Category: Odd Bits

January 2026

At the beginning of the week, my area finally got a significant amount of snow from the latest storm, about twelve inches in all.

View of snow in back yard

This is currently the view into the back yard, showing very little of the three and half foot tall stone wall with the steps totally obscured and only a dimple showing where I had previously shoveled. A few decades ago this would have been normal, but since global warming and the unstable climate that goes with it, it has been at least three years since we’ve seen this amount of snow in a single snowfall.

Between that and chilly temperatures in the teens and single numbers Fahrenheit, outdoor activities are at a minimum. As I am not a fan of skiing or snowmobiling, I only venture out when I have to for grocery shopping or appointments. So I keep myself busy with indoor projects. Cooking and reading help pass the time, as I wait for more clement weather, but my latest new hobby, crocheting, is taking more and more of my time.

I started teaching myself, thanks to numerous online tutorials, how to crochet last fall. My late mother had knitted but never crocheted, finally being forced to give it up when her arthritis made it too difficult to manipulate the knitting needles. There is still a decent sized stash of yarn from her projects left over, along with a surprising amount of yarn left over from needlepoint projects I have done over the years. Frugality, ingrained in me by my Great Depression Era parents, led me to save any left over yarn, so I have had plenty to practice with, as I’ve been teaching myself.

The learning curve on the different types of stitches, how to hold your hook and yarn, at what tension to hold the yarn, I found a bit tricky at first. But gradually I’ve become accomplished enough to consider myself a competent beginner. There are only a few basic types of stitches in crochet; the chain stitch, the slip stitch, as well as single, double and treble stitches with the infinite variations involving those stitches which go with them. Just to add to the learning curve, it seems they use slightly different terms in the UK as opposed to here in the US. Our single crochet stitch is their double, our double is their treble and so forth.

Granny squares are the first thing one masters, as you can stitch up mass quantities of them, then hitch them all together with slip stitches. It’s also possible to just keep going with a single granny square until you wind up with a good size blanket.

Granny square afghan

I was able to create this throw with just double stitches done in a Granny square pattern working from the center outward.

As what to do with left over skeins, there are any number of small projects you can create with them, such as dishcloths, coasters, pom-poms etc. I chose a large project, a blanket, where I stitch using both mid-size and small left-over balls of yarn until I run out of a particular color, then immediately change to a new color. I try to keep sequential colors more or less compatible but otherwise just keep going. If some yarn seems a little too thin, I double up the yarns (two yarn strands to a hook) which can make stitching a bit tricky but produces an interesting effect.

crochet blanket in progress

As you can see, the blanket is a work in progress and will probably take a while to finish. It is 165 stitches wide, using a half-double crochet stitch. It’s still up in the air on how many rows I will end up doing (to be honest, I haven’t been counting), but I would like it to be comparable to a twin blanket by the time it’s done.

I’ve still a way to go before I try making any clothing, amigurumi figures or any of the more complex looking afghans. So, for now, this should keep me busy until spring at the very least.

That’s all for now. Have a happy February.

Talos, the bronze giant


Greek mythology bursts with all sorts of amazing beings; gods, sorcerers, gorgons, sirens, sea monsters and so forth. One such being is Talos, often referred to as the bronze giant.

Talos, the mythical bronze giant

Thanks to Ray Harryhausen, a Hollywood stop-action animator, the usual view of Talos is as an enormous metal statue come to life, often viewed erroneously as a robot.

Talos’s true nature depends on which Greek legends you read. Far from being a nation-state as it is now, Greece was a diverse collection of kingdoms, called poleis, small city-states which shared a common ethnic heritage but were not united, each having its own rulers as well as iteration of gods, spirits and the afterlife.

Talos was often described as a man of bronze set by the gods to guard Crete from invasion or attacks by pirates. Some tales have him as being forged by the smith-god Hephaestus in His divine furnaces as a statue, not a mechanism then brought mystically to life to serve as Crete’s guardian. The living statue would run three times around the island as part of his duties, throwing huge boulders at trouble makers. Popular views show him as a giant, though legends give no clear indication of his actual size.

But other versions of the myth state that Talos was a living being who was a survivor of the Age of Bronze. Ancient Greeks saw history as a cycle of ages, slowing declining with each subsequent age until the cycle bottoms out with the Age of Iron, which is the one we currently live in.

Greek legend of the Age of Gold

The Age of Gold was the first age, ruled over by Cronus the Titan. It was a time of peace and abundance. The earth provided food without humans having to struggle obtaining it. Hardship of any kind was unknown. Spring was eternal. People lived long healthy lifespans, free of sickness and pain, dying peacefully in their sleep.

Prometheus bringing fire to mortals was alleged to have brought an end to the Age of Gold, leading to the Age of Silver. With the Silver Age, seasons such as summer, winter, and fall came into existence. Humans needed to plant crops and build shelters. Their lifespans, while still long, was shorter than in the Golden Age. Battle among them began appearing. Evidently the god Zeus decided they weren’t honoring Him enough, so He brought an end to them, leading to the Age of Bronze.

In the Age of Bronze, humans were still powerful, but violent and warlike. It was said they were created from ash trees and their appearance was described as brazen, meaning they were metallic or bronze. These beings began building cities, their homes and weapons made of bronze as they themselves were. Talos was said to have a single vein running through his body filled with ichor, a divine form of blood, his only vulnerable point being his ankle which had either a thin membrane of flesh or a bronze nail. The Age of Bronze came to an end when the bronze humans destroyed themselves in a violent cataclysm or, in another version, a vast flood wiped them out. In this latter ending, two humans, Deucalion and his wife Pyrra threw stones over their shoulders, creating a new race of humans.

It’s not clear how Talos himself survived the end of the Age of Bronze into the following Age of Heroes but he was given as a gift either to Europa, a lover of Zeus, or to King Minos the ruler of Crete (again depending on which version of the myth you read). His demise came when Medea, a sorceress, managed to trick him into allowing the nail in his ankle to be removed, causing him to bleed to death.

There’s no account given of what became of his remains. As a living statue, once the life which the god Hephaestus gave him bled out, he would have reverted to mere bronze, presumably getting melted down by locals, a humiliating end for such an awesome creation. On the other hand, if he was a survivor of the Age of Bronze, one wonders if his brazen flesh would have rotted or been palatable for scavengers. A mournful prospect either way.

Now, according to Hesiod, we live in the final age, the Age of Iron, a time of sorrow, cruelty and desolation, where infants are born with gray hair, lies are considered ethical and the gods disrespected, all caused by human venality and corruption. It can certainly seem that way to us, with the endless barrage of evil news from TV newsfeeds, podcasts and YouTube videos hysterically declaring the end is upon us.

But honestly, I find it hard to think that way when I see a beautiful sunset with the setting sun coloring the clouds lavender and gold, a bald eagle flying in the distance, a slender fox galloping through my backyard in search of a meal or those infant spiders that I saw a few months ago congregating on a foxglove plant, preparing to launch themselves into the air, searching for a new life.

Take care, all.

baby spiders on foxglove buds

Adventures in Cooking

February has been a crazy month, with various events prompting me to look more into preparing various food stuffs from scratch rather than buying them from the store. I started with bread last month, finally getting to the point this month where they don’t deflate like a spent balloon in the oven. For those bread loaves less than perfect, I found a use for them as breading for home made stuffing mix. Waste not, want not, as they say. Finally satisfied with the results, I decided to move onto home made saltine crackers.

I’ve been making soup for quite some time now, but what’s soup without a few crackers? I went to the following website: https://www.servedfromscratch.com/saltines-from-scratch/. I used cake flour and since I didn’t have any vegetable oil, I substituted lard. The resulting dough was difficult to work with, especially after leaving it in the fridge overnight like the web-site suggested. Using a rolling pin just didn’t get it as flat as it looked in the pictures, never mind getting the nice, neat squares she showed. After baking them in the oven, this is what I wound up with. Those little suckers would just not compress.

Saltines-first try
My first attempt at home-made saltine crackers

Hmmm, definitely not nice flat crackers! However, they did taste like saltines, and were actually quite good, so I figured I was headed in the right direction. It’s possible the measurements given weren’t quite accurate or maybe using lard instead of oil affected it.

So, I tried a different recipe. This one is from Homemade Saltine Crackers – The Mountain Kitchen . It has fewer ingredients, uses unbleached flour instead of cake flour and doesn’t have the overnight resting time in the fridge which the previous recipe suggested. One ingredient was 7 tablespoons of water, but I found I needed to add a few extra tablespoons to make the dough more workable. The dough ball flattened out much better under the rolling pin. After cutting out roughly square shapes and using a fork to make the classic indents, I basted them with butter and added Celtic Sea salt to the tops. After baking, I achieved the result below.

second try of saltines
Results of the second try at home-make saltines

This effort was much better and had a good flavor. I may experiment with a few more variations before settling on a favorite. Since I only use crackers intermittently, I had run into the problem with store-bought crackers going stale before I used them up. Home baking allows me to make small batches as needed. I haven’t tried assessing the cost of making these but I’m sure it’s more economical than buying the store brand and ending up wasting some because I didn’t use them up quick enough.

Hope this inspires any readers to make their own stab at home cooking.

Have a safe and happy March.

Cooking stuff

Year’s End: Food For Thought


Now that the year is nearly out, the Christmas bacchanalia has receded, so things are quieting down. New Years usually doesn’t get celebrated by me. I gave up on watching the ball drop in Time’s Square years ago as I found getting a good night’s sleep more desirable. With the Winter Solstice past and the chill this time of year settling in, I find myself thinking more about food.

Cooking stuff

I like cooking from scratch, something I took up when my late mother began having too much difficulty moving about. It tastes far better than prepared foods since I can make meals from fresh ingredients without all the additives which make commercial foods questionable.

The old Rival crock-pot which my mother rarely used, though a bit beat, still works and get a lot of use making soup stock, so much so that I never buy commercial soups anymore.

Rival crock pot

Making stock (or broth, I’m not sure on which to call it) is astonishingly simple. Just save up bones and skin from poultry, beef or pork. I use a zip-lock freezer bag. When I have enough collected, I thaw and place in the crock-pot along with some chopped onion and celery, add water until it’s just barely covered then turn on the pot. It has a low and high setting so I use the high setting to start with. When it reaches a simmer, I turn it to low and just leave it. Four hours for poultry, six or so for beef or pork. For bone broth, simmer for at least 24 hours with beef bones or ox-tail. Be sure your meat is of good quality.

Some people may express concern about the fat content of poultry skin or bones but if you get meat from pastured animals rather than battery raised, the fat profile is far more healthy and should not be a matter of concern for you. Fat has been demonized for so long that it’s hard to get across that it’s not the enemy. Locally produced meat, which I have access to, has far less to travel and if you have a farmer’s market near you, you can become acquainted with the farmers who raise these animals. Healthy animals translate into healthy meals for you.

Years ago, I made loaves of whole wheat bread. The loaves came out dense and chewy but good. However in the press of work and looking after aging relatives, bread making fell by the wayside. Now with food prices looking to rise, I want to resume bread making. This time I will be looking to lighter bread, with some whole wheat but enough unbleached bread flour to make sandwich breads or rolls.

You-tube is an interesting source for bread recipes and methods of making loaves as I re-familiarize myself with bread-making. As with all their how-to videos, it’s a mixed bag with some just using it as a venue for showing themselves off. Others can’t seem to hold the camera completely steady, a non-starter as I am prone to motion-sickness so a herky-jerky video is pretty much unwatchable. But more than a few do a good job demonstrating their techniques.

Now which is the best technique for making a basic loaf of bread? Well, my come-away is that they all work. Some use bread-making machines but others do it by hand, which is my preference. It doesn’t seem to matter if you knead or don’t knead. Not kneading tends to give you a rougher more artisanal type loaf, while kneading and shaping produces the traditional rectangular loaf. Ingredients may vary but basically are wheat flour, salt, sugar or honey and yeast. Sourdough can get a good rise without yeast but maintaining the sourdough starter is more work than what I want.

So, once I settle on a good recipe, I will begin baking and with any luck add to my repertoire of recipes.

bread loaf goal

Happy New Year!

Tail End of November

It’s amazing how fast this month has come and gone. So much has been happening, it’s hard not to be left a little dizzy by it all. A Thanksgiving Day storm allowed only one of my brothers to come for dinner. It was a quiet meal as we avoided politics and stuck to mundane topics like odd family relatives, cat hijinks and how easy it really is to replace the battery in a watch.

The weather in the earlier part of the month was mild enough to I was able to snap this picture in mid-November of a dandelion plant, near the edge of the road, sprouting a pair of bright yellow flowers.

dandelions in November

There have been enough frost so that it’s unlikely pollinators will be visiting these blossoms. But dandelions are rugged little beings. If they could talk, they would say “We don’t need no stinking pollinators.” They can self fertilize and set seed. The seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to five years before sprouting. The plant can re-sprout from bits of small taproot left in the ground. No matter what you do to them, they can bounce back from any blow.

Now there’s snow staying on the ground so winter is here, at least for now. But take a lesson from the dandelion. It’s possible to bounce back from anything. If a lowly weed can do it, so can we.

Peace and long life.

Columbia, Spirit of Liberty