Tag: mine

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

THE AIR SMELLS OF DELICIOUSNESS TINGED WITH SORROW

One of the few conversations I had with my Grandma after her stroke (she was affected psychologically, not physically) was about her time in London. She was a nurse in the East End during the Blitz. She said, “I remember when they hit the sugar factory. It smelt beautiful.” She drew that last word out as if transported, as if it was one of the most amazing things she’d ever experienced, in the midst of the horror she saw daily at one of the most bombarded hospitals in Britain.

And because of the internet, I know the exact date. Grandma said it burnt for at least two days before it was extinguished, sugar being a very flammable substance.

She talked about this a few days after her stroke, when the light still hurt her eyes so much she couldn’t open them, and before the psychosis developed. The sense-memory of that caramel smell was enough for her to talk to me for some minutes, coherently, about something she’d never even mentioned to her own children. (And it came about because I asked her about the Windmill Theatre, somewhere she never would have gone but would have been aware of the existence of, because I’d just seen Mrs Henderson Presents.)

Sometimes the most horrific destruction produces something hauntingly beautiful, a sense-memory you’ll retain forever.

copperbadge:

costumersupportdept:

copperbadge:

raziya63
replied to your post “whenflowersfade reblogged your post and added:STITCH WITCH MY…”

Stitch witchery is a specific specialization within string witchery. Spinners and weavers are still string witches without stitches.

I do kind of feel like I now need to write a novel about a cabal of magicians from the various fiber arts called STRINGWITCH. They could call themselves The Descendants Of Fates and interlace magic spells into their various string-crafts! 

But what do you do when someone is a Witch Of All The Fiber Arts? Is there like a Grand Supreme? Because most of us tend to be pretty competent with at least two crossover fiber arts, if not more.

I mean, I would imagine most magicians have a couple of special skills and some generalist knowledge, so I guess someone who’s got training in everything would be considered a good all-rounder, though most prefer to specialize. 

In a move of shameless self-promotion, have a link to my Marvel Bang fic for 2016: taking up the tangled threads (and spinning something strong and true). Stitch-witch Bucky Barnes and a reimagining of Bucky’s childhood, First Avenger and Winter Soldier by way of The Six Swans. I’m a fibre artist myself, and the media never gets it right (I’m looking at you, Once Upon A Time), so be assured I did my best to get the crafting correct. Based on fanart by the wonderful @kath.ballantyne .

Happy birthday to me!

The Upside of Unrequited and Leah on the Offbeat were presents from @lefaym. Carry On, Autoboyography and The Edge of the Abyss were from mum (bought by me as second hand and remainders). And the last eight Classic Library books were my present to myself. Low res picks because my laptop has died against and the tablet has a terrible camera.

[Copies of Captive Prince and Prince’s Gambit from the Captive Prince Trilogy]
So, my curiosity got the better of me. I saw these first in the Smith Family store, then a week later in my local second-hand bookstore, Elizabeth’s (someone either read fast or quickly realised their mistake and traded them in, is my guess), where they’ve been for at least three weeks. So, I gave in. Slave!fic isn’t usually my thing, but people won’t shut up about this series, and though there’s a lot more queer fiction than there used to be, beggars can’t, and all that. If it’s not to my taste, I’m sure there’ll be someone out there willing to take them off my hands. $8AUD each, which isn’t the cheapest, but a lot cheaper than if I wanted to buy new.

When I was about ten, Mum bought me the eight books in the first picture, a couple at a time, from Kmart, until I had them all. I’m pretty sure they were $5 a book, which might sound like a lot for a kid, but Mum and Grandma had been buying me things like Kipling and Bronte since I was about eight, and they knew I took care of my books. They’re nice editions, unabridged, with eight full colour plates of illustrations in each. Even after the better part of thirty years, the pages are still bright white, so for cheap hardbacks, they used REALLY low acid paper for circa 1990. They’re also a proper sewn binding, not just glue.

Fast foward twenty five years. I find a book, in a charity shop, that matches my books. But it is one I do not own. It is one I never knew existed. I had always had weird recurring dreams of finding more books to match my treasured set of eight. TURNS OUT THEY WERE TRUE. Cue an internet trawling, which yielded a final number of twenty four titles in the series.
Over the last year or so, I’ve found three in charity shops and bought five from the internet. I have a massive list of things I want to buy – most of them books – but I decided that what I really wanted for my birthday this year was to complete the set. So here it is.

They’re all imperfect in some way – scratches, dents, the odd ex-owner’s name, and two badly faded spines, but the whole collection is together, after twenty six years of being incomplete.

Alice in Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
What Katy Did Next – Susan Coolidge
What Katy Did – Susan Coolidge
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol & Cricket on the Hearth – Charles Dickens
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
What Katy Did at School – Susan Coolidge
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
Moonfleet – John Meade Falkner
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea – Jules Verne
Around The World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
Heidi – Johanna Spyri
The Water Babies – Charles Kingsley
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & The Beach of Falsea – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

Some of them I’ve read lots of times over the years, some, not since I was a kid, and a small amount are completely new to me despite being classics. I can’t wait to dive in.

I LOVE CLASSIC LIT.

The rest of my birthday present was three queer YA titles, but I’ll take a picture of those later, when I’ve covered them. 🙂

Before, it was spite box cake. (Which was understandably underwhelming.)

Now, behold, It’ll-Do 3AM Scones!

I have never made gluten free scones before. I only vaguely followed the recipe, and I changed up the flavours. Still, turned out pretty great!

The original recipe is here

I replaced the pomegranate with chopped dried apricots. For the greek yoghurt, I dumped in a tub of strawberry Chobani without measuring and hoped it would do the job. (Given my baking powder is super old and there’s only one egg in this recipe, it definitely worked.) The chocolate was ¾ of a 180g block of Milky Bar, but it was sweet enough to not need more. Also, I had just under 100g of a block of butter left, and decided ‘it’ll do!’ because I couldn’t be bothered opening a new block. (It did.) They’re in American-style wedges rather than British/Australian style rounds, because finding my cutters at 3am was, like, nah, when I could just cut the dough into slices with a regular knife.

So, basically, after Emma has been gluten free for fourteen years, I broke my block to do with trying to make scones because it was late, I had a craving, and I decided that because I was fudging half the recipe, if it didn’t work, it didn’t matter. And they’re pretty great. The texture is cakey, but that’s normal for GF without added xanthan gum, and they’re sweet, soft inside, and have a nice crust. I didn’t even bother to egg wash them despite it suggesting to, and look at that colour! The balance of flavours is nice – the chocolate melted in, so there’s no chunks of that, but every now and then you get a surprise pocket of the flavour of it. The strawberry puree from the Chobani is a mild fruity note in the background, and the apricots are tart and add texture. I think the yoghurt has a lot to do with the nice softness inside. I’ve used sour cream in a number of recipes in the past, and it really makes a nice bake.

In the future, I might add another sharp note, because they are very sweet. A citrus glaze, or maybe zest in the mix. It could be more balanced, but it is certainly not going to be a chore to eat through this first batch.

ETA: I did cook mine for five minutes longer than the recipe time (20mins) but my oven is slow, so I expected to have to do that. If your oven is pretty accurate, you probably won’t need to.

Emma and Ruth on Instagram:

Hey, so we have six cats. If you ever wondered what they all look like, Emma actually got all six of them to sit still and look in roughly the right direction for #internationalcatday. Four of the six were rescues, living feral, when we took them in. The other two were a friend’s cats we took in when she had to move and couldn’t keep them. Ginger, O’Reilly and Scarlett are about 17. Nick is under five, we think, and Sam and Winter are brothers born approximately September/October 2016. Ginger is deaf, Scarlett is blind, and O’Reilly is and always has been chronically clumsy. Nick could do with losing a bunch of weight, Winter probably could too, but right now, they’re enjoying food security for the first time ever, so, y’know. Also, Mum keeps overfeeding them despite us trying to explain to her what portion sizes should be, and she’s the one up at 5am, so we can’t intervene when she dumps a whole can in their bowls.

Emma and Ruth on Instagram: