daily, eats edibles frequently, and is working on getting her medical card for anxiety).

I felt a slight giggly out-of-it-ness after 30 minutes - right away I was feeling it, feeling something. This was what I was expecting. A very mild happy vibe. This felt okay. This felt normal for what I thought I ate. This was what I had signed up for. I still felt pretty normal besides the slight buzz. Perfect. Just something to help me relax a little bit. Something to take the edge off. Akin to drinking a beer after a long day at work. I spoke in the parking lot with my friend for 45 minutes after ingestion and we both felt and seemed pretty normal. Keep in mind, edibles take time to fully kick in. In my head I completely forgot that I ate that gummy. I thought its full purpose had been fulfilled. I thought I was at the level I was supposed to be at all along. I felt fine. My friend drove home. Thank GOD she got home before it really kicked in. I would’ve felt terrible with that on my conscience if it hit her while driving.

And then I came back inside after she left. I noticed that I felt slightly more out of it, a little bit at a Dutch angle if you will. Nothing to worry about though. Just thought to myself; oh, I’m high. This was more than I was expected. But that’s okay. I told my boyfriend (with my tail between my legs: he’s not a huge fan of weed-anything but he doesn’t care that I imbibe every now and then). I told him “babe, I just thought you should know… That I ate a gummy with ___ and I’m actually feeling high right now”. And that was that. He smirked and said “okay pothead”. Went about our usual business. I smelled myself after standing outside in the heat for 45 minutes in that parking lot and thought, ugh I stink.

And then I took a shower.

I felt okay in the shower. Just normal. The hot water rolling down my body. I wasn’t having a break from reality. Not yet anyway.

And then I got out of the shower.

I wrapped my hair in a towel. I threw on an oversized t-shirt, something comfortable. The cool air after being in a hot shower wrapped around me in a ghostly hug. At this point in time, I don’t know if the drastic change in temperature triggered it. I don’t know. All I know is it had been an hour and a half since ingestion at this point and this act of getting out of the shower was the precipice for what I was about to experience. What I was about to fall into. I FaceTimed my friend to see how she was feeling. It hadn’t hit her at all yet. Okay, slight anxiety. Was I the only one feeling this? Was I feeling something I shouldn’t be? My boyfriend and I had given her a spare TV recently and I wanted to see if she was having any troubleshooting issues with it (she was hooking it up, seeing if the google chromecast still worked, etc). We spoke on FaceTime. I anxiously asked her if she was sure she wasn’t feeling anything.. I didn’t like the prospect of me being the only one feeling out of sorts. She insisted that she was feeling fine.

And then she couldn’t speak in full sentences. I thought it was me. I thought I wasn’t hearing her correctly, or processing her words in the way I should be. Anxiety. And then she said: OH. I feel it. I am high. This is not just CBD.

And then I fell.

Not physically. I didn’t physically fall down. I sat there on FaceTime with her, and I felt myself getting higher and higher, and I already had anxiety from what I thought would be a simple CBD sleepy gummy turning out to be a full on edible experience. I felt myself (my consciousness, whatever part of my personality that makes me - me) fall out of my body. I felt myself and my body disconnect. The only way I can explain it is that feeling you get when you’re falling asleep, and your mind isn’t fully asleep yet but your body is. Where you become aware of the fact that you’re falling asleep and you panic and your consciousness snaps back into your body and you jolt out of bed, alert. That feeling. That is the closest thing to what I was experiencing. Except I wasn’t sleeping. I was fully awake. I was tripping. And not only was I tripping, I was tripping BALLS.

I felt my heart lurch out of my chest. In a shaky voice I said “I have to go” and hung up. I jumped out of bed (I was FaceTiming her while laying in bed). I went to tell my boyfriend what was going on. I told him, “Hey- I’m not feeling normal. This isn’t supposed to be happening. I’m not supposed to be feeling this way right now”. I was going from anxiety mode to panic mode. I felt it happening. Except the whole time, I was high out of my mind. Completely, unexpectedly so. In complete and full honesty, I wasn’t associating this right away to the gummy. Because in my mind, I didn’t buy an edible. I bought what I thought was something else. I thought it was just a simple CBD gummy. Something to help me sleep. This couldn’t be causing me to feel this way, right? No. I have to be having a heart attack or something. Something’s wrong with my body. Something’s wrong with my brain. The two are not connecting. I’m phasing in and out. I feel my heart rate begin to rise along with my panic. I have an Apple Watch, and in a moment of clarity (and stupidity) I thought it best to put it on. I needed to check my heart rate. I fully thought I was having a heart attack and this mental detachment I was experiencing was the result of a serious bodily issue rather than the gummy I ingested two hours prior. I put the watch on. Heart rate is at 135. Okay, not terrible but not great. That’s the heart rate of a person who is jogging. That’s the heart rate of a person who is doing an exercise. I’m laying in bed. Why is my heart rate that high? Oh god. I’m feeling terrible. I’m feeling out of my body. My vision is getting darker and I feel like I’m inside my head watching everything happen on the giant movie screen that is my eyes, but I’m not outside of the screen. I’m experiencing this panic, but not in my body. I wish I could explain it better than this. I wish I could have it make sense to the average person. But the reality of it was that I was not experiencing something that you would normally experience unless you were blackout drunk, tripping balls, having a psychotic break, or drugged. Heart rate is creeping up higher and higher. I’m googling what a normal healthy heart rate is for a person of my size and weight (female, 5’2”, 110 lbs, 24 y/o). I read a sentence that says “if your blood pressure exceeds 180 or higher seek immediate medical attention”. I confused heart rate and blood pressure in the whirl of cortisol and adrenaline and fear. I check my watch again. 184 BPM.

Total. Fucking. Panic.

I felt my heart beating OUT of my chest. It felt like what I imagine holding a hummingbird feels like. It wasn’t beating, buzzing. My heart was buzzing. I thought, is this what it feels like to die? Am I going to die, right here, right now, in my bed? 24 years old? I just graduated college. I haven’t even started my first salaried job yet. I haven’t been married. I haven’t had kids. I haven’t bought my first house. I haven’t experienced so many things and I am about to die, right here, right now. My entire body was numb. Pins and needles. I thought: “I am having a heart attack. 184 BPM. My vision is going dark. I am fully going to pass out”. I yelled out for my boyfriend, at this point in the other room. He rushes in. I tell him what’s happening. He begins to panic. Not knowing how to calm me down. He tries to get me to do breathing techniques with him. It’s past the point for that. I told him, I need to go to the hospital. I need to be near a defibrillator in case that’s really what this is, a heart attack. Because I have a better chance of survival if I’m near a machine. If my heart gives out. I’m trying to communicate this as best I can, while being sky high. I can barely speak. He says, “okay we’re gonna go see ___ (our roommate, and a good friend of mine).” And he guides me downstairs. I stand up on my feet. I feel like I’m a thousand feet in the air and yet so incredibly small. We make our way downstairs to our roommates’ room. He knocks, she lets us in. I stumble in like a drowned rat, hair still wet from the shower. I must’ve looked fucking insane. She takes one look at me but I don’t see her face. I don’t process a face on her head. I just see a blur. I’m still panicking. Heart still beating like a hummingbird. I hear them talking in rushed tones but I don’t hear words. It sounds like the Peanut Gallery parents, if you’ve ever watched Charlie Brown movies. Womp womp womp womp womp.

Next thing I know, she hops out of bed and is wrapping me up in a blanket. She runs to her bathroom and grabs a pot of what smells like, lavender lotion? She’s rubbing it on my cheeks and face. I’m sobbing and all I smell is salt from my tears and lavender. She’s talking to me, but I don’t fully hear her. Like when you watch those movies of a person coming-to in the hospital and the faces of the people surrounding them in their hospital bed blur in and out, the voices fade in and out. I hear her ask me what’s going on. I tell her basically everything I wrote here, just now, but I don’t hear myself say it. The synapses in my brain aren’t firing properly. I know I’m doing things, speaking, but I can’t hear what I’m saying. I know I’m sitting here, wrapped in this blanket, but I don’t know where my body ends and the furniture begins. Cause for more anxiety. It feels like a never ending loop of fear and panic and sensory deprivation, or at least sensory overload? Who knows. My sensory experience is not of this Earth. Sitting in this space, in this room, hearing her talk to me, not really knowing what she is saying but knowing there is care behind it, gives me one small pin point of reality to hold onto. One tiny thing to save me from this seemingly endless nightmare. She takes the watch off of me. I hear her tell me I don’t need to be looking at that right now. No wonder my heart rate is through the roof. I’m giving myself a panic attack.

A panic attack. Is that what this is? Am I not having a heart attack? It sure feels like one. I guess they’re pretty similar. I was convinced, CONVINCED, I was dying. But here I was, some while later, wrapped in this burrito blanket in this room, and I was still experiencing things. Even if the experiences were warped and horrifying. It wasn’t death. But what was it then?

And then I remembered that I ate a gummy two hours earlier. I was having a drug induced panic attack. I was never expecting this. I was NEVER expecting this… What the fuck WAS this? It wasn’t normal. It was exactly what I discovered it to be later on, after researching the label of that sampler pack. It was 1000 mg of CBD and delta 8, a FDA-loophole for weed. And I was buckled in for the full fucking ride.

If you’re wondering what was going on with my friend, she was still high. She was experiencing a strong high from that gummy, but we had nowhere near similar experiences. I was on Mars. She, I think, fell asleep a little later on and woke up the next day ready to smoke again. I am amazed at how vastly different our experiences were. I would give anything to have had that kind of experience. I would’ve loved to wake up the next day, head slightly fuzzy, but feeling normal all the same, and been able to conceive of smoking weed. And if we’re being completely honest, I’m so incredibly grateful that she didn’t experience this. I would not wish this on ANY person. It was my fault that I ate that gummy, and I gave her one too. We could’ve both been fucked. At least it’s only me. My burden to carry.

But being alone in it is scary. And guess what. I woke up the next day, not feeling like myself. Not feeling normal. Not feeling present.

And I’ve woken up every day since in a completely altered state of being. I’m obviously here, I’m breathing, I’m trying to do regular tasks that I do every day. But everything feels so much harder. Everything feels fuzzy. My body feels numb. Some days are worse than others, but for the most part, nothing ever feels normal. I’m realizing that what I’m experiencing is DPDR from a drug induced panic attack. And I’ve cried every single day since that fucking day. It’s been a full week and I’m still having a break from reality. I still feel fuzzy, and like my head and my body aren’t connected, and I’m feeling depressed. I have racing thoughts. I can’t think myself out of this. I know it might seem like I’m fully lucid if I’m able to write all of this, but I’m writing this from a dreamlike state of semi-reality. I still don’t feel real, and people and places don’t feel real. Temperature changes send me into a panic. I zone out and realize that I’m not in my head and even when I “come to” I’m still not FULLY zoned in. My ears and head feel clogged, or like they’re full of cotton balls. I want so badly to escape this feeling but no matter what I do, everything feels surreal. I have no sense of time. I cannot process words. Even writing this, I guarantee you that I forgot 80% of it already. I have to reread things several times to make sure they make sense. If I’m watching a television show, I feel like I’m seeing characters talking to each other but not absorbing anything being said. How am I supposed to live like this? I’m so fucking scared. I can’t eat without feeling weird. I can’t sleep without feeling weird. I can’t do anything. I’m supposed to start my new job on Monday, and I have to be fully aware to do my training, and I’m so afraid of failing because I can barely do the bare minimum right now. I’ve considered going to the hospital but what good would that do? They would think I’m having a psychotic break and admit me to a mental hospital, where I’d be surrounded by unfamiliar people and settings, and be unable to leave. And I’d ruin my life. I’d ruin my job opportunity that I spent 6 months post-grad trying to get hired for, and I finally did. I’d ruin my ability to make an income. I’m terrified of ruining my relationships with people right now because I need so much more support from everybody than I ever do. I am so fucking terrified of my life right now because I do not feel real. I convinced myself the other night that I actually died on Saturday and I am not really experiencing any of this. I have anxiety attacks every day now. Little things set me off. I had an anxiety attack at my mom’s today and she is worried about me. Everyone is worried and nobody knows what to do, including me. I cannot live like this. It’s affecting my day to day life in such a strong sense that I can’t do minimal things. Everything frightens me. I just want to feel normal again. So badly. I would do ANYTHING to feel okay again. I just want to be me. Not this shell of a person. I feel like I fucked up my brain.

This isn’t a cry for help. I know realistically there’s nothing that anyone can do. That helplessness has set in. This is just me yelling at the void and hoping it helps me feel something better than this. I want to be real again.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again

how many problems this week?, well, we’d prefer you think of them as getting-to-know-you questions, but you will have to answer between five and fifty of them to apply for this job :) 

listening chong the nomad’s Take Two ft Hollis dropped earlier last week, isn’t on youtube yet, none of the lyrics are up anywhere so i have only a vague idea of what the song is actually about, and i have been fighting with tumblr to get a soundcloud embed within this post under a readmore for mmm a hour? so i’m not doing that anymore.

gentle, summery, production on this is chefs kiss as always. i don’t have the music vocabulary to explain why i like the beat that keeps skating in and out of my hearing range combined with bright flutes, but it’s a good effect! there’s a playlist of gentle bops that i apply to jobs to and i added this one immediately.

reading uncommonly fond of stories that take place “ten minutes in the future”, with a gig economy blown out of control and where streamers are king. crowdfunded assassinations and bodyguards for hire by the hour/day/assignment is compelling concept! also always a sucker for a bodyguard/client story. CROWDED, by Sebela, Stein, Brandt, Farrell, and Rae is published by Image with two volumes out now.

it is incredibly weird reading a comic with a ex-cop character in These Times, bc it was not until well into the first volume that particular reveal happened and by then i was thoroughly hooked. i’m hesitant to rec this until i’m actually finished with it, although she seems to have been chewed up and spit out by the institution- currently halfway through the second volume and her tragic backstory has only been hinted at. as always, this is a curated log of what i’ve consumed during the week not a rec list per se. 

the facial expressions and the lines of motion with character movement and between panels are really top-notch here. kay, this is basic Good Comics/Art, you cry! - yes, well, a secret is that a lot of comics art is not very good. these ~160p trade paperbacks have taken me about three hours to read each bc i am so in love with all the tiny details and visual gags, like so. there’s an extended scene in a bar called BiFurious. krispy kremlin is a major supporter of one of the streamer antagonists. america’s next top bottom is a wildly popular show

watching i did not have anything in mind for this slot this week and then one of my favorite discords watched 1974′s Jack in the Beanstalk, a Japanese Western-style animated feature with a better soundtrack and songs than it has any right to have. we all fell in love with the dog. there is unfortunately an evil/spooky black character with stereotypically large lips in the first five minutes and some stuff about beauty and intelligence that probably wouldn’t fly in a modern children’s feature. the people and action sequences are a little rough, but this film has got adorable animal companions on LOCK. charming use of rock organ. 

playing there’s a pirate event on in animal crossing: pocket camp (good) but the prizes are lame as hell (less good. i do not want various boxes and crates i would like more piratical gear thank you nintendo)

making progress on Big Sampler, bc I go through boom/bust cycles with cross stitch. the comet in center top and Jupiter are new, I’ve also been halfheartedly poking at the ISS in the lower left bc there’s so much color switching. gotta stretch this bad boy back out into a proper square something is fucky with my vertical tension 

[reckless-stitches]

Not sure if you’re still taking questions, but if you are, I’m a beginner, and I was wondering what I should learn/research next.

Welcome to the world of crochet!  This is a tough question because it depends on your goals or what you enjoy about crochet and what you have already researched/learned. 

If you have tried a few basic stitches (sc, hdc, dc) and want to practice those and expand your knowledge of what you can do with them look for a sampler pattern. Sampler patterns are often small blankets made of squares with different stitches, so you get to make small swatches with new techniques but still have a nice project at the end. 

Make sure you know the difference between US terms and UK terms, they use the same terms sometimes to mean different stitches and it becomes very important to know which terms are being used in a pattern. 

I really enjoyed learning simple crochet cables, different types of granny squares and small amigurumis when I was starting out and had completed a few baby blanket sized projects. They all took concepts I knew but used them in new ways. 

Feel free to share more of what you have already done if you want more help narrowing down ideas! Just watch out a couple hours on Pinterest or Ravelry (look into both of those if you haven’t) and your project list will soon be longer than life expectancy lol

[babylon-crashing]

cunningham’s ice and snow magic

... taken from Scott Cunningham’s book, Earth, Air, Fire and Water:

I. ICE MAGIC

Dawn. A late March morning. Though the weather has been warmer lately, a cold snap has swept the neighborhood. On rising and stepping outside … you look out on a fairyland of glistening bare trees, their lacy branches covered with ice.

Few can deny the power that ice has over us. Of all the obstacles that the weather can put in our paths, ice can be one of the most dangerous. Yet, tamed and brought into our homes, ice is a delightful part of life.

Today we put ice on wounds, fill our glasses with it and set exotic foods on beds of the cold stuff. Ice is a utilitarian object, something that we may rarely think of—until we find that we have to drive to work on icy streets.

But ice is magical. It shares some qualities with its cousin, snow, and yet possesses unique uses all its own. Magically, ice is thought to be a blend of two elements. Although ice is undoubtedly Water, it possesses the solidity of the element of Earth.

Ice's transformational properties are seemingly miraculous, and the following spells make good use of them.

But you may be asking, “Are freezing temperatures necessary to practice ice magic?”

No. Ice magic is certainly a natural during winter in cold parts of the country. When birdbaths freeze over and lakes become solid white surfaces, that's the time to practice ice magic. But those who live in temperate, sunny climates can still practice ice magic. We can do this through the wonders of the modern freezer.

Artificial refrigeration certainly can be used, but keep our environment in mind. The refrigerant used to cool and to freeze water harms the ozone layer. Quickly open and close the freezer door when placing ritual items within it. There's no need to fling open the freezer door and recite 37 pages of incantation while cool air flies out and uses up the nasty refrigerant.

That said, onto ice magic!

CHERRY ICE

(a love ritual)

Have two small glasses; a larger, freezer-proof bowl; water; and some unsweetened cherry juice.

Place the glasses and bowl on your working area. Fill the glasses with water. Fix in your mind an image of yourself enjoying a mutually satisfying relationship. Once again, don't visualize your cute neighbor in your arms. Simply feel and see yourself in a loving relationship.

Place your hands over the two glasses of water. Say these or similar words:

Northern Wind;

Chilling breeze;

Rise up now;

Make this freeze.

Manifest

Love for me

As my word;

It must be!

Pour enough of the cherry juice into each of the glasses to dye the water a light pink. Then, still visualizing, pour the two glasses of water into the larger vessel. With the index finger of your projective hand, sketch a heart on the surface of the water.

Place the bowl outside (or in the freezer). Wait several hours. If the water doesn't freeze, try again. As soon as the water has solidified, your rite has ended. The power has been released. (The ice can now be melted. This in no way affects the spell.)

PUTTING IT ON ICE

Magic is a tool of personal transformation. This simple rite utilizes ice as the tool with which we can change and improve ourselves.

First, write down three words that represent three negative habits or aspects of yourself. These may include cynicism, jealousy, over emotionalism, guilt and so on. As you write, pour these negative qualities into the words and into the paper. Flood it with personal power.

Fill a freezer-proof bowl with water. Place the fingers of your projective hand into the water and say these or similar words:

I am a vehicle of transformation.

Now, place the paper into the bowl of water. Set outside or put into the freezer. When the water has been transformed into ice, remove it from the cold.

Heat some water on the stove until it's boiling. Remove the ice from the bowl (run some warm water over the bowl, if necessary). Put the ice into the boiling water, saying these or like words:

All the power that you've felt,

All your power over me,

All your power I now melt

As my will, so mote it be!

The ice block will melt. As it melts, freeing the paper contained within it, visualize yourself clean and purified of your problem.

It is done.

(Cunningham, Scott. Earth, Air, Fire and Water, pages 125-129)

II. SNOW SPELLS

Spells—rituals—are often tools of self-transformation. The following ritual utilizes one physical manifestation of Water: snow. This is, by necessity, a winter ritual. Winter can be a time of stifling isolation from nature. Though I live in sunny San Diego, I designed this ritual during a winter trip to St. Paul, Minnesota. The remarkable nature of snow (a liquid in a fairly solid form) is utilized to represent an existent negative condition or habit. If snow isn't available, shaved or crushed ice can also be used. Remember, such rituals are valuable psychological boosts, but when energy is truly transferred, magic is afoot and changes occur through means not readily explained.

TO BE RID OF A NEGATIVE CONDITION OR HABIT

When you've decided to no longer allow a harmful habit or condition to control your life, perform this ritual.

Dress warmly. During the day, go outside with a small, cereal-sized bowl. Fill the bowl with fresh, white snow. Pack it tightly, level it off with your gloved hand, and rush back inside.

Remove your cold-weather clothing and your gloves. Place the bowl of snow on a table. Standing over it, hold your hands, palms down, over the bowl. Say:

Crystal white,

Crystal snow;

Help me fight

The evil blow.

Visualize (see in your mind's eye) the habit within the snow.

See the negative condition as existing within the snow. Know that it, its causes, and the power that you give it, are in the snow. Transfer the negative energy through your palms into the snow.

Now, pour ½ handful of rock (de-icing) salt into your right hand (if right-handed; if left, use the left). Looking down at the white substance, sense its purifying, cleansing energies.

Still visualizing your negative habit in the snow, sprinkle the salt over the snow until you've completely covered its surface. Say:

White on white

Salt on snow;

Fight your fight,

Evil go.

Next, take any small stone no more than 1 ½ inches in length or width. Hold this in your dominant hand. Visualize freedom from your negative habit or condition. See yourself free from its grip. Visualize your life without this harmful condition. Feel the power that you possess to break the chain.

After a few moments, gently place the stone on the surface of the salted snow. Say:

Rock on salt,

Salt on snow;

Evil halt;

Evil go.

Sit before it, staring down into the bowl. Watch. Sense. Visualize the purifying potency of the salt destroying your habit, its causes, and the power that you have been giving it.

As the snow melts, release all connections that you have with the habit. Visualize and feel your unconscious desires melting, dissolving into a sea of apathy, an ocean of disinterest, a surging river of purification.

When the salt has melted the snow, remove the stone, pour the water outside of your house (away from any plants that may sleep beneath the blanket of white), and return inside.

Wash the bowl and the stone. Put away in a safe place until the next day. Repeat the entire ritual for nine days.

(Cunningham, Scott. Cunningham's Magical Sampler. 2012, pages 136-138)

SNOW FIGURE MAGIC

This is similar to “A Sea Spell” in Earth Power. But instead of using wet sand to retain the figure, we use snow.

I created this spell while visiting the mountains a few years ago. I distinctly remember the experience, for it was the first time a friend of mine had ever seen snow.

You'll need a two-foot square patch of undisturbed snow. The snow should be at least a few inches deep to retain the figure (the deeper, the better). Additionally, it should be fairly fresh. Crusty, hard, icy snow simply won't work.

Kneel on the snow (or squat, if you find that more comfortable). Visualize the magical change that will soon grace your life. See it clearly.

Now, with the index finger of your right hand (or a stick), draw a symbol of your need with firm intent and visualization.

Once you've made this symbol, draw a circle on the snow about one and a half feet in diameter around the symbol if your magical change involves love, healing, spirituality, friendships, purification or psychic awareness. Or, draw a square about one and a half feet in diameter around the symbol if the change involves protection, money, grounding, weight-loss, courage and other similar, Earth-based changes.

Brush off your hands and leave the area.

A CHARM FOR PROTECTION IN THE SNOW

This can be easily made at home with common ingredients. It can be worn or placed in a coat pocket when going into the snow for extended periods of time. It can also be attached to young children's clothing (keep it away from babies) or placed in their pockets. Mishaps are quite common in the snowy world. This is a charm to help prevent them.

Note: If you make the amulet for a child, try to involve them in the creation of it in some way. If not, visualize her or his safety—not your own, as mentioned in this ritual.

Ingredients needed: one peppercorn, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cayenne pepper, a pinch of powered ginger, pinch of powdered cloves. You'll also need a small piece of red cotton cloth no more than four inches in diameter, needle and red cotton thread, and a bowl.

Place all ingredients on your working area. Put the peppercorn into the bowl, saying and visualizing:

I CHARGE YOU WITH PROTECTION!

Add the pinch of salt, saying and visualizing:

I CHARGE YOU WITH STABILITY!

Add the pinch of cayenne pepper, saying and visualizing:

I CHARGE YOU WITH WARMTH!

Add the pinch of powdered ginger, saying and visualizing:

I CHARGE YOU WITH PROTECTION!

Add the pinch of powdered cloves, saying and visualizing:

I CHARGE YOU WITH PROTECTION!

Add the pinch of powdered doves, saying and visualizing:

I CHARGE YOU WITH PROTECTION!

Mix the assembled spices and salt with your fingers, visualizing yourself having a healthy, safe, guarded time. No thoughts of slips or of snow sleds banging into trees should enter your mind.

Next, transfer the herbs to the center of the red cotton cloth. Fold it in half, then in half once again. With the needle and thread, sew up the ends so that the herbs can't escape.

Carry with you as needed. Make a new protective charm every snowy season.

(Cunningham, Scott. Earth, Air, Fire and Water, 2003, pages 121-123)

[softlyblues]

The music wraps around the trees, hanging off the branches, playing with the dangling leaves and teasing the sky. It pours down to meet me, hanging off my fingertips, dancing along my shoulders, and the cold heat of it makes me shiver, makes me yelp in fear and discomfort. Something is running to find me, and I am out of breath - I can no longer outrun it.

I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I need to escape it, them, him, her, or I won’t leave the woods alive. 

***

The first impression I get of Ireland is the first impression most people get of Ireland. It is raining and it is cold, and the sun is hidden behind thick grey clouds, and the wet is seeping into my boots and through the strip of fabric between my hood and my neck. My knuckles are blue around the handle of my suitcase, and my thumbs have turned white without circulation. 

“This is the house,” says the man driving the car we’re in, the window-wipers scraping tunefully across the windscreen every half-second to combat the downpour.

He is called Joshua Raleigh, and he’s who I’ve been in contact with over the last year to finalise the purchase of the aforementioned house. Today is the first time I’ve met him, and I’m surprised - my head had conjured a greasy estate agent, red-cheeked and wet-haired, hair dye and cheap suits, and Raleigh is none of those things. He’s young and sandy blonde and he’s wearing an unbranded red polo neck with bleached blue jeans, muddy at the cuffs. A wedding ring on his finger, and a hole in his left ear where a piercing must normally sit. 

Part of our agreement had been that he pick me up at Dublin Airport and drive me the rest of the way to the house, and I’d been dreading small talk with the real estate agent of my nightmares, but the drive has been quite pleasant - weather chat, talk about families, about Ireland, about how much Raleigh enjoys working around the little village I’m moving to. About his wife, his newborn baby. 

“Where?” I ask. All I see outside are trees, turning golden. Toast in the mornings.

Trees, and rain. 

“Through there - the drive is pretty long, but you’ll see it in two seconds,” Raleigh leans forward over the steering wheel and smiles, top teeth sticking out over his bottom lip. “There!”

I copy his pose, peering around the trunk of a peeling tree, curiosity itching out at me. I’ve only seen the house in pictures, and Raleigh’s been more than accommodating with a digital camera and the services of gmail, but seeing it in person is different. The house, the whole reason I’ve uprooted and left without much of a word to anyone. 

He says house, but in truth it’s more of a cottage. Nestled in the woods near the village of Kilnaloe, it stands a little rough and ready, surrounded by hedge plants gone wild, birch trees far taller than the house itself, ivy wrapping around the doorframe like a green embrace. It’s grey stone, and would look a bit forbidding if not for the shiny yellow door, the cheerful square windows, the red bricks squaring off the corners. The leaded roof; the squat chimney. It peers from between the trees like a curious animal, not particularly frightened of us, like it knows it’s stronger than us.

“Is it what you thought?” Raleigh has pulled up on the leafy patch by the door, a place I can imagine parking. He’s smiling across the car at me. 

“Absolutely,” I breathe, my hands fisted in the material of my shirt so as not to do something really stupid, like flail and whack Raleigh in the face. “It looks just like the pictures!”

He laughs softly. “I can give you your key now, if you’d like. You can ring me if you want a lift into town proper - I know you didn’t get that much notice, and if you want to sort something out at the car dealership -”

“I’ll ring you,” I promise. I’ve google-mapped it, and the walk from the cottage into Kilnaloe is just less than an hour, doable if I fancy killing time. Raleigh has already done so much for me, from the pickup at the airport to the endless emails and negotiating on my behalf, and I fancy the idea of a walk through the place I intend to stay in, and finally make home. 

“So you want the keys now?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Raleigh gets out of the car and slams the door, and I follow suit, my brown boots crunching the brown leaves into the brown mud, different shades convalescing into one. “Miss Delilah Hale,” he says, jokingly sincere, “It is my utmost pleasure that I, Joshua Raleigh, should present to you the keys of your new estate. My deepest wish is for you to enjoy it as the occupants of the mists of time did before you-”

I hold my hand out, palm up, smiling. “Thanks for the speech.”

When he drops the keys into my hand, already keyringed with a little Raleigh & Simpson Estates fob, I shake them to hear the jingle. “Call me Lilah,” I add, as I’ve already had to remind him once at the airport. “Please.”

“Lilah, then,” he says. “Do you want me to show you around? Check everything is in order? The movers came a bit earlier than we thought, but we got the boxes in all right and there’s no damp in the house.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” I assure him, and although he seems eager to help me I can’t help but notice the way he shifts from foot to foot. It’s been a three hour drive from Dublin, and he must have been up ridiculously early to make the drive on time and collect me. “I can show myself around just fine if you want to go home-”

“But ring me-”

“And I’ll ring you if I need anything,” I finish. “Thank you.”

“You have my number?”

“I have your number,” I wave my phone at him. Joshua Raleigh New House is how he’s saved in my contacts, although there isn’t anyone else I could confuse him with, what with the embarrassingly short length of the list of numbers. “Can I grab my-?”

“Oh, yeah!”

He lifts out my travelling case from his boot, setting it gently in the frosted mud, the airport stickers already peeling and fraying from the curled handle. “Grand?”

“I’ll ring you,” I say again, and he laughs sheepishly, rubbing the back of his short-shorn hair. In the three hours we’ve spoken in person, he’s come across as friendly to the extreme, careful and wary, and pleased to have finally met me. 

The sound of his car is quick to fade through the woods when he’s finally reassured enough to leave, the trees swallowing the noise whole with their rustling, smoothing it over like disturbed dirt after a funeral. Back to silence. Not quite - back to the noise of the woods, and the trees, growing and whispering and settling in their own pace, taking no notice of me or my case or the cottage or the keys, a world so removed they couldn’t care less. It’s peaceful. 

It’s exactly what I asked for. 

Inside the cottage is just like the pictures I made Raleigh take for me, countless angles and times of day and positions of furniture and so on, from the first time I saw the cottage on his website until just a few weeks before my plane landed in Dublin. Part of the charm was - is - that it comes furnished, and I don’t have to mess around with visits to Ikea and DFS and Argos and the Salvation Army looking for discarded chairs and ugly tables and stupid novelty light fixtures to turn something bare into a home, something I know I don’t have the energy for. 

So. The cottage. Inside the door I kick off my boots, setting them under the little hall table, a place where a landline phone sits off its hook, a little sticky notepad rests dust-covered and half-used, and a mirror hangs over, framed in silver wiring and hardly spotting at all. It’s too dusty to properly see through, though, and I wipe my finger on the surface: Lilah, I write, like a child breathing on a bus window to draw pictures on a cold morning. Through the lettering I see only glimpses of myself; the orange scarf I’m wearing, the red cold of the tip of my nose, the wisps of reddish-brown escaping from the ponytail I tied my hair in this morning.

I move further in. 

Raleigh is right, my moving boxes have arrived before me; they’re strewn halfway up the carpeted stairs, all across the hall, and spill into the two doors on the bottom floor as well. I never thought I had that many things until I had to pack them all away, silly useless collections that come from having been alive for a decade or three, things I couldn’t get rid of. Books and toys and clothes and clutter. 

I pop my head into the dark kitchen, cast my eyes over the oak table, the few chairs scattered around the flagstone floor, the oil cooker nestled in the hearth, ash turned to rock there from years of abandonment. Familiar to me from Raleigh - 

As is the other room on the ground floor, a large wooden-floored living room with seventies sofas spread out in front of the empty fireplace, paintings of muddy cows hanging on the wall, embroidered home samplers framed in their messy hoops, hung on withering strings. Now I’m excited to explore, and now I know I’m properly alone - 

Up the stairs. They creak comfortingly under my socks. Bedroom, bathroom, tiny study, a little storage space for the clutter. Spiders move away from my invasion, my rude disturbance into their home, and I do my best not to knock them from their spaces. There’s a bed, a heavy queen nestled in the crook of the far wall, where the roof slopes most severely, and I’ll need to get sheets and a proper duvet before I can sleep there tonight. Chest of drawers, wardrobe, mirror, carpeted floor, another fireplace with the grate hooked high against the empty space. A bookshelf mostly empty. 

The study is much the same, a sturdy oak desk under a window that gives me a view of the trees outside. Branches tap at the glass, seeking entry. A bookshelf, a few paintings, dark wooden floorboards. It’s pretty and airy all the same, the wallpaper yellow with a pattern of faded pink roses, delightfully seventies. 

Although none of it is really new to me, what with Raleigh’s pictures, it’s enough to make me smile happily, spread my hands over the windowsill burdened with bluebottle corpses. At last I’m here - here to stay. 

__________

so that’s the intro! i’m doing something completely new to me, which is original fiction in first person with a female main character... so i have to keep on brand in the big things. ireland, celtic gods, the woods, you know the drill. i had a lot of fun writing delilah and though she’s a little stiff in these first few parts, she comes into her own! joshua raleigh is also a cool dude. i hope you enjoyed this little excerpt! 

(twitter sweetlyblue) (ao3 softlyblue) (dm for commission details)

[drrubberfunk]

Earlier in the year I was asked to contribute to the excellent ‘Dusk Dubs’ mixtape series, and jumped at the chance. They have a nice format of asking guests to provide music that has a special place in their memories and in their souls - ‘...music that moves them, that invokes images of sunrises, sunsets, good times and good people’. 

I thought it’d be a nice way to compliment the other ‘My Life At 45′ themed mixes that I’ve done this year, with a selection of music you’d be likely to hear playing at my house over the last 30+ years, with tracks featured in full, mixed end to end, and a little story to go with each track. 

Here’s the full tracklisting, and photos of some of my well-loved vinyl that the tracks were recorded from - hope you enjoy this laid-back late summer stroll through my record collection, and My Life At 45!

1) Peddlers - ‘Whole Lot Of Sunlight’, from the 1970 Philips LP ‘Three For All’.

I picked this up in Avid Records in Oxford in the late nineties, I got a lot of good stuff from them around that time, picking up cheap classic soul, blues and jazz LPs, bargain priced late ‘80s / early ‘90s 12” singles that I’d missed the first time round and just taking a punt on interesting looking sleeves, or bands I’d heard about in sampling cirlces. ‘Suite London’ was the hot crate digger’s favourite from The Peddlers, but the production on ‘Three For All’ is right up my street, with wonderful hammond playing and a killer drum sound. It’s a great album from start to finish. I’ve used tracks on a few mixtapes in the past 20 years, but not this particular one, and with an apt title, it seemed like ‘Whole Lot Of Sunlight' was a nice way to kick off my late summer Dusk Dubs selection!

2) Joe McDuphrey Experience - ‘Solar Waves’, from the 2002 Stones Throw 12” ‘Experience EP’.

Madlib made a big impression on me when I first started producing with a sampler and a second hand Hohner Pianet. I really enjoyed this era when he was mixing live instrumentation with the straight up MPC sample business. ‘Solar Waves’ has it all - lolloping drums, wonky synths and tasty electric piano - a super laid-back groove, and is one I rediscovered in my collection recently. Plus, I’m a sucker for coming up with a bunch of aliases to cover all the roles you might play on a record - Madlib is the undisputed champ at that.

3) Paul Weller - ‘That Spiritual Feeling’ (New Mix) from the 1993 Go! Discs promo 12” GOXDJ 102.

My first proper music industry job in the mid nineties was as a radio plugger, and we shared an office building with Go!Discs - home at the time to Portishead, David Holmes, The Beautiful South and Paul Weller, amongst others. There was a little shared kitchen area with a photocopier, and I was busily copying press releases one afternoon on about my 3rd day in the job, when I heard someone making a drink behind me. Turning round I was confronted by Mr Paul Weller himself, impeccably dressed (with an AMAZING tan) stirring his cup of tea. ‘Hello’ he said, ‘I’m Paul - nice to meet you’.

I managed not to swoon or drop my photocopying and introduced myself as the new boy. I worked on radio promo with him across various album projects for the next 4 years, culminating with a week on a tour bus with Paul and his crew doing sessions at radio stations across the country. Story for another time maybe … Anyway - also in that little kitchen area at Go! Discs was their stock cupboard, which I rinsed for releases I’d missed in the years prior to my starting work there. ‘That Spiritual Feeling’ was originally on his first solo release ‘Into Tomorrow’ in 1991, but got remixed and added to this promo, as well as appearing on the ���Sunflower’ 12” (taken from ‘Wildwood’) It’s got the instantly recognisable JBs on it, with a classic horn arrangement backing up a kinda hypnotic 2 chord groove that just rolls and rolls. I can listen to it for hours.

4). Rhianna - ‘Word Love’ (4 Hero Soul Mix) from the 2002 Sony Soho Square promo 7” XPR 3600.

4 Hero were killing it in the early ‘00s as their productions evolved from the breakbeat mastery of the ‘90s into the wonderfully orchestrated arrangements that saw them covering ‘Les Fleur’, and bringing their deft touch to an increasing number of quality remixes. I don’t think this version of British soul star Rhianna’s ‘Word Love’ - which I loved in it’s original form - ever made it to a commercial release, but it’s something I’ve played out a lot over the years, and it always gets great comments and a bunch of info requests from the crowd.

5) GangStarr - ‘Jazz Thing’ (Instrumental Mix) from the 1990 CBS promo 12” XPR 1571.

I saw Mo Better Blues at the cinema in Australia in November 1990 and bought the soundtrack on cassette the next day. Brandford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard have a superb dialogue across all the tracks, especially on the Canonball Adderley-esque title track. However, Gang Starr’s ‘Jazz Thing’ blew my tiny teenage mind, and I became a bit obsessed with it over the next few years, the samples, the cuts, the live loops - especially after my new college mate Pete made me a tape a year or so later with two extra versions from the 12”, including this, the Instrumental Mix. I finally tracked down my own copy of this import promo in the Soul & Dance Exchange in Notting Hill in the late nineties, and it’s lived in my record bag pretty much ever since.

6) John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Peter Green - ‘Greeny’, from the 1969 Decca LP ‘The World Of Blues Power’.

Everyone my sort of age with some records is bound to have one or two liberated from their parent’s collection, and this was an album I discovered in my folks collection in about 1987, not long after buying a drum kit. I’d been rinsing their Beatles albums since I was a kid - singing along to ‘Drive My Car’ and ‘Octopus’s Garden’, but the World Of Blues Power seem a bit of alien concept until I gave it a good listen as a teen. There’s some classic pyrotechnic stuff from rising Brit Blues stars like Eric Clapton and Paul Butterfield, alongside US veterans like Champion Jack Dupree and Eddie Boyd, who’d moved to Europe in the ‘60s.

Always understated, Peter Green’s playing on ‘Greeny’ is perfect; simple and catchy as hell, but with complete mastery of his instrument.

7) Stanley Clarke - ‘Blues For Mingus’, from the 1979 Nemperor LP ‘I Wanna Play For You’.

This was another ’90s bargain from Avid Records in Oxford, but I first heard it when babysitting in the late ‘80s. The couple who’s kids I was deemed suitably responsible enough to be left in charge of were very happy for me to listen to their small but perfectly formed record collection, and many happy evenings were spent with a pile of C90s taping all sorts of classic jazz and blues. Took me the best part of the next 20 years to find my own vinyl copies of them all mind you. The uptempo jazz rock that Stanley Clarke was known for in the ‘70s is featured throughout the part-live ‘I Wanna Play For You’ album, but this downtempo small group number perfectly encapsulated my idea of what a jazz club gig should sound like; dark, smoky and soulful.

8) Al Green - ‘Lay It Down’, from the 2008 Blue Note LP ‘Lay It Down’.

Is it controversial to call this my favourite Al Green album? I mean, you can’t deny the classic ‘60s and ‘70s hits, but for me, this Questlove produced LP is right up there in terms of songwriting and production. I could have happily featured any of the album tracks here, but went with the title track for the silky strings and restrained playing from Questlove. Something as a drumming producer myself I’m less good at ;)

9) Matt Deighton - ‘Hey, My Mind’, from the 1995 Focus LP ‘Villager’.

This whole album is stuffed full of timeless sounding songs, it's one I’ve listened to alot over the years and comes complete with alot of happy memories.

Just before I got the plugging job, I’d been working in promotions for (the original) Virgin Radio in London, driving a branded vehicle around town all day. Seems mad and pointless in 2020, but it was fun in 1995, I was young, it seemed to be sunny all the time, I had a free 4WD and it paid quite well. I used the station’s copy of ‘The White Book’ - an entertainment industry directory that cost a small fortune back then - to look up the addresses of my favourite record labels, and spent most days knocking on their doors in an attempt to blag some free records. One of these labels was Acid Jazz, and, having announced which station I worked for, I was rushed in to meet their head of marketing and plied with records and CDs, before someone eventually asked ‘so, what is it you actually do at Virgin again?’. I bluffed my way through the next 10 minutes and agreed to have a chat to the producer of the evening show about getting a session for Matt Deighton. Matt was the singer and guitarist with Mother Earth, of whom I was a big fan, and was currently promoting a new solo album ‘Villager’ - Mother Earth had been a guest on the Virgin show before, and so the producer said yes to a session. I’m sure she would have booked him anyway, but she graciously let me set it up with Acid Jazz, gaining me some vital industry kudos and connections in the process.

10) Money Mark - ‘All The People’, from the 1998 Mo Wax / A&M LP ‘Push The Button’.

Mo Wax were one of my favourite ‘90s labels, having been introduced to them by a college friend sometime in ’93, and I think I tried unsuccessfully blagging my way onto their mailing list in my Virgin days, but later on, after the A&M deal, I had better luck getting occasional freebies. ‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’ was the record that the genre lo-fi was invented for, with the mix of bit-crushed samples and live vintage keys, but ‘Push The Button’ is a brilliantly rounded record, with some great pop songs. Session legend Jim Keltner is playing drums on this track, which I’d forgotten about until I was reading the sleevenotes while recording this mix - his playing with the likes of Delaney & Bonnie, BB King, Leon Russell, Bill Withers, Eric Clapton and all of the Beatles on their various solo projects has been a big influence on my drumming style over the years. Records I’ve never heard of but have bought just because Jim Keltner is on drums is an extensive section of my collection.

11) Bedouine - ‘Summer Cold’, from the 2017 Spacebomb Records LP ‘Bedouine’.

Spacebomb are one of my favourite contemporary labels, with a studio sound and ethos that I aspire to greatly as I enter my third decade as a producer, and I’ve been picking up their releases since hearing label owner, and talented artist, Matthew E. White interviewed on 6 Music back in 2015. LA Based Syrian born Bedouine put out one of my most listened to albums of 2017 (and since!), and I would have featured any of the tracks in this mix, but something about the found sounds at the end of ‘Summer Cold’ seemed to work very nicely with the start of the following song from Emily King. Bedouine’s vocal and guitar sound is wonderfully distintive, and beautifully enhanced by the sympathetic Spacebomb Horn and String arrangements - get yourself the LP!

12) Emily King - ‘Distance’, from the 2015 Making Music Records LP ‘The Switch’.

I didn’t listen to many new records while I was producing Izo FitzRoy’s debut (track coming next!) - I think I thought I’d find it distracting, I suspect that wouldn’t have been the case, but once Izo’s record was in the can, I gorged on releases I’d missed and found things that have become all time favourites. Most of them seem to be by women with a very different sound to Izo, but equally captivating writing and energy. Emily King is one of those artists, along with Bedouine, Jane Weaver and Aldous Harding amongst others. ‘Distance’ is such a great song, and I love Emily’s voice and guitar playing, plus the production and feel too - ticks all the boxes for me.

13) Izo FitzRoy - ‘Heads Held High’, from the 2017 Jalepeno Records LP ‘Skyline’.

This was one of my favourites from Izo’s debut that I produced and played on a few years ago. A great lyric and performance from Izo over a groove that we worked hard to sound like a mix of samples and live instruments, but was in fact all recorded and produced in my studio at home. Initially Izo and I were writing on some tracks that I’d already recorded with a view to them going on a Dr Rubberfunk album, but it was pretty clear after we’d written a few things together that she had so many great songs that the project needed to be an album for her. Even at a few years distance, I’m still really pleased with how the record turned out, with a ’studio sound’ I can call my own, and one that I’ve been able to carry over to my recent ‘My Life At 45’ LP - on which Izo turns in another couple of killer performances!

14) Urban Species - ‘Blanket’ featuring Imogen Heap, from the 1998 Talkin’ Loud LP ‘Blanket’.

Along with Acid Jazz and Mo Wax, Talkin’ Loud were another label I was madly collecting everything they released throughout the ‘90s and beyond. Having DJ’d in support of Urban Species at my college in 1994, I was already a fan, and their second album ‘Blanket’ is one of my all-time favourites by any artist. It features two great collaborations with Terry Callier, and two with Imogen Heap, including the title track featured here. Great writing and production, I was very influenced by this record as I started working with vocalists. Always love the guitar solo over the fade out too - if it exists, I’d love to get my hands on the full version without the fade!

15) Routes In Jazz - ‘Out In The Jungle’, from the 1992 Concious Records 12” CON 999.

Another sure shot from my days as a nascent DJ at Froebel College in West London in the early ‘90s. I was fortunate to have the support and encouragement of a couple of older students as I joined the Student Union and started organising events, and one of them - Lee - actually let me borrow his records a few times to play out with. Cheers Lee! This was one he used to play in warm up and bar sets, and I loved the double bass loop and ear worm horn sample (I never have worked out what it’s from), so had to get a copy. In some ways it’s a very 1992 record, but has stood the test of time in terms of production as far as I’m concerned.

16) DJ Krush - ‘Yeah’, from the 1994 Mo Wax LP ‘Strictly Turntablized’.

Early Mo Wax classic, from before all this sort of thing was considered ‘trip hop’, it was just killer instrumental hip hop as far as I was concerned, and DJ Krush, along with DJ Shadow, was right up there, leading the way. Another big influence on me when I eventually got a sampler - tough drums: check, swinging bass sample: check, jazzy horn and vocal samples: check. Love it.

17) Freak Power - ‘My Heart Sings’, from the 1994 ‘In Dub - The Fried Funk Food EP’, bonus album with some vinyl editions of the ‘Drive Thru Booty’ LP

They say never meet your heroes, but having meet and worked with both Norman Cook and Ashley Slater, the creators of the Freak Power project, I’d have to disagree. Naturally, if you’ve read through the tracklisting this far, you’ll have worked out there’s another showbiz story to go with this selection, and there is, but I’m saving it for another time, ‘cos it’s LONNNGGGG. Suffice it to say, ‘Turn On Tune In, Cop Out’ was a massive tune in ’93, and when the album dropped the following year I was straight down the record shop on release day. I wasn’t expecting a bonus ‘Dub EP’, much less one with almost unrecognisable remixes of the album tracks, but I was very happy to have it included. Some of the best downtempo beats Norman has made I think, and the drum programming on the second half of this track had me scratching my head in my pre-sampler owning days and wondering how the heck it was done. Fabulous sample choices, and nice and long too - handy for those DJ set comfort breaks.

18) John Martyn - ‘Sunshine’s Better’ (Talvin Singh Mix), from the 1996 Go! Discs promo 12” SSB1.

Talking of long tracks, here’s 10 minutes plus of John Martyn and the balearic classic ‘Sunshine’s Better’ reworked beautifully by Talvin Singh. John was another of the artists on Go! Discs when I was plugging for them, and I think it’s widely accepted he was a challenging character at that stage of his career. Still an amazing songwriter and performer though, and sounding as good as ever on the album ‘And’ from which ‘Sunshine’s Better’ is taken. Phil Collins on drums too.

19) Incognito - ‘Out Of The Storm’ (C’s Planet E Mix), from the 1996 Talkin’ Loud promo 12” TLDJ54.

If you were putting together a downtempo set in ’96, and you had ‘Sunshine’s Better’, you needed this Carl Craig mix of ‘Out Of The Storm’ for sure. Hip hop drum loops, swirling synth pads, a wobbly flute sample and some perfectly placed little bass guitar fills and turnarounds made this perfect in so many ways. I was VERY excited to get a promo copy, and definitely felt I had ‘arrived’ as a DJ when this came through the letterbox one morning. old DJ voice “Those were the days.” LOL.

20) Freddie King - ‘Gambling Woman Blues’, from the 1977 RSO LP ‘Freddie King (1934-1976)’.

In case you were worried I’d skipped over my love of the blues with just one track, here’s a less well known number from Freddie King, recorded during sessions with Eric Clapton and his band in the early ’70s, just a few years before King’s untimely death in 1976. I’ve got plenty of albums by the ‘Three Kings’ (Albert, B.B and Freddie) and they all had some very funky moments in the late sixties and early seventies. This posthumous compilation album was also in the collection of the family I used to babysit for, another tape that had pretty much worn out before I could track down my own vinyl copy, which, as you can hear, has been well played too. Again, a track that seems to fade just as it’s getting going, but fear not - there’s a 20+ minute version on some of the popular streaming services.

21) Donny Hathaway - ‘What’s Going On?’ from the 2014 ATCO Records LP ‘Live At The Bitter End 1971’.

I heard Gilles Peterson play tracks from this album on his 6 Music Show on Record Store Day in 2014. RSD often falls on my birthday weekend, so I thought I’d treat myself to this re-issue (with previously unissued tracks) of Donny Hathaway’s 1971 shows at the Bitter End on Bleecker Street in New York City. Although there aren’t many artists that can make a convincing go of covering Marvin Gaye, Donny is definitely one of them, and ‘What’s Going On?’ sounds just as relevant today as it ever did. I felt it was an appropriate choice, given the state of the world today, my love of black music and the fact that my whole music career is based on it. Once more, for the people at the back, BLACK LIVES MATTER.

22) Wes Montgomery - ‘Sun Down’, from the 1966 Verve Records LP ‘California Dreaming’.

3 quid from, you’ve guessed it, Avid Records. Bargain. I listened to an absolute ton of blues guitarists in my late teens, but it was a few years later that I started going sideways into jazz guitar, falling in love with the soul jazz / acid jazz sound of Grant Green and Ivan ‘Boogaloo Joe’ Jones, before finding the earlier generation - the likes of Barney Kessel, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery. Tricky to pick between them to be honest, but it seemed this upbeat and optimistic big band number from the 1966 ‘California Dreaming’ album by Wes Montogomery, a mixture of contemporary pop covers and jazz standards, with Herbie Hancock on piano, and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder - two more heroes of mine - was a good way to close out my Dusk Dubs choices.

[geordiesaffer-blog]

How is everyone doing? Still hanging in there? I sure hope so... I've been keeping busy with my stitching, reading, beginning a new (non-cross stitch)  project (which I'll let you in on some day soon!), trying to limit my news intake, and connecting with family members via Zoom and Board Game Arena . Since this whole strange Covid-19 saga began for us in mid-March, the only person I've talked to face to face is my husband! Such a strange feeling...  My family met up for a virtual game night on Easter Sunday (on Board Game Arena) and it was wonderful to see everyone's smiling faces. My oldest son and daughter-in-law in California, middle son and girlfriend who live 30 minutes away, and my youngest son in the Washington, DC area all connected online for games of Yahtzee and Sushi Go. I basically just watched and coached my husband a bit in Yahtzee as only five players could play at a time.My stitching has been hit and miss--still having trouble settling, but I do try to sit down each day for a couple hours in the evening. I know you've seen these designs stitched up many times, but I hope you don't mind seeing my versions... First, is the Easter Holiday Hoopla design by With Thy Needle and Thread. I fell in love with this cute bunny the first time I saw him and am so pleased with how he turned out. I loved the colors on the chart and chose some similar overdyed threads from my stash to stitch him. He is stitched "over one" on 28 ct. ice blue Jobelan so the stitched area is a mere 2" X 2". I finished him into a circle (just traced a drinking glass to get the shape on the mounting board), padded the board with batting, and added a silk handmade cording trim. A mini-pompom gave his tail a nice fluffy look.  Easter Holiday Hoopla finishThe round piece is simply glued onto a fabric-covered piece of sticky board and placed in a rustic looking 3.5 inch square brown frame. I purchased a bunch of these frames from an eBay seller, years ago, who had used them to display his butterfly collection (no, the butterflies were not included--thank goodness!). They sure have come in handy over the years and can easily be painted. Here is another of the frames that I painted and distressed last year for a different Easter finish that resides with my oldest son and daughter-in-law in California.An Easter finish from 2019--such a cute bunny!My second finish is so bright and cheery! It is called "Easter Wreath" and is a design from Tiny Modernist. The bunnies also have white mini-pompom tails like I used in the Holiday Hoopla finish above. They, too, are stitched "over one" on 28 ct. white lugana. I used the suggested DMC colors for everything except the carrots. I wanted a darker looking carrot so I used DMC 976. And, because of a slight counting error--my carrots are just a bit longer than those charted. Oops! It doesn't affect the overall look so I just left them larger. Ripping out "over one" stitching is the worst, so I avoid it whenever possible! I kept the finish very simple as the design itself is very "busy." Just a handmade cording in that pretty shade of blue that I love so much!"Easter Wreath" finishHere are both of my new Easter finishes together--looks like we had a big party going on on Easter Sunday, doesn't it? Nope--just me and my husband. It was a quiet day, but certainly one we'll always remember due to the circumstances. I didn't even get most of my Easter decorations out this year--it felt like too much of a chore for some reason. I've been gradually learning that now is the time to cut yourself some slack--be kind to others, but also to yourself. These are unnavigated waters and no one really knows what the next day will bring...I absolutely love the pretty teal blues in these two finishes!I also got a very sweet Easter card from my friend, Gabi, in Germany. She knows how much I love stitched bunnies (or any bunny, really!) so she made me this lovely card. Thank you so much, Gabi--I always love hearing from you and being the recipient of your pretty stitching!Easter card stitched by my friend, Gabi, in Germany!Much of my Easter seemed to be spent on the phone reminiscing with my mom, exchanging old photos via text with my siblings, and looking through old photos. The photos below brought back such wonderful memories of times with my three boys--dyeing eggs, hunting for baskets, and making a bunny cake each year. Oh, I miss those days so much. These were all taken in the late 80s / early 90s as you can probably tell by all the red and blue.  I think, back then, clothing designers only made boys' clothes in combinations of red and blue! It's so nice how things have evolved. And yes--they all have the same haircuts--courtesy of my husband. He sure saved us a ton of money through the years by cutting the boys' hair until they became teens. He even cut my hair when it was longer--not sure if I trust him to cut it at this shorter length, though! What are you doing about your hair? Trying to cut it yourself, getting a loved one to cut it, or just letting it grow? And we won't even talk about the hair coloring issue--yikes! By the time this is over, I'm going to have a very wide "skunk" stripe where my hair is parted, that's for sure! Time to let it go gray? I also made a couple of masks for myself and my husband. Oh, dear! I am really  not good with a sewing machine... The first one took me two hours to create, and, although the second one was easier--I do struggle!  I used one of my husband's old shirts for the green checked one (mine) and a piece of quilting cotton for my husband's. They are "okay"--mine is a bit too loose around the sides. I found another tutorial that might work better for small heads on YouTube so I might give that one a try this weekend. Wish me luck!My two masks--pretty good, but I need more practice!Comfort foods still seem to be appearing on the menu at my house and I found this delicious recipe for apple crisp right here. When I make it again, I'm going to try about 3/4 as much sugar and maybe even take it down to half as much. It was plenty sweet!  We enjoyed this as our Easter dessert (and for the next two nights, too!). Have you been whipping up any tasty comfort foods during this lockdown period?Do the apples make this a health food--ha ha!! Watching old television shows seems to be comforting to me right now, too. My husband and I have started watching an episode of Cheers (on Netflix) each night before we go to bed--a light, fun show that doesn't upset us or keep us awake. Honestly, I think we've both been sleeping better lately... And I've begun watching Downton Abbey again from the very beginning. You see, I never watched the final season, so I decided to begin all over again. I absolutely love it-- and I really think I'm picking up on so much more of the dialogue than I did before. The Dowager Countess's (Maggie Smith's) lines are just so delightful, aren't they? "Edith, you are a Lady, not Toad of Toad Hall!" ~ "What is a weekend?" ~ "Every woman goes down the aisle with half the story hidden." I could go on an on! And the scenery, the dresses, the jewels--sigh... All so well done. I still haven't seen the movie, but plan on watching it after I finish the series.  Anyone else have any comfort watching television shows to recommend? So, how many of you have talked to friends or family using Zoom? I had a Zoom get-together with my three sisters-in-law (on my husband's side) on  Tuesday and, after some initial difficulties connecting on my end, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing their faces and catching up with them. They live in Indiana, Ohio, and Connecticut so we rarely see each other anyway. We already have plans to meet this way every other week. At the end of our session, the following question was posed to us so I've decided to use that as my "Getting To Know You" inquiry this week:  "Have you found a "silver lining" in this period of being confined to your home?" In other words, few love being stuck at home, but is there something nice in it that you've discovered? For me, that answer is easy! Yes! I've discovered that my husband and I can live together happily and quite easily (other than the occasional disagreement) after he retires. I was truly worried about that, as I was so used to being home alone,   but--so far, so good! How about you?Giveaway Time... I haven't had a giveaway in a while... so how about the chart for this lovely red house sampler? It is simply two pages removed from a magazine (sorry,  I don't know which one) and if more than one person wants it, I will draw a name. All you have to do is: 1) mention in your comment that you specifically want to be entered in the giveaway,  2) answer the "Getting To Know You" question above, and 3) include your email address if I don't already have it. You may enter until April 29th, 2020 and then I'll pick a winner and announce it on my next post. The chart will be folded and mailed in a legal sized envelope to save money on postage. Good luck to all! If you are interested in winning this pretty red house sampler chart, see above!I'll leave you with what, to me, has always been a sign of hope and comfort each time it blooms. This orchid was given to me when my father died on October 31, 2014 and it still blooms almost yearly. Each time it blesses me with these beautiful white and fuchsia blossoms, I think of him and feel like he's visiting me. And this year, that feeling is especially needed and meaningful. It's an absolute perfect time for it to be blooming with all the worries and unrest swirling around us these days, isn't it?This special orchid always brings me comfort...So, more of the same for a while--at least here in Pennsylvania. We are shut down until at least April 30, probably longer. The hardest part for me in this whole thing is being unable to visit my mom--I miss her so much. It is extremely lonely for her having no family https://www.patternspatch.com/1/bunny-stitching-as-the-days-slowly-pass/ https://stitchingdream.blogspot.com/2020/04/bunny-stitching-as-days-slowly-pass.html

[un-enfant-immature]

Endlesss, the iOS music making app from Tim Exile, takes to Kickstarter for desktop version

In entrepreneurship, timing is everything. Launch too early and the market or underlying tech may not be ready to support your idea. Launch too late and the opportunity may have already been conceded to competitors. For Endlesss, the music-making app from Tim Exile, the timing feels just right.

Launched on March 31st, just as the U.K. and many other countries around the world entered lockdown, the iOS app’s collaborative approach to music making proved to be an overnight hit. It seems that many people not only had time to fill, but craved the kinds of social and creative interactions that Endlesss was conceived to facilitate.

More broadly, Exile tells me the app and cloud-service is based on the premise that music has always been about performance and social interactions. However, as the recording industry developed, the tools for making music developed with it. This saw the onus put squarely on producing a final product — music-making as a means to an end rather than a means in itself — and along the way the spontaneity or ‘in the moment’ element of music has been lost.

A vision that has been years in the making (see this video interview with Exile conducted by TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher in 2016), the resulting Endlesss app combines software recreations of drums machines, samplers, synths and FX, with a “tap to loop” workflow that should be familiar to anyone who has used a looper pedal or loop-based sequencer. The app also accepts live audio for use with guitars, mics, and other external instruments. However, the clever part is the way these loops or riffs can be shared or remixed by others participating in your jam — essentially sending musical messages back and forth as if it were a chatroom. Or at least that’s one analogy Exile is fond of using.

“Endlesss started life as an instrument I developed to allow me to take a spontaneous performative approach to improvising electronic music,” explains Exile in a Medium post. “I wanted to liberate myself from the perfectionism that I fell into in long solitary hours in my studio. The workflow evolved over a decade of regular touring at a time when process-based music was an arty experimental niche. At first I wanted to build a career for myself as an improvising musician but I soon realised there was much greater potential in what this workflow could do for others”.

Now, via a Kickstarter campaign launching today, the Endlesss team are aiming to bring an even more ambitious version oto desktop Macs and Windows machines, including VST/AU compatibility for integration with your favourite DAW. Dubbed Endlesss Studio, the idea is to retain the accessibility and sense of play that the iOS app delivers, but couple it with a more involved studio setup so the music-making possibilities really are endless.

With that said, a few Kickstarter caveats. Endlesss Studio isn’t planned to ship fully until next year, with backers given access to an alpha version in December 2020 at the earliest and a beta release scheduled for February 2021. However, the team already have a track record shipping software, including the iOS app and accompanying cloud-based back end, so hopefully the release dates won’t slip too much, if at all.

Exile has also thought long and hard about how to create a sustainable business model that will support an even more ambitious roadmap into the future. Early Kickstarter backers can grab lifetime access to Endlesss Studio for a one-off fee but the longer term model is a monthly subscription of $12 per month — jamming as a service, if you will. This includes HD audio quality jams and archives, an option that should prove popular for users who want to use Endlesss as a jumping off place for more polished tracks. In fact, Exile has already launched a record label dedicated to Endlesss-enabled releases.

Meanwhile, Endlesss isn’t entirely self-funded. The startup disclosed its first funding round in July last year. Backers include Tim Clark (co-founder, IE:Music), Mathew Daniel (VP International, NetEase Cloud Music), Dhiraj Mukherjee (co-founder, Shazam), Richard Jones (manager, Pixies), and Paul Kempe (Tileyard), along with a number of unnamed but “well-known” artists. In addition to equity funding, Endlesss has also received a grant from Innovate UK.

The company’s advisory board includes Stephen O’Reilly (IE:Music, Topspin), Cliff Fluet (Eleven Advisory) and Will Mills (Shazam, LyricFind).

[valmaior-blog]

Asymptotically tending...

Saturday 13/07/2019. A momentous day. I took a shower! Showering in itself is not that unusual, I shower every month, whether I need it or not;-) This was a momentous day because it was my first shower in my as yet incomplete new bathroom, and by new, I mean new. New concrete floor, new drains, new plumbing, rebuilt walls, new floor and wall tiles, new toilet-bidet-sink, new mirror, new electrics, new ceiling, new doorway, new window, and incomplete because the last 4 items are not yet installed.

Funny thing about the bathroom mirror, it is of the “blue touch” type. It has a permanently illuminated blue circle – very useful at night, which can be touched to turn the built in lights on, or off and cycle through the lighting options. Made in China. On the box, it proclaimed blue tooth – silly Chinese. Obviously never heard of Blue Touch, so I assume it was an error and had been helpfully corrected by the packaging printers for the manufacturer, except that after it was installed, I discovered that my phone can connect to it and play music. (apologies China) Also, when the lights are on, a heating element demists the central part of the mirror. Neither of these functions were on my list of essential features for a mirror.

The main problem has been the size of the house – 188 square meters – over 2000 square feet, and apart from the kitchen, (and now the main bathroom) the ceilings are over 3.5 meters (12 feet) high. Actually, the real problem has been underestimating the amount of work required, overestimating my skill and ability, and working around the lack of specialised tools.

So, it is now 2020. Time for an update. Progress has been slow. It is 1 year and 11 months since we bought the house. My initial estimate of 2 months to make it habitable is just a vague memory. The deeper I dig, the more I find that needs fixing. The termite damage that I though was confined to skirting boards proved to be more extensive. In places all the wood has been destroyed leaving just the paint! The schist stone construction is great for plants and small animals. It is like a dry stone wall, but the inside spaces are packed with soil. Where I replace termite terminated wood, I use concrete if possible.

In October, I visited the local health centre. I needed a medical to apply for a Portuguese driving license. I had been registered there for 3 years, but this was my first visit. While I was there, I was interrogated about my medical history, got measured, got a flu jab in one arm, and a tetanus jab in the other. Gluteus maximus, was untroubled. I have no idea if this is now the norm, or another Portuguese idiosyncrasy. Passed the driving test bit with no problems, amazingly, my eyesight was classed as perfect, but blood pressure was ridiculously high, looks like I will be on medication for a while. I was sent for chest X-rays, blood tests, I wore a heart monitor for 24 hours, and later, a blood pressure sampler for 24 hours. That machine squeezed my left bicep every 20 minute during the day, then allegedly every 30 minutes at night, but I don’t know for sure, because it didn’t wake me up. On my last visit to the Doc, I was told that heart and lungs were fine. My blood test results went missing somewhere, so I had to go to the lab and get them printed again. Steamed open the envelope that I have to deliver to the doctor, and checked. Cholesterol 188?? I should be dead. Checked the units – seems that EU and US have a different set of units to those in the UK, so divide by 40ish gives 4.7. He lives – again!  Seems weird that the US uses the same metric units as the EU, but UK doesn’t.

The flu jab seems to have been a waste of time though. I was stuck down with a severe case of man flu over Christmas and New Year.

Only those who have lived through man flu can appreciate the heroic efforts I must have made to cook a full Christmas dinner, including Christmas pud. I didn’t get round to making mince pies until New Years day though. That did give the mincemeat a little extra maturing time – 800% extra.  

Highlights of 2019?

1) Transporting a new double bed and mattress and wife to the house completely inside a Fiat Punto – just the normal hatchback version, with all widows and doors closed!

2) Successfully gluing 8 pieces of broken granite counter top (kitchen worktop)  back into 1 piece. (there was no way I would have been able to match the colour)

Spanish windlass in action.

So, we now have a basic but working bedroom, and have stayed over a few nights, we have a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom, but still lots of very dusty jobs to do before we can take up residence.

I received my Portuguese “Carta de Condução” a few days before Christmas. It took just under 2 months to arrive, which is very fast compared to times reported by the expats in the Algarve. It does involve Portuguese IMT communicating with UK DVLA to cancel my UK licence before a Portuguese version can be issued.

This was something I had to do, for two reasons.

1) To legally hold a UK licence, I must have a UK address.

2) To legally drive in Portugal for longer than 3 months, I need either an EU licence which has to be registered with the Portuguese Authorities every 2 years, or a Portuguese licence.

As it was looking increasingly as though my UK EU licence would cease to be an EU licence, I jumped before I was pushed. Exchanging a non-EU licence for a Portuguese licence generally involves retaking a driving test, which is only conducted in Portuguese.

I also renewed my passport online at the same time, which was processed very quickly. Perhaps because I waited 1 month to send my old passport back. However, DHL failed to deliver it on 3 occasions. I guess the driver just looked at the street name and thought “I know where that is” and went to the wrong street in the wrong town. I used the house address for the passport, because I had no idea how long it would take. I had to use the apartment address for the driving licence, because that is my registered address at IMT.

During the height of summer, we were surrounded by forest fires – not close enough to be scary, and we are far enough from the trees to satisfy our insurance company. There are, I think, about 12 water bombing planes in Portugal, and 4 of them were doing circuits and dumps (anyone?) loudly over our house for a few days.

There were some local road and expressway closures, and when reopened, evidence of major conflagrations on both sides, but as far as I am aware, locally, damage was restricted to vegetation.

Portugal is an odd country in many ways. Soon after we moved into the apartment, we found that there was a LIDL closer to us that the store that we had been visiting. So, we made that our local. Cheddar cheese from there is acceptable quality, and half the price of cheddar from the supermarkets. Man cannot live without cheese on toast! Also, IMHO, their croissants are superior to those purchased from E. LeClerk or Auchan. Anyway, I digress. Travelling to and from LIDL, we used to often pass a woman who appeared to be living in a Ford Transit (or similar) she seemed to spend most of her time sitting in a camping chair watching the traffic. I guessed this was the result of a breakup or a death. She was a fairly ordinary middle age specimen, somewhat overweight, and not well dressed.

When we drove to the beach though, we would sometimes pass aged grannies sitting on plastics stools, presumably abandoned by their families, who considered them too doddery to trudge through the pine forest collecting cones, firewood, mushrooms and stuff. This seemed to be common. It wasn’t until we traveled further afield, along roads more used by truckers, that the ladies sitting at the sides of the roads became younger, more provocatively dressed, and all seemed to have orange skin, like Donald Trump, or like original James T. Kirk Star Trek aliens. Then the Euro cent dropped. Not sure about the grannies, however, we often pass an orange skinned granny, though it seems that she is only there when there is no competition. Holidays, Sundays – bad weather etc.

Pet Peeves.

1)Expressways!

There is not much wrong with the expressways as such, but the sliproads (on/off ramps) seem to have been added as an afterthought, or without any thought at all.

As an example, here are two junctions I use frequently.

The north/south expressway is the A1, the main (and only practical) route to drive between Lisbon and Porto. The east/west A25 expressway heads across the border, towards Madrid.

I approach this junction from the top right on a sharpish right hand bend, which prevents me from reaching a safe joining speed. The trees on my left prevent me from seeing approaching traffic, and the slip road is only 65m long, and even that requires use of the shoulder.

What makes it worse, is that 80m further on is the exit slip to join the A1 in both directions, so vehicles intending to take that route are unwilling to move into the adjacent lane to give joining traffic some space.

The next example is in the centre of Porto. Again, I approach from the top right. A 2 lane slip road, which becomes 1 lane. This section is always busy, that is at the time I use it. The slip road is from the A28 expressway which runs north from Porto, and I am joining the A1 again, which here forms part of the Porto inner ring. I have usually queued on the A28 for 20 minutes to get here. With bad timing, that can be much longer.

I am trying to match the speed of the traffic on the A1, while watching for cars merging from the right. The evil designers plan here, was to make this entry slip road also function as an exit slip road. So some vehicles on the A1 are slowing down to try to move onto the slip road, and other vehicles on the slip road have no intention of joining the A1, but are heading for the exit.

The final example is just stupidity. Again the A1. This pic has been rotated 90 degrees, so north is on the right. So, heading south on a 3 lane expressway, you arrive at a junction. Conventional exit, 3 lanes continue. Just before the southbound traffic from the junction tries to join, the 3 lanes are reduced to 2, then the joining traffic has to squeeze onto an expressway which is suddenly 50% busier, and drivers who found themselves suddenly without a lane are trying to settle into their new spot and not worrying about joining traffic. Sometimes vehicles unable to find a gap are forced off the expressway and onto the slip road. The problem is not the reduction to two lanes, but where the reduction is located.

Finally, the cost. Almost all expressways have tolls. The quickest route from apartment to house (according to google) incurs a cost of €3.1 That is €31 per week if we go there and back on 5 days, and that is in the cheapest car class. When I rented a van to collect the kitchen, I racked up tolls of almost €200 over a weekend.

Pet Peeve 2 – Import duties.

Before we moved to Portugal, I bought a UK registered Left hand drive Freelander, thinking that I could just switch the registration to Portuguese when I arrived. Yes I could, but I would have to pay taxes of €12000. Used cars incur the same tax as new cars. Portugal has been told by the EU that this is illegal, but refuses to change. The cost of cars in Portugal is astronomical, so old cars are still valuable and are still kept running. If Portugal was forced to change, the price of used cars would collapse. Imports of goods from outside the EU have severe problems getting through Portuguese customs. They are frequently held up for months and incur significant charges, such that many people just refuse to pay.

I have just informed our landlord that we will leave in 2 months time, so that is how long we have to get everything ready. When we move in, there will still be a lot to do. I have a plan to fix the sagging wall (see blog). I found a problem with the river that runs through it (see blog) the stream exits the house though a tunnel in the wall. One day after heavy rain the previous day, the stream was insignificant, but the water was deep in the tunnel. I had no idea where the water goes when it flows out of the building, the exit is below ground level. I poked the hole with a sharp stick, and hit fairly solid stuff. Another job for the to do list. A few days later, heavy rain again, I wandered out to inspect it. Our tarmac driveway is on the other side of the wall, and there, a spring had sprung. Water was bubbling up through the tarmac driveway. I dug down to the stream where it exited the tunnel, and the was no indication of any other route that the water could take. There is no immediately obvious solution to this problem, so a bout of pondering is required. Sump and pump would probably be the easiest. If the water is raised by 1m I could pipe it to a drain, but I would much rather have a non-electromechanical solution if one can be found. I would never trust my boat to an automatic bilge pump. Though the house won’t sink, it could be damaged if a pumping system fails to operate.

The house has no heating yet, although we do have 3 portable electric heaters, and 2 portable gas heaters. I am flip flopping over systems – burning wood or pellets, oil, LPG, air conditioners, heat pump, …

Underfloor heating is not an option, the house has a mix of solid and wooden floors. I realise that in itself would not preclude underfloor heating, but it would complicate installation.

Wall insulation is not an option. The house is externally tiled, the walls are 60cm thick (that’s 2ft in old money), there is no cavity, and internal insulation would require drastic remodeling.

Double glazing is not an option, it would not suit the house. All the windows are 2m high, and 1m wide. Our internal shutters should achieve the same goal, if they can be made to seal effectively. However we did survive winter living on the boat in Preston with no effective heating – any attempt at heating resulted in torrents of condensation. However, the internal temperature never went below +3.

The last two years have been intense. I didn’t realise what the effect had been on me until I compared two virtually identical before and after photographs of myself.

Before...

And after.

I have similar pics showing the effects on Ping, but I doubt I would survive the consequences of including them here.

One theoretical benefit of the location of the house is the proximity of the only ski resort in Portugal – 2 hours drive.  At virtually 2000m above sea level, snow should be guaranteed.

This is what it should look like.

And this is a live webcam feed.

We have only ventured up the mountain once – about 3 years ago, in late spring, and there was still deep snow in places sheltered from the sun.

I had marmalade on toast for breakfast this morning – homemade organic marmalade, made from homegrown oranges :-). Organic, because we have ignored the garden, not because I have strong pro-organics sentiment. This was just a trial run – our oranges are not traditional sevilles, much smaller and sweeter, I had to tweak the recipe – drastically reduced sugar, so just one test jar. Not quite Golden Shred, but better than acceptable. Not bad for my first attempt.

We have a local railway station - 2.6km from the house, but I could not find a timetable for the trains, because there are none. The route is interesting, because it follows the ground contours, even in the hilliest parts of the route. No deep straight cuttings, viaducts, bridges or embankments, though there are a couple of tunnels. It seems that a few years ago, some bad weather damaged part of the track, causing the company to impose a 30km/h speed limit. More bad weather dropped the speed limit to 10km/h, then to 0. The middle third of the line is closed, and that section includes our local station.

The eagle eyed amongst  you might notice a red light on the right of the picture. We have on 3 occasions seen a train on the closed section of track. I guess there is only one maintenance depot. The exceptionally eagle eyed might notice that the track looks a little odd. That is because it is meter guage, 1.0m width. Normal tracks are 1.435m. Consequently, our line does not join with the national network. Our trains don’t fit on normal tracks, and normal trains don’t fit on our tracks. I believe that the railway company is unwilling to spend much money on repairs, and unfortunately the trains are not pretty - 2 car diesel electric, decorated in unimpressive graffiti, bought used for not much money from an East European country (Poland?) that had no further use for them.

As the Portuguese crow flies, it is 40km between the two extremities of the line, both coastal, but the track does head inland, and meanders from village to village, so the track length is much greater, almost 100km.

We tried the train once, from Aveiro to Sernada do Vouga, a little over 1 hour an 18 stations, followed by a stroll through the hills and forest to the house, a lot over 1 hour. We went back to Aveiro by bus.

It is January here - like everywhere else. We have bunches of narcissus and lilies in flower.

Grass hasn’t stopped growing, the oak trees still have leaves, the peach trees have new buds. No time to rest.