who only by moving can balance

Reading. mauve, Simon Garfield. I am regretfully coming to the conclusion that much as I love the Relevance of the Colours of the Cover, the writing does not grip me enough to keep hold of this once I've finished it.

The Korean Vegan, Joanne Lee Molinaro. Got to the front of the ridiculous hold queue! So far I am Gripped by the family stories but have not added anything to my to-cook list; on the other hand I am still only as far as the chapter on breads.

Playing. Scrabble! Only two games, but I am very glad to have had them.

Cooking. ( Read more... )

Eating. We have delightedly been consuming Mooon Milk all week and are a bit sad about coming back upcountry. Herbs from the garden. Pasties and cake from Gear Farm. Takeaway from Jumunjy.

Exploring. Several new-to-me footpaths and bridleways! Poss some photos to follow; I had a good excuse to poke around when I took myself off to Acquire More Milk (see above) while my companions were working.

Making & mending. Some garden infrastructure Constructed! Various other small jobs.

Growing. SO MANY PLANTS MY GOODNESS. Jostaberry and flax and RHUBARB (acquired from the other side of the village) into the ground. Many, many things out of the ground (mostly thistles; some brambles; various form factors of metal). Some herbs transplanted for real; some herbs transferred to a temporary holding pen to bring back upcountry. A few cuttings taken.

Observing. SO MANY FLOWERS. My goodness SO MANY: in Cornwall it is currently Postcard Season i.e. all of the hedges are covered in flowers -- sea pinks and campions and bluebells (???) and more, different campions and SQUILLS and some of the Special Local Violets and--

( Read more... )

Alright. So. Last week! Last week.

Reading. I picked The Silmarillion back up! It is much easier to follow the Ainulindalë this time around! And then I ground to a halt because while I understand the meaning this sentence (emphasised) is attempting to convey, I still haven't managed to wrap my head around the grammatical construction:

... this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness; as who should take the whole field of Arda for the foundation of a pillar and so raise it until the cone of its summit were more bitter than a needle; or who consider only the immeasurable vastness of the World, which still the Ainur are shaping, and not the minute precision to which they shape all things therein.

I think the thing I keep tripping up on is my expectation that "who" should refer to the same people (i.e. the ones observing and judging the Arda) in all three instances, but I can't work out how to make that make grammatical sense in the context of the italicised phrase. Explanations eagerly solicited.

Playing. One round of Scrabble, in which I was delighted to manage to turn what felt like a rack that ought-to-go-but-wouldn't into DELUDINg.

Cooking. So much food. The last-but-two of the blood oranges got turned into blood orange meringue pie, which I felt would have benefited from more acidity than it actually had. Elsewise little of note, except that I seem finally to have got the hang of cooking rice, at least, on the induction hob at the mouldering ancestral pile.

Eating. Pasties! From The Gear Farm Pasty Co. (Facebook link, I'm afraid), and also a bunch of purple sprouting broccoli from the associated vegetable stand, which I could not resist. (The honesty box system involved putting change in a tin, OR going to the pasty shop and paying contactlessly, OR doing a bank transfer after the fact. I was charmed.)

Also I got a tiny tub of Roskilly's Raspberry Iced Yoghurt from the Eden Project, to eat in the rain, and I am very glad that I did. Also also we (... Adam) bought a slightly alarming amount of alcohol at said Eden Project. ( Alcohol! )

Exploring. ( Holiday! )

Growing. The P. edulis survived being taken down to Cornwall and back!

Observing. SO MANY CRITTERS. For lots of them, see under Exploring.

Additionally: I saw the local choughs (!) twice (once where I didn't quite trust my ID but in retrospect, yep, that was them), and in the garden we were blessed with a plenitude of robins (I can but assume we have a breeding pair), blue tits, coal tits, and goldcrests! Pied wagtails also featured at Eden. And, of course, there were seagulls.

The Nebra Sky Disc is very, very cool. I'm going to summarise for you what is on that there Wikipedia page (which, incidentally, has been very endearingly translated by a German-speaker), but: basically, it was discovered in Germany by people illegally using metal detectors, spent two years changing hands on the black market, and was then recovered by the state in a police sting operation. It's reckoned to be about 3,600 years old.

It's made of bronze and of gold. The copper is from Bischofshofen, in Salzburgerland in Austria; the tin and gold are both from the river Carnon in Cornwall.

I saw the official reproduction in the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, when I was visiting my grandfather at the beginning of May. The museum was sadly not selling anything with the design on; given the localities involved and the history and the science, it's the kind of thing I adore, so I was very disappointed.

And then my mother and I finally got around to looking in the online museum shop for Landesmuseum Halle. If you click through to Schmuck and search the page for Mannschaftknöpfe, you will find what it is I am drooling over. [link updated 09/01/2021]

Which is rather inconvenient, really.