Tag Archives: boston

may

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Spring has finally arrived–the sun sets later and later, the days are warmer, and the rain and sunshine have made the grey city lush and green. Lilacs are blooming everywhere.

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Yesterday I gathered a bag of dandelion heads, painstakingly pulled the leaves and stem off, and set the petals to steep in vodka. In a few weeks I’ll strain it, add sugar, and have a dandelion liqueur. When I left the house this morning, there were even more dandelions than yesterday. I’d like to pick some more and repeat the process sometime in the next couple of weeks before they all go to seed. I want to make dandelion wine eventually, but I have to start easy if I want to get anything done at all. Wine takes research, and possibly specialized equipment. All I had to buy for this project was a bottle of vodka.

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autumn

I’ve been living in Boston for over three months now. Fall is well and truly here, and it really is pretty in New England, if you can make it through the summer. Fall has always been my favorite season anyway; there’s no real pressure to do much of anything besides eat soup and go for walks. I’m still walking to work every day, and plan to continue doing so until the first blizzard. Every day I go over the Charles and it’s been quite pleasant watching the change of the sky and the foliage.

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I’m afraid there’s not much sewing going on around here these days, besides curtains. I vowed not to let myself start a new project until I’d figured out my sleeve fitting issues, but it’s nearly impossible without a friend to analyze back fit, so the whole process is stagnating. But there is a lot of cooking! I am making acorn flour and preserved lemons, and I finally got my hands on some sourdough starter so I have been experimenting with that! There’s a certain amount of math involved and of course I struggle there, but it turns out the hardest part is time management–when to take it out of the fridge, when to feed it, how long to let it rise. On my first batch I went with a 1-2-3 formula, where 1 is the starter weight, 2 is the water, and 3 the flour. Then it was too wet, so I had to add more flour, and I ended up accidentally making four loaves!

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In other news, there’s not much other news. I started my first Boston aerials class yesterday, and it’s very exciting to be back at it. I have lost some strength, but not nearly as much as I’d expected.

Other autumn highlights: going to a Renaissance Faire on a cold and rainy day, a brief jaunt to New York City back in September, playing board games as often as possible, and daydreaming about getting a cat. Also planning the costumes that I’d like to sew, eventually (rat queen, Rococo princess, a whole line of glamorous insects at a cocktail party). In the meantime, perhaps I should get started on my Yuletide present sewing…

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boston

Nearly two months ago, I packed up all (well, most of) my worldly goods, bid farewell to my beloved lush green PNW, and got on an train going just about as far as it possibly could go without ending up in the ocean. And here I am.

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