mrsbrown | Recent Entries

Yes, I should keep a journal, it will be interesting to read later. Also, there's so much stuff swirling in my head, it will be useful to get out. Also, also, if I do this I won't have to do any work. I think I'll make this my daily work ~~procrastination~~ trigger.

I just made a cup of tea and remembered to check on my saurkraut. I made it three weeks ago (I think) and left it on the stove where I would see it. Our first troubleshooting came when I noticed that the liquid was brown - it was too hot. Then, a couple of days ago, I noticed that there seemed to be a mould colony growing on the side of the glass jar I'm using as a weight. I've just cleaned it off and settled the thing down again, but I need to check that I'm not about to poison anyone - I don't think so based on something I read a while ago, but I'll double check. Honestly, the mould is my own fault. Like so many things I do, it got towards the end of the process and I'd nearly had enough so wehn I thought, "I should sterilise the outside of this jar", I quietly washed it with hot water from the tap and went on with the sense of achievement I was looking for by finishing. OK. Found the site that had the answer I was willing to listen to (ignored the ones that said throw it out) and I think I need to get the weight out, and put it in the fridge. Also, eat some for lunch with roast beef, mustard and cheese. Next time, I will choose a smaller jar - I couldn't put the lid and the weight on, so I just put a cloth over the top. Here's hoping that 2-3 weeks wasn't too long for me to enjoy my saurkraut.

My version of pandemic anxiety seems to be all about the food. I started with a strong interest in gardening, which has now become a mournful watching of youtube videos about how to garden and endless plans to sit down and plan how to use the garden bed I got Mrbassman to put together. But I can seem to worry about food quite well. We have a growing shopping list, and I seem to be planning my days around how much longer it is until I can make food and then making it. Although I'm also doing quite well at being overwhelmed and then just waiting for someone else to make it. I do seem to be using a lot of head space on planning the optimum time to cook bread, what sort of bread I should cook and then blinking to find that the bread has over risen or it's too late to put it in the oven and have it cooked before bed time.

Next, 2 hours of work, as per my daily routine checklist.

Current Location: loungeroom couch

It was too nice outside to be sitting inside working, so we got heaps done.

I worked with Mrbassman to build a large raised bed and MsNotaGoth got busy cutting back the grapevine. Rose even came outside and participated for a while. We have a lot of light in the kitchen now.

This evening Mrbassman is making baby wipes out of old towels and I've dealt with the celery glut by making verdurette: 1 parts leek , 2 parts celery, 1 part parsley and 1 part salt. Minced together in the food processor and left in a bowl overnight. I'll put it in jars tomorrow and then we can use it for the rest of the year.

Current Location: Kitchen

Oops. I made a facebook post a couple of days ago in which I pondered the nature of volunteering in my local neighborhood and suggested that hanging around in local spaces was important community work. Unfortunately, I used a recent event that I worked on as the introduction, and one of my co-organisers has taken exception to my "attitude" to her volunteers and the suggestion that "hanging around" was more important than cooking sausages. It's terrible that I have upset her, and I obviously failed to see that as a possible outcome (thanks autistic brain) but otoh, she's sort of confirmed my disquiet by revealing that at least 2 of her volunteers weren't local, in fact they drove 2 hours each way to help by cooking sausages "for the kids". If they'd "hung around", maybe I would have known that :).

To be clearer than I was in my facebook post; I don't think that volunteering is a bad thing, and I think it's great that people are willing to volunteer. I do think we need to be aware of the impact and goals of the volunteering we do and the programs that are run. My facebook post and this post are intended to explore that issue and my thinking. I am pretty certain of my values, but I am not so certain of the best goals and implementation methods so I appreciate input from others and actively seek it - generally online because there are more of my people there.

This area, and other inner city areas, have a long history of privileged people coming in to do good works. It's how it was possible to demolish what it sounds like was very functional housing, because people who weren't living here decided that it was substandard and had the ability to agitate and lobby to get the government to demolish and build the public housing towers. It continues today with church organisations who run "homework clubs", using private school kids as tutors and then funneling successful students into Catholic high schools, leaving the kids who aren't as successful, or who don't have parents who make them go to homework clubs to go to the local high school. It appears to be great, but may not be the best outcome for the community.

One of the nicest things about the volunteering I've done recently was the increase in the number of people who i now say "hi" to as a wander in the local area. For me, that's what social cohesion is about - increasing the number of familiar faces for everyone, so that we all feel more comfortable in our local community. From my reading on the Transition Towns movement, we all need to increase the number of people in our local area that we can turn to when we need help. That means that I want to get to know both my immediate neighbors, who live in houses, and my other neighbors, who live in the flats and so far, I have.

I feel like getting locals to hang with locals has been my major goal with my community work, together with the caution of avoiding unintended community consequences. I feel like my summer has not achieved this as strongly as i would have liked although, as I've gotten older, I have learned that you need to identify the unexpected wins. So I don't think it's been a complete waste.

Firstly, just hanging out in some of the spaces in the local area means that I now understand how woefully they've been maintained and provisioned compared with how they would be if they were park spaces provided by local council. Pleasingly, we've won a lot of brownie points with the local MP, who is also housing minister, so we've started having this conversation. This needs more work.

Secondly, we've had to navigate the same bullshit bureaucracy that everyone else has to navigate. Except that we have the white, english speaking privilege that means we now have the ammunition to work towards a positive change. Now to actually do it.

i think the 3rd win might be that I now have a much more nuanced understanding of what i'm doing with my community work and what I want from it. Thanks for the ride.

So, even if we didn't get the locals coming and hanging out in the local spaces, there were some useful gains from my summer of work. Now to work out what I want to do next.

When we design retail spaces we typically expect that the store will have a 20% occupancy, but that the lighting energy to the store will be designed to operate at 100% during opening hours. Wouldn't it be good if we could better match the number of people in a supermarket to the energy being provided to keep the store open?

I imagine that going to the supermarket could be a bit like riding in the Ghost Train at Luna Park. As you enter each section, it could light up. And you would have to wait until there are enough people to justify you starting the journey.

Although maybe the realistic version of that is using smaller stores for each of the supermarket sections - butcher, dry goods, fruiterer, deli etc. I wonder what's more energy efficient? The wholly lit supermarket behemoth, or multiple small stores that cover all of the stuff you buy at the supermarket?

This weekend we went to a private 14thC reenacting event. It was quiet and pleasant and gave us an opportunity to get Rose away from her computer and give her some interesting people to meet and alternative views of the world. I also got to catch up with some old friends and got to meet some people who might become friends in the future. But I mostly kept to myself. I watched the social groups there and pondered the nature of the living history groups - how they work and what makes one group more successful than another. I also thought about what I'm trying to do by getting involved with these groups. I want a new group of friends, or at least a bunch of people I can hang out with who can provide mutual support to make something better/bigger than I can do on my own and share my intellectual curiousity about history and how to make things. There were a bunch of people who seemed to be able to do that, so it's worth continuing.

However, my enjoyment of the weekend was soured by a message I received today asking me to justify the materials and design of the clothes we wore on the weekend. How am I to continue having a good time in these circles if I feel like I'm being judged? It's made worse because the dress I wore is not what I would prefer to be wearing. It's a dress that is mostly the right shape and materials but not quite the cut I would use if I made it myself and the sleeves are lined with a synthetic silk material. But its good enough for me to participate and I would prefer to get there than miss out. Also, I know that many of the clothing items I have made and worn over the years have been based on my best efforts at historically informed practice and then I or the community learn something new and I'm no longer happy with them. On that basis, none of my gear will ever be "good enough", it will only be as good as I can make it. I'm worried that if I have to always formally justify my stuff to an external arbiter I'm just going to be anxious all the time. How do other people have a good time in that environment?

What's a better way to deal with the tension between an externally moderated clothing standard and having a welcoming, happy, inclusive reenacting group? Here's what I think a group that successfully navigates this looks like;

Succeeds as a social group - people feel welcomed and supported
Publishes minimum dress standards and trusts the adults joining to do their best to meet the standard
Has leaders and long time members who wear nice clothes and model appropriate dress standards
Has regular craft based meetings which include informal conversations about dress standards and historically informed craft practice.

I don't think that the Melbourne based group is going to work for me. It doesn't do any of these things and I'm having a major personality clash with one of the older members (I think she was the origin of the criticism), but I'm very happy to attend LH events. I may have to start my own group - I'm thinking about it.

I started writing this a month or two ago for my work blog but it got really long and I think it's actually 3 work blog posts or a magazine article (with a LOT more work). It was still here when I came to write my next update and I've published it so I don't lose it.

I'm a member of the Urban Coup and we're currently involved in the collaborative design process for the co-housing development in Nightingale Village. I'm finally able to put my interest in food waste systems in apartment buildings into practise!

I've had a food waste system at home for the past 20 years. I don't call it composting because my focus isn't about making a beautiful fertilising system for a beautiful permaculture garden, it's just about reducing what I'm sending to landfill and having a system that's not too smelly and doesn't take up too much room or require a lot of time and energy from me. My system has mostly worked but got much better after I did my volunteer work with Food Know How, collecting cafe food waste and taking it to Collingwood Children's Farm for processing into real compost.

The biggest problem faced by the Food Know How project, was finding enough carbon to help the decomposition into fluffy, pleasant compost, rather than anaerobic, smelly slime. Carbon seems to be the factor in food waste systems that gets left out.

I've started putting all of the food contaminated paper into my food waste bin - butter wrappers (I only buy butter that allows me to compost the wrapper), flour bags, brown paper bags that I buy bread and mushrooms in, used tissues etc. That's still not enough to make happy compost, so I've recently put a paper shredder near the food waste bin, and line the bucket with shredded paper each time it's empty. The paper also makes the bucket easier to clean.

We have a bin inside that gets emptied about 2-3 times a week, depending on how smelly it is and/or how full it is. The appearance of vinegar flies is also a prompt to empty the bucket. The bucket is probably bigger than most people would be happy with but we have a good tolerance for the smell/flies, so our laziness is best served by this bucket. I have previously used a pair of stainless steel bowls that needed to be emptied more often than we were up for, but it was good to be able to put one bowl in the dishwasher, while filling the other one. The bucket gets a quick rinse outside and a thorough cleaning every couple of weeks.

The outside bin gets occasional attention, mostly when it's my turn to empty the inside bin. When I think of it (about every 6 weeks or so?) I add some more carbon to the outside bin and give the waste a turn with my screw compost turner. About every 2-3 years the bin is full enough that I need to move it and I put it somewhere new in my front garden, put the compost onto my fruit trees, put the un-composted waste back into the bin, add some more carbon and then ignore it for a couple of years.

We have a similar process for the dog waste bin. It's in the backyard in a shady spot, the dog waste is put into it daily, I add sawdust to it regularly, the worms do their thing and every couple of years I take out the compost, put back what hasn't broken down and keep using it.

A few weeks ago, I met up with a several of the Urban Coupers including Bron who is a resident at The Commons. Bron has an interest in permaculture and has been one of the residents looking after their worm farms. It was useful to collect the experiences that people have had with food waste and look at a building that already has a communal food waste system, to see what works, what doesn't and what our ideal system would look like.

The Commons has 24 households and started with 4 worm farms, 8no comingled recycling bins, and 8no landfill bins. They now have 6 worm farms, 6no recycling bins and 4no landfill bins. Bron felt they needed more worm farms, but when we went and took a look at them only one was working effectively, with a healthy worm population and only aerobic breakdown. The worm farms are Hungry Bins. Until recently, they were also composting food scraps that can't go into the worm farms, but that's not currently available. The refuse room has a blackboard, plenty of signage and a cleaners sink. The residents supply their own containers to carry waste, recycling and food scraps and to the refuse room.

Based on The Commons, and our experiences, this is what our ideal waste system (for 30 households) looks like;

5 landfill bins
8 recycling bins - based on the "recycling crisis", we talked about using these bins to separate our recycling more thoroughly than the current co-mingled systems.
6 organic waste bins (similar size to standard 240L bins) - either hungry bins or aerobins and maybe a mix of both.
Shredder for paper and maybe cardboard. This will be added to the food wast
Grinder to reduce size of organic waste (wishlist item)
Bin washing area
Sink for residents to wash personal food scrap bins (same tap as bin wash?)

I've also reviewed many waste reports, including those for apartments and it feels like waste consultants have no idea about how to deal with food waste. They either leave out any mention of options for food waste, or they design systems that are too small and have insufficient maintenance.

OTOH, most people who aren't me are pretty crap at getting these systems to work well. Here's a study of a bunch of people in an apartment building and some of the issues the food waste system had to deal with.

Anyway, hHere are the things I think make a food waste system accessible for people;

The inside container needs to match the lifestyle of the people using it - how often it gets emptied, how clean it needs to be, what food waste the household creates.
Some people won't like cleaning the container, and they will need some sort of bag system to line the container. "Compostable" plastic bags don't compost and shouldn't be used - a paper liner would be better for these people.
Organic waste disposal in a compost or worm farm system doesn't mean just food waste. Paper and cardboard are an important part of a successful system and can include paper food packaging, tissues, paper towels (if you use them) and shredded paper. Side note - offices could be including paper towels from bathrooms in their organic waste streams.
It needs to be easy to shred paper, so maybe shredders should be included in apartment waste rooms?
Waste rooms should also include facilities to wash the kitchen bucket.
Aerobins don't need turning and can accept most food waste
Hungry bins use worms to process food waste and need careful and educated use.

Years ago, I read that being idealistic about a thing means that the feelings when the thing fails to deliver the thing are much stronger. It was in the context of sustainability consultants (like me) giving up on consulting because the developers we work with are more interested in money than saving the planet. It was a useful concept because it meant that I could develop a coping mechanism and focus on achieving my ideals without expecting that anyone else would buy into them.

I'm pretty sure that's what going on for me with the SCA at the moment and I'm thinking about the ideals I have about the SCA;

The SCA is a community. A community whose members care about the other people in the community and help them.
The SCA is a place where I am safe to be me in a world where I often suffer for being different.
The SCA is a place where I can investigate new things and have an instant group of people be interested and helpful about me achieving my goals.
The SCA is a place where I can use my skills and interests to help me feel clever and appreciated.

So, I can intellectually look at this list and be aware that the SCA is a pack of human beings that do all of the same things that shit groups of human beings do, but I've just left a period in my life where, actually, most of this was true and I'm having a hard time adjusting to reality.

And, in particular, I've recently had at least 3 of these ideals proven to be unreasonable expectations so I'm feeling pretty shit about the SCA right now.

This has been prompted by 3 things:

1. somebody on facebook saying that she didn't want to be a laurel when she really meant she didn't want to be a dick. And taking it personally because i have spent a lot of personal energy working to make stuff a bit more period and then been accused of being a laurel, as if it meant the same as being a dick. Yes, I get the same bullshit as laurels do, without any of the "glory"
2. I asked for hardship pricing for an event on behalf of some friends who I thing are really deserving and was completely refused. Not even a $10 discount.
3. I've been effectively bullied by a several people who think that complaining about me/my views (that aren't even my actual views) to my daughter means that I won't hear about it.

Once upon a time, I would finish reading the internet and start creating my own contribution to stuff to read and post here (ish). Since reading the internet is now done on my phone, it's less likely that I'll post.
Otoh, I can get quite opinionated when responding to other people and the need to actively respond will prompt me to write quite extensively using only my phone keyboard. To the point that occasionally while writing fb messages using my computer I will look unsuccessfully for the predictive text bar to write the rest of a word or sentence for me.

So, I think I have worked out the stilted form of writing and editing required to post using my phone but I think that I need a passion and clear message to be able to write very much.

I need a replacement for my bellarmine jug. The big cup that I used for tea drinking every morning and the dropped when I slipped on the steps at Canterbury Fair. Here's a collection of fun images I've found while surfing on my phone this morning.

These pointed nose jugs are adorable and not very different from the owl jug/cup bought for a friend a couple of years ago. The last one is closest.

http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/50309/pointed-nose-jug/Anonymous

http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/50292/pointed-nose-jug/Anonymous

http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/49080/pointed-nose-jug/Anonymous

What does a spinning jug get used for? It's tiny!

http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/140064/spinning-jug/Anonymous

Fantastic picture of a rectangular tent
http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/3736/Lot-and-his-Daughters/Anonymous

Another name for bellarmine jugs is brtman jug. This one's lovely

http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/48442/bellarmine-jug/Anonymous

The SCA needs more enormous water jugs like these. http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/45154/Christ-and-the-Woman-of-Samaria/Sebald-Beham
I guess these proportions would be useful for a water jug - 19cm h and 17cm w, but I was imagining something even larger.
http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/51944/jug/Anonymous

Kitchen interiors are always worth a closer look
http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/64153/The-Fat-Kitchen/Pieter-van-der-Heyden
http://collectie.boijmans.nl/en/object/139724/Peasant-Interior/Anonymous

Current Location: Warm bed

I'm knitting a jumper and I have to design the sleeve (unless recipient decides she wants a vest instead, her latest fancy)

Anyway, I collected some links.

Handy guide to writing an excel spreadsheet to work out the sleeve pattern

I haven't looked hard enough at the spreadsheet to see if this might be a more straightforward way to do the sleeve pattern calcs.

Or I could avoid the entire issue and use this calculator instead.

Why do people feel so emotional about this school uniform thing? Why do I get so angry about it? Here's my theory; when we think about high school things, it makes us remember how we felt then and we feel some of your teenage emotions again. Those emotions colour the way we approach any of our ideological arguments about what's the right thing for our kids.

When talking about uniforms, people talk about their embarrassment and the anxious feelings about fitting in and frequently talk about uniforms being the thing that will fix that. But here's the thing: being a teenager is about being embarrassed and anxious about fitting in.

The other difficulty in discussing this is the bike shed problem. Almost everyone went to school, we were all teenagers once and we either wore a uniform or we didn't.

When we're aware of all this, we can put aside those teenage emotions and our "expertise" and look for the real stuff. Discussing a school uniform is not really about bullying or cost or making people think that the school is a good one. It's about our approach to making teenagers into adults.

I want my adult children to be comfortable with themselves and able to spot the people who will contribute positively to their lives and cast off the ones that don't. I want them to be creative and able to try something new. I also want them to develop independent living skills like dressing appropriately and fashionably and to manage their money in a way that prioritises the things that are important for them.

I think they can either learn that at school or at Uni, and I'd rather they did it at school where they have a level of supervision and they can still eat if they spend all of their money on clothes.

Here's my memory of clothes and high school; I went to a high school without a uniform. I spent my time transitioning from a person who went shopping for clothes with her mum, to a person who was given an allowance for clothes shopping and organised op-shop expeditions with her friends. I experimented with my hair - it was shaved short, it was dyed, it was cut by hairdresser trainees, it was cut by my sister and it was cut by other students. I experimented with how many days I could wear a thing before people commented and I tried out being fashionable and being comfortable. I learned that it's hard work to come up with something that looks amazing every day - you have to do your washing for a start!. Getting up up every day and having to find clothes that are both clean and will work is difficult but you have to develop routines and standards that work for your personal image AND your care factor. There are also the days when everything comes together and you can look amazing, and you work out how to have that happen more often. By the end of year 12 I wore clothes that had a particular style and that I could rotate through as little as possible. I was ready for uni.

Yesterday I damaged something in my lower back. Straight after I did it I went walking, started my stretches and put a hot pack on it. I also started taking drugs. You know you're in a goodly amount of pain when you don't get the whoozy feeling from the codeine, and you just feel a bit more normal.

In the afternoon, I got tired and lay down on the couch. I think I stayed still for too long and my back got much worse.

Early this morning I got up to have a wee and I was in too much pain to walk, let alone lower myself to the toilet and I gave up and took pain killers instead. I was able to move a bit better 30min later and successfully sat on the toilet.

I went to the physio this morning and burst into tears when he asked me how I was. He immediately went and got me some pain killers.

My back is taped, I have recently had pain killers and right now I'm in almost as much pain as I was in at 3am this morning. It hurts to change feet as I stand, it hurts to think about moving from one room to another and I'm in so much pain I can't think. I don't know what position I can put myself in to stop the pain for a while. I've thought about lying down, but I'll have to get up again in 30min to do my stretches and avoid damaging myself further and I don't think I want to contemplate the pain that getting down and up again is going to involve.

I think this level of pain means that taking a train to Canberra will be a stupid idea.

I've been thinking this week about leadership, or possibly more correctly, getting people to do what I want them to.

I've been feeling the impotent annoyance that I remember feeling in the weeks before I stepped up as Baroness. In particular, an incident when I arrived at Monthly Bash and saw a rabble of people not sure what to do. I made my suggestions and was ignored. it was super annoying and I remember the feeling of frustration and the almost shrill voice in my head as I raged internally about people not listening to my sensible suggestions/requests. I think I felt a bit invisible too.

My memory says that a week later, the day after our investiture, I arrived at the Sunday Tourney site to a similar rabble of people. I was greeted enthusiastically by the people present, who bowed and nodded, "Your Excellency!". I walked over, took stock and asked people to help unload the car, directed where the tourney field should be and got people involved in setting up the sunshade. It was wonderful and I spent the following week reflecting on the difference and what made people ~~listen to~~ obey me one week after comprehensively ignoring me.

A couple of years later, I watched my Boss designate a person (N) I thought too young as his successor and 2 months later my Boss left on extended sick leave and died of a brain tumour. Everyone in the company happily did as N directed, even while she confided in me that she didn't want to be the person solely responsible. N was, in fact, great and I was happy to follow her.

I decided that it had to do with people wanting a designated leader. Someone who is anointed or named in some way as the leader. As soon as they have, I guess they can stop worrying about deciding it for themselves and get on with just doing whatever the leader says that's basically reasonable. It's a successful approach, because most times doing something is a better option than angsting about what to do, so it's hard for a leader to get it wrong.

Oh, that's why H has set himself up as the "captain" of his pirate ship. It automatically makes him the leader. I wonder what equivalent I could adopt? Would it work for a nearly fifty grey haired old lady? Would it get me what I want?

Alternatively I need to work on the charisma side of the leadership thing, or borrow someone else's charisma.

My dream this morning was about finding a safe place to give birth.

There was a monster/demon looking for me and they needed me before I had given birth. I was at Festival and a midwife agreed to find me a quiet space at the hospital, with the right people around me. People who could protect me from the demon.

We found the spot. I was a bit exposed, near the front entrance and the Bishop came. I asked "why him" and the midwife spoke of her faith. When I turned to tell him to go, he was gone. The others came and talked of their skills and we set up a curtain to screen me from the entrance.

Time passed and I had the urge to leave. I knew the midwife was the wrong person so I secretly left with my companion and the demon fighting equipment. We walked through the linear park. I was heading for the dog enclosure, a place surrounded by trees.

I heard something coming behind us and I started running and we missed the access to my preferred destination and ended up in the tunnels. After running for a while more

We chose the exit and looked back where we saw the midwife sitting, waiting. We ignored her and headed for the trees. I sat and, while I wasn't in pain, knew that it wasn't long before I gave birth. A woolly alpaca type animal came over, but ignored me and addressed something behind a large tree. While that was happening, a larger than life, godlike person came to me and insisted on checking my blood pressure and birth progress. (It's ok, no vaginal exam). As she finished the alpaca ran forward and killed the invisible monster hiding behind the tree.

I was pretty happy. There were trees around and I could give birth. I started feeding apples into the processor.

There was also a meeting with my prospective birth attendants in a restaurant. A real life acquaintance was there with her daughter and I made several attempts to get her to be interested in the reason I was there. I even found a picture story book with Violent Femmes lyrics for her daughter, but it wouldn't work, I couldn't get her to pay me attention.

I think this dream is about safety and how I don't feel safe right now. About how my safety and value as a member of the sca community was attacked yesterday in my interactions of facebook. I had four negative interactions and I'm feeling sufficiently fragile that they hit me really hard and made me dream about my safety in that environment.

sss
I wish people would acknowledge the good intentions that people have, rather than putting them straight into the "authenticity nazi" bucket.

I'm feeling a bit better that I was able to be safe, and also about the re-birth aspects. Also amused that when I had found a safe place I was able to grate apples.
There

I have a new induction stove. Many of my favourite pots don't work on the induction surface and the ovens (there are 2) are smaller than my roasting pans. The large oven has 5 shelves and the small oven has 2. Assuming a roast height of 15cm, there is room in the large oven for 4 roasts and one in the small oven. I can cook up to 7 trays of cookies or pies in the 2 ovens. The instruction manual says that the maximum roasting tray size is 37cm x 32cm and the max baking tray size is 35cm x 25cm. I don't understand the discrepancy as there is air circulation space at the back of the ovens. I can also fit my existing square cookie trays (3no) in the big oven, as long as I put the oven shelves at the top of the shelf supports, leaving about 1cm either side of the tray.

Here's the shopping list;

up to 4 cookie sheets (I like the perforated ones)
silicon sheets to fit
4 baking/roasting pans
2 crepe pans
cooking pot replacement for heavy pasta pot
another saucepan

Having done a bit of shopping, maybe the cookie sheets could have more lip and perhaps double as roasting pans? Something like this;
www.chefshat.com.au/product/8292-baking-sheet-rolled-340x255x25mm-alum. I still have one large and 2 small pans with a 5cm lip. I've had a look through the perforated pans I can find and they all seem to be larger than my oven will fit :(.

I looked at the non-stick versions but the product has a guarantee of 20years and the non-stick coating only 5 years. I think I want something that will continue to be functional for longer than both of those times. I wonder how long the silicon sheets are meant to last? OTOH, if I use them and they stop being useful I will still have all of the energy invested in the aluminium trays.

Crepe pans; we used to have non-stick aluminium ones, but we had to replace one because the non-stick scraped off. I really like our well seasoned cast iron pans, but they're too heavy and deep for happy pancake making. So I'm thinking that we should just buy a couple of these steel ones - www.chefshat.com.au/product-group/51810-crepe-pan-blue-steel-de-buyer-fb/product

The heavy pasta pot is about 6L. The thing closest to that, in the style I want is this one. www.chefshat.com.au/product-group/51858-saucepot-w-lid-18-10-ci-elite/product. And I think I like that style enough that I would just get a suitably sized saucepan from the same range - probably 3L or 4L.

I will certainly be buying the 6L pasta pot and the crepe pans asap. The other stuff can probably wait until we are given them, or next year when we have more money.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: bed indulgence

I just watched "Why we make bad decisions" (I'm making lots of them at the moment) and, at the very end he answers a question about how to get people interested in making a positive decision about the future.

I'm impressed with myself, because it's a technique I use all of the time; I imagine how I'm going to feel in a week or a year, when I'm suffering the consequences of some half arsed decision. I learned it from renovating - making a decision that I was too tired to fully clean the grout off the tiles I'd just grouted and then sitting on the toilet for the next 2 years wishing that I'd done a better job.

So I finished the thing that I thought was a blockage, the reason I hadn't done a bunch of other things.

And yesterday, I determined that I would do all of the sewing on the dress I want for next week. But first I organised a shopping list for the breakfasts, snacks and lunches for the even next week. And then I realised that I had to buy most of the food yesterday, because next week is full of work and a full day course on the day I had planned to do the shopping.

After the shopping list was completed, I took Rose's violin to school (we'd forgotten it in the morning) and went window shopping at the op-shop (not sure why I did that).

As I was standing at my kitchen table, ready to cut out my lining fabric, my mother arrived for a chat and cup of tea. Yesteday, I got the lining cut out and the bodice pinned ready to iron.

This morning I have to take Rose to sell raffle tickets for cubs, so maybe this arvo I can sew the skirt together with the machine and all the rest of the work will be handsewing.

I also need to make those pies for the event next week and go to Bash (handsewing time!)

I don't think I have time to make that jacket or partlet I wanted. :(

Current Music: Nagging Rose to get dressed

Tonight's dinner started in the greenhouse last year when S grew lots of basil and then sjkasabi turned quite a lot of it into pesto.

It continued with the passata I made a month ago in a weekend frenzy that produced 80 bottles.

then last Friday I made mashed potato and stored the leftovers in the fridge.

On Saturday, we had roast vegies for dinner and, again the leftovers went into the fridge.

Tonight I spent 20min, making gnocchi and a roast vegie sauce with passata and basil pesto to finish. The cheese we grated onto it was bought at the local market, from a local producer.

Current Mood: amused

I think the schedule thing failed, so I give up. Yesterday, I hit the "sit down and internet" item on the schedule and stayed there for the rest of the day, only interrupted when the dinner guest deadline arrived. Luckily it did, or it would have been cheese on toast for dinner.

Sometime soon I will run out of internet based things to do and get out of bed to attempt the Rowany Festival packup/cleanup thing and cleaning all of the house. Although if I wanted to stay in bed I could probably do paid work for the rest of the day.

I think Rose needs to get out of the house and/or a bit engaged in the world before she heads to school tomorrow. She's a bit grumpy right now for that to go well. I can't do that from my bed, unfortunately.

I've spent the morning obsessing over getting organised for Quest, you've probably seen the 10 separate updates to the event description on FB, the advertising, the event form and the booking form. I've also started making a list of the infrastructure we'll need.

I have a tentative sewing/clothing list for Quest:

wool flemish for me
wool jacket for me
black wool partlet for me
black gumboots for Rose and me
Woolen venetians for Rose
woolen thermals for rose

And I'll be fitting that around work - lots of work, apple processing next weekend, spring cleaning and decluttering the whole house, paying someone to re-roof the house (just decided to pay someone else to paint the house too).

It's a good think I just started paying for office space 2 days a week - I'm going to need to cram all work into 3 days so I can do the rest of the stuff I want to do on thursdays and Fridays.

Current Location: My bedroom has lovely south facing light
Current Music: there would be more noise if mr-bassman didn't have headphones for his video

Today is the second day I have woken at 5.30am, read the internet for a while and then rolled over and gone back to sleep until 9ish. I'm still catching up with the daylight savings change. I was speaking to someone who suggested that you get more sleep at this end of daylight savings, but I always get less - I stay awake later because, "the clock says it's only 11pm" and then wake at my normal, pre daylight savings time of 6.30am, but it's only 5.30am which loses me an hour of sleep every day for a week.

I have huge plans for today and I'm going to schedule them so I'm more likely to get them all done. The list is;

Make booking form for Quest and submit event form
Sit in bed with a computer and tea until 11am
do 2 sessions of 1 hour on work stuff I need finished before Monday
Spend 30min cleaning my bedroom
~~Wash all woollens from Festival, as well as the new brown wool I bought yesterday to make my own Flemish dress before Quest.~~
That means I also need to empty Rose's chest, so I think I'll spend 30min on her room at the same time
~~spend 1 hour cleaning~~ the Kitchen
~~go to the market~~
Spend 1-2 hours making 2 protege belts (only need one right now, but it'll be easier if I make a second)

And here's how the schedule goes;

~~9.30am Sit in bed with computer and tea AND do Quest stuff (multi-tasking!)~~
10am Sit in bed with computer and tea AND do 1hr of work
~~11am shower, dress and empty chests, put on load of washing~~ still need to empty Rose chest (just retrieved the woollens) .
~~11.30am go to market~~
~~12.30am~~ 1pm flop for 30min; read the internet, eat food
1.30pm clean the kitchen AND hang out washing
2pm 1hr work session
3pm commence protege belt making
4pm clean bedroom
4.30pm clean Rose's room
5pm put dinner on and finish protege belt (I love roasts)

Phew! that was hard! I don't feel so enthusiastic now.

Current Location: Saturday morning bed
Current Music: QI episode

Page generated Jul. 14th, 2025 05:48 pm

MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

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