Music and Cats

A couple of days ago, Melinama at Pratie Place wrote about a lovely poetry exercise based on George Ella Lyon’s poem Where I’m From. The exercise was originally from this post at Fragments from Floyd; it includes directions for the exercise, as well as a template of sorts to aid the process. Here are my […]

A couple of weeks ago, at the end of an English Country Dance, one of the dancers asked me about my violin: Did I buy it from a violin shop here in Seattle? Who made it? She wants to buy a violin, and doesn’t know where to look. I’m not familiar with local violin shops, […]

Last Sunday afternoon was gloriously sunny, but cold. The cats availed themselves of the patch of sun in our bedroom. Light, shade, shadow and happy cats - I grabbed my camera.
Lyra in Sunlight
Sergei Sunning
Sasha’s Stripes

This evening, I made more marmalade, using up the remaining four pounds of seville oranges. While the first batch is quite good, it is very strong stuff, not for the faint of heart or palate. It is the sort of marmalade that I imagine my Scottish ancestors might have eaten to ward off the effects […]

I have heard for years that the only way to make real orange marmalade is with seville oranges, a type of bitter orange that is not common in this country. I didn’t know that it was possible to get fresh seville oranges here, so I made do with making marmalades of sweet oranges, lemons and […]