MAKE-LEARN-GIVE: Second week of October

This has been a crazy week, so none of my accomplishments come with pictures.

I MADE a crocheted fish for Morrin to bite and sent it down with Margot.


I LEARNED that cuttlefish change their colours by sending electrical signals from the brain to the skin cells, which makes them way smarter than I had previously believed.  Add cuttlefish to the list of things I don't eat.  http://boingboing.net/2012/10/10/celebrate-cephalopod-awareness.html

I GAVE our old curtain pole to a woman who asked for one on Freecycle.  She was pleased with it, and that's one less thing stuffed into my cupboard.

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MAKE-LEARN-GIVE: First week of October

This week I MADE a little baby blanket out of leftover wool:

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I LEARNED that hovercraft are actually in commercial use!  I had previously thought they were the domain of hobbyists, Scrapheap Challenge, and evil geniuses who live in swamps, but you can take a 130-passenger hovercraft between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight
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I GAVE Helen the cake tins I hadn't used in the past year, which has shifted the storage problem from my house to hers.
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It's Autumn!

Autumn

I'm a bit late on this post.  I was distracted on the equinox by being in Dundee for a wedding.  I am also without a cat, who has moved in with her grandparents for the duration of building repairs.  Catless Em is definitely more pouty and less goal-oriented.  

My Summer goals saw mixed success: I defended my thesis, but have struggled with my fitness.  And so for Autumn, a new type of goal!  Every week, I will MAKE something in which I can take pride, LEARN something about the world I had not known before, and GIVE something away to another person.  This is less about forcing myself to do these things, since I do them all quite often, but more about recognising and reflecting on what I have done.  Oh, and I have to submit the corrected version of my thesis by the end of November.

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Signs of Autumn

Autumnweather

It begins.

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Tattie Harvest III

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Two medium, three small, seven tiny, nine minuscule: 450g.  This crop was made into patatas bravas for Jamie's birthday dinner.  They were delicious.  I was especially impressed by the two-tone tattie.  I hope I get more of those. 

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Things I love: BBC Radio

Ptemple

The BBC has converted me wholeheartedly to radio dramas.  Especially crime serials.  Garrison Keillor was perhaps the gateway drug that led me to appreciate the format, which I find superior to television in that knitting does not keep you from following the plot, and the special effects are much more convincing.  My favourite by far is Paul Temple, a series that started in 1938 and has aged beautifully.  And better yet, the radio section of the iPlayer is available in the US!  So you have no excuse.  Go listen to the first episode of Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery right now.  But be warned; you'll get hooked.

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Comparing Things: Oat Milk

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When Victor was visiting a few weeks ago, he mentioned he'd been investigating more sustainable alternatives to soya milk.  Oat milk struck me as having some potential, since oats are the dominant grain crop in Scotland.  Jamie found some commercial oat milk at the Waitrose, and we tried it today.  

I made one mug each of tea with cow, soya, and oat milks.  Jamie had no trouble telling them apart blind, but I found I had to put much more into the oat mug to get the colour right.  It had less taste than the soya I'm used to, so the tea flavour came through more.  It was better after I topped up the oat milk to a more standard colour, so I conclude that taste would not be a barrier to switching if I could prove oat milk more sustainable.  
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Oatly is produced in Sweden of Swedish-grown oats, while Alpro only says it uses non-rainforest soya and I can't track down where it's produced.  Their packaging is nearly identical and recyclable where I live.   Nutritionally, Alpro contains three times the protein and half the carbohydrates of Oatly, which makes it more suitable to my diet.  They are even on calcium, which seems to be added to both, but soya contains plant oestrogen that the internets say is good for women.  

So the winner seems to be soya for now.  It would be great if I could get Scottish oat milk, or better yet, make my own out of the Scottish oats I buy in bulk from Real Foods.  I tend to rely on my milk substitute for a portion of my daily protein, since I don't eat a lot of meat anymore, but now that I've moved away from store-bought cereal in favour of homemade granola with yogurt, that may not matter as much.  Great, now I sound like a goddamn hippie.

 

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Tattie Harvest II

It occurred to me that I forgot to weigh my first harvest.  This one comes in at 630g, so I'm estimating the last batch at 500g.  That's over a kilo of potatoes so far!  I'm planning to use the little ones to make potato salad for dinner, and the largest four or five are for the nice man downstairs that has put up with my gardening all year.  The count for today comes to 5 small, 12 tiny and 16 minuscule, plus two medium reds.  Total weight so far, 1.13kg.

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Summer Goal 1: Accomplished

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Passed my Viva with minor corrections!

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Labor Dabor

Click here to download:
wordcatzipf.pdf (2 KB)
(download)

Here I go to defend my thesis.  I really hope it's a small snake.

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