Wallpaper Paste
* 1 cup flour (wheat, corn, or rice)
* 3 teaspoons alum
* water
* 10 drops oil of cloves (natural preservative)
Combine the flour and alum in a double boiler. (If you don’t have a double boiler, set a smaller pan inside a bigger one that contains enough water that can be brought to a boil without overflowing). Add enough water to make a consistency of heavy cream; stir until blended. Heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture has thickened to a gravy texture. Let cool. Stir in the clove oil. Pour into a glass jar with a screw top. Apply with a glue brush.
Makes 1 cup
Shelf Life: 2 weeks refrigerated
Have made and used it before. Long time ago.
IEEE Spectrum: The Firefox Kid
As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.†Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox’s.
Could change a lot of things. Quite a lot of things.
gNewSense Official Website | Main / gNewSense
Interesting sounding new distro. Just downloaded it and am gonna give it a spin.
Wonder if they are really this bad or just don’t worry about sites with lower ratings like mine? Been 2 days since they have shown any of my updates and I have even gone to their site and clicked on the ping button to tell their spider to check this site. Still nada. So they get yet another not happy post from lil ol me… 🙁
Kept meaning to get these up but since time flies like a banana, I just got around to it. Gonna put them after the fold so only those really wanting to get grossed out will see them. 😉
And YES it hurt as much as it looks like it would. These pix were taken the evening of Thursday August 10, 2006 no matter what the camera time stamp says.
Continue reading 'Yellow Jacket sting photos of me'»
And one of my favorite materials, (bamboo for those who don’t know me) made into windchimes. Neat!
I think that is a half of a coconut at the top. Didn’t see what the clapper was made of. Main thing I was after was the memory of the style and cut of the chimes themselves.
This is another 2 piece pix that I took of a necklace hanger someone had made of 1/2 inch rebar for the upright and and square iron for the foot. There were 2 of these with a 3 to 4 foot rod hanging between them with the jewlery on it. I didn’t ask but assume that there was spikes on both ends that go 8 to 12 inches underground. Total height above ground was about 4 feet. Top hoop was 6 to 8 inches.
Cat needs something along this line to display her work. Will see about making something along these lines to hold some bamboo rods. May try to make a double hook affair to hold 2 rods at different heights.
This picture is made up of two different views of an adjustable iron hanger to use on a pole. Lantern, pot, coat or whatnot could be hung and then adjusted to the height needed.
This piece owned and used by Hrothgar the Trader and photographed with permission. Thanks Hrothgar!
More pix from the Alabama Renaissance Faire. These are just interesting (to me) bits and pieces of tents.
A post and rope supported tent. Note the hard to adjust ropes and sagging tent top.
Continue reading 'Bits and pieces of tents'»
We have seen these fine folks several times. They have a website at http://www.fairewynds.com/home.html which will explain a lot more about them. The following is a pix of their banners and then some of Ginny “sword walking” in which she walks barefooted up and then back down a stairway of sharpe bare edged swords. They are next scheduled to apear at Alabama Frontier Days Nov 1-5.
Now on with the pix:
Faire Wynds Banners
Ginny going through some contortions. That’s her dad Eric with his back to the camera on the right and her mother Susan on the left.
Continue reading 'The Faire Wynd Players'»
In the same day. 280+ miles is more than I enjoy driving in a day any more. That alone tired me out, not to mention the 3+ hours walking around at the faire. Enjoyed the acts and vendors and renewed aquantences of some of the folks we have gotten to know over the last 3 years of visiting. I got some pix and Cat got a lot more. Will get them up soon. Course I said that last year and still haven’t posted them. Guess I need to do that too… Soon. Really.
Still in town as of now. Didn’t get near enough done to try vending at the ren faire. Maybe next year. Still hoping to get setup at Farm Days at Wrights Dairy on Nov 4 but will have to wait and see what the next week brings.
Planning on heading out early in the am so we get to Florance by noon but may be later in the afternoon.
Just got my outfit as done as it’s gonna get. Will post pix and such after the event. The main thing my outfit is missing is shoes.  Just haven’t had the time or energy to even make shoe covers to fake them so am going in mundane footware.
Main outfit is pirate pants, peasant shirt and a hat I bought last year.
Also have a leather pouch made from an old 70’s era leather purse.  Lots of olive oil brought it back from the crackling dead. A strap that Cat wove replaced the one it came with. Recut the flaps and added bead and leather thong closures. Looks properly old and worn out. Holds lots of stuff too.
Time for me to hit the sack if we are gonna leave early, so will close for the nonce. More when we return either late tomorrow or sometime monday.
Still trying to get finished getting ready for the cold weather.
Since the weather folks said last night was gonna be below freezing was time to get the plants in for the year. After building a raised area about 8×6 and 4 feet off the ground we moved them in by dark. That also included the walls around it. Will try for pix later.
Today was firewood and timbers for the tent/portable building. Firewood cutting started at 9:30am and finished about 11:45 am. Cut and split a pile about 8’x8’x1.5′. Enough for the next few days anyway.
After lunch I went back out and cut several poplar trees from 2 to 5 inches diameter for the tent frame I am trying to get built for the ren faire this weekend. Got all 8 pieces cut to length and peeled. Got the 4 uprights cut down on the bottom to 1.5 inches to fit into the pine rounds and 2x4s around the base of the building. Will be 8’x8′ square with a front wall height of 7 feet and a back wall height of 5.5 feet. Floor will be raised 8 inches above the ground for water or whatever avoidence.   Must get pix. Too weird to discribe.
Gonna try to get the canvas for the top, back, and front/canopy at the coop tomorrow. Hope they haven’t gone up too much on the prices. Need 10’x20′ if possible. If not will see about getting painters canvas and sealant and sew it myself. May not make the weekend if that happens. Next bit we are gonna try to make is farm days at wrights dariy on November 4.
Posting will be sparse for the next few days till this is all over. Will try to catch up soon.
Tastebud Chicago: How to Cook a Steak
Linked to this page the other day but have to do so again after trying this out with a should have been tough shoulder steak. Did nothing different other than to add a bit of Adolphs meat tenderizer before the salt, pepper and olive oil. After adding the meat tenderizer (msg free) to both sides of the meat, I let it sit for about 5 minutes then added the salt, pepper and rubbed olive oil into it all on both sides of the meat. Used a regular meat themometer, instead of the fancy digital remote they recomend, and at 150 F took the meat out of the oven.
Added a bit (quarter cup I guess) of water to the sauce after cooking it all for a few minutes. This helped to break the hard crust up and softened the dried onion bits and chives I used instead of fresh scallions.
Was wonderful! Tender, moist, and as flavorful as the last t-bone I had at a restaurent and paid much more for. This one was $4.18 + tax and it fed the both of us to over full. Good stuff! A five star recipe!
Article – How To Make Beef Machaca
Sounds good. Will have to try this sometime soon when I have the mud oven fired up. Should be able to do the simering in there and the searing with the coals left after firing.
Techdirt: News.com Editor Explains Why Google Is Immoral
Now if someone can explain just how an idiot like this got to be news.com’s editor…
Techdirt: I’m Sorry, You Can’t Use That Deduction: It’s Patented
Totally out of control patent office. Kind of like the rest of the government. Totally out of control… 🙁
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