JiM's Dreams

When you craft with variegated yarn, it can cause color pooling. Some people dislike this, but planned pooling may be used to create fancy designs without switching yarn.  A friend tipped me to some websites for it.  If you'd like to play with the concept there are many online colourpooling generators/planning tools: https://magicneedles.in/blogs/guide-more/what-is-planned-pooling and https://mathgrrl.com/crochet-color-pooling/ are both great, and https://plannedpooling.com/ is the original.

This poem is spillover from the June 4, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Public Places" square in my 6-1-24 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. It is an alternate universe crossover of Polychrome Heroics and Schrodinger's Heroes.

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This poem is spillover from the September 5, 2023 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from dialecticdreamer and see_also_friend. It also fills the "Adversary" square in my 9-1-23 card for the Story Sparks Bingo Fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. It is an alternate universe crossover of Polychrome Heroics and Schrodinger's Heroes, based on the Edison's Mirror dimension created by dialecticdreamer -- she's currently running a story arc in that, so check it out.

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Tonight I made the blueberry muffins again.  This time I added a teaspoon of freeze-dried lemon powder.  The lemon flavor is there, if subtle.  I may try this again with honey instead of maple syrup.

Straight out of the bag the lemon powder is intense, sour, and surprisingly floral.  It lacks the bitter notes I was expecting, as it comes from complete lemons peel and all, so if you want that you'll need to use fresh zest.  Advantages of the powder are that it's not overwhelming, it's dry rather than wet, it's not so acidic that it's liable to curdle things as fresh lemon juice can do, it can't spill, it should have good shelf life, and unlike lemon extract it contains no alcohol.  I'd like to explore more uses for this.  One suggestion was making lemonade or stirring it into tea, and yeah, it does smell like lemonade powder.  If you like sour flavors, you could certainly use this as a dusting ingredient for candies or cookies.

This poem is spillover from the May 6, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from fuzzyred , see_also_friend, labelleizzy, and wyld_dandelyon. It also fills the "Riot of Color" square in my 5-1-25 card for the Colors Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. It belongs to the Shiv and Big One threads of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "Babes in the Pineywoods," so read that first or this won't make any sense.

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Here are the notes for "The Strange Transformations of the Moth."

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This poem came out of the October 1, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from siliconshaman. It also fills the "Energy" square in my 10-1-24 card for the Fall Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. It belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

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These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Poem: "The First Swath Cut by the Scythe"
Linguistics
Poem: "Finding the Gold of the Spirit"
Poem: "Thresh Through the Complexity of Life"
Today's Cooking
Birdfeeding
Romance
Poem: "Knitting Is a Therapeutic Activity"
Today's Adventures
Vocabulary: Vellichor
Birdfeeding
Science
Creative Jam
Philosophical Questions: Tribalism
Today's Adventures
Today's Cooking
Follow Friday 10-17-25: Joss Whedon
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Books
Birdfeeding
Food
Gaming
Birdfeeding
Activism
Hard Things

Poem: "New and Innovative Approaches" is featured in today's Magpie Monday by dialecticdreamer. If you like Frank the Crank, drop her some prompts or join the discussion under the poem, which already has 19 comments.

Trauma has 30 comments. Food has 52 comments. Affordable Housing has 55 comments. Robotics has 89 comments.


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $191 to be complete. Maiara and Arthur discuss taking notes.


The weather is much cooler and fall-like now. It rained most of Saturday and was around 75°F that day, then dropped 20 degrees overnight so Sunday was around 55°F. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a male cardinal, and a fox squirrel. While we were out Saturday, I saw a bald eagle! :D 3q3q3q!!! Currently blooming: dandelions, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, moss rose, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, morning glory, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, cypress vine, sunchokes, sedum, violas. Tomatoes, ball carrots, and groundcherries are ripe. Fields are about 2/3 harvested.

Today is mostly sunny, breezy, and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- We rolled up the hose.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I planted 10 'Spectrum Sweet Aroma' daffodils in the daffodil bed. I have at least 15 more to spread around.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I finished planting the rest of the daffodils under trees in the house yard.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I planted 10 Pink Snow Crocus in the goddess garden.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.

This year's Asexual Pride Week runs October 19-25.

My QUILTBAG characters include many aroace ones.

Asexual Book Lists

dialecticdreamer is hosting Magpie Monday with a theme of "hidden expectations or accidental entanglements."

Over on ysabetwordsmith’s blog here on Dreamwidth, a comment on her poem “New and Innovative Approaches,” led to the theme for this month’s Magpie Monday.

Because there’s such a strong tie to Frank the Crank’s write-in election to the Mercedes city council, I’d like to specify that all the prompts remain in or around Mercedes, in the Polychrome Heroics universe. It’s still possible to write a near-infinite range of prompts which connect to one or both of the broad ideas of this month’s theme. Modern society has an enormous number of hidden expectations, based on one’s age, gender, skin tone, ability or disability, and even one’s mental health. How do those expectations affect life as the town is rebuilding after a tremendous, world-changing earthquake? Is it easier to stay, where there are familiar faces and resources (stretched to the breaking point), or to leave, to possibly escape a hidden expectation?

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

These are the notes for "The First Swath Cut by the Scythe."

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This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It fills the "scythe" square in my 8-1-25 card for the Discworld Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. It belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

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New in-browser language app, lang.guru

It's in open beta right now and free to join. It has the usual suspects of Spanish, German, French, some Asian languages, Hebrew and Arabic, a bunch of Slavic languages (I know her from Balkan choir), and more.

If you're tired of the gamification of Duolingo, give it a try! https://lang.guru .

This poem is spillover from the July 15, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from fuzzyred. It also fills the "Gambling" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. It belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. This is a sequel to "Renewing a Sense of Community," so read that first or this won't make much sense.

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This poem is spillover from the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from fuzzyred and see_also_friend. It has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred and mama_kestrel. This poem belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

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Today I am making butternut squash soup inspired by the recipe from Stock the Crock.  I'm modifying it because we have a tiny butternut and there are only 2 of us.  I'm using the corncob broth for the first time, so that's exciting.  I also used pumpkin pie spice instead of the rather stingy amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg; we use this regularly in baked acorn squash.

My partner Doug pointed out that there is no protein-heavy ingredient.  It's a pureed vegetable soup once finished.  So if we like this, one future option would be to add a flavorless white bean, such as navy beans, that will blend in smoothly and add protein without really affecting the flavor or texture much.  Alternatively, we could dice up some bacon to stir in or sprinkle on after seasoning.  A later thought would be adding chicken puree, as squash soups often use chicken broth to good effect, but I haven't ever tried to puree chicken.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- The soup turned out quite well.  It didn't make a lot, just enough for the two of us and one leftover, so I'm saving that in the freezer.

Today is mostly sunny, chilly, and breezy. It rained copiously yesterday, which should help restore water and make fall planting easier. Also while we were out at events, I saw a bald eagle. :D 3q3q3q!!! I hadn't seen any since spring, so that was exciting.

I fed the birds. I haven't seen any activity today.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I planted 7 'White Emperor" tulips in the purple-and-white garden.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I cleaned seeds from the butternut squash and set them to dry. I got a lot of seed from that one tiny squash, probably 2-3 packets worth.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I planted 6 'Decoy' daffodils in the daffodil bed. These are supposed to be white with red cups, and there was an extra in the bag.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I planted 5 'Kiwi Sunset' daffodils in the daffodil bed. These are double daffodils with yellow petals and double orange-and-yellow pompom cups.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.