Friday bullets, Jan. 18, 2019

With P. off on her great adventure (and safely arrived and on the ship), I feel as though I have some brain space again.

• This past week has been very much an unschooling week for us. I allow for such weeks in my yearly planning, so it's fine as far as our schedule. I just couldn't focus. When I was home, I couldn't sit still, much less think about grammar and math, and found myself doing things such as chipping away at the ice on the back sidewalk, clearing the whole thing. There were also quite a few stretches of time where I was with P. trying to get everything taken care of that needed to happen before she left, such as going downtown and getting her yellow fever vaccine. I think next week will be better for concentrating on school.
• At least in theory it should be a better week. I have some big news. Our builder told me a couple of days ago that the barn will be finished today. Yes, you read that correctly. As of yesterday, there was only a bit of siding and the doors to install. There is still fencing to be put up and stalls to be built, but we can make do with round pen panels as we get those things finished. This means that as of right now, we are planning on moving Emmy home on Monday. I can hardly believe it. I'm suddenly very nervous.
• D. is beyond excited about traveling to Amsterdam in May. In true D. fashion, he is starting to work on learning Dutch and plans on doing some intensive reading on the history of Amsterdam. He isn't like me at all, is he?
• Some of our people are a little unsettled with P. leaving. I expect that we will say that P. will come back home at least one million times before May.
• Part of my not being able to sit still meant that I needed to start a new knitting project. Here is what I have so far:

I'm using a ball of handspun (by me, ages ago) single thread.

This is the very beginning. It is going to be a garter stitched lace shawl. It is knit from corner to corner. We'll see how long it takes me to make it.

• I've also finished all the homework for my quilting class. I was finished with that the next day. So, I decided to see if I could make a second quilt using fabric from my stash in the same pattern. I'm almost done getting that to the point of the class quilt. See? I told you I wasn't able to sit still. Too bad my nervous energy didn't extend to doing the laundry.
• We are going to have our Nigerian dinner this coming week. I had scheduled it for next week, but decided I needed more planning time to pull it off. In the interim, I discovered a book which I wish I had had when we started our Africa unit. It's called, The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent by Jessica B. Harris. It looks really interesting, and I'll be curious to see how the recipes turn out when we try it on Tuesday. I'm thinking I'm going to purchase my own copy. In flipping through it, I realize that the cuisine of the various African countries is virtually unknown to me. There are spice mix recipes using spices I have never even heard of, much less have in my pantry. (There are recipes provided which use Western spices that are somewhat comparable.) As I look at my cookbook collection, I realize there is a huge, gaping void. This book would start the filling of that void.
• The other thing I've discovered this week is bargello quilts. Go ahead and look it up. They are amazing. I will probably need to make one eventually.
• Both of M.'s rescue gerbils died recently. Kind of sad, but they had a pretty good life for the last part of it. It's hard to know how long an animal should live if you don't know how old the animal is to begin with.
• We are supposed to get up to 8 inches of snow this afternoon. We'll see. The last snow storm we had, they had predicted up to a foot of snow and we got a measly two or three inches. I'm not sure I really believe them. Either way, I went to the grocery store yesterday for our weekly grocery run, so we're set. I would kind of rather not get 8 inches.
• I might be off mysteries for a while, having somewhat overdosed on them last year. I started one a few days ago, and just can't bring myself to finish it. I'm just not interested. Instead I picked up a more serious novel, which I am enjoying much more. The book I just finished was The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis, which is set in the Barbizon Hotel in New York City. It's not something I was familiar with, and ended up being very intrigued by the story.
• Finally, for those following P.'s adventures, she texted yesterday afternoon to say she arrived safely in Barbados and had found her group. I feel as though I can relax a little bit knowing she is where she needs to be.