amanda — a good loaf 🍞

a rebrand? no, I'm just going to the oak tree in my backyard my whole personality.

We're coming up on six weeks of this plague so I am rebranding my cold and never ending post-viral cough as consumption. The only cure, I fear, is to go take the sea air.

We're all trying to get by, in our own way.
And if your way involves books, strong tea, and secret meetings with the old gods in the mossy end of the forest, so much the better.

I don't know about you, but I'd feel a lot better if we were allowed to disappear into a malevolent fog once in a while and become a dark creature of folklore and legend.

this or nothing

William Morris, 1876.

A photo of a small square glass jar with a domed glass stopper full of pale amber honey sitting on a wooden table

I have no will power when faced with small enchanting glass jars. I went to the grocery for tea and cheese and came home with tea, cheese, and a magical little jar full of honey.

🐝 More bee facts for you: squash bees (which look kinda like frumpy European honey bees) sleep inside squash blossoms and you can go out at night and check inside your squash blossoms after they've closed and you might find one.

Excuse me but I just learned about buzz pollination—when pollinators vibrate flight muscles very quickly, knocking pollen loose deep into the flower. These are primarily bumble bees, and they buzz at the same frequency as middle c. Adorable.

surround yourself with people who frequently blow your mind, you know the ones I mean, they suggest things like doing a CE class in the bath.

magic✨

"Lights all askew in the heavens. Men of science more or less agog over results of eclipse observations. Einstein theory triumphs. Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry."

another favourite scientific headline, following confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity by observations of the 1919 solar eclipse. "Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry" is a beautiful sentiment. i would have that on a t-shirt

I've been having a lot of evening baths lately & I clip my hair up because I don't like sleeping with wet hair.

Today I had Afternoon Bath Time, which led to a little bit of Mermaid Hair time at the end. And it provided just as much magic & whimsy as it did when I was five. 12/10 highly recommend.

thank you!! this was my first time trying it with twine.

A round loaf of freshly baked sourdough bread cooling on a wire rack on top of a wood counter in front of a window. The loaf has been scored in a decorative pattern with three hearts surrounded by leafy branches.

A photo of a round loaf of sourdough dusted with flour on an aluminum peel ready to be transferred to the oven for baking. Three pieces of twine are tied together on top of the loaf, dividing it into 6 segments. The segments have been scored to create three heart shapes on top of the loaf.

Just a cute little Valentine's loaf. 💞🍞

This Valentine’s Day, give your partner what they really want: a murder of crows to befriend, a glowing tome found in a bed of ferns, and an ancient magic that imbues them with fearsome powers.

Gentlemen, Valentine's Day is tomorrow, so please be mindful of whether your lady prefers gold or silver. If she only uses silver and you buy her a gold amulet, she'll be forced to recalibrate all her alchemetrics before she can harness its arcane power

If I went to all that effort to reply to an email I don't think I should then be expected to expend similar efforts to respond to the reply back all in the same day.

I have things to do, birds to watch, toast to eat, baby goat videos to watch.

[“Take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.” — Mr Beaver, The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe]

C. S. Lewis tried to warn us about AI

A screenshot of an eBay listing for an antique French tapestry.

A screenshot of an eBay listing for a black wood bat box shaped with gothic styling.

eBay ads targeting has been spot on lately. My life is indeed incomplete without an antique French tapestry And a gothic bat box.

a couple of mandarin oranges with a nice cup of hot chocolate is the pinnacle of winter snacks.

I just don't know that there is anything quite like the magic of fermenting your own food or growing a plant.

After being sick for more than two weeks straight I took myself out for a little walk this afternoon and encountered this fine creature enjoying a rainy supper.

A pink peony lies on a rumbled white sheet. The peony is at the end of its life and has scattered petals everywhere.

Same, peony. Same.

#photography #peony #iphonephotography

Trying to decide on the most appropriate and magical term for my basement canning closet/pantry. is it a root cellar? a dry larder?

It's where we store flour & grains, preserves, wine & spirits, extra jars, bottles, & canning equipment, garden seeds, herbs & spices.

a round pottery piece with pig eyes and a snout

i think we all need to step back and realize that peak art was made when neolithic pot in the shape of a pig was fired

The title page for 'Dictionary Domefticum, Being a New and Compleat Houfhold Dictionary For the Ufe both of City and Country.'

A good huswife must record the proper seafonal management of the houfhold. I can only aspire to create something as magnificent as this particular specimen.

I think I shall start referring to my office as the still room and my cook book as my closet of rarities and receipts.

I have decided to come back here and just pretend it's 2009 twitter, but now I'm older, wiser, more chaotic, and a better bread baker.

If you can substitute "hungry ghost trapped in a jar" for "AI" in a sentence it's probably a valid use case for LLMs. Take "I have a bunch of hungry ghosts in jars, they mainly write SQL queries for me". Sure. Reasonable use case.

"My girlfriend is a hungry ghost I trapped in a jar"? No. Deranged.