My Library Doppelganger

My library doppelganger SHER C often reserves books I want to read, have read or need to read. Here’s a book that my doppelganger reserved that I need to read! Don’t worry. I left it on the shelf or him or her. I just reserved my own copy.

When you order a book online from the Johnson County (Kansas) Library, you can pick it up on the shelf at the branch you choose. A shortened version of your name will be on the spine. My name is SHER C.  There’s another SHER C, whose reserved book choices are often so similar to mine.  I call him/her my library #doppelgänger.

My library doppelgänger SHER C often reserves books I want to read, have read or need to read. Here’s one I need to read!

“The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up
The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” by Marie Kondo.

In this case, the other SHER C is also my library angel. If anyone struggles with decluttering, it’s me! I’m practically a hoarder!

 The word doppelgänger is from the German Doppelgänger, a compound noun formed by combining the two nouns Doppel (double) and Gänger (walker or goer).

The Library Angel is a phenomenon described by Arthur Koestler in which information (typically in libraries) becomes accessible through chance or coincidence rather than through the use of a cataloguing system.

The Library Angel can be regarded as a form of synchronicity. Bernard Beitman, who conducted research in coincidence studies, found that 18% of his respondents had acquired information in an unexpected way.

Arthur Koestler coined the term library angel for frequently experienced meaningful coincidences in which the right book or reference suddenly presents itself at a moment of need.

Doppelgänger

Library Angel

Marie Kondo Website

Key Lime Pie

Key Lime Pie is on almost every menu in Florida.  The original version with meringue is more difficult to find.  The more available version uses whipped cream, which is easier to serve.   My husband and I found the meringue key lime pie at the Key Lime Pie Factory on Tavernier Island just west of Key Largo. It was delicious! You can buy slices and whole pies, as well as a wide range of key lime flavored treats, including frozen key lime pie dipped in chocolate on a stick

Key Lime Pie is thought to have been invented in Key West by “Aunt Sally,” the talented cook of William Curry, a prominent Key West resident and Bahamian-born immigrant who became Florida’s first millionaire. In the late 1800s, Aunt Sally used ingredients available on the island, which is at the end of the Florida Keys archipelago — easy to store sweetened condensed milk in a can (no cows anywhere near the island), local eggs (there are chickens everywhere on Key West) and the locally grown key limes.  Key limes are yellowish when ripe and are smaller and have more seeds than the bright green limes you commonly find in the grocery store throughout the United States.  In the original recipe, egg yolks go into the filling, and the egg whites are whipped into a meringue topping. More commonly now, restaurants and bakeries skip the meringue and use whipped cream, but the Key Lime Pie Factory in Tavernier Island in the Florida Keys still creates its pies with meringue.

History of Key Lime Pie.

Authentic Key Lime Pie Recipe.

What Makes a Key Lime So Special.

How to Sell Greeting Cards

Fellow card designer Tom Rent alerted me to this hilarious video from the masters at Hallmark about how to sell greeting cards.  Tom and I are freelance card designers who hope to lure away a few card buyers from Hallmark, which is a big dog in my hometown. Sadly, I’ll never be more than a runt of the litter, but a pup can dream, can’t she?  (Freelance is an interesting word from the days of knights in armor. More about that later.) Here’s one of Tom’s cards.

I’m not funny like Tom, but I love photography (and surfing!) so I tend toward the scenic, like this:

Emergency Chocolate Relief Act

Need some chocolate relief? Mix this cookie dough, form into cookies, freeze and then pop into the oven whenever you have a chocolate emergency.

Our annual book club Christmas party was on Monday night.  We exchange small, but wonderful gifts.  We bring a gift for each person, so we go home with a lot of loot. 

This year, Chris brought a recipe for “Emergency Chocolate Relief Act” plus the actual raw cookies in a plastic bag to put in our freezers.  The raw cookies were ready to pop in the oven whenever we were feeling faint and in need of chocolate. She even gave us a small cookie tray, which will fit into a toaster oven.  It was all wrapped in a festive tea towel.  Her mother, Judy, also a member of book club, gave us a small spatula to complete the ensemble. You can see it all above with the cookies hot from the oven. 

The recipe:

Take off all jewelry. Wash hands. Combine one roll of Nestle refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough with a roll of another brand (such as Pillsbury) in the same amount.  Add substantial amounts of pecans and chocolate chips or pieces of candy bars.  Squish all together into balls. Slightly flatten and put in freezer bags.  Freeze. When you need a cookie or two or three, break out of the bag.  Put on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.  Cool slightly.  Eat!  You’ll feel instant relief!

Frugalista

Children grow so quickly that there was always a market for their "gently worn" clothing. Now more and more women are buying "vintage" clothing for themselves. This is a Kansas City consignment store, which recently underwent a major renovation and expansion. Business is brisk!

Being frugal is cool these days.  I like the new name — frugalistas, people who are experts at finding frugal ways to enjoy life.  Becoming or remaining debt-free is one of their top goals. (See link below.)

I was born a coupon clipper and a recycler.  There’s a photo of me as an infant with a pair of scissors (blunt, of course) with the caption “Cathy’s first tool”.  OK, I’m just kidding about the photo….. (I did recycle the photo above from my post on consignment stores.)

Couponing and shopping at sales are two obvious ways to save, but only if you buy items or meals you need. (Yes, need is a vague term, which is why our houses are full of stuff we thought we “needed”. )   These days, the half-life of a coupon seems to be about ten days, so some of the joy is gone.  What happened to “No expiration date”?  Of course, companies don’t last that long any more, either.  Being a frugalista is much more than coupon clipping, though.  It’s an attitude. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to enjoy life. You don’t need as much as you think.  Sometimes, it’s a decision not to buy something or to find a different, cheaper way to do something you enjoy. 

• Check out books and movies from the library.  Yes, it means you won’t have a clue about this year’s Academy Awards nominees, since you’ll still be catching up on last year’s.  But so what?  We haven’t rented dvds in years, but I have bought a few dvds that I want to keep. (More on those dvds in a later post, probably entitled “Shameless Promotion”.)
• Walk in the park.  Kansas City has more than a two hundred miles of walking trails in stream-side parks with lots of access, so that’s easy for us.  You can be a bird-watcher, cheap entertainment.
• I save the newspaper plastic sleeve and use it to clean out the cat box.  (There’s no way you can make this fun, sorry.)   Plastic grocery bags, if you’re still getting those, can line trash cans, but everyone knows that!
• Consignment stores.  I’ve bought some great stuff there and sold some stuff, too.
  

  I'd be lost without my scissors. I have ten pairs, so a pair will always be near.

• Garage sales. Yeah, I know, it’s pain in posterior, if you conduct one yourself.  However, sometimes it’s the only way to clear out your house.  You can donate your stuff to charities, which is good, too, but a lot of that stuff gets dumped, unfortunately, because charities don’t have the resources to sort, display, store and distribute the zillions of tons of donated stuff.  When someone invests a dollar for an item in your garage sale, they might actually use it.   There’s also www.freecycle.org  Conversely, you can get some great stuff at garage sales. We’re working on putting together a garage sale right now, because our neighborhood and several others around us are having one May 1-2.  I’m going to try to enjoy it.
• Eat at home, including making your own espresso and lattes.  I tried giving up coffee, mostly to avoid caffeine withdrawal in the morning, but I just couldn’t do it. I have a cheap machine, but I’m not picky about my foam, which is a good thing because the foamer is clogged. I order my coffee  in bricks by the case from www.cafebustelo.com  with free shipping in the U.S. on orders over $50. I order six months’ worth of ground coffee.  I’m not hung up on grinding it myself. I’m happy if it’s strong and full of caffeine.
• Since recycling is the theme this week of Earth Day, I’m recycling another blog of a young frugalista from Kansas City who explains how she does it.  She also has other great frugalistas on her blogroll.  Carrie on the Cheap, a young frugalista.

I’m recycling this blog post of mine because I forgot to put tags on it the first time around, Coffee, the Miracle Drink. I’m sure it’s still steaming hot, ha, ha.

 “Austere Times? Perfect” — Article from the New York Times on Frugalistas.

I’m Addicted to Digital

My newest addiction! My photographs are the tabby cat in the second row and the Texas waffle in the third row. After all of the "arty" photographs I've taken and submitted, I never dreamed that my two most popular photographs, featured on the RedBubble home page, would be my cat and a waffle I made for my breakfast.

Last month, I stumbled across a photographer’s blog that mentioned the RedBubble art and photography website, so I checked it out — then I signed up.  Now, I can’t stay away from it.  The amount of incredible excellent art and photography on cyberspace is mind-boggling — and from teenagers, even.  

If only we’d had digital photography and computers when I was a kid.  (We did have electric typewriters with correction tape.  And boy did I need the tape! ) All of my hard-earned darkroom skills are now archaic.  Using film, an enlarger and developing chemicals these days is like listening to your music on vinyl disks.  You have to be hard-core to do it.  I love the instant gratification as well as the ability to edit in so many ways in digital photography!  We “edited”  in the film darkroom, too, but it was limited.  And I only did black and white.   (I won’t even go into cameras.  More on that later.)

Birds are an extremely popular photography subject. You need a twist to stand out from the flock. I took this photograph of a cardinal holding on for dear life as he's buffeted in an early spring snow storm on a pear tree branch outside my kitchen window. You can't see the detail here, but the blossoms are covered with snow and the branches encrusted with ice. The poor cardinal, as brave as he is, is probably too common.

I started with Flickr, but I love RedBubble’s Aussie cheekiness.   Etsy is fun, too. (I discovered Kenna Foster on Etsy. She’s also on Flickr.  She’s on my blogroll. Check her out!)  I don’t know how many photography and art sites are online, but there must be tens of thousands of photographers and artists looking at and commenting on one another’s work, everyone from professionals to the people posting their first work.  It’s inspiring, overwhelming and humbling at the same time.

My photograph of Paddington with his mis-matched eyes has been very popular with other cat owners and lovers. Paddington is tired of me pursuing him with a camera and is going to take out a restraining order against me.

On RedBubble or Etsy, there’s a chance that someone will see one of your great photographs or artworks and decide that they can’t live without it. On Etsy, the artists themselves produce and deliver the work.  

If you order through RedBubble, RB produces and ships the art as a card, print, canvas, calendar or poster.  I suspect that much of the art sold on RB is to the artists and photographers themselves.  I bought my own photograph (below) of the View from the Sydney Tower on canvas.  Those RedBubble people know what they’re doing!

Anyone who signs up for RedBubble (It’s free) can also get a free photography website, which is very cool.  You can organize your photos into galleries.  It was incredibly simple.  You can join a huge number of specialty groups on RB, such as landscapes, sunsets and sunrises, wildlife, doors and windows, old theaters, rivers, pets, food, skies  — in fact not even the sky is the limit.   Each group has sub-sets, too.  There are groups with minimal standards, and there are groups by invitation only, and everything in between.

I like to photograph oddball things, such as this van parked at Bondi Beach in Sydney. I think the driver is trying to contact the mother ship.

Featured photographs and art usually are exceptional, awe-inspiring, off-beat, fresh or eye-popping or else tug at your heart-strings (or else the person who selected it just took the next artwork that came along…..)

I know many of you out there are photographers.  What is your favorite photography website?  What are your favorite subjects. What do you do with all of your photographs? Do you print many?  Why do you take photographs?  I wanna know!  If you want to see a RedBubble website, here’s mine.  I’m still working on it.  My favorite gallery is “Fun Stuff”.  Catherine Sherman Photography.

RedBubble.      Flickr.   Etsy.  Beholden to Nature – Kenna Foster Photography.

Thanks to my daughter for saving the RedBubble screen shot for me.

I thought my photograph of this view from the Sydney Tower was spectacular, but the number of spectacular photographs in cyberspace seems to be infinite!

Make This No-Calorie Chex Mix

Here’s how to make no-calorie Chex Mix.  You won’t even get your hands dirty. 

Chex Mix Jigsaw Puzzle.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Scone Recipe

In 1960, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain sent President Dwight D. Eisenhower her recipe for “Drop Scones,” which she had promised to give to him when he’d visited her at Balmoral Castle. Eisenhower was an avid cook.

Elizabeth II doesn’t seem like a likely cook, but she was an auto mechanic during World War II.  She could probably stir up a batch of scones, if called upon in the line of duty.

A photograph of the recipe she sent him is in a book about Eisenhower entitled, The Ike Files: Mementoes of the Man and His Era from the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, which was published by Kansas City Star Books and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Foundation.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum is in Abilene, Kansas, which is where Eisenhower grew up.  It was the first presidential library I ever visited, which makes sense since I lived in Kansas.  (Although many people never visit the sites in their own states.)

We already had a “history” with Eisenhower, though. My parents had taken me as a baby to Eisenhower’s presidential inaugural parade in 1953, when we lived in Alexandria, Virginia.

Here’s Queen Elizabeth’s scone recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4 teacups flour
• 4 tablespoons caster sugar
• 2 teacups milk
• 2 whole eggs
• 2 teaspoons bi-carbonate soda
• 3 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons melted butter

Beat eggs, sugar and about half the milk together, add flour, and mix well together adding remainder of milk as required, also bi-carbonate and cream of tartar, fold in the melted butter.

The recipe was typed, but at the bottom, written in ink and underlined, was the line: Enough for 16 people.

I don’t have the Queen’s instructions for what to do with the dough. Here’s a scone recipe from Epicurious.com that describes how to work, shape, cut and bake the dough.

Hearty Scottish Scones

Blogging friend Paula’s photos of scones and jam inspired me on this topic.  Here’s a link to Paula’s “Jamming” post.  She also included a recipe for scones and more information in her comment below.  Check it out.

To learn more about the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, which sells the book, go to www.eisenhower.archives.gov  I don’t get any royalties. In fact, don’t tell them I sent you.

Cutting Edge — How to Use a Straight Razor

This is my son Matt's straight razor and shaving cup, soap, brush and strop. He says that using a straight razor produces a cheaper and better shave, although it takes three times longer than with a cartridge blade or an electric razor. Link to Straight Edge Razor Father's Day card at the bottom of this post.

                                                                                                                                                                                           My son Matt and his friends love metal — and I’m not talking about music.

They love steel, silver, iron — anything they can forge, hammer, bend and weld. They use words like anneal, temper, ductile, malleable, hone, forge.

They’re fascinated with bladesmithing, such as the labor-intensive process of forging the katana, the long sword the samurai carry.  Matt bought a couple of replica katanas when we visited Japan, but it’s just not the same as the real thing.  They had no cutting edge — all show and no go.  (But they were so much cheaper!)

Matt and two of his friends have brought their appreciation of a sharp edge to their daily routine by using a straight edge razor to shave.  Matt ordered his online, while one friend got his at a pawn shop. 

“I think of my razor as a really high quality knife,” Matt says.  “It’s generally about as sharp as a knife can get.”

Japanese Katana Sword.

Matt bought a DOVO Black Star with a pakkawood handle, made of high carbon tempered steel with a blade that’s five-eighths of an inch wide. It’s full hollow ground, which means that the faces of the blade are ground to make it as thin as possible.

“I wanted a better, cheaper alternative to normal shaving,” Matt says.  “The choice was between a straight razor and a safety razor.”

Matt likes to learn new, unusual skills, so that was another factor.

“How long did it take you to get the hang of it?” I ask.  The thing looks dangerous.  I’ve seen what a straight edge razor can do in “Sweeney Todd”.  (Matt says that a true fan of a straight razor would never ruin a blade by using it like that.)

“It took about three weeks to stop cutting myself at least once every shave,” Matt says.

This is from an advertisement for a DOVO razor. The guy looks pretty calm, considering someone else is holding a razor to his neck.

Matt describes the basic procedure:  “Strop your razor a dozen times, first on the canvas side and then on the leather side.  I usually skip the canvas side unless my razor isn’t honed enough. 

Shaving is best after a shower. You want your face to be as wet as possible, so don’t use a towel.  Soak your brush (more on brushes below) in hot water and then swirl it on your bar of soap for ten or so seconds.  Now whip your brush in a bowl that contains a small amount of water.  Whip for 30 to 90 seconds to create a lather.  Apply lather to your face. 

Always shave first in a downward motion with the hair growth.  The chin and upper lip are the hardest parts.  After one pass downward, you can re-lather and shave perpendicular to the hair growth, or shave against the hair growth.  Two or three passes are generally required to get a close shave.  One with the grain, one perpendicular and one against.  I generally only do two passes, one with the grain, one against.

After shaving, splash warm water on your face to remove all of the soap residue, then splash cold water on your face to close your pores.  Then pat dry.  Never wipe dry, or you’ll dry out your skin too much.  You can then apply a facial lotion, if you want.”

What does this Samurai have to do with shaving with a straight razor? Not too much, except that he's cool and used a really sharp sword. This samurai is on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Pardon my reflection.

In the long run, shaving with a straight razor is cheaper than disposable razors and blades and shaving cream in a can, and there’s a lot less waste.

“My bar of shaving soap, which cost ninety-nine cents at Wal-Mart, will probably last for dozens and dozens of shaves.”

Do the guys still shave as often?  One friend still uses the straight razor — when he shaves.  “He tends to grow beards for a while,” Matt says.

“I still shave about as much as I used to, but if I go for several days, and my facial hair gets long, the razor has no problems cutting through it,” Matt says.  “It doesn’t clog like a normal razor does.”

He admits to using a disposable cartridge if he’s pressed for time.  He may get a safety razor for those times when he’s in a hurry. (Which is probably every time he’s heading to class.)

“But if I have an extra fifteen minutes, it’s certainly more fun to use a straight razor,” he says.

Am I a convert?  Considering  I have more area to mangle and mutilate, I don’t think so……..

There are three grades of badger brushes — pure, best and the top grade of silvertip, Matt says.  Matt has the best badger, which is the middle level.  Badger brushes are softer and hold more water than the cheaper boar hair or synthetic brushes.   

Clean the brush thoroughly after each shave and shake it dry.

“Badger smells like wet dog for the first ten times,” he warns. 

For more information,  go to www.classicshaving.com  and www.shavemyface.com  There’s a whole culture of shaving out there!   For a straight edge razor shaving greeting card using this photograph, go to Straight edge razor Father’s Day card.

 

 

Chiggers!

 

This is a chigger, enlarged about 1,500 times. Chiggers are red until they are engorged, when they turn yellow. They feed on our dissolved skin cells, not blood. (Photo — Dr. W. Calvin Webourn, the Ohio State Acarology Laboratory.)

Since I’m still scratching like crazy, I decided to get serious about avoiding more chigger bites.  (See my post, “Berry Picking by Moonlight” for an impractical approach.) If you’re wondering whether there are chiggers in your area, there probably aren’t. If you’ve been in nature, you’d already know! 

HOW TO AVOID GETTING CHIGGER BITES:

Wear Insect Repellent.

Wear long pants and long sleeves (which is so much fun when it’s 95 degrees!)

Wipe off your skin with a rough towel when you come inside.

Take a warm shower or bath with soap after coming indoors.

Wash your clothes and used towels in hot water and detergent to kill any chiggers hanging out there.

                                                                                                                                                               Chiggers are the almost microscopically small six-legged larval (juvenile) form of an eight-legged mite (Trombiculidae), related to ticks.  How can something so small cause such torment? You can’t see them to pick them off.  By the time you feel their bite, it’s too late.  Your body has already started its allergic reaction.

                                                                                                                                                         Chiggers are constantly on the move, running onto your body from grass and plants, heading for areas of thin skin such as your ankles or groin area. Their mouth parts are weak, so if they can’t find a delicate area, they need a fold of skin or a tight piece of clothing to help them pierce the skin.

                                                                                                                                                                          In North America, humans aren’t a chigger’s preferred host.  Chiggers would rather bite reptiles or birds, which don’t get an allergic reaction.  We’re just accidental prey. (There are chiggers in Asia and the Pacific Islands that do prefer humans, and their bites cause no itching.)

                                                                                                                                                                       The chigger injects saliva to dissolve our tissue, which the chigger then sucks.  Our bodies react by walling off the corrosive saliva, forming a sort of feeding tube in the center of a welt that itches like crazy.  The tiny chigger then sits on the tube, alternately injecting saliva and then sucking up the liquid tissue.   Most chiggers are scratched off before they complete their one and only feed.  If they don’t get enough to eat, which may take three days of feeding, they won’t mature into an adult mite. Too bad! 

                                                                                                                                                                       The good news is that chiggers don’t carry any diseases.  However, if you scratch too much, you might get an infection.

 

Now, enjoy your summer outdoors!

For more information go to http://www.mdc.mo.gov./nathis/arthopo/chiggers/