Out of the Frying Pan

Monday Mix

DollarSeed has organic seeds, a small but nice collection and the price is certainly right. HT, Redneck Rosarian, whose blog is a treasure for rose lovers.

What's wrong with this picture?

Wow. A sweater that can be worn twelve ways.

Over at Picturing Plants, I'm beginning to amass a little collection of carnivorous plants.

 

 

Monday Mix

Monday Mix has been on hiatus. Today it seems to be back.

How to get a job at a small company - I love Seth Godin's blog entry. He points out that jobs at Fortune 500 companies have latterly shown a net loss, so the place to think big is to apply small.

12 steps for gardeners in the fall - This is the way to prepare for beauty next year. Yeah, it's a lot of work, i.e. I probably won't be doing it. But she nails the program, if you're interested.

Melissa at A Contemplative Joy links to this article about Joan Didion. If ever you've suffered bereavement, Didion just might speak to you.

Today over at Picturing Plants, I feature an engrossing drawing by Ferdinand Bauer, a towering figure in the field of botanical illustration. I think you'll like it.

Monday Mix

• The MOST amazing bubble wands I've ever seen
• MuseumWales photo stream at flickr has tons of gorgeous images
• Copyright stuff for bloggers
• Studio G, garden and landscape design blog
• 7 Vastly Overrated Business Books, an article from BNET that does a great takedown of some ol' dawgs that should have been run out of town long ago.
• And, special, The Post Rapture Survival Guide. BNET is running a little late on this, but go with it.

Monday Mix

OK - I'm late with the Reading Table this week but (watch out for non sequitur) these are a few things that are interesting or fun:

• For kids: an online version of Mad Libs
• Scholars Resource: a tremendous repository of all kinds of images. You need an institutional address to be able to register as a student, but a .org works. If you are a home schooler, I might be able to help with that.
• 10,000 Birds is a tremendously well written bird blog.
• How to steal like an artist, etc. Ahem.
• blotanical - an outstandingly huge array of garden blogs
• It's an old blog entry, but this time of year as a nature photographer I like to revisit it: Why the sharpest photo isn't always the best photo

Monday Mix

• Journal and tea is a site with magnificent hand crafted journals and more. Go and delight your eyes.
• Easter eggs? How about making a photo-mosaic Easter egg? Another cute idea from Photojojo.
• Last week one of my new favorite garden blogs, Amateur Bot-ann-ist, had an entry about Shore Acres State Park on the southern Oregon coast. The photos and text are simply lovely.
• I am really enjoying working with Picturing Plants. It's like being able to peer over the shoulders of gardeners from centuries past. And you should see today's artist. I mean, you should see her. Wow.
• Yesterday I mentioned that the yellow-headed blackbirds are starting to reappear at the lake. The one I saw kept pace with our (slowly moving) car so I didn't get a photo, but here's Cornell's information and a darn good photo.

Monday mix

• A virtual visit to the Galapagos Islands - a friend is making a real visit soon and shared this fun site with me.
• A low tech way to animate a picture - it's called a thaumatrope and kids might get a kick out of it.
• Ash Wednesday is this week. The Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony, asks and answers a challenging question: How would satan tempt Jesus in 2011?

Monday mix

The title for today's list is: Miscellaneous!

• Always Get Back Up: Lessons from Muhammad Ali - I really liked this blog entry for its review of Ali's public life. These days, it seems that Ali is known mostly for his head injuries. But there was a time...
• My friend Melissa has been making my mouth water with her talk of Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon. Some things worth doing aren't very easy.
• It's February. Some days are dandy for playing outside; some really are not. If I had little (though not littlest) ones, I might try making this really simple indoor ring toss.
• My friend Blair has an aunt, Anne Coe, who has an amazing portfolio online. My favorite is Bi Polar. It makes me laugh whenever I look at it.
• I'm playing with a new blog. The interest is focused, which doesn't really fit with the OotFP mission statement ;) Anyway, the first real entry is about Redouté's Johnny jump-ups.

Monday mix: mostly stuff to do

Olive pizza sounds so good that I can barely keep the drool off the keyboard.

If you really, really, REALLY have taken photos you love, there's a way to put them on your Ikea furniture. Enter Mykea. Seems like fun.

For President's Day, take a look at a Presidential schedule, albeit from more than half a century ago, and be glad you don't have to live it.

If your car is on a jack, you can lift it faster.

Pet portraits: you can take advantage of the fact that your pet spends 73% of its time lying down.

Monday mix: wok on!

A little trick I like to perform now and then is making potstickers. (That's Alton Brown's recipe, which is not the way I do it, but I'm too lazy to type out and photograph my method.) I don't make potstickers nearly often enough, so I've decided at least to cook Asian recipes more frequently. Some of the online resources I'm looking to include:

• Wok Skills 101: braising, indoor smoking, stir-frying basics, deep frying, steaming
• Wok Skills 102: dry frying, such as Sichuan green beans
• Stir Fry Recipes at Allrecipes.com
• Scallion pancake recipe at Food Network
• Chinese recipes at RasaMalaysia

Hungry yet? ;)

Monday mix

• "America needs one million new farmers. Veterans want the job." A WIP documentary about making available transitions from fighting to farming.


• Texting while birthing: "making birth, once again, part of the social network."


• I love the Ikea hackers blog. How to protect your PC from two-year-old child is less aesthetically pleasing than many projects and, lacking both a PC and a two-year-old, I haven't much use for it, but the ingenuity is off the charts.

Monday mix

Jack LaLanne has died. Yes, he has (had?) a Web site.

Anthony Tommasini's top ten composers. I'm mildly annoyed that Handel didn't make the cut, but pleased that Schubert did. And top dog? The perfect choice.

I'm reading a book about decision theory. So far, I'm flunking the quizzes, except for one about a choice made by George Washington Carver. The book is by James Stein and it's fascinating. And he has a very entertaining blog.

 

Monday mix

Patterns are in my imagination lately, probably because I'm imbibing Lewis F. Day's Pattern Design. Some things I've looked at:

• Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving. Textiles, Lace, and Related Topics includes hundreds of items, such as a full text (and illustration!) version of Day's book. (Recently Dover was remaindering the latest edition; you might still find a dead tree copy there.)
  
• Tessellate!
  
• Tessellation tutorials
  
• Geometric Patterns in Islamic Art, timelines and essays and terms from the Met
  
• And where to go with all these patterns? Wallpaper! Gorgeous stuff - I don't think I could live with any of it (I'm strictly a white walls kinda gal), but it's truly amazing.

Monday mix

Just finished reading The Temptress: the Scandalous Life of Alice de Janzé and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll. I didn't like the story that much and specifically recommend that children not be given this book. Nevertheless, it did send me in search of information about

• the Lunatic Express, a railway first constructed for travel from the port at Mombasa to the shores of Lake Victoria, a long steep climb.

• Pyrethrum, a crop grown by settlers for its insecticide properties.

• the Gascon, the ship on which Alice de Janzé traveled to Mombasa, before flights were available. From Marseille to Mombasa, in the days before stabilizers for cruise ships. Whew.

Two more for the mix

6 Tips To Looking Better In Photos, Even If You Have A Face For Radio

A Short Testament by Anne Porter:

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation[...]

For the latter link, HT Blair.

Bear Lake Road on Monday.

Monday mix, but on Wednesday

• "Upward feedback" - the fine art of telling your boss how it is (if s/he asks).

• Social media trends for 2011 - maybe of more interest to organizations than to individuals, but don't you want to know what "they" are thinking? ;)

• IMHO Nigella Lawson's new cookbook Nigella Kitchen is her best yet: wise, chatty, funny, aware of household economics. That's a heads up, by way of offering a recipe that doesn't happen to be in it (I think it's in an earlier book): spiced peaches. Yum.

• Urban Garden claims to be "your complete guide to home food production". I'm in.

• Perennials are about, at least to a degree, home food production for birds. hardyplants.com is the best source I've found -- and, believe me, I've looked hard -- for perennial seeds on the Web: more than 2400 "seed items" available. When I ordered, there was a nifty discount on my way out of the store. Of course, the proof of the seed store is in germination; I'll let you know how it goes.

Monday mix

The story of St Nicholas for adults and for children - and I'll throw in my gingerbread recipe, as well. You do know what day it is, right?

Looks like the Denver Cathedral has a director of music again. That's good.

We've reached an accord with the squirrels in the 'hood. We're feeding them. One of the gadgets we're trying out is...

Monday mix

Today I ran across this old photo and kind of liked it, just as it is. Uncropped and plain. The Betty Ford Garden at Vail, where the photo was taken in Fall 2009, has probably been put to bed for the season.

Am I on your Christmas list? Didn't think so ;) HOWever, for any photogs on your list, any of the quirky things from photojojo should be just the thing. Never mind me; I'd greedily settle for the WHOLE list!

Someone at Marquette University has a Kennedy Assassination site.

The Brown and Gold acquitted themselves perfectly this weekend in the Border War: 44 to zippity-do-dah out of CSU. And there's a story behind those colors... Okay, so it wasn't an outstanding season, but that sure makes for a high point.

If you have a Five Guys, you might be able to order online now. That's not admitting outright where tonight's dinner is coming from, but let's just leave it at that.

Recently a friend mentioned that Des Moines has a superb modern art museum. Hey, it's two-thirds of the way to Chicago, which is all I need to know to want to go.

Monday mix, on Tuesday

Seems I get less and less apologetic about doing things this way ;)

Near the center of town we have a Butterball plant; no points for guessing what gets "planted" there! Anyway, 'tis the season and all and butterball has modernized their approach to turkey tips: how to brine a turkey

ChangeThis: write your own manifesto and have it e-published. There's a great Seth Godin piece on offer, free, right now: perfect for the aspiring entrepreneur.

Image transfers: a fun looking project from Miss Mish Mish Mish Mash. She has me at the intersection of "art" and "science".

In view of the cholera in Haiti right now, I'm working through the Johns Hopkins free, open course on "Water and Sanitation Needs in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies".

Finally, with a happy hat tip to Jordana, a musical offering that invokes the elements and Gilbert and Sullivan, two (or is that three?) of my favorite things. (And don't be getting sniffy with me about "people" not being "things": "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes...").

Monday mix, but on Sunday

Ahem.

• The Backyard DIY Photography Blind and Habitat has some clever tips. I love the pond.
• Today I discovered that it is possible at this altitude to make what I thought was a passable banana bread. Recipe to follow, if I can remember it.
• We got started too late to have much in the way of results, but I liked using a stock tank for a raised bed this past summer. Ours was painted off-white by DC, at my request; an Austin gardener used them "au naturel".

Autumn on the Front Range has been particularly lovely. I suspect, though, that soon we will turn the corner to winter. Today I finally tracked down the bulbs I wanted to site around one of the big rocks (doesn't seem impressive enough to call a boulder) in the garden and popped them in the ground (okay, yes, I ganked some soil from aforementioned tank). It was blue sky when I started and windy grey when I put away the tools.

Along with scilla and crocuses, I planted varieties of tulipa clusiana and iris reticulata. If you can bear bulbs that are subtle, rather than brash, you might enjoy these.

Wyoming hasn't worn on my yet; see above.

Monday mix

One of the things I have been exploring in CS5 is the pano methods (above, our part of the Front Range from early this morning). But there are some freeware products that generate panos, too: see Lifehacker's report from a while back. Yes, it's not one step, but in some ways I think the results surpass PS5. Tucows has an article about an approach that uses CleVR.

Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian - probably it has been mentioned here before. If you don't mind Flash, take a look and listen to her voice, often copied, but truly inimitable.

Aliventures is a cool blog about... well, it's hard to say. It's creativity more than productivity. Anyway, the eponymous Ali got married. Was the background of the photo intentional? I don't know. It's striking, though, to have the Cross at the center of a wedding photo. Life in a good marriage is wonderful, I can tell you. It is also an opportunity to embrace selflessness, humility, and ultimate love: just as the Cross teaches us.

From a couple of months ago, five Colorado cities made the 2010 "Best Places to Live" list compiled annually by Money magazine. Fort Collins I'd take in a heartbeat. (Still no takers on this place in Longmont??)

Top 4 Reasons Adults Should Not Fear Algebra: I'll get back to you on this one. Now that I'm certified as "educated", it's time to begin addressing my math illiteracy.

Monday mix is back (at least today)

Never apologize, never explain ;)

Crabtree and Evelyn is having a fine sale on gels and other great stuff. Find a scent you like and likely you'll stick with it for years.

Sheesh, real estate around here has gotten dead cheap, if you don't mind taking it in the shorts when you sell your own house. (I do.)

Disclose This! Jonathan Fields does what blogger ought to do, which is... DISCLOSE. Maybe not in the way I've thought of disclosure, but it's pretty funny, too.

Best shot ever: photographing the Queen in 3D.

Be yourself, but keep your inner jerk in check: Bob Sutton of the Work Matters blog and Stanford (hey, first things first!) is interviewed by Gretchen Rubin, she of the delightful Happiness Project.