Strata Chalup

Green white teal small woven band about a finger width

Green white teal band on an easy Weaver loom partially completed

Blue white red band about a finger width

I've been teaching myself simple band weaving with the help of various blogs and YouTube videos. So far I've just made a couple of simple headbands to hold a veil, but I'm enjoying it and I'm going to tackle something larger next. #sca #mysca #weaving

Watercolor of a Torii gate and hills

Getting my visualizations out there to make a trip to Japan, a lifetime bucket list item, happen in 2026 in the fall! Let's see if we can do this! #watercolors #japan

Hummingbird season on wire trellis

Hummingbirds like to visit the scarlet runner bean flowers, and one posed for a picture this morning! 🌱

Jar of Carlin peas

Baggie of red fox carlin peas

Finished harvesting and shelling the Carlin peas. Got a little over two cups, which is great since I started with 25 peas and only 15 to 17 of them turned into plants due to germination failure and predation. Medieval recipes await! Also saved some seed for next year. 🌱 #sca #mysca

Three clay cups ready to be fired as greenware

Three clay cups from overhead

A few more small cups. These were turned from 1 lb lumps of clay, which I found much harder to center than the 1.5 lb that I've been using earlier. I think they came out pretty decently, not fabulous but decent. #pottery

Um art

Making art. Alcohol markers, metallic pens, glitter pens.

Dried pea pods waiting to be shelled

About half the Carlin pea harvest is in! Not bad for starting with only 25 peas, of which only 18 sprouted and 15 made it past the snails. This medieval style starch pea will be the source for some pottage experimentation. #sca #mysca

Cherry custard pie called a clafouti

cherry clafouti, baked this morning before it gets too hot to turn the oven on! #whatscooking

Even though I snipped off the buds, that central stalk will not dry out like the rest of the onion and cause them to rot after a couple months. Looks like I'm going to be chopping a lot of onions over the next few days and putting them in the freezer! 🌱

onions in a pop up greenhouse

Harvested all my onions today and set them out in the pop up greenhouse to dry out a bit. Unfortunately I won't be able to store them for months like last year. The cold snap we had this spring tricked them into thinking it was their second year and they all sent up flower stalks. 🌱

Had a great time at the W7PXL Valley Radio Club field day operation yesterday. I made my first contacts on 20m! My husband's radio trailer was the 15m station. #hamradio #fieldday

Words to live by! #watercolors

Suszę każdy z nich osobno, ale mieszam je w trakcie gotowania.

Basket of herbs each to strings on clothespins

Snipped some summer herbs to dry in the garage for fall. 🌱

Carlin peas flowering and with pea pods

Carlin pea update: we have lots of pods! I'm hoping for a good harvest, enough to try some traditional pottage recipes this fall in combination with my potherb garden. #sca #mysca

Three small pottery cups

Three small pottery cups upside down

Pretty happy with these cups, trimmed and ready for bisque firing. #pottery

Picture of a sprig of sage

Coffee shop art. #watercolors

Weird growing pea plant

Traditional medieval field/starch pea, the Carlin pea. They grow like no other pea I have seen, with the leaves on the central stalk and crazy vining tentacles on the sides. These are only a month old, let's see what they look like as they mature! 🌱 #mysca #sca

Our reach is as long as our roots are deep.

Coffee shop art. My new sets of washi tape came in!

Illustrated page with a poem

Coffee shop garden art. 🌱

Cosmos flower with the description gratitude blooms in an open heart

Coffee shop art journal art. #watercolors

Raised bed with luxurious onion growth

Happy onions. 🌱

Pan of quiche

Super quick and easy dinner: quiche with sun-dried tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, and wilted spinach! #whatscooking

Riverview on trail walk

Larkspur or Columbine I'm not sure which

Had a lovely hour walk on the loop trails at Dorris Ranch a couple of days ago. The meadow areas are blooming with camas lilies and the forested trails have larkspur and columbine.

Stylized rose

Coffeeshop art. Ohuhu alcohol markers on mixed media paper. #art

Congratulations! I got a happy twinge reading Barony of Settmour Swamp, I had some good friends who played there as the house of the confused cat. Their heraldry was a confused cat with ferrets rampant on either side. Alas, that was 40ish years ago, but seeing the name gave me a happy memory.

Peaceful garden scene, kind of cluttered but that's just how we roll

Taking a few minutes to just sit in the sun and listen to the wind chimes. There's a chicken in the smoker, I just checked the moisture level in all my planters and they're all okay, and there's nothing I have to be doing right this very second except enjoying the smell of the lilacs. 🌱

Wow those look fabulous!

I feel your angst, I grew up in New Hampshire and northern Maine!

Weird tentacled Carlin pea

Weird tentacled Carlin pea

Weird tentacled Carlin pea

This year I'm trying to grow Carlin peas, a medieval starch pea that's been used for centuries. I'm really impressed by how different and weird they look compared to normal snap, snow, and shelling peas. I feel like I'm growing little aliens in the garden! 🌱 #sca