Chronic reader, creative dreamer, a LOT of hand skills to make things real, intense health issues that limit my activity, but not my creativity or dreams. Moved to southern Missouri with enough tools and junk to build a life that might work well with my health. One of god’s gigglers, I punctuate with smiley faces and exclamation points when I type, and smile and laugh a lot in real life. (Often at things no one else understands.) And I both curtsy at people (even when wearing grubby work clothes) and purr when hugged, both online and in real life. “Normal” is not a word that has ever been used for me.
Been organic gardening all my life, and bought 4 acres that I have designed from the ground up. Making it happen is being the most fun I have ever had in my life, the best 3D jigsaw puzzle ever! Reading Mollison’s Designer’s Manual was like coming home, ah, THERE I am! A reality where I can use all of my multifaceted talents and skills!
Dumpster diver, recycler, second hand store shopper, I tell people I am attracted to rust and lace. I have violated every warranty I have ever met, I’m a tool using animal, and I use my tools to modify everything in my world. And it only gets weirder...
Bricolage: something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things. Adding ier to a french word means one who does that activity. I am a bricolagier, the things I do are all made of a wide range of things that I have acquired from diverse places.
Trivia I learned about cold today: thermos type water jugs can not only freeze solid, but freeze the lid on too. Check your jugs if it’s going to matter.
I usually have a pile of dietary restrictions, that change fairly rapidly. The odds they will actually bring a snack I can eat are VERY low. So no, don't bring me a snack. I'd like one, but odds are high it won't be what I can eat that day.
Day dreaming more on my lunch break. Prowling the net!! Not getting my lunch eaten quickly. :D
Found a good picture to illustrate what I said about any type can be decorated to look like something neat. In the post above I put a parafoil. Nice industrial looking thing, flies well, lifts really really well, but can be made neat looking too, besides just making sections different colors (pretty common) any kite can be made neat. This is for sale commercially.
If you look, it's sections of the parafoil lift cells, then made to look like a dolphin.
This fascinates me.
I'm still thinking of rigid members in a parafoil, so it's more stable. Some of the stunt kites have cords coming off each corner section separately, ending up an a bar, so in each hand you have a bar that tilting it one way makes it lift, the other makes it stall. I might be just day dreaming, but a more rigid parafoil, in constant wind, with controllers like that might easily do things like bring that basket of produce up from the lower slope. (It's not a steep slope, slow, but constant.)
I got a book on kites! There are lots of books about them out there...
Flipped through it while stretching today, and now my head is all full of neat ideas!
This one covers kites by concept, rather than detail, and that works best for my brain. Covers the different types of structures, and explains that the details (like making it a peacock or dragon) can be done to any structural type. Doesn't give patterns, gives concepts.
And ooooooh what concepts!
I'm back to my ideas about using kites to do work. My property has a slope, and on the other side is kind of on a ridge, and it ALWAYS has at LEAST low wind. I have felt it totally still only once or twice. The idea of using kites to lift and move things, to take things up or down the slope, to do things, just fascinates me. Sewing is easy for me, this is basically quilting things that fly!
My head explodes.
A random explosion: cellular kites, made of cells that catch the air, of which box kites are the most basic, have been used as lifting kites for centuries. They have a rigid structure, and don't collapse on landing. Parafoil kites can lift even more, and can be made as a cellular type, possibly with a more rigid structure, and can lift quite a lot.
A parafoil kite with cells
I could put those to work!
The book talks of different types of rigid members: carbon fiber, fiberglass, rattan, bamboo... I'm thinking sunroot stalks.
Also talked of using them to make harp or drum sounds, and I know flutes work too, what about flying scarecrows? Kites would make chickens paranoid though....
I'm daydreaming while I'm supposed to be working, but ooooh, what dreams.
And an equally permie temporary solution: I dropped them into my big pressure canner, and covered them for shade with a chunk of cheesecloth I cooked a plum pudding in :D
They need to hold their little oniony horses till spring.
...when cleaning under the kitchen table, to get rid of the pantry moth infestation, you find.... Ah damn. About 200 walking onions, happily growing in a bunch of small baggies. They were supposed to get given away. It's midwinter, I have snow and ice on the ground. Now what? I don't have house plant space... Hmm....
You have heard the expression "first world problem" I'd classify this a "permie abundance problem."
:D
I saw someone say a line I liked, that relates to this thread "a sense that we are corporately building a knowledge base for whomever might follow behind us. "
I 100% agree :D
Quick and easy is folded up towels or other easy to fold items, in a pillowcase, pinned shut. You can make some really neat multi/level ones that way, and they wash easy.
A+ for function
"Needs improvement" for form
Is it possible to make something stunningly beautiful?
Do you need stunningly beautiful for your feet? I'd put a pretty pillowcase on it if I wanted beautiful :D I think easily washable and easy to modify is higher priority. And these also have the added function of you don't have to keep it someplace over the summer, all the parts go back where they came from till you need it again :D
Comes down to what matters to you. As always, "it depends!" :D
And yes, it's always possible to make something stunningly beautiful if that's your highest priority.
Quick and easy is folded up towels or other easy to fold items, in a pillowcase, pinned shut. You can make some really neat multi/level ones that way, and they wash easy. Mom's favorite is 2 towels, one folded in quarters, so it large and flat, one on top of it folded into thirds so it's higher, kinda like 2 steps. The high end is right for when she stretches out her legs, the low end when her knees are bent.
I go for serious clothes barriers. Cheap slick polyester fabric sucks, but ticks can't climb it or get through it. I make my work pants out of it. I have seen ticks slide right off it. My pants are strapped tight at the ankles, I have never had to remove a tick since I started doing this, they can't climb up or crawl under. I normally do just my pants, and only wear that sort of thing on my top if I'm working on my knees in weeds, but I always make sure I have tick proof top clothes with me. Zero ticks have been removed from me since 2016!! Barriers WORK. Don't expose ANY skin on the lower half of your body.
I worked with a couple of teenage boys that we counted ticks on us as we worked, in an hour I'd have none, one would have 20 one would have 50. The guy with 50 had genetics that made his skin more oily and also tended to eat more fried foods and junk food than the other one. Both lifted weights, so that wasn't it. Both declined to have me make them tick pants out of pretty colored cheap polyester :D Both of them also were not concerned in the least about bites, despite me trying to teach them. Since then, Alpha Gal has moved into the area, on top of the Lyme that was here. I hope they both have wised up.
