fufaraw | Entries tagged with i have no restraint

A long story for another time, but someone gave me a tiara, or two, several years ago. Just rhinestones, but pretty and glittery. Wearing one made me feel silly and special for an hour or two. It was fun. I started browsing tiaras at ebay now and again, just to see new designs and enjoy the pretty. Over the years, I’ve collected…some more tiaras, paying no more than $10 to $20 for any of them. I kept them wrapped carefully in tissue and nested in boxes. Once in a while I’d dig one out and wear it for a couple of hours while editing, reading, folding laundry, or watching tv.

I’ve had this random black plastic CD rack, relic from the before times when music came on CDs. The rack had three squarish sections with slots for a dozen jewel cases in each section. I’ve used the rack in altar displays once in a while, for tiny examples of changing seasons, or at the holidays for mini-displays. Mostly it just languished, empty and unused. I’d always toyed with the idea of maybe displaying some–or all–of my tiaras, somehow, but didn’t have a lot of drive to implement the idea. And then one day, cleaning off the bottom bookshelf, I stood the empty CD rack on end.

DH helped out by cutting and glueing black foamcore “cleats” at the halfway point in each of the sections, and foamcore “shelves” to rest on the cleats. And voila! Seven tiaras on display! Also handy should I suddenly have a desire to wear one. But…there were still tiaras packed away in boxes. “I’ll build you more shelves out of thin plywood and paint ‘em black,” DH said, that project joining the looooong list of projects he has lined up. I resigned myself to wait, until I woke up one morning wondering, “Are the insides of those drawer boxes black?”

Reader, they are. The red drawers, containing my silver jewelry in plastic baggies (mostly so I don’t have to polish them often, also with earrings and coordinating pendants and things bagged together) are now stacked on top of each other on the shelf.

DH gave me a halogen desk lamp, which I put on a shelf just inside my office door, trained on the tiaras. I flip that switch when I walk through the door and the resultant blaze of glitter, color, and sparkle never fails to take my breath, just a little, every time. A tiny thing to lift my mood, even for a few minutes. There are copies of Actual Tiaras in there: fourth down, center, the Marlborough, AKA the Spencer Honeysuckle tiara. Below that, Princess Sophie (of Sweden, I think?)’s Palmette Wedding tiara, and below that, the York tiara, Sarah Ferguson’s wedding tiara. The gold one, top left, is one of QE2’s favorites, the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara. The baroque gold and emerald one, center top, is a recent gift from a friend, and I call her Idina. I know I have at least two–and maybe as many as four–tiaras still in boxes in the closet. The green drawers may end up stacked on themselves soon, as the tiara towers grow in height.

But I thought I'd share it here for those of you who might be interested. And bore the hell out of everybody else. Aaand of course, LJ's not letting me cut. Feel free to skip.

So, this is probably more than you want to know, but if you're interested in fountain pens, I can't recommend highly enough the Goulet pens info vids. They'll tell you a lot about today's fountain pens, and currently available inks.

I started with Sheaffer's school pens and cartridges (click through pictures), progressed to Sheaffer No Nonsense pens. At the time, I was unaware of converter fillers, but I cajoled a used, needle-less syringe from my cat's vet, and used it to refill cartridges with bottled ink, eliminating throwaway cartridges and spending money on new ones. Adults used lever-fill fountain pens, and when I first started collecting vintage fountain pens, they were what I thought of as "real pens." Here's a YouTube link on a series of care and feeding vids for lever-fill pens. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cleaning+and+filling+lever-fill+fountain+pen You can find lever fill, and vintage pens with other types of fillers at flea markets, yard sales and, of course, on ebay for very little money. Sometimes they might need a little repair or refurbishing, but even adding in those costs, a vintage pen can serve you well for very little money. Most of my pens have been acquired this way, other than my dad's lever-fill Sheaffer, my mom's Parker Vacuumatic, and my husband's piston-fill Pelikan.

When my husband bought me my first "real" fountain pen, a Parker 45, it came with both cartridges and converter, and I never used cartridges again. I discovered twist-piston filling converters, and have always subbed them for the pinch-type converters which a lot of pens came with, because you can see the ink level in them, unlike the metal-housed pinch fill ones.

Today's fountain pens almost all come with twist-fill piston converters, and I've replaced cartridges and pinch-converters in every pen that will accept a converter. My Sheaffer Connaisseur, released by Levenger as the "Mediterranean" of its "Seas" series, has a solid block at the end of the barrel to improve the pen's balance. But it also shortens the available space and makes a twist converter unusable. The rest of my pinch converters have been replaced.

As I said, more than you wanted to know, I'm sure. But maybe you'll find some of the links interesting, or helpful, if you decide to fall willy-nilly into the wonderful world of fountain pens.

( Probably boring, feel free to skip )

( This is Arlo )

And Taliesin Bach in his sleigh full of toys drawn by the second child's elephant pulltoy.

click on any picture to embiggen. And Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate!

I can't do it now because if there's more than one wick lit at a time, OH will whinge and expire from the dread heat, but when he used to work third shift, in the evenings the living room resembled a Shaolin temple (as portrayed by Kung Fu reruns), or perhaps a Police video. We used to make pilgrimmage to the candle factory outlet thrice a year (after Christmas, late spring, and late fall) to stock up--tapers, pillars of all heights and diameters, votives--10hr 10 cents, 14 hour 15 cents per candle, but you had to choose carefully because most of them were scented. You could find packages of 50 unscented tealights for a dollar--that's 2 cents a candle. After the outlet closed, I'd find bags of 50 tealights at the dollar store for a dollar or two.

I learned that changing empty tealight cups for full ones inside votive holders was much easier than removing wax from said votive holders, and though I have a huge stock of votives, I almost exclusively use tealights, any more. Also, if I pop off the aluminum tealight cup and substitute one of the clear plastic ones I saved from used-up tealights, the candlelight through the glass candleholder isn't obscured by the aluminum cup, so that's what I've been doing. Freezing the plastic cup to pop out leftover wax, and popping in a new tealight before using again.

Lately tealights have been made out of whipped parafin, they have a styrofoamy texture, burn down the center in about a half hour, and often have wired wicks, which give off toxic fumes and flash into a larger flame at random, which is dangerous. I've looked everywhere for better quality--even Ikea--without success. I was down to about five tealights, though, and charged OH with bringing home a new bag, which he did.

Reader, they're smooth and solid poured parafin, with a pure cotton (no wires) wick--and they come in clear plastic cups! Pricey, but worth it. We're a hop-skip from the Canadian border, and these are made in Canada, where apparently, they do things right! So I sent His Nibs back to the store today to buy more--he said the display was half-gone since yesterday, and he brought me three more bags. Now, how long do you reckon 200 tealights is going to hold me?

I will retain a handful of the aluminum cups--in a metal candleholder, the plastic can get hot enough to melt, so in those cases I'll use the metal.

1. What is the meaning behind your LJ name?
2. What was your favourite childhood book or books?
3. What is your favourite recipe and why? Try to post the recipe if you have time.
4. What are the top 5 things on your wish list & have you done any of them?
5. What do you collect?

No, really, the relevant question would be, what do you *not* collect? I think the human spirit is a magpie--we all collect something, even if it's just phrases that seem to speak our personal belief at the time, and operating on the old decorating maxim that "three things make a collection."

Throughout my life, I've picked up rocks and pebbles wherever I've gone, and every time we went to the beach, we'd bring back a bucket of shells. I had a basket on a living room end table of fist-sized rocks, some mailed from Canadian riverbeds by a friend, more carried through customs by a visitor from England, flint geodes from where she lived, and sea-tumbled ones from the foot of a ruined Scottish castle, all piled together in the basket with river-washed granite chunks from hikes at Linville Falls, Pilot Mountain, and Mt. Mitchell, in NC. There was another basket of broken shells--whelks with their inner curls and spirals exposed, thick clamshells pitted and bleached by long exposure, delicate purple-patterned butterfly scallop shells, olives, shark's eyes, and sand dollars, tumbled into the basket as if by a random wave.

And then there were the baskets, accumulated over decades, all sorts of shapes, of willow and split oak and seagrass, from Romania, China, Guatemala, Appalachia, full of rocks, shells, skeins of colored wool, magazines, cat toys, or lined with a doll quilt as a bed for teddy bears.

My mom kept my childhood dolls, and the clothes she had made for them, and I added a few, even a designer doll, or two. They brought me pleasure, but it wasn't painful to let them go, when a friend offered to sell them and split the profit.

My son bought me a teddy bear with his own money when he was nine. I started casually researching bears, and a decade later, I had a second job to pay for my aquisitions. I collected Steiff and Hermann, Merrythought and Dean's, all new, or secondary market, all made as toys. Steiff edged into the collector market, and I found a few of those irresistable--some of mine were editions limited to 2600, or 2400, or 750. I ordered a couple of small bears from a family-owned toyshop in Wales--they had discontinued one line, but they broke out the pattern and made one just for me. I rescued a few unfortunates, repaired some veterans, learned to clean and restore stuffed animals and cloth dolls, along with the textile repair I was already learning. My family tolerated the vignettes I staged throughout the house with bears and doll furniture and toys, used--and often suggested--the names given to each doll and bear.

Eventually, curating the collection took more time and was more work than was rewarded by the pleasure it gave me, and I culled the collection and gave the ones I wasn't keeping to another friend to sell on ebay, and split the profit. I had little trouble letting go--I only regretted losing two, and she sent those back to me. I have them, still.

I actively resist collecting, these days, it's such a compulsion for me. When I started journaling, I used loose pages and bound them myself, unwilling to spend money on blank books. *That* didn't last long. Before I knew it, I had a whole shelf of blank journals, gorgeously bound books with quality paper that would stand up to fountain pen ink.

Which I have had to stop accumulating, as well, restricting myself these days to sample vials offered by Goulet Pens and other sellers. Somehow I amassed more fountain pens than I could ever keep inked and in use, both new and vintage ones--some that need expensive repair. I am teetering on the edge of selling off at least some of my pens.

And then there are the tarot decks, the bags I made to store them, the boxes I found to keep them in, and the stationery sets that came in some of those boxes.

Resist as I might, I am at heart a magpie, or perhaps a squirrel, driven to collect, even when what I have isn't useful to me, not even as a sense of pleasure in ownership. I fight the impulse, every day.

Took the hoosband out for his belated birthday dinner, to the buffet restaurant he likes. I was smrt, taking only a bite of things that interested me. I learned at south'ren church homecoming potlucks, I did. SO MUCH food, and all of it good, and if you take the helpings that you really want, you'll never get through all of them. So, bites. And then if you have room, you can go back and get more.

So, the food was really good. I steered clear of tomato and pasta and breads--though I did sneak a bite of cheese biscuit--worth it! But you know, my heart belongs to the dessert buffet. They have a chocolate fountain! To some of you that may be a ho-hum thing, but for me, my inner eight year old is turning cartwheels, because Chocolate! Fountain! There were chunks of fruit, and marshmallows, and little coconut balls to spear on long skewers to dip into the fountain, and the chocolate was really good! The cake and pie was already cut and plated in very small servings, which is such a thoughtful idea for presentation.There was fudge, and brownies, and german chocolate cake, and devils food with chocolate ganache and a cherry on top. And coconut cream pie, and apple, and blueberry pie, and carrot cake, and the ubiquitous soft serve ice cream.

So I had my dinner, very sensible, lean protein and veg. And then I had a marshmallow, and a coconut ball dipped in chocolate. A small square of fudge, which didn't thrill me so I skipped all but the first nibble, and a brownie, which was fabulous. I love coconut cream pie when it's done well--this wasn't, so I didn't finish it. But the devils food cake was amazing. And then, I stopped.

Because I'm a grownup like that. But also, because I had a good dinner, and amazing dessert, and I had enough. So, yay me!

The OH? Oh, he had a little bit of everything going, including potatoes and pasta and steak and ribs. Mr. Protein Man, he is. And right now, after the drive home? He's snoring gently in the recliner. Happy Birthday, babe.

So, the hoosband is making chicken curry for himself, and it's scenting the whole house. I'm not especially fond of the scent of curry, though the exhaust fan is dealing, mostly, at least to the point it's bearable. I like eating curry a lot more than smelling it. Unfortunately, it has potatoes, which are nightshades, and along with tomatoes and peppers, I can't eat them. Well, I can, but I'd pay for it for days after. Not worth it.

So, I'm having a spinach and mushroom omelette, with every cheese we have in the house. Except... *Somebody* left this container of roasted almonds by my chair, and now *someone* seems to have eaten, um, quite a lot of them, one after the other. Now, who on earth let that happen, I wonder?