1. Ebook piracy: the latest hot topic. I have been staying out of this discussion, mostly because: I have been listening to pirated audiobooks since before I could *read*, since pirated audiobooks meant "check the LP out of the library and copy it on to reel-to-reel tape." I worked through all my moral and ethical questions about the issue by the time I had hit kindergarten, with the assistance of the fact that *all* of my peers and authority figures did the same things; I had picture books that were photostat copies bound with brads; I had Boxcar Children books that were bookstore remainders with the covers stripped.

My father was a math and programming teacher in the early 80s; the county-wide department inservice days were the best thing ever, because Dad would come home with 5.25-inch discs holding pirated copies of all the latest Apple II games that all the teachers were trading around under the desks. (True story: I once asked Dad what the "kracker" did in programming, since all the programs we had at home had a "kracked by" credit before the opening screen.) In fact, I have never met a single teacher, at any level, and growing up a TK I've met a lot, who has taught for more than five years and doesn't routinely make illegal copies of things for her classes. When a law is that widely flouted (by pretty much everyone who doesn't directly benefit from its existence, and also often, quietly, by them as well), what you need to do is change the law, not human nature.

Which is to say, I got over this topic two decades ago. Can we move on and stop acting like fainting flowers about it? ^_~

2. Still listening to (pirated) Dresden Files! 3.5 books in have reached Step 10 in the getting-into-a-fandom timeline. Current fic bunnies: A Day In the Life of Father Forthill; 5 Times Harry Dresden Narrowly Avoided Learning About Slash; and Ray Kowalski Dances With The Winter Lady. Also did another meme fill, which was probably obvious to anyone who knows me and is reading over there. However, I've reached the point where I know just enough canon that I no longer feel comfortable writing fic without knowing it all, sigh, so that's stalled, mostly.

Luckily, the anon meme is keeping me in fic for now! Actually I was just thinking that maybe Dresden Files has finally cured me of politics RPF, given the relative numbers of times I've been reloading the two memes, but then Dresden Files fandom decided on its own to adopt Rahm Emanuel as a character, so I suspect I'm just cursed to read politics RPF forever. (Oh, Rahm, oh.)

3. I am almost finished with my mending basket! Which means time to start a brand-new sewing project, maybe! (Or go back to a years-old retired one.) The last thing in the basket was the Madelyn Mack dress I wore at con-txt and ripped the hem out of. It's 100-year-old black silk, so thin it's translucent in sunlight. I have a picture of my grandmother wearing it, c. 1930, in an "Old Hometown" history pageant; I have a picture of her grandmother wearing what might be the same dress, 30 years earlier. I was really, really nervous about attempting to repair a dress that's practically an artifact and such fragile fabric, too - until I actually started the repair.

I am at *least* the fifth person who has attempted to repair the hem of this dress! (And a better seamstress than at least two of them.) That makes me feel a lot better, and, somehow, love the dress a lot more, too. In fact, its value as a historical artifact may not so much be its value as a dress, as it is a record of Edwardian and early-20th-century home clothing repair techniques; this dress wears its scars proudly, and I'm learning things about effective and efficient repair just from studying it that even my mother's generation seems to have forgotten. (I never did get a picture of me wearing it last summer. Maybe once the repair is done I'll attempt a photographic record. Repair being done make take awhile - there is literally six yards of hem around this skirt.)

4. Last Thursday was the first 10 O'clock Live! It was not terrible! It could use some settling-in time, but it was legitimately good. It actually feels like it's kind of halfway between wanting to be the Daily Show and wanting to be something more like W$W - a serious but irreverent real current events magazine. Am looking forward to more.

...and then the next day Keith Olbermann signed off for the last time. D: D: He wasn't always right and he wasn't always good, but he almost always said the things that the American left needed said but was afraid to, and shouted them when they needed shouted, and now who's to do that?

5. I joined inkitout - the DW community to challenge yourself to keep writing all year - and so far, thanks to Dresden Files, am doing okay. But! This week's support post was to introduce one of your characters, and I was like hooray! I always want to talk about my original characters! Until I tried, and realized I couldn't do it. ( original character wibbling )

1. Here is your silly-but-good improvised cocktail recipe for 2011. I am calling it a "Sonic Shark", mostly because I can:

Make a basic Sonic Screwdriver with lemon-lime soda, blue curaçao and plain vodka, without shaking or stirring. (If you want to do a non-alcoholic version, you could use the lemon-lime with blue raspberry soda and skip the vodka.)

Then add freshly-made whole pineapple juice, nice and pulpy, about as much as the curaçao and vodka combined. (The host of our NY party got a juicer for Christmas, you see. There has been much juicing in that house of late.) The pineapple pulp should nucleate the soda-pop, causing a sudden uprush of foam like a toy volcano, and it will also make the foam persistent, so that your drink keeps a head. Also the pineapple juice makes it yummy. :D

(Why yes, we have watched the DW Christmas special.)

2. Also finally went to see the latest Harry Potter movie yesterday. I was not unimpressed - I know you all have been saying it's good, and it was: it somehow managed to follow the book pretty much exactly and yet still make a good movie, which considering my mixed impressions of the book is saying something.

Mostly, though, it made me want to go on a long backpacking trip around Britain. (I was possibly the only person who read that book and said "I wish she'd gone into more detail on the camping!) :D Especially combined with the fact that I got A Walk in the Woods for Christmas and have read it already. (In which our author attempts to walk the Appalachian trail and spends a fair amount of time whining about how hiking in the US is so much harder than hiking in Europe. And he skipped my state entirely and *didn't even mention it*. BAH.)

Also, I spent most of my Christmas gift card money at Target on a 20°F 2.5 lb backpacker's mummy bag, marked down to half-price, which has only been on my wish list for years, and I have slept a night in it already, and we loves it, precious. (Now what is replacing it on my backpacking wishlist is a Kelly Kettle-type stove, but apparently Americans, being addicted as we are to fancy distilled-and-refined fuels, have no need of such things, because nobody seems to make them for us, which means my chances of finding a cheap used one are about zip, and the import ones are out of my budget >:| I have heard rumors that dirt-cheap samovars can be bought in some ethnic neighborhoods in big cities here but I bet they're all electric.)

Anyway I think my official goal for this year is to do a solo backpacking trip at least once. You know, once it is not winter any more.

( How To Be The Cool Cousin/Aunt* in Five Easy Steps That Anyone Can Do )

*or elder relation of other gender or connection

I was reading rm's PSA on Queer and it occured to me that one could, in fact, make a simple nine-patch quilted totebag, with eight symbols around and the rainbow flag in the middle.

G would probably be a pink triangle, either patchwork or applique.
A would probably be the AVEN triangle, though one could use the new flag.
B would be the pink-lavender-blue flag or triangle.
T would probably be either the three-pronged symbol (applique) or the pink-white-blue flag.
L would probably be either the linked symbols or a labrys; this would have to be applique.
for I I don't know; I don't know of any pride symbols for this specifically (please tell me if there is one!) but one could use the three-pronged symbol here and the flag for T
U would probably just be a question mark
Q again I don't know; if one uses the rainbow as the center square, what goes here? There is the queer anarchy flag, but that has a specific political meaning; I'm almost tempted to go with the leather flag, as that takes in some of the queer communities that often are sidelined in GLBT and also would be fun to patchwork, but it also excludes a lot of queerness. An applique lambda might work, though (or maybe a rainbow here and lambda in the center? Or rainbow flag for Q, and the center square embroidered QUILTBAG?)

For the liner/backing, I am regretting the fact that I always throw out the incredibly ugly prints with vomit-green cabbage roses that seem to inexplicably recur. :P

And you could do one side of the bag nine-patch, and the other side as one large square for some specific identity/community that's yours and isn't specifically in the acronym: two-spirit, blue-feather, a subset of trans*, bear, poly, faerie, pansexual, bdsm, pflag, a traditional log cabin or stone wall patchwork pattern, or some combination or personal symbol that IDs the bag's owner specifically...

Anybody have any better ideas for the symbols to use for QUILTBAG, or objections to the ones I used? Anybody else interested in making or owning one of these? :D


(...we are not even going to talk about the dozen crafting/mending projects already in progress, no. Anyway two of those involve patchwork already, and if I have to pull out all the quilting stuff I might as well start a new project too, right?)


And speaking of activism and symbols, I am totally going to the Rally to Restore Sanity. (Did anybody doubt this for a second? :D) I will be bringing a sign which displays the H in Sunrays, of course. Though I am debating coming up with one with an actual political message or international fake news reference as well. Who else is going? Does anybody want to get together a whole group with h-in-sunrays signs?

You know that old saying about how democracy is like sausage: you'll feel much better about it if you never see it in progress?

Yeah, don't ever sign up as an election judge or a meat inspector.


(Also, Candidate Middlebrooks' wife showed up to observe and get immediate vote totals. Guess how many times I accidentally called her Mrs. Milliband! Go on, guess!)


Here are the Completely Useless Skills^{(pat. pending)} I showed off to my fellow election judges while waiting to see if any voters would actually show up for a non-presidential primary election where none of the races were being seriously contested.

( Make a three-story-high tower out of voting machine security cards )

( Make a 'beaded' necklace out of 'I voted' stickers and paperclips )

( Make a basic paper spring out of the backing strips from a roll of 'I voted' stickers that you used to make a necklace )

( Make a kleenex carnation )

( Make a rotating three-dimensional projection of a four-dimensional hypercube out of nothing but paperclips )

(Oh, and some voters actually did show up! Although many of them were confused and thought they were there to vote on something else entirely. This is, sadly, true.)

Having finally imported my LJ into my DW, I have set about the task of trying to organize my tags into something ... usable.

This is best described as hellish, although the improvements made to DW's tag management system are making it, at least, bearable (in that the headaches are caused by the nature of tagging itself, rather than the implementation of it.)

I am also learning interesting things about myself in the process. For example, I had a separate 'science' tag and 'science!' tag, because I think we can all agree that "SCIENCE!" has a different meaning than science. However, when I actually looked at my tag uses, I realized that having two separate tags was redundant. Because it's all SCIENCE! :P

Also, things that I have decided, on balance, require fandom: tags of their own include sodapop, sports, springtime, and squid.


In other news, I am giving in and getting myself an Etsy account. If I have to. I guess. Anybody want to be my referrer? (Does being a referrer get you anything?)

(Also, linkedin is creepy. jsyk.)


I spent most of yesterday and the night before, with some very welcome help, attempting to fix all the computer hardware. As result, instead of using a power cord with a socket made of electrical tape that burnt through every three days and stopped working if you looked at it wrong, I now have a power cord that causes my computer to completely shut down without warning if you look at it wrong. I'm not sure which is preferable really, though I suppose the new way is less of a fire hazard.

(Other things that did not actually get fixed: my newest mp3 player (which seems to have firmware issues, and no way to actually alter or access the firmware); my external media drive (which I was able to confirm does still have the data on, but still cannot get to function as a drive, and have nothing to copy the data onto); my sound system (which used to sound tinny in the speakers but fine with headphones, and now sounds tinny with headphones too.)

On the upside, my monitor is no longer floating around loose in the case with scary rattly noises, and my CD/DVD-RW drive works again! And that means I can run a linux liveCD! And oh, linux, how I miss you! And oh, linux, how I do not miss trying to find the necessary drivers to make my peripherals work!

I think the next large-ticket item I am buying is a brand-new terabyte external drive. Perhaps with my election judge money. Any recommendations?

So, 3w4dw is happening, yeah? I'm not changing my crossposting because I already don't post anywhere except DW and sometimes JF, and I seriously doubt anybody is staying away from DW because JF is too active. :P

(well, and a certain anon kink meme I can't stop refreshing, but I can't give that up. This is how much I can't give that anon meme up: as you may know, I have had javascript turned off on LJ for quite some time now, because the crufty javascript they've been pushing in made the site stop working with my browser. With javascript off, I can read my flist and post signed comments, which is usually all I do. Until I got tempted by this anon meme.)

( This is what you have to do to leave an anon comment in LJ if you don't let the site use javascript: )

...yes, I have fallen for current tiny RPS fandom hard enough that I go through that voluntarily anyway. And no, it is not the least bit exaggerated. (and yes, it's almost as annoying to do with js off in DW - but oh, look, I don't have to turn js off in order for DW to function! Amazing.)

So anyway, right now the thing I love most about DW is I can post anon comments on it without wanting to commit murder. There are a lot of awesome DW anon memes going on for 3w4dw right now, incidentally. Far too many to keep track of, in fact - just reload the 3w4dw tag on latest - when I am still reloading the lj ones for tiny-fandom-of-doom and also forsciencememe, the anon meme for rock-star scientists, literal or otherwise, which I would be *all over* if it didn't take me about ten minutes every time I try to post a comment on it. Especially I would be all over it requesting epic Othniel Charles Marsh/Edward Drinker Cope hatesex, about which more anon (in the other sense of anon), possibly.

ANYWAY ANYWAY. My actual point, when I started all this, is that there's so much going on for 3w4dw that I have decided, with the exception of a few community events and some anoning, to save most of my effort for after the event is over, where things will probably be quieting down and everyhing won't be getting lost in the rush. (That, or I am bone-idle and/or exhausted). So it will be business as usual here - i.e., long rambling posts every ten days or so.

My contribution to cross-site-ness for the time being is probably going to be going through the flists of the small-fandom lj communities I'm busily stalking and dw-watch everyone who crossposts. :D

---

And now for con_txt! If you have been following this saga, you will know that I submitted an utterly ridiculous number of panels (in the non-david-mitchell sense of panels, though do you know how tempted I am to suggest a fannish panel game for Saturday evening entertainment? So tempted) to the concomm, and I have just gotten the first voting-results email.

...ten of my panels are either in, or possibly/probably in, and by con-txt tradition, they are now asking *me* to volunteer for or find mods for them all. I know some of you are going to con-txt, or know people who are: anybody interested in modding or co-modding any of these if they get in?

( Panel Fun )

( And now for a cute and cuddly baby Dalek! )

If I made a small flock of these daleklings - say, 4-6, in a rainbow of bright cheerful nursery colors - would it be worth submitting to the con-txt art auction? Would anybody bid? I have been messing with the pattern for so long that I've lost all perspective on it, I have no idea if it even looks like a Dalek anymore, because I've forgotten what Daleks look like when they aren't pink crochet. Oh, I know! Poll!
( Because this entry wasn't long and scattered enough already! )

The internets has refused to cough up a proper cocktail recipe for scumble, and so I wish to inform them that 80-proof apple jack mixed 50-50 with ginger beer is yummy, and it's also lethal, because my body seems to think it's apple soda and I drink entire gulps before I realize that it's actually rather distinctly alcoholic.

(The stash of drinks has no vodka, but my sister and Rachel Maddow together have made me interested in cocktails. So sister had sonic screwdrivers with tequila instead of vodka & I had moscow mules with applejack instead & called them scumble.)

(Actually we had vodka, but it's double-caffeinated espresso vodka. Our hostess has been drinking it straight for several hours and is now both lit and wired. How festive, just like her non-demoninational holiday shrub!)

We watched A Colbert Christmas and then have spent the past several hours watching DVDs of all the Otakon vid shows for the entire decade of the nineties (because the parties I go to are just that cool), including the very first vid I ever saw (which was Ryoga Hibiki doing I Would Walk 500 miles in 1995. btw.) I am thinking about how much those old-school AMVs, especially in the humor vids that had a particular way of using literal matching of lyrics & images while completely (deliberately) mismatching tone & mood, shaped my vid aesthetic. Or I would be if it wasn't three o'clock in the morning and I hadn't drunk quite so much scumble.

Also I appear to have crocheted a mauve Dalek.

Everybody who is here tonight drew a party spink. Three guesses which was mine and the first two don't count! Hint: it is the Doctor Who one.

Now I am waiting impatiently for yuletide reveals. Perhaps I will drink some sherry and then attempt to write fic!

My resolution for the year: I am going to start actually finishing creative projects instead of just talking about how awesome they would be if I actually finished them. (To aid me in doing that, I am going to do more talking about them, too.)

Also I am going to get a job. And make some money.

I'm a grown-up and I pay for my own groceries, and that means that if I want to mix up a bowl of powdered sugar and peanut butter 'till it's the consistency of mud brick, and then eat it with a spoon, I can, right?

(..hey, there's *no* candy in this house, and my roommates won't let me bake. Except what I just mixed up. Granted I could have walked down the street and bought some candy, but a) broke and b) I went from Cake Wrecks to mazapan the other day, and it that time of month, so I'm allowed to cave to random cravings.)

----

Anyway, if someone was, completely hypothetically, thinking about finally installing an IM program, what program would you hypothetically suggest? Bearing in mind that this hypothetical person last tried to install Trillian, and gave up due to FAIL, and that the last time she bothered with IM, she hypothetically had AIM, ICQ, and Y!M accounts, because this was way back when you needed different accounts and programs and they wouldn't talk to each other.

How is it possible to screw up *rice krispie treats*? (Well, cheerios treats actually, but the principle's the same.) Six year olds can make them!

...I've decided to blame the marshmallows. The marshmallows were too old. I was only making them in the first place in order to use up the elderly marshmallows.

Ah well. I needed an excuse to scrub down the entire kitchen anyway. And I did get a lumpy thing that's a third the size the recipe called for and is closer to the "popcorn ball" end of the scale than the "rice krispie treat" end, but still nummy. And some quite excellent homemade caramel chews.

Moral of the story: next time you need to use up baking sweets, just go right for the caramel and cut out the middle-man. You always end up there *anyway*.

In other news, have been playing with USB turntable and record collection. The first one I ripped was "When Dalliance Was In Flower, Vol. III" by Ed McCurdy, which is a 1959 record of bawdy British folksongs, mostly from the early-18th-century collection "Wit And Mirth or Pills To Purge Melancholy". It's not musically brilliant - standard male singer accompanied by banjo and guitar. And it's both a lot less witty and a lot less bawdy than your typical bawdy folksong of today. But it's very, very early-60s-folk-movement. And some of them are catchy. (Especially "Bees? In my cunny? It's more likely than you think!") Anyway I couldn't find the tracks easily available online anywhere, except at collector's prices on LP, so here, share! (I may attempt to set up a torrent later. But that scares me.)

( Zip, cover, & tracklist under cut )

The case had some pretty severe water damage, so I did the best I could with the cover and the text. The record was in good condition, though. I did mess with noise removal and click reduction on some of these tracks, and then decided it didn't really need it. You can tell me if you can tell the difference.

And yes, there was a Dalliance 1-2 and a Son of Dalliance, but they haven't shown up in any of my local thrift shops yet. Sorry.

So this was the first time in *years* - possibly since I started my LJ - that we've had a proper old-fashioned Pop-pop's house Thanksgiving instead of just going out. Featuring Pop-pop, me, mom, sister, uncle, aunt, aunt's brother, Pop-pop's sister, and Dog. And everyone Pop-pop knows in town calling him at some point. :D (Pop-pop's kitchen has been a local social centre basically since my dad was in high school. I know this because we got him to haul out Mom-mom's first family album, featuring the pre-war photos, for the first time in years.)

For posterity, menu:
Turkey breast (nobody ever eats much of this, honestly. They just cook it, so we have a lump of hot, juicy, nearly-tasteless chemically grown white meat. yay.)
Home-made gravy (YAY!)
Mom's stuffing (YAY!!!)
Great-Aunt's macaroni and cheese bake (best macaroni and cheese bake ever. mmmm. She unexpectedly didn't bring it to the reunion this year so now she's been told she has to bring it to every family gathering for the next three. Just to make sure we all get some.)
Real mashed potatoes (the instant stuff is better aktully. Or if you do it by hand instead of a processer. Blending it just makes glue.)
Family recipe candied yams (I have reached the point where I will eat sweet potatoes sometimes. Just not these ones. They just sort of sit there in chunks and sulk in this thin brown liquid. These ones are possibly *why* I only eat sweet potatoes under very special circumstances. Other people seem to like them though.)
Cold mashed turnips. (Pop-pop makes these just to see Mom make yucky faces at them. I try a spoonful - they aren't gag-inducing like the sweet potatoes, but they taste like soap. Very strongly flavored soap. yum.)
Lima beans. (Um.)
Green beans (Aunt made these. She's one of those people who actually *uses* the recipes out of lifestyle magazines, so they always have like almonds and orange juice or something instead of good proper Campbell's mushroom soup and fried onions. Still, yum.)
Cranberry jelly out of cans (best part of Thanksgiving dinner!)
Home-made cranberry salad (...not as good as the canned stuff)
Dinner rolls (these horrible storebought pallid ones that Pop-pop loves)
Pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, pear-mince pie (one by each aunt. Too bad I was too full to try them all! Great-aunt's sweet potato pie is better than Mom's, even though Mom uses great-mom-mom's recipe. don't tell.)
And two bottles cheap wine. (yay!)

Also, I managed to not have to help cook *or* wash dishes. So over all, an excellent thanksgiving! (Also, the only thing me & my republican uncle can agree on about politics is that slot machines in Maryland = dumbest idea ever. In fact, pretty much every Marylander seems to think that - until they get elected to the state government. Dear state government: shut up about slots already.)

Damn it, the two posts that I saw on m_f, jumped over here, and breathed a sigh of relief that nobody'd posted them JUST SHOWED UP. Dear flist: just because it's on metafandom and it's full of fail doesn't mean you should wank it.

In fact, if it's on metafandom it's probably full of Serious Business and you probably *shouldn't* wank it. Go look for something wacky and irrelevant, please.

(How quickly one gets jaded!)

Anyway, I went to do food prep for this fundraiser the local homeless shelter is doing, and as I was prepping about two hundred hard boiled eggs, I started thinking (as you do) about what the characters in my head would be doing in that situation.

Thing is, while the characters currently living in my head would totally have let themselves get roped into a church fundraiser, they live in early-copper-age Greece. Did they even *have* hen's eggs? I don't think they did. Did they have other kinds of eggs? (Were there quail eggs in Greece? Would there be quails in my alternate-fantasy-Greece with the Mediterranean landlocked?) Would they have fried things? What would they have fried them in (olive oil, I suppose? Or would there be animal grease to use for that? Is early Greek olive oil as messy as cheap American frying oils?) Was everyday cookware in the Mediterranean glazed, or sealed, or what? How would you have gotten grease out of it - did they have soap? Did they have hard soap? Would the rare copper have been used for cookware? (How would you cook in pots of unalloyed copper?) I know there would have been octopus and eel, but would there have been crab? How about other shellfish? Did they have mayonnaise? Would they have used cream sauces at all?

...sad thing is, last time I was working in this universe (NaNo four years ago) I actually read a book of Bronze Age recipes. Do I remember the relevant bits? NOOO. I have never missed being in walking distance of a University library more than now.

This is why I never get anywhere in actually writing my original fic. This is also why I was originally so attracted to fanfic - at least there, the canon is FINITE. 'Course, I still never get around to watching the canon when there's wikipedia articles I could be reading. It's also part of the reason I write in fantasy and SF universes instead of the real world; you can pick a point at which you've done enough research and it's time to just make shit up. (Not that I've ever gotten to that point. At least with the Copper Age mediterranean (and even more so when they eventually go to the Sahel) there will be a point at which I've exhausted what is currently known. I'm just not there yet. (I wonder if it would be a good use of my time to re-read Homer?)

Today was my very favorite holiday ever - Palm Sunday! We have a parade and a play in church!

Actually, today in church, for the first time ever, I was one of the helpers in the service. (I say 'I was' rather than 'I signed up to be', because Mom signed me up and then didn't tell me 'till a week later.) So, yay! I got to be lay reader, and I got to hand out the wine to people and say "The blood of Christ, given for you" about two dozen times, and be part of a miracle. I'd never helped with communion before - back in the day when I was an acolyte, I always refused to do it on Communion Sundays, because not only was I not communing yet, I wasn't even baptized (and nobody at church ever remembered that I wasn't baptized, so when it came up in conversation - awkward!)

Anyway, I experienced another miracle after church, too, a miracle like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when I sat down at coffee hour and started making my Easter basket out of my processional palms. I started out with nine small palms. I was going to make a square basket, 3x3 on the bottom and then three rows around the sides, but somehowe it ended up being 5x5x5 instead, and then I made eight or nine crosses to put in it. And when I had finished I looked over at my pile of palms and somehow, I still had six left. The pile just never got smaller!

Knock and the door shall be opened unto you, man. Seek and ye shall find.

Actually, making a basket like that is an act of faith on its own - for the first three-quarters of the work, I have what looks a huge tangle of cracked and bent leaves that will never, ever resemble anything and really I ought to just chuck it and give up; but keep going, and suddenly - snap - it transforms into a cute (if somewhat stringy and lopsided) little green-and-yellow basket that's a lot stronger than it looks. (And will last forever once it dries - this one's at least three or four years old and still up to carrying eggs in.) I make a basket once a year on Palm Sunday (when I have the materials and have the time) just so I don't lose the skill - basketweaving is *brilliant*. Someday I'm going to get around to teaching myself how to make a pine-needle basket like the natives around here did, or sweetgrass like the prairie-dwellers in Mom's part of the country, or how to cut and soak and split the invasive bamboo that's taking over our scrublands. But gathering and learning how to work the materials is the *hard* part, alas. (Plus, do I have space for lots of pretty-but-too-lopsided-to-sell baskets? No, I have no space at all.)