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Continue reading →: Terrible horrible no good very bad month
You can read the full tale to date at my other blog, where I’ll be chronicling my latest adventure, but the short version is that no matter how healthy I am or how fine I feel, I’ve been diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. Yikes. I won’t be mentioning it much…
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Continue reading →: Further Tales from the Rumpus Room
Trygvi poses with his five-day-old indestructible kevlar dog bed. Ain’t he cute? I’ve been doing the early part of the holiday baking: fruitcake, so it can steep in brandy as long as possible. (Yes, I should have done this in November. Much like blogging, it didn’t happen.) The second batch…
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Continue reading →: Miscellanea
FFF is this weekend – I hope to see some of you there. This is the eleventh one – wow. I’m teaching a new-to-me class, on Japanese loop braiding. There’s no concrete evidence for the marudai braiding stand before the early seventeenth century, but there are all these braids, including…
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Continue reading →: Nifty
Oldest string found: 90,000 year old Neanderthal string. Dinovember. This is just delightful. The eggs! And the crayons… Bookbinding. I was going to email this to Laura, but I thought that some of you all might like to see it as well. While the entire set is amazing (I got…
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Continue reading →: How to live to be 95
Lessons from my grandfather: Walk your dog twice a day. Eat oatmeal for breakfast. Always have a project going. Tea and fishing may also figure into the plan. I’ve walked the dog and eaten my oatmeal, if with coffee rather than tea, and now I’d like to invite you to…
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Continue reading →: Kittens
Things have been accumulating; let me foist them off on you. Nick thinks I need this to protect me from rampaging nightime kittens. I think it would just make things worse by adding an extra toy to the mix. Trouble-causing cats are not a new problem. My Little Queen Elizabeth…
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Continue reading →: Happy Halloween!
String. And Halloween. Hm. How about a needle lace jack-o-lantern? Or maybe some medieval ghoulies? Wodewoses, even! Perhaps you need this wonderful early 16th c. German rosary? In much more recent history, that hysteria about Martians invading? It just isn’t so.
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Continue reading →: Kittenocity
I’m furloughed, locked out of my office since October 1, forbidden to even check my email under pain of fines and jail time. The kittens have been ecstatic. The wonderful Tania sent them a present: a catnip mat. This was met with great approval. Most of the photos are blurry…
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Continue reading →: Friday fun
The folk band Sassafrass is doing a Norse mythology album called Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok and you want to take a look, and a listen to at least “The Futhark Song.” No really. They’ve also put together pretty good Viking clothing for the associated materials (their list of references has…
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Continue reading →: Two quick links
Before I lose these: A very well preserved wool tunic from approximately 300CE was found in a melting glacier in Norway. Look at the photo gallery here, but ignore the text (“boat-neck sweater”). The find was published in Antiquity. I was going to just send this link on fore-edge painting…
Welcome!
I’ve been doing stuff with string for quite some time, and describing it to others online since 1996 or so at Phiala’s String Page.
I also do some science and write some fiction.
I’m Phiala most places on the internet.
