The first link states that it is a draft and it has comprehensive information about the program. The second does not state that it is a draft and it contains no further information other than a title image.
paul wheaton wrote:I wonder if there could be a table-top thing that sits next to a window - and there is an exhaust to the outside through the window. Kinda like a window mount air conditioner - but it would be a table top rocket heater. When you are cold, you could feed it a bunch of cardboard and empty milk cartons.
evanggelo mitchell wrote:
These are some of MY main points from the Medical Medium's work; there are more, in fact, his books are incomparably "dense" with medical knowledge.
Hi Evanggelo,
Thank you for wishing hope to everyone seeking recovery. The search is real!
In my recovery, I'm discovering that the most effective medicine so far is anything that I believe will help me. In other words, research has shown that placebos are the most effective of all medications. Do I still take medicines? Yes, because I haven't figured out -- yet -- how to activate my own placebo response without them! I try to be very careful about where I place my beliefs in order to minimize harm while I heal.
I researched the MM you recommended and found this:
Medical knowledge is a tricky idea. From what I have observed, we make best guesses and then try to find a way to repeat results, while distinguishing which actual thing brought the results. So much of our marginal medical knowledge makes connections by observing things that are associated but not actually related. Sometimes that leads to discovery and other times to toxicity or nothing.
I continually struggle with keeping my wishes separate from my perception of causes and effects, especially related to my struggles with maintaining health. Many well-intentioned alternative providers have delayed my actual progress and clarity, as have regular old doctors.
bernetta putnam wrote:any suggestions on natural way to help RA?
I have an outdoor shower. This Spring, I got dive-bombed by a wasp who built a nest under the drain floor. It was a few minutes before I could get back inside to treat two stings, one on the back of my neck and one on my wrist. By that time, they had formed welts.
Fast forward two days and all of my RA symptoms vanished. Mobility returned to my hands and knees. Not only was the binding stiffness gone, but I had zero pain. This lasted for over 2 weeks, but diminished soon after. So I Googled it. Sure enough, wasp strings are known to relieve RA.
Not my favorite treatment, however. I removed the nest.
As an aside, I found that a TENS electric current directed at the site of an insect sting will lessen the spot from being quite so achey.
Jeremy VanGelder wrote:
For those of you who are asking questions about legality and insurance and such. Are those questions holding you back from telling your friends about RMHs? If you got acceptable answers, would you tell your friends about them?
Language matters. I retired from a profession focused on language use (speech language pathologist). If someone is gesturing and telling me something urgent, but I don't understand their language or it scares me, I won't try to discern that they're warning me or directing me. I'll give up and walk away, perhaps to my own harm. If I say something important in a way that it cannot be heard, I will try to find another way to say it.
I'm assuming the Rocket part of this heater name relates to the action of the combustion?
But because of the above language issue, I'm going to further disrespect the "Rocket" part of the name:
A rocket requires a planet- sized mass behind it. Will this heater blow out my back wall if I don't reinforce it? Or will it shoot the wood across the room like a projectile? Sounds silly/stupid to the initiated. It's a reflex response to newly hearing the name. "Blast" isn't much better. They both sound violent and dangerous.
I'm a gentle giant who prefers zero drama or danger. I'll do something by hand to avoid using power tools. So I'm going to offer unasked-for alternate names and invite anyone else who has ideas around this to join in. I can already see enthusiasts squirming because all names are approximations (my whole point) and these names don't tell exactly what it is. But then neither does rocket. My idea is to alter the name in order to evoke a sense of safety, cozy warmth, and hearth.
How about:
1. High Efficiency Fireplace
2. Built in woodstove
3. Zero emission burner
4. Minimal fuel furnace
Why it has not become imperative for me to build a RMH even though I love the concept and want one in my home:
1. The R word.
When I first discovered the idea (here), the name Rocket made me think of science fair projects. I loved the experimental approaches being taken, and yet that made it seem like the whole idea was still in the experimental stages. What I saw were people with more skills than I have playing with fire and having good results. That did not connect with me wanting this thing named like a flame thrower in my home. I like my home. I do not want a rocket combusting inside of my home. Especially not a rocket that I built. It's one thing to have a loaf of bread not come out, it's a whole other level to not have a fire (danger), smoke (danger, damage), construction-level (mess, skill, and some expense) project not work out.
For me, if this "technology" had been branded less as a new great idea and more as a refinement of a very old and effective method, I would have been less hesitant to approach it.
Upon further exposure to the idea and the history of development of mass heaters, I realized I wanted to do this in my house. But:
2. Permits (?) -- As Kenneth talked about
3. Timing. I had just finished rebuilding. If I had seen this before starting, I would have put in a RMH, and like Trace said, I'd be selling people on it like crazy just by having an example.
4. Safety. Even with all the fine examples I've seen, I still feel unconvinced that I would be safely burning anything inside my house using a thing that I've built. All sorts of "What if" questions end with the scenario that I Could Lose My Home and/or burn us up in our sleep, smoke us out, or invisible gas poison us, all because I thought I could fly close to the sun. Not rational. Lizard brain stuff. But it's there.
5. Responsibility. I want someone else to be responsible for researching and building ways to keep me safe from a fire. I like tools, but I don't want to have all the tools needed to measure such things. So I want manufactured assurances that no other lemmings have died from RMH use.
I wonder if you're dealing with a strong survival instinct when you meet with resistance.
I finally gave up, and I now have a very expensive plant graveyard in my patio.
Moral to the story (and one that I'm going to try to stick to): prepare the area first - before obtaining your plants. I should have read this article first - mulch, mulch, mulch.
Ah, Loretta, my true gardening sister!
I am so sorry for your bad experience and the losses. I won't tell you how much I've spent toward premature planting. It will only make me cry. Again.
My horror story involves the same realization that just because I was here with seeds and plants didn't mean the ground was ready. I caught on part way through (I started to wonder when squirrels unplanted our entire cornfield and some ground dwellers devoured new bulbs, but didn't stop trying). I finally put away my $$$ of seed packets into a 5 gallon bucket to use the following year. You can imagine, that was a lot of seeds.
One of the contractors who was putting in new rain gutters pulled down an old gutter and laid it across my planting bench. It turned out to be placed in such a way that run-off fed directly into that seed bucket, which I had not covered with a lid. Only when a foul stench emerged from my dormant planting area did I discover the titanic seed loss.
My only gardening success so far, in two years here, has been a front berm that I wanted for privacy from the street. I built it up and planted, using what to me was some funky thing called hugulkultur.
I'm huguling everything, going forward.
Our most recent plant graveyard was established last week when that same contractor (a neighbor who clearly prefers meat to plants) asked if he could bring in seven cattle to graze down our unused pasture. We had protected the fledgling trees, so we thought, and he said the cows wouldn't bother them. In one day, the cattle wiped out two years of irrigating and growth. They stripped the leaves and broke to the ground any thorny trees (jubube). It took a while for me to be able to look out there and not feel my stomach lurch or tears threaten.
My husband, gentle soul that he is, said he's not giving up. He'll start again next year. He's the one who did all of the watering by hand. I've two plans in mind for this winter. Hugul the orchard, and put up an electric orchard fence.
Let's not give up, eh? I look forward to hearing how you found work-arounds and I'll follow up too.
It really helped me to read on your blog that the full food forest is the end goal, not the beginning goal. I calmed down and realized that all I need at this point is patience. Well, that and perseverance!
Rachel, I can hardly wait for next Spring and the vinca to bloom. 🧚♂️ toothbrushes!
Thekla, I find it remarkable how you have nurtured your love of Hollyhocks. Some experiences like that, especially with an overlay of shame, only leave bad associations. You mentioned, "I appreciate this particular episode of my early life because it shows me just how early in my life I felt that deep connection to plants..." From my observer view, it sounds like you also felt and retained a strong connection to yourself. Priceless.
I learned to make hollyhock dolls by connecting a flower-bud head with an open-blossom skirt using half of a toothpick for the connector.
We moved into a fixed upper farmhous in Winter, two days before the pandemic hit. Our fixing-up plans changed daily. We stopped when we got the house sealed from weather and pests. We started work with our heat source, formerly a wood stove, which had been pulled out to be replaced by a certified one.
If I'd known about rocket mass heaters, this would be a different story. I'll still shift our design that way when I can.
In the meantime, here what we did:
Found a used, certified, cast iron stove and installed it. Burned a mountain of wood trying to heat the house the first Winter. Note the word "trying." We were exhausted by the 24/7 of wood cutting, splitting, hauling, stacking...
I used those electric heat mats that are sold for seed starting under my feet at my desk. Best idea ever. I had tried a version of this in Alaska with heat mats designed for boot drying, one under the kitchen table and one in the bathroom, each covered by a small rug. Highly effective. Potentially dangerous. Not recommended over vinyl flooring.
When the next Winter in the farmhouse rolled around, I decided to try hybridization of the wood stove with pellet burning. I put a fine mesh metal basket in the center, started a small wood fire, and then manually scooped pellets on top. It has worked like a charm. The basket is needed not only for pellet containment but airflow.
The hybrid fuel works because of the design of this particular stove, which has a top feed access as well as two front doors which we can crack open for a draft. Since our electricity can cease for several days where we live now, having a manual feed is ideal.
As renovating progressed, we put under floor heat in one little strip in the bathroom and one in the kitchen where we stand.
I still use the seed starter heat mat under my desk so that the air in the room can stay cooler while I feel toasty warm.
Thank you for putting to words a process that can be mostly wordless.
"the ability to choose to reject some thoughts over others, or replace all those thoughts with ones that were constructive"
This is so clear and helpful. The challenge for me begins with a gentle awareness that the panic thoughts are not the only ones available. I also thought I had to rid myself of panic first to be able to give attention to more rational responses.
Instead, you seem to be making room for awareness of ALL the thinking and then turning the volume dials up and down to hear what is most helpful in each moment. I like this because it validates normal feelings instead of shunning them, which only makes them get louder in me. It's as if panic only needs me to say, "I hear you. And..." for it to stop shouting.
Your ability to bite your tongue is also a tribute to your skills! I still want to find a way to speak up at all, and then in a way that can be heard...
Thank you for sharing this story. My takeaway is from the crucial juncture where you managed micro-panics. I've had my share of these in some wilderness experiences and they can become a considerable squall. When you think about managing these understandable responses, you must have talked yourself down. Do you recall what you thought about to come back to stability?
"I felt my first micro-panic right at the start. I knew I was strong enough, though. A night or two on the mountain, I could handle."
From this phrase and some of the others it seems like part of managing panic involves shifting focus from what I don't have to taking inventory of what is actually here right now, including any less favorite reserves (for example, continuing to hike on an inflamed leg vs getting still).
I've done intermittent fasting for weight loss for a couple of years. I didn't lose weight.
It was really easy for me to fast. Too easy.
The reason I have gained extra weight is for the same reason I had bulimia as a teen: unaddressed and recurring trauma. For decades, I have been trying to keep a lid on what actually happened and the effects from all of it. That extreme level of control makes fasting appealing in a very unhealthy way.
I don't fast intentionally any more. I'm sure it would help my body's health, so it might be something that I want to come back to once I have stabilized my mental health. In the meantime, I'm working on listening to my body's signals of hunger and fullness, trying to distinguish hunger from thirst, and hunger from emotions.
I'm observing before I jump in with any changes, kinda like I'm doing with the land around our house. Awareness is the beginning of transformation.
If we seek to convey a message to a billion people, it seems wise to embrace what humanity is.
The word "asshole" is thrown out. What does it mean? What have we learned about the person being pointed at? What have we learned about the person with the finger? And, most importantly, how do we move forward from here?
My sister just got a phone scam text about being late to meet up with her, calling her "Brian." She replied with "wrong number." It went on for a bit until the scammer complimented her for being "such a nice person." She blocked the number. Why? The intention for manipulation behind the label was pretty obvious in the context of the text exchanges, not recounted here for boredom's sake.
Her experience reminded me of this discussion. To me, the important question isn't so much what: "What constitutes an asshole?" or conversely, "What can I do to be a nice person?" My question is Why?
Why do we call each other names?
Why do we categorize, attempt to control, or manipulate each other -- especially via labels?
Why might I care about labels put on me, and at what time don't I care?
One of my teachers said that humans are pattern seekers. I like this perspective on many of our problematic behaviors. We're just trying to make sense of the world, sometimes in ways that make very little sense.
Whether I am going up the ladder or down, my feet are not on the ground.
Thank you for this topic and the engaging discussion.
Shaming seems to me to be the unspoken core of our discussion, both in this forum and out in casual conversations. The metric I would like to see developed includes a way to measure Shaming Units.
We enjoy getting along with others and it feels good to fit in. Being stinky and drenched, falls and injuries, looking either poor or wealthy all influence our decisions. Keeping up appearances can lead to having the SUV in a city, being careful with spandex, yearning to live rustic and off-grid, not giving up comforts… Motivations around social change have a core of being influenced by others in an effort to avoid shame or gain esteem. This energy is often harnessed for good or ill by creating a sense of belonging.
As we learn to consciously energize motivations for ourselves, as with permaculture, the power of advertising diminishes. The increased productivity supported by the illusions cannot sustain themselves without our buy-in. If we pull close our painful experiences of shame, siren songs of shame-relief cannot pull us off course as easily.
At its simplest, petroleum empowered us. Being stronger means being less vulnerable and therefore gaining a safer distance from shame. Being more productive is a very real boon from petrol. The question is, more productive of what?
Even productivity is a shield from shame. I feel better about myself on the days that I get more done. Being perfect or being better than my past self can mean simply growing, which we do without needing shame to germinate it. As stated at the start, shame can inhibit growth. We don't have to prod a bean to get it to sprout. Or, so I've been told. Repeatedly.
Giving up is shameful. Letting go is noble. From the outside, they might both look like the same behavior. From the inside however, it could be a shamefest or pridefest to have or not have a car, to ride a bike, to walk, to sweat. I lived in a place that was perfectly bikeable and my friends refused to join me because "Only people with DUI's use bicycles."
The other emotion flowing under this discussion is our survival instinct. If I'm surrounded by shells of metal hurling past, wearing a metal shell seems like a good idea. My dad wanted me to drive an SUV as a kid in Denver specifically to have a less crunchable shell around me. For women, personal security is baked into these decisions. For example, we cannot lock ourselves safely into a bicycle. And if, like me, someone can grow flowers but not (yet) food, eating still depends on our petroleum-based infrastructure. The discussion itself is resting on the foundation question of survival. How will we live?
The metric that changes my behavior? Emotionally satisfying solutions to logical problems. What do I find emotionally satisfying? Ideas that are accessible for everyone. Enjoyable, comforting, life-enriching or simplifying. Visually interesting or aesthetically pleasing results. Predictable results with challenging variations. I especially like solutions that require some small input from me, so I prefer a bike to car, or to light a fire rather than to turn on a furnace. So the emotion behind that satisfaction might be called a sense of participating, or belonging. Disability can really thrash this one.
And the Tesla battery of all empowering emotions for me is a sense of play. I get moving because I'm curious. I keep moving because I wonder about this and that. It renews itself when I am delighted, surprised, inspired, and when I rest, celebrate, and reconsider.
I think of emotions as energy in motion. E-motion. I was raised emotionally illiterate. Like someone discovering a love of reading after illiteracy, I enjoy observing human steering and fueling based on the energy of our feelings. If we could harness E-motion for an alternative energy, my guess is that several of these problems would evaporate.
When it comes down to it, any alternatives at this time are still petrol-based. I'm going to explore the mention of TEQ's. While we seem to be in a time of transition, the real power will come from choosing whether to experience these changes as giving up or letting go. It's also what aging and disability can offer us, both of which we get to experience in varying degrees.
Shaming Units might end up being an entirely internal metric. I'm going to think about that some more and see what I can come up with.
Our energy is most effective in a supportive community. I don't know what "cider press" means but I do know the felt sense of someone wanting to control or silence me. It benefits no one if I bicycle to a shop where the workers or supplies could not get to because of a lack of transportation. What I'm saying is that I am continually tempted to think that I can go it alone and things will work out. I think that's the very reason forums like this are so important. We need to be able to hash out our ideas together in order for them to become optimally functional as well as to reflect on when to let go of reiterating ideas that haven't work.
Burra Maluca wrote: In retrospect, I'm tempted to say I should have thrown him out earlier, but I'm not actually certain. For my own long-term peace of mind, sticking it out until I had no choice left me entirely free of any feelings of guilt or failure, which ultimately probably helped and strengthened me and gave me huge life lessons.
This is also a huge part of why, I think, I stayed as long as I did. I am VERY committed to the idea that marriage should be forever and I think it took me ten years to get to the point where I knew, deep down inside, that I had already left no stone unturned and had done everything I possibly could to save the marriage and it was beyond saving. Huge life lessons, indeed.
This really helps me. I stayed way too long. It took him pulling a hand gun on me for me to be shocked enough to leave. I'm not entirely stupid, so why had I stayed so long? Because if I left, I still needed to be able to live with myself. And so I did what I could to repair things, until I couldn't.
I taught in a tiny rural school while getting further education. When I took a job in my new profession, the education group (all the small schools in the region pooled resources) had me go to job fairs as a recruiter. The guy who was going to replace me as teacher came up to my table and sat there like Rodin's sculpture of the Thinker, quietly asking about the school and village. There was major upheaval at the time, so I suggested he run the other way as quickly as possible. I was not a very good recruiter.
Turned out he had already accepted an offer for the job and was just trying to get a sense of the place. I surmised the man was either a daredevil or possessed some serious courage, taking the job even after hearing my warnings. But he handled the heat beautifully. He quieted walkouts, talked down a violent dad, and worked his way up to Superintendent.
In the meantime, we crossed paths professionally. He taught my stepson. I gave speech therapy to his middle child. He had to inform me of a complaint about my shorts being too short (turned out they were... because my legs are stupidly long). We rarely talked and I don't think he ever looked me in the eye. This was how it went for years.
One day I was in my office when I got a discipline report from him about my shy and quiet stepson. I was in shock. It was two pages long. I flipped to page two where it said, "April Fools." My stepson had handed it to me, and he stood there beaming with glee. I was not amused.
That afternoon, I rounded up a few of the high schoolers to help me lift his Geo Metro and turn it 90 degrees in its space between the other cars in the parking lot.
But we still never talked other than greetings. We just went about our work in a parallel quiet. He hired me as the speech therapist for that school, years later. So in a way, I hired him, then he hired me.
Both of our marriages started to fall apart after 15 years. I moved away. When his marriage ended, he followed me to where I moved and we started talking. We fell instantly in love, married, and have been together for 20 years, not including all the silent coworker years.
Years later, I asked him why he never looked me in the eye at the job fair. He said he had watched me from across the space and was afraid he would stare if he looked up at me because he thought I was so pretty. Aaaaw. I'm not. And I'm almost 7 inches taller than he is. We don't seem to notice that much any more, but we did at first. Our height difference didn't matter, as it turned out, because we so enjoy each other's company.
For me it's like I'm out in the storm without an umbrella. I am the umbrella now. Yipes.
I was thinking today about "The Greatest Generation" (my parents). There is something amiss with a generation calling themselves the greatest, I have to say. Yes, they went through all kinds of terrible stuff. So have our kiddos (decades of foreign war). Every cohort has their wake-up call. And every generation can do better than the previous, if we are willing to wake up, observe, remember, and revise.
I have a few remaining elders, friends who are 90+. They know I'm more frequently emailing them to be sure they're still alive. Thankfully they think it's humorous, but it's no joke to lose friends.
Is anyone registering the collective loss of wisdom, perspective, and grace that our elders provide? It keeps hitting me in waves, still, two years in. When covid first came and ravaged distinct regions, I planted in honor of their losses. I put in a fruit tree for Italy, forget me nots for New York, lilies for India.
We will mourn collectively, I thought, when this is done. Now I wonder. We seem accustomed to the losses, which are still happening, as if they are now to be expected, somehow better because it seems less likely that mostly everyone will die.
I guess I'm going to keep planting as my way to mourn. That way, if those who come next have lost their elders, they will at least have food and beauty already growing, waiting for them.
paul wheaton wrote:The funny thing is: can anybody point at somebody and say "asshole" without being an asshole? In other words, would a perfectly pleasant person ever call anybody an asshole?
That sounds wise, but I keep wondering how to define asshole. Is this one of those "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" things?
As a compulsively pleasant person, I would not call someone an asshole. However, I can identify the behaviors that would fit my definition. I'll take a swing at a definition, feel free to revise it with your own d'oeuvre (auto-correct for "experiences" even though I've never typed that word) and viewpoint:
An asshole is someone who wilfully and intentionally shoves others without listening or attempting to hear answers to clarifying questions. The ingredient missing in relating by asshole-ness is a measure of humility or not-knowingness. Like autocorrect. Sometimes amusing or enlightening, but not really understanding what I've tried to say.
Please understand, Paul, that I am not saying this is you. I would not... I do not know you and haven't read enough here yet to form any sort of opinion. If I detected a prevailing culture of asshole-interactions (as defined above) I would simply and quietly leave the conversation and think about what I want to keep from it and what is not for me at this time.
I assumed a definition of normalcy bias. Having it defined was eye-opening.
My bias had defined normalcy bias as having neighbors who ranch and farm normally while I'm sitting on an increasingly feral plot that threatens all of the weed and pest (wildlife) elimination they've spent decades pursuing. They define normal as ground zero. One elderly neighbor mows her acres to golf-course height and yanks my grass seed heads from in front of her face when we talk over the fence.
The good news is that we're still talking over the fence. Most of the talk is about what I'm going to do with my place -- her telling me.
This all feels eerily similar to middle school peer pressure. Thankfully, I was weird enough that all the normal kids still found me entertaining. The problem remains the same as with the actual definition of normalcy bias, how to get community buy-in and find cooperative relationships.
I look at intentional communities with an equal mix of admiration and caution. I yearn for living with others in a way that is mutually life-affirming. And, I live alone with my husband and animals. Why don't I "have" that community (yet)?
Between the past two US elections and the pandemic, I started to get a perspective on how we can have a disconnect between our values and our actions. We like to think of humans as rational beings who sometimes have emotional experiences. But what if that's backwards? We are emotional beings who sometimes have rational experiences.
Emotion and reason don't have to be in conflict. However, we are living in the aftermath of centuries when emotions were devalued and repressed. We kind of still think of feelings as inconvenient, secondary, or icing on the cake.
Add to this view the ubiquity of traumatic experiences, with neglect topping the list, and it gets complex fast.
"People aren't used to being heard in this culture, I think, because they don't even listen to themselves. It's noisy these days, 24/7. We need more silence in our lives to each listen to our own inner voice and converse with it, and we will be better able to both talk well and listen well to others."
Listening is a great place to start. Sometimes, especially with Complex trauma (C-PTSD is quite different from PTSD), listening is not available due to being checked out from or running from connecting with self and others. We don't know we're doing this when we're doing this. From the outside, it just looks like someone is dreamy, spacey, not listening, disengaged, workaholic, or addicted to something.
"And so--if you don't need to partner with other people to get things or do things, you won't get much practice forming and maintaining close relationships, and so you likely won't figure interpersonal things out very well and get good at communication."
Yes and no. Complex trauma wounds were made in relationships and can be healed in relationships. The pandemic helped many people to get alone enough and quiet enough to wonder why they were doing what they didn't want to be doing, especially in relationships. It's like having a limp and trying to cross a busy street. You're paying attention to the traffic patterns and for the opening to get across. In the busy moments, you're not focused on understanding why you have a limp and if it can be repaired. You're just trying to get around without getting run over.
Another comment brought up the word trust. Trust requires calculus-level relationship safety for people dealing with trauma. By definition, the trauma was some sort of life-threatening betrayal of trust.
Where do we go with this trauma-informed perspective?
- assume that everyone is seeking to be drawn closer with love (but don't just reach out to pull them in!) Operate under the assumption that off-putting actions are still a bid for love. Respond with love.
- examine and perhaps deep dive the recent insights and emerging discoveries about complex trauma
- model listening to yourself, healthy self talk, growth mindset, skillfully protecting yourself,
boundaries, enjoyment of life, and mutually beneficial relating
- people hurt when they are hurting. Think of a wild animal caught in a fence. If you want to help, protect yourself, and call in professionals as needed. Realize that for the wounded, taming and trusting will take huge swaths of time. Don't feed what you don't want hanging around, but don't poison it either. Toxic stuff will move away or be released if not engaged.
Someone's mention of our fast pace bears repeating. Even us outliers are moving quickly. Blame it on internal combustion or microchips, whatever. We are all going faster than our biological animal bodies. How can we slow down and connect, knowing that many of us are bleeding internally?
R Ranson, I feel your pain. This level of frustration reminds me of some of the beginning permie threads here where gardens started under the best of plans end up harvesting disappointment. That's where I am with growing a food forest: bamboozled. But only if I give up. So I'm not going to give up trying to grow my own food, just like I didn't give up on making clothes that fit.
As a 6'2" woman, all of my clothing is modified. With aging, I can no longer modify enough, so I'm working on my own patterns too. It's a race with gravity. In fact, this is a perfect description of life's changes to our bodies if we get enough time to experience it: "Wardrobe Unlocked has been absorbed into Foundation's Revealed."
I've learned several sewing tricks and tips which help, but my greatest success was while living in Alaska. I loved a cream fleece blanket enough to want to wear it all the time, so I made it into a coat. I took measurements for the basics: armholes, shoulders, length, waist and hips, then dove in. I didn't overthink it. It worked.
So maybe think of your trials right now as doing piano scales. It's not exactly pretty, but it will help when you get to improvising. Your years of gleaned skills will bring you good results. Keep at it!
Jamie, your insights have me wanting to try again at growing corn. I love how you give detailed information about regions, uses, and nutrition. I'll check out the books you recommended.
Our first attempt at growing corn ended in a squirrel fest. All of our carefully planted kernels were dug up and either eaten or replanted--scattered throughout the area. None of the vagrant sprouts made it past the sprouting stage, so something must have found them to be delicious.
Does anyone have a strategy to keep corn in the ground long enough to grow when squirrels are in the vicinity?
This is an oldie that I pulled up to rehab after a hip replacement. Don't let the title put you off. It's a workout that keeps the chaff at the beginning and end, can increase or decrease in challenge according to the need of the day, and has seen me through back surgery, chronic health issues, and this recent hip replacement.
