Happy Imbolc!

Feb. 1st, 2026 09:17 pm[personal profile] sonia
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
My plan today was to get a 20 lb bag of rice from the local farmers market, and then take BART to the other side of the hills and bike "the three bears" aka Bear Creek loop. However, the rice vendor said they didn't send him any big bags of rice this week, and I saw on the BART website that they were trimming vegetation between the two BART stations I needed and single-tracking the trains, so I didn't want to do that.

Instead, I decided to bike to 99 Ranch the long way (over Grizzly Peak) and get rice there. I texted a friend who lives up that way that I would get there approx 1:30 and did he want to meet up. It was a gorgeous day for a ride, sunny and just warm enough not to need a jacket.

Biking over the hill and seeing the flowering plum and cherry and magnolia trees is a touchpoint of the year for me. I was distressed last year that I missed spring hill rides entirely because of my injured ankle, so it was a treat to see all the flowering trees today, even if February 1 seems unreasonably early.

My friend and I texted each other updates from our respective journeys and did manage to meet up. I got to 99 Ranch at 1:28 after 2 1/2 of riding, so I was pleased about estimating accurately (without a mapping app). I got a 20 lb bag of rice for $12.90 instead of $40 at the farmers market, with the cost of a long beautiful ride and hauling it home (the flat way) for 7 miles. I'll take it!

I also spotted some Sterilite ClearView plastic storage drawers on the sidewalk with a FREE sign when I was fairly near home. They were the old style ones similar to the ones I have. I had looked for more online and now they only sell stacked units, not single ones. So I stopped and picked one up and strapped it to the back rack. I'll have to scrub the top of it, but it's nice to find something that's not available in stores.

Happy Imbolc to all!

Clothing sweatshop

Feb. 1st, 2026 10:48 pm[personal profile] hudebnik
hudebnik: (Default)
Some time last summer we were invited to provide music at a Venetian Carnavale, a 16th-century-Italian SCA event in February. Now, we don't do a lot of 16th-century Italian, or 16th-century anything, but there's plenty of good music easily available, by people with names like Bassano, Gabrieli, Dalza, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Vecchi, not to mention all the English, French, and Flemish musicians who were working in Italy at the time. And the dance treatises of Negri and Caroso. So last fall [personal profile] shalmestere picked out a bunch of music and we had an all-day rehearsal to decide which pieces we liked best, which worked best with whom on which instrument on which part, etc. We'll probably add some more pieces with more and fewer parts, so we can have some of us playing while others eat, or have people from other ensembles sit in with us.

But there was the question of clothing. Naturally, we have The Tudor Tailor and Alcega and Patterns of Fashion and class handouts from various 16th-century clothing classes we've attended over the years, but it's all a little foreign to us. We decided that if we're "the hired band of minstrels", we should be dressed somewhat similarly, and since such hired bands in period seem to be all-male, our group are all wearing boy-clothes (despite two of us being genetically, anatomically, and socially female). In November or December we took an expedition to the Manhattan garment district and came home with some luscious shirtweight white linen, some luscious black linen for linings, and some luscious black wool for fashion layers. We've made poufy white shirts with cuffs and collars decorated with blackwork, redwork, and/or linen ruffles. We've (mostly) made Venetian-style poufy knee-britches. And we're in the middle of making cassocks, sorta. In most of the pictures, cassocks are crotch-length outer shirts, but the pictures of hired bands show people wearing short cloaks over cassocks, so we're cheating a little, conflating the cassock and the cloak by making the cassocks loose and thigh-length. And we are not making doublets; that sounded more fiddly than we wanted to deal with. Cutting and sewing all this stuff, from an era that we don't normally do, has been occupying much of our evenings and weekends. The clothes are looking good so far, but we're not sure where else we'll wear them after this event.

The Hunting Party icons

Feb. 1st, 2026 11:20 pm[personal profile] flareonfury posting in [community profile] fandom_icons
flareonfury: (Bex/Jacob/Shane)
The below icons are for [community profile] tvmovie20in20 Round 23 with The Hunting Party - screencaps are from Season 1 only.

Preview:



A secret prison. A killer escape. The hunt is on......

Groan

Feb. 1st, 2026 07:46 pm[personal profile] ranunculus
ranunculus: (Default)
I cleaned out a whole cabinet  plus another very small drawer unit and several shelves in San Francisco.  I remembered my drawers as being quite a lot better organized than they were. Now I have 5 crates of stuff to sort.  A couple of them won't be bad, but at least two or three need a lot of work.  I'm tempted just to toss the lot, but can't quite make myself do that, there is a lot of hardware in there, much of it new.
Discovered that there were no large sized screwdrivers left down there.  I'll take some back. 
Dug a few iris, including a light blue one that will very much be in the way of the construction project. I really wanted that color in the mix here in Ukiah.  Took a bunch of containers with fertilizers and other soil amendments that will never get used in SF but can be used one way or another in Ukiah.  
It is a bit overwhelming. 
Dealing with our elderly downstairs tenant was no fun. He is resisting both our project to fix the house and my attempt to get the electrical fixed, saying that it is an enormous disturbance and he will have to move everything in his flat when we do it, which is not true.  Yes there will be some disturbance, but he's way out in left field.  Then he started in telling me that we had told him we were starting our project "right away" when we started the planning process 3 years ago. The opposite is true. We have told him repeatedly, monthly, weekly (basically every time we talk to him) that we are NOT starting yet, and that he will have at least 2 weeks notice before we do.  I know it is just him getting more frail and less able, but it really rubs me the wrong way. Sigh.  
conuly: (Default)
correcting things people think they know about history, you'll soon learn that a perennial topic is "Yes, people drank water in Medieval Europe", followed closely by "They took baths too!" And yeah, they drank a lot of ale and wine... but people today drink a lot of alcohol too, and for much the same reason - we like it! Or if we don't like alcohol we like soda, or coffee, or tea.

People in the middle ages did understand that some water was safe to drink and some wasn't, and they went through considerable lengths to bring clean, potable water to their towns. Not that most of them lived in towns, but in this case, living further from town is a bonus. Less people = less poop.

(Also, while there are other waterborne illnesses, cholera in particular didn't leave India until the 1800s, well into the modern period. I'm not sure it even existed prior to 1817. Please stop telling me earnestly about Snow and cholera in London. Totally different time period, totally different situation, totally irrelevant.)

Anyway, this just popped up on my feed yet again today, and it suddenly sparked a question in my head:

If people supposedly didn't drink water because they didn't want to get sick, what did their animals drink? Surely nobody thinks that medieval peasants were giving their cows and pigs ale? Or do they think that non-human animals are so hardy that they aren't at risk of waterborne illness? Or maybe that people just didn't care if their animals died, like every sheep isn't wealth, or at least a source of food and wool?

(I'm willing to bet that nobody has an answer to this question, but that if I ever ask them, should it come up in the wild, they'll be annoyed at me!)
muccamukk: Kate looking like she's going to shoot someone (Marvel: I Will Shoot You)
Misc PSA from various BlueSky users: If you see the research study conducted by Ayagdos, don't participate in it. It's run by transphobes.
More details in the thread.


Fandom Stuff!
bring her bleeding heart to me promo banner
[personal profile] fiachairecht's annual Dark Femslash Comment fest!

[community profile] halfamoon is currently running with daily prompts for fanworks about female characters. (I'm not even trying to participate this year, but I love that it's still going.)

[personal profile] dreamersdare: Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition (February Challenge)
Each week in February, you are challenged to write a themed top ten list, with a focus on different aspects of media.


Fandom Stuff: The Hockey Gays Edition
[youtube.com profile] CBCArts: Heated Rivalry's Harrison Browne is fighting the good fight for trans hockey players | Here & Queer (Video: 11 minutes).
There is zero mention of HR in this video, but Browne's current project sounds cool!

Province of Canada: Sign Up for Fleece Updates
I guess fans lost the push to make that fleece official merch for the Canadian Olympic team in like two weeks, but you will be able to buy it at some point.

Out Sports: Empty Netters host privately called Heated Rivalry ‘trash,’ show creators ‘losers’ and ‘cowards’
Ah, there's the hockey culture I know.
ETA: The guys have apologised, and there are misrepresentations in the article I linked (because the reporter is shitty). However, I think the underlying homophobia stands.


Canadian Politics
House of Commons: Petition e-7005 (Health)
We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to ensure all eligible residents of Canada can access required healthcare, including gender affirming healthcare, as outlined in the Canada Health Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
(Open to all citizens and residents of Canada. Don't forget you need to confirm your signature via email.)

CBC: Unreserved with Rosanna Deerchild — Greenlandic Inuit and their fight for independence (Podcast: 49 minutes, no transcript.)

Parody Site: Sponsor a Separatist!
(Possibly mean spirited, but I got a laugh out of it.)

The Tyee: As Supports Dwindle, Violence Against Sex Workers Is Up
Women are worried that conditions could lead to another serial killer operating in the Lower Mainland. A Tyee deep dive.


U.S. Politics Cut for those who need the break )

moonlight

Feb. 1st, 2026 08:43 pm[personal profile] summersgate
summersgate: (Default)
DSC_0660.jpg
Just now.

Torpor of Sleet

Feb. 1st, 2026 07:40 pm[personal profile] ismo
Yesterday, I was too tired to post anything at night. We considered going to a car lot to look at potential replacement cars. The Sparrowhawk didn't really feel up to going out at the time of the appointment. We could have gone there later in the day, but I felt that I wanted to talk more about what we were looking for before we started looking, so we stayed home. Wood Elf came by to pick up chili for our friend. I made up a little bag of chili and condiments for her too. When she protested that I didn't have to go to all that trouble, I said "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the grain!" which made her laugh. She had brought her little tool kit so she could have a look at the sick friend's toilet, which she said was acting up. Wood Elf is one of the people you want to have with you in case of Apocalypse, a woman of many talents.

Then the Sparrowhawk's brother Fritz called. He wanted to stop by for supper, and said he would bring something. So we went to church, and he dropped by after that, with some barbecue. Fritz is proof that people are different. The last thing I would have felt like doing is driving for a couple of hours from the east side of the state, and then tromping around some obscure county parks in the freezing cold. But he had a free day and wanted to get out and do something, and that's what he chose. And then he spent a couple of hours visiting with us, which was lovely. He had a basketball game to listen to on his phone, so he didn't mind driving home in the dark--again, not like me, but it takes all kinds. Anyway, after he left, we were happy to go fall into bed.

This morning, I decided I had to make more chili, because after I took out a generous amount for Wood Elf and friend yesterday, I didn't feel there was enough for the potluck. So I found another pound of ground beef in the freezer, added my last two cans of beans and two cans of tomatoes with green chiles, two more onions, my last pepper and a half, and another round of cumin, oregano, chili powder and ancho chili powder. With this I topped up the pot. With some trepidation, we made our first return to the highway. Everything was fine. People have dropped all caution and returned to driving like maniacs as usual. We got there in one piece with our chili, shredded cheese, sour cream, and salsa. A number of other pots were on the table, so as usual I thought I might have overdone it. However, I was proven wrong. When I went back to get my pot, it had been not just emptied, but scraped clean. I am happy.

Also, today was my dear friend Deb's birthday! She has joined me on the far side of 75. We had a tentative plan whereby she would have been here for the event, but they decided it was better not to travel at this time, and they were probably right.
jazzfish: Alien holding a cat: "It's vibrating"; other alien: "That means it's working" (happy vibrating cat)
Among the better things in life: a cat sleeping next to the laptop while I'm eating dinner.

Sadly he really dislikes the sound of me typing next to him, to the point that he woke up and got bitey. So now I am on the couch with the laptop and he's having a bath on the table.

Tarot Reading for Imbolc

Feb. 1st, 2026 05:10 pm[personal profile] muccamukk
muccamukk: Sinbad looks up with an innocent and concerned expression (Sinbad: Puppy Eyes)
(Layout from [instagram.com profile] thewitchoftheforest right here.)

1. In what areas of my life do I need a fresh start?
Ten of Pentacles

2. How can I nurture myself at this time?
Five of Cups

3. What practical ways can I do this?
Eight of Wands (Reversed)

4. What seeds of intention should I plant?
Eight of Swords

5. What must I do to nurture those intentions?
The Priestess.

Like fucking fine, I guess! It's reasonable advice. Not in love with both the Five of Cups and the Eight of Swords in one reading, but that's not out of line with how things have been going, either. I like the Priestess.

Actual snow day.

Feb. 1st, 2026 06:02 pm[personal profile] ofearthandstars
ofearthandstars: A single tree underneath the stars (Default)
If you've followed any weather news on the southeastern U.S. over the last couple of days, you'll know that the Carolinas (North Carolina in particular) fell in the path of a Wintercane. There is about two feet of snow along the coast, where the winds gusted to tropical storm levels and pushed another home into the Atlantic, while creating blizzard conditions and a 100-car pile up elsewhere. The entirety of the state - all 100 counties/53,000 square miles, received some amount of winter precipitation, which is visible on satellite and something we Just Do Not Deal With.

Living just outside of Raleigh, we spent the majority of yesterday waiting out in the dreaded "dry slot", a term that makes my teeth itch, but is o.k.a. the Raleigh Dome of Doom - an area of dry air stuck between two steady pressure systems (a frequent influence of our mountains-to-sea geography) that quickly ate any snow in the upper atmosphere. After a brief flirt with fat flakes early in the morning, things dropped into a lull until around 5:30 in the afternoon, when the dome finally subcumbed to the Wintercane forces and snow and wind began to fall in earnest. It continued that way for about 10 hours, leaving us with 4-5" of the actual real, honest-to-goodness fluffy powdery joy that the rest of the world experiences (we usually are stuck schlepping around tiny mounds of soggy wet snow and kicking ice bricks). To our east and west, the totals ran several inches higher.

On waking I took a few obligatory pictures of the yard looking perfect - all the leaf litter and pine straw that makes up most of our lot was quietly subdued, and for a moment, our grass-loving wish-they-were-in-an-HOA neighbors forgot we are trying to keep things native and natural and forgave us. We tried to walk the dog (she isn't having it), and I spent a portion of the afternoon repurposing the leaf-blower as a makeshift snow clearance tool. This was only moderately successful, because despite my living up and down the east coast as a child, I do remain somewhat Southern and clueless when it comes to cold guests that arrive in large groups overnight and overstay their welcome. "Let me let you be gettin' on then" does not work in this case. So I tried to review the best means to move snow from a hilly gravel drive that is heavily shaded by trees - a gravel drive I had regraded and refreshed last summer after several summers and winters of rogue heavy storms had cut a new tributary through it. A new drive that I have hawkishly inspected after every rain since and tended to lovingly with a rake to make sure the ideal rock distribution remains to protect further erosion of the soil and our bank account.

I regret and/or may be proud to say (results pending) that I only managed to clear the top layers of snow, leaving a thin layer over the rocks that I then drug a rake over backwards (to avoid picking up rocks), creating either some minimal traction or a completely useless and innavigable work of natural art. Since there remains Unhealthy Levels of Canada™ in the region, there was no real melting today, but tomorrow is a different day. I have a rogue memory of our first snow here when the boys, still teens, compacted everything to ice in their cars and created a giant slip-in-slide to the ditch that, due to the shade, lasted a few weeks. But I am holding out hope that I have removed enough snow that any melting tomorrow will leave things in better shape. If not, may kitty litter and charcoal and our endless supply of fallen tree limbs help us all.

Of course this effort called for a celebration of hot chocolate - this is the first day post-surgery that I am allowed hot food and drinks, so a celebration was going to happen, yard work or not. I made the mistake of looking over at my neighbor's driveway (he's from Pittsburgh, and the Steelers' flag is up year round). It seems he managed to use his leafblower to turn his gravel path into an immaculate collection of rocks, not a trace of ice between them, which he emphasized by carefully backing all three of his (also immaculate) vehicles up in reverse. I assume he is using chemistry and/or dark magic. I would have offered him a hot cocoa, but I was feeling a little salty at my own deficits (why, yes, we are out of Ice Melt and salt).

After these adventures I spent some time sketching, until my eyes couldn't take it anymore. I chose the smartest subject in the home, who other than heroically pooping on the side of the house in the one untouched dry spot by the trash and recycling bins, spent the rest her day hiding under a blanket. rough sketch of Yoshi under her blanket )

tielan: Maria looking sternly out of image (stern)
pipe bombs in perth

Finally on the 26th of January ("Australia Day"), there was an Indigenous protest march in Perth.

During the march, someone threw a pipe bomb into the crowd. It was packed with metal shards and nails and suchlike. He failed to light it correctly so it didn't explode.

He was white. He was a he. That's all we know about it. And even that was mostly reported by the people who bring online news commentary, rather than mainstream media. (I saw it first with Cheek Media, myself.) You know why? Because "we aren't putting out his name because he is accused of..."

FUCK THAT SIDEWAYS WITH A RUSTY SPORK.

They had ZERO compulsion about publishing the names of the Bondi terrorists.

But a terrorist action done by a white guy? (It wasn't even billed as 'a terrorist action'. Well, excuse me for bloody well thinking that a FUCKING HOMEMADE PIPE BOMB tossed into a group of people who are supporting a particular racial identity isn't 'a terrorist action'.)

Oh no, can't publish his name!


--

conservatives, right wing, and please let our electoral system hold

In other political news in Australia, our 'right wing' is going down. Hard. Not only is their current leader (she's technically a "conservative moderate" and has lasted since the election) on the way out, but the Racists And Arseholes Party (known more conventionally as 'Pauline Hanson's One Nation') is on the rise - at least in sentiment. Whether that sentiment can gather the centre-to-right-wing conservatives in Australia is another question.

Our holding institutions right now are pretty much the Australian Electoral Commission and common decency, but how long those will hold is another matter. Watching what is happening in the US, being told what is happening by billionaires who own all the media properties, having a point of view RAILROADED through thanks to a lack of media discernment, and general outrage headlines...

I can't see my conservative friends here in my electorate (strongly conservative - one of the very few suburban electorates that hasn't gone "Teal") voting PHON. And they have to vote, and they can vote for the "least worst" option - ie. preferences. Plus, we have a very large percentage of "not born here" Aussies in this electorate, possibly one of the reasons that Old Guy down the road (and a bit further in) has his house decorated with PHON and Trump flags. Yes, Trump flags. In Australia.

Great moogly googly.

Anyway, we know the guy - he stumped up on Election Day 2025, put his little sandwich board up, stuck a plastic sleeve with the "Trumpet Of Patriots" party 'how to vote' card on, and went away.

That sleeve was touched pretty much twice. Once by one of us volunteers for the other parties gingerly looking to see what they'd recommended (even the conservative volunteers were eyeing it like it was fresh dogshit), and then once by a woman from the AEC whose job it was to go around collecting the 'how to vote' cards for each party in each electorate, so that the AEC could archive them.

We left the sandwich board after we packed everything away, and it was gone the next night.

In the end, hard right-wing support isn't non-existent, and probably never will be, but the current state of world politics, where right wing conservative parties get hollowed out by hard right wing racist fucks is sincerely worrying. I've never thought Australia is immune, but it's a worrying trend to finally witness happening, even if nothing comes of it. Grievance politics is hell on the system.

Maybe it mitigates with mandatory enrolment and preferential voting - we can hope - but if it does, that's on the system and the institution, not on anything else. Heaven knows the parties and the politicians are NOT HELPING.


NOT. HAPPY. JAN.

sunday

Feb. 1st, 2026 05:48 pm[personal profile] summersgate
summersgate: (Default)
DSC_0659.jpg
Imbolc. Not my best work but at least it is something for today. I've always liked making pictures along this theme, a seedling coming alive.  That's what my user pic is.

Went shopping with Jules this morning. We went to the Meadville Walmart and Giant Eagle instead of our usual Cranberry and Franklin ones. There was a neat thing that I noticed when Jules and I were walking back to the car. It was only about 10F and cold. Blue sky and the sun was shining brightly. If you looked towards the sun there were the tiniest of little light flashes happening in the air. At first I thought it was my usual old person eye aberrations. A lot of the time I see all kinds of little splotches and wiggles flashing in my vision in addition to what is really there. But it was actually super tiny specks of ice floating in the air and reflecting the sun. Very easy to overlook because they were so small. It seemed very magical. I think I've seen the phenomenon only once before. Maybe if I went outside more often in the cold, cold winter I might see it more. I called up Dave (he was ice fishing) and asked him if he ever saw it and he said he can't remember seeing it. So maybe it really is a rare thing. I just looked it up - it's called Diamond Dust

May your days be brighter

Feb. 1st, 2026 06:10 pm[personal profile] rolanni
rolanni: (Default)

And a blessed Imbolc to all who celebrate.

I celebrated by changing out the cat boxes, and vacuuming the basement.

Because my roommates are not good with telephones, nor, frankly, with understanding when I might need them to use the telephone, a couple years ago, I upped the population of Google Nests in this house, making sure I had one in more or less every room.

I have at last count 7 Nests, and when asked all will give me the current weather in the city in which I live.

Except for the Nest in the bathroom -- you know, the room in the house where people are most likely to fall?  Yeah.  Well, for the past two years the Nest in the bathroom has operated under the persistent illusion that I live in Portland. Or at least that the bathroom is in Portland.

I have today -- I believe -- repaired that delusion. I will of course test this multiple times, but just now, after the fix and the reboot, when I asked it what the weather was, it gave me local conditions in this, my own, city. And when I asked it where I was located, it gave me the correct zipcode.

Other things accomplished today -- books pulled and boxed and ready to go to the bookstore, where they will be entered into The System, and brought to the library on the day of my event.

The aforesaid changing out of the cat boxes and vacuuming of the basement, moving clean dishes from the washer to the various cabinets where they belong. I still have to wash the pots and pans and then? It will be Coon Cat Happy Hour.

So, yanno, not an earthshaking kind of day by any means, but I got through it, and that counts.

Tomorrow, PT first thing, then I have to stop at the bank for the first time in at least a year, then home again for work on the WIP and revising the Remarks. Oh, and I should write my wrap-up for Conflict of Honors, seeing as I'm halfway through Plan B.

Everybody have a good evening; stay safe.

I'll check in tomorrow.


a couple of weeks old now

Feb. 2nd, 2026 10:04 am[personal profile] tielan
tielan: Leia, RotJ, concerned (SW - Leia concern)
Some thoughts I put down at the time, and which I'm going to store here.

Bondi Massacre: shortly after - the aftermath )

--

a few weeks later/now a few weeks ago )

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