It Looks Like Old People Live Here

First Batch of Doompunk Photos Is Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:25:00 +0000

The full set's at our Doompunk site but here are some highlights:

Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:26:00 +0000

Latest photos of the garden! You can see that the eggplants are coming along well, as are the tomatoes. The first ripe tomatoes have come in, and they are soooo tasty. Nothing compares to the salty/sweet/umami flavor of fresh tomatoes picked off vines you grew yourself! The peppers were a complete loss. The herbs are doing all right, but the lettuce and beets didn't get very big--I think I need to thin them a lot more than I did.

Here's one of the eggplants:

The tomatoes:

No More Crackspider!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:57:00 +0000

Hooray--no more Crackspider! Here is my first completed crochet project--a water-bottle carrier with a drawstring.

Mysteries of Seward Park

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Joseph and I went back to Seward Park to forage again. I have read that salal berries can be used like blueberries in pie, so I wanted to collect a big bag of them and try it. This time, though, we ended up on a different trail, where the salal was sparse and what berries we found were dried up and unappetizing. Even with the paucity of berries, there were some interesting and mysterious things to be discovered.

First mystery: what is leaving all this fur around? It has guard hairs in it like dog fur, but we saw it everywhere! Unless someone was shaving Akitas in the park, I think it probably came from a wild animal--maybe the feral rabbits? I was tempted to try to collect it and make yarn from it (hey, free yarn!) but there were bugs in one clump, so it wasn't a good idea.

We also found a mysterious sap-producing tree. It was too tall to be able to see what its leaves looked like, except that it's a broadleaf of some kind. Here is a picture of its bark:

The leaves in that picture belong to a nearby bush and not to the sap tree. The sap tree's branches are all really high up.

This is the sap. It seeps out and makes long projections that look a lot like Gummi-Worms. This is not an evergreen tree and the sap-gummis aren't pitch. I tasted one to see if I could identify it, and there was a mildly sweet taste--not as sweet as maple sap--but what was really interesting to me was the mouth-feel of this stuff. It was slightly slippery and humectant, reminding me of glycerol. Once I know for sure what kind of tree this is and how edible the stuff is, I may be able to make my own dry-mouth treatment stuff!

We also saw a really big owl. The picture of the owl is a little blurry, as the light conditions were kind of weird and I didn't get close enough. The owl seemed to regard me as no threat; he looked at me a bit as I approached, but didn't hiss or puff up or fly away. It looked like he just thought I was an interesting oddity. He looks sinister in this picture, but owls are actually real sweethearts who love to snuggle.

Berries and a Couple of Nuts in the Park

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Now that last week's heat has broken and the clouds have returned, we've resumed our forest walks (I hesitate to call them "hikes" because we don't go camping during them yet, and we just wear ordinary clothes like any other day, no "hiking equipment" required) and wild-food foraging.

Yesterday we explored Seward Park, which has old-growth forest and lots of hiking trails. The main trail was too crowded for us--meaning we were seeing people and dogs about every five minutes--so we went on the back trails.

I had brought a bag for blackberries (there are tons of feral blackberry bushes everywhere!) but I forgot to pack the field guide to edible plants, so we kind of ended up guessing about the berries we found.

For our first non-blackberry find, Joseph spotted these berries growing on a grapelike vine. He tasted one and said it tasted sort of like a grape. We collected a sample of that one to bring home and identify. That turned out to be currants!

Then we found something that looked a lot like a blueberry, but not quite and on the wrong kind of tree. I was pretty sure they looked like something I used to eat as a kid while blueberry hunting, so I tasted one, and the berry was sweet and pleasant. However, it was not what I used to eat! It was actually a salal berry. They can be used in pies.

Toward the trail's end, Joseph saw some fuzzy things hanging in a bush and asked me if I knew what they were. Guess what? I did! They were hazelnuts, just like the kind my dad gathers by the coffeecanful! The hazelnuts are still scarce (they ripen later on in the fall) but it sure is good to know where they grow.

We walked a total of 4.5 miles, which is less far than a walk in the woods normally takes us.

Fun With Knitting

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:56:00 +0000

Knowing how to make cloth is an almost magical skill, but one that had eluded me for a long time. My grandmothers each tried to teach me the mysteries of knitting and crochet when I was a kid, but it always seemed like I produced a knotted mess instead of neat rows of stitches.

Because I was such a fiasco with yarn, I had given up on learning to knit, until Joseph and I started talking about learning useful doom-based survival skills. We got some yarn and some crochet hooks, studied a book called Knitting With Balls, and watched numerous tutorials online.

Joseph showed more aptitude from the beginning.

Look, here he's made a square!

My first few attempts came out looking like Crackspider had been at the yarn.

After taking apart and re-trying a few of these interesting creations, I managed to produce this:

It's still a little like a Crackspider weaving, but you can see some stitches in it that resemble actual stitches.

Eventually I had Joseph demonstrate to me exactly how he was making it work. I needed a real-time, three-dimensional demonstration because I have trouble visualizing things in three-d and I also have some task-ordering difficulties (whee!). I had to get a kinesthetic sense of where the yarn and the crochet hook should be, and in what order things should move.

After a few demonstrations and a lot of practice, I managed to do this:

Check it out--not only is that a square with mostly good stitches, but I even managed to change the direction of the stitching a few times! Eventually I should be able to make actual items out of yarn.

Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:04:00 +0000

The garden is coming along nicely! There are some very beautiful flowers on the eggplant.

The tomatoes are beginning to form, also!

We Ate the Rye!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:04:00 +0000

We cooked the rye we foraged and used it as a salad topping. It was really good!

Gardening on the Fifth Floor

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:01:00 +0000

We live in a place with a great view and a balcony that is ten inches wide, so planting some food crops has been challenging. Despite the obvious difficulty, we planted some vegetables in containers. A real garden would have been better, but this has provided a chance to work on skills related to growing food, which is an excellent doom-related activity. Even in an ordinary doom like the Great Depression, knowing how to garden is essential.

This is a box (called the "salad bar") with lettuce and beets; we also have a box of herbs, a bag of tomatoes, and another bag of eggplants and bell peppers. I don't know how well this is going to work or how much it will yield, given the cramped quarters.

This is the box of herbs. In order from closest to farthest from the camera, the herbs are oregano, tarragon, chives, lavender, Thai basil, sweet basil, and dill.

Yum, tomatoes! I have planted Early Girl and Sweet 100s. Next year, if this turns out to work, I want to put in some heirloom tomatoes. I'm thinking that Black Seaman tomatoes would be fun, both because the name makes me giggle and because they look like tomatoes from Mars.

That's the bag of eggplants and peppers.

Because the balcony is so incredibly narrow, it was difficult to find pots deep enough for tomatoes and narrow enough for the balcony, so we used some big plastic bags instead.

Urban Foraging

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:16:00 +0000

"Survivalists" isn't the right word; it carries all kinds of spooky connotations of cabins in Montana and stockpiles of weaponry. We're more like "doom hobbyists." That is, we like to imagine what we would do if some major disaster happened and we had to provide for ourselves using basic survival skills.

One of the doom-related projects has been foraging for edible wild plants. This is a great hobby, because it is cheap (sometimes free!) and results in food as well as useful skills. A few weeks ago I discovered a vacant lot a couple blocks away from home. This lot has been the source of some tasty herbs, apparently leftovers from a previous resident's garden, and I've watched over the summer as patches of rye matured. Finally the rye was ripe enough for harvest.

After we harvested the rye, Joseph and I had to figure out how to thresh and winnow it...in the top-floor condo. This could be a challenge, as grain processing is usually done outside. Joseph had the excellent idea of using a bag to contain the mess and just beating the bagged-up grain against the table to separate the seeds from the husks.

The first bag he tried was a paper lunch bag, which gave some good results. Then he had the idea of putting the rye inside a net bag (to catch the husks) and the net bag inside a cloth jelly bag. That turned out to work better, though the net bag was not as good at catching the chaff as we'd hoped.

Threshing tools: jelly bag, net bag (from fruit we bought at the supermarket). The grain and chaff mixture that comes out of the bag is also visible in this picture.

Once the grain was threshed, it had to be winnowed. Traditionally this is done by putting it in a large bowl or basket and tossing it into the air on a breezy day, so the chaff blows away and the seeds stay in the bowl.

A wok and the fan made a good improvised solution.

Here you can see the wok, the fan, and the grains.

Here is the rye after processing! It looks like a tiny amount, but we only took a few stalks of the rye, leaving the vast majority of it for the birds and other wildlife.

Doesn't this photo make it look like I'm in the middle of a field in some pastoral setting? In reality, this is still the middle of Seattle.

Typewriting is odd ?

noreply@blogger.com (Joseph) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:37:00 +0000

I spent a lovely evening at the Oddfellows' Lodge. OK, it wasn't *really* the Oddfellows Lodge, but a restaurant established in the former Oddfellows Hall. My companion mentioned that there was something odd (heh) about the menus. I hadn't noticed, but on further inspection, the menus revealed themselves to be *typewritten*. This was, to my mind, not at all odd. What I did notice was that the glasses for cocktails were the right size and shape for the drinks being served in them, and that they were very tasty... perhaps too tasty. In any case, should you be on Capitol Hill in Seattle, seek out the Oddfellows Hall, or the Tin Table, in the same building. There is also a dance hall in the same building where people with the usual number of left feet might actually swing dance, should they be so inclined.

What do we want? BRAAAAINS! When do we want it? BRAAAAINS!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelly) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:29:00 +0000

On July 3, we were looking online for something fun to do, and found that there was a Zombie Walk scheduled for that day.

What luck! The night before, we'd been talking about going out wearing postapocalyptic costumes to a bar or nightclub, and here there was already a nice doomy event scheduled.

The only catch? We had two hours to get ready! Joseph is the costume and props maven, and he immediately set to work making clothes look like they had been buried for years. The key ingredient was a spray bottle filled with a mixture of tea, coffee, and other stuff, which gave the clothing that grave-mouldered look. He also got a pot of blood ready.

The base garments of the zombie costumes were some older clothes that we had.

After making the clothing look old and adding some grave-dirt (made of coffee grounds with flour and spices), we put holes in 'em. Most zombies just cut slashes in their outfits, but that looks fake because actual worn-out clothes don't tear in neat slashes; they wear through. So we used a Dremel tool with a grinding head to make realistic-looking rips. After that, Joseph burned the edges of the rips, giving a spooky cremation-gone-awry look to our costumes.

Once the costumes were dry, it was makeup time. Artful application of flat, dead-looking makeup with lowlights of moldy grey sucked the life out of us. The finishing touch was the fake blood, which Joseph has learned to cook in a way that makes it dry to look scabby and clotted like real blood. We used method acting techniques to bloody ourselves up: pretending to eat brains and letting the blood fall and drip, wiping out faces and hands on our clothes, and carrying out other ordinary undead actions so the blood patterns would look natural. I picked my nose with a bloody finger.

On the drive to the event, we listened to zombie-themed music with the car stereo volume up and the windows down. You would be surprised just how many strange looks a couple of bloody zombies driving through the neighborhood get. Er...maybe you wouldn't.

At the walk, we registered for Guinness, socialized with other zombies, and toured the neighborhood on a couple of waves of the zombie walk. After the walk we stopped at a bar for some beer and food (pizza, not brains). Several other zombies came in, including a green-faced zombie who told us about some of his hobbies, including skydiving, and said he wants to adventure with us.