2024 Turkey: Rug Factory

 One of the things that the tour company we have used for all of our tours for the last four years does is make stops at "trusted partners".  Part of it is to display local traditions and crafts (like, for example, the coffee plantation in Costa Rica or the Icon Factory and Olive Farm in Greece).  I suspect there may also be some sort of "advantage" to the company to do this, or at least to its tour guides.  I do not really mind:  the stops have always been interesting, the pressure to purchase low, and it has really been a great way to see local practices and crafts.

In this case, it was a rug factory.

Traditional rugs being woven in wool, wool and silk, and silk.  Silk is obviously the finest, can be woven to the greatest detail, and takes the most time.

A loom with a partial and finished rug:

Part of the tour was demonstrating traditional rug making.  Pots for dyeing:

Dyed yarns:

Traditional herbals used for dyes:

Bobbins and silk rollers (and some random things I have no idea what they are):

The undyed silk:

Silk cocoons being soaked for unwinding:

If this works [I sure hope it does], it should be a video of a machine that de-cocoonizes (is that even a word) the cocoons into thread:

The finished pre-dyed product:

After the demonstration of course, comes the sales floor:

The rug below is the one we bought. Yes, it was probably more money than needed to be spent, but it just makes me happy.  (Interesting note: You can tell a traditionally woven rug versus a machine woven rug in that the color of the fibers will vary to the sight when brushed one way or the other).  And I am finding overall that I would rather buy one "larger ticket" item from a trip than many small ones, both from the "not leaving too much for my heirs to deal with" as well as the quality of the purchse.

This is that same carpet in the living room of our apartment.  Every day I see it - and I see it every day - it makes me happy.  Much like the icon I purchased in Greece, it is a daily reminder of a grand adventure.

05 November 2024

Today's post, happening as it is on the quadrennial festivities that occur this time every November, owes its premise to that wily poster and man-about-town Eaton Rapids Joe, who in his own post of yesterday noted the fact that, in the midst of "The Season", he was brought to Matthew Chapter Six, where he notes that Christ dealt with four different things:  fasting, performing acts of charity, and praying all in a manner to attract attention and praise rather than actually fast/be charitable/pray and our concern the wealth and planning for the future (he breaks into five sections; he is far better at this than I).

But the last portion of this chapter really came across to me this evening (the night before) beyond just the subjects of wealth and planning (after all, the Bible often speaks of such things):

"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:  they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For your heavenly father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.   Therefore do no worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." - Matthew 6: 25 - 34 (emphasis mine)

Yes, it is specific to worrying about food and clothing.  But taken more generally - and there are more general applications elsewhere - the message is plain:  we are to trust God, not worry about the outcome of things, especially things which are largely out of our control.

Pray?  Yes, of course.  But whatever the outcome, it will ultimately redound to God's glory.  Which is the real purpose we should always strive for.

Be Like A Tree

This upcoming weekend promises to be a big one in terms of things:  The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I are meeting at The Ranch and looking through things one last time.  I say "looking through things".  What I am (selfishly) hoping to get out of this is either a verification or retaining or get rid of things I have currently set aside for saving.

Moving as I have has been a very eye opening experience in any number of ways.  One of the biggest - and most surprising to me - has simply been my changing view of the things I own.

While most of my things are here with me, a few remain back in New Home - in this case among them, almost 30 years of journals (those, of course, are coming).  But things scattered about a largish home are very different from those same things in an apartment.  And it is not just the nature of the things filling up every space - they do not (although my bookshelves might argue otherwise).   It is the question of "do I use the things I have now?"

A simple example.

Prior to the move, I easily had 60 or more T-shirts of various types from sporting events and colleges and just "ones" that had been purchased for me.  I agonizingly let go of about 20 of them but consoled myself with the 40 or so that I kept.  Upon arrival at New Home 2.0, I discovered that closet space in an apartment is quite different than closet space in a house.  The T-shirts went from hanging in a closet to being carefully folded in a drawer.

An odd thing happened over the Summer.  Turns out that you can only wear one T-shirt at a time, and the T-shirts that make "the cut" are far less than the T-shirts in the drawer.

I am being fair with myself as - given the advent of "The Coldening" which I am reliably informed lasts from now until March or April - likely few of these will be worn. I will give myself another full Spring and Summer cycle.  But if they are not worn then, off they go to the donation pile.

I like to believe that other than books, I do not have a lot of "stuff".  But that is a bit of misnomer.  I have multiple training weapons for iaijutsu, a few random bladed weapons that caught my eye, and the sorted through kitsch that we all seem to get over time, the sort of thing that means a lot to me - but not necessarily to my heirs.

Sort of like the stuff at The Ranch.

Like the tree that Rumi speaks of above, I am trying to let things fall away instead of holding on to them, especially things that no longer mean once they once meant.  It hard - far harder than I anticipated.  And likely it is going to taking far longer than I anticipated. 

But maybe that is okay.  As long as I can slow the acquisition, I can hopefully reach a balanced state where I have what I need, perhaps what I even enjoy - but no more.  After all, trees have all the leaves they need, but not one more.

Fix Yourself

The Mists Of Autumn

 The Mists of Autumn
swirl among dying leaves
in morning silence.

A Recipe Book Of Memories

(An update on my Aunt:  Apparently she has two tumors, one in her duodenum and one in her pancreas.  The hope is that they are two separate cancers in their early stages instead of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer which has metastasized.  Thank you for your kind thoughts and prayers.)

This past weekend Nighean Bhan sent me a text:  Could I find Grandma's recipe for meatloaf in the church cookbook?

"Grandma's meatloaf recipe" is really my maternal grandmother's recipe (so really "Great Grandma's meatloaf recipe", I suppose).  It may something between 80 and 90 years old at this point or even older, a Depression-era recipe that was easy to make and used a minimum of ingredients.  It remains one of my personal comfort foods, a thing I associate with family dinners at home on cold nights.  It was always a treat when we had it.

Not even being conscious that we had such a recipe - I still picture all such recipes on recipe cards - I rifled through the collection of cookbooks on our shelves - a combination of "365 ways to prepare X", fancy specialized cookbooks, and the random sorts of cookbooks that show up over the course of a lifetime of children, food festivals, and random cuisines that catch your eye.  Sure enough, just as Nighean Bhan had said, there was the cookbook: "The Joy of Sharing:  Old Home Lutheran Church.

The cover was a hand drawn pictures likely drawn by someone in the congregation, the binding spiral bound, the whole thing put together by a fund raising organization.  The sections were organized into the typical sorts of recipes:  Appetizers, Soups/Salads, Sauces, Meats & Main Dishes, etc. etc.  "Meats and Main Dishes" sounded pretty promising.

Going to that section, I was initially annoyed by the fact that the recipes were all out of alphabetical order (and, there was not index).  So I started wandering through, scanning from page to page for something that said "Meat Loaf".

And then I started to look more closely. At the bottom of each recipe was a name.

I knew many of these names - they were mostly people that would have been in their 50's and 60's at the time this was published, about the generation of my parents.  Lots of them - mostly women - were faces that I could picture as soon as I saw them.  My second grade teacher was there, as was her aide.  At least two pastors and their wives.  The guy that lead my youth group.  Numerous church friends of my parents. 

Suddenly this was less of a recipe book and more of a time capsule to a place and people long ago.

Most of the folks in this cookbook are now passed on, like my parents, enjoying a far greater Feast in another place.  A few still linger here, faint remnants of my own life long ago.

Part of me wonders if they still make cookbooks like this or, like the church directories that we sat for pictures against beige backgrounds, they have passed out of common practice due to cost, technology, mobility and privacy concerns.  That is a bit of a pity, honestly:  yes, the recipes are not always adaptable to today (I have no idea what a "pretzel salad" is, but it sounds very much 1950's), but the memories and the comradery and the homeliness (in the best sense) that such things represent truly do seem like some of another age, the likes of which we will not see again.

Bonus Round:  The recipe:

Grandma's Meat Loaf

1 1/2 lbs ground meat

1 medium onion, chopped

1 1/4 tsp poultry seasoning

1 tsp salt

1 egg

3 slice bread, torn in pieces

Pepper to taste

Milk to moisten (canned milk, undiluted)

Mix together well.  Put in greased loaf pan and draw lines on the top, filling them with catsup.  Bake at 350 F for about 1 hours.  Meat loaf draws away from the pan when done.

Toirdhealbheach Beucail's Addendum:  Best served with new potatoes which have been sliced, put in a pan, had butter added over them with salt and pepper, and baked.  Add additional ketchup as needed.  Green items could appear as a side dish, but are not required.

The Collapse CLXVII: Ready?

19 September 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

The temperature had a sudden drop over the last two days.

This happens from time to time during the run up to Winter. It is a reminder that – while Winter is not quite here – it will soon be here with a vengeance. Nature’s gentle nudge, perhaps, that any business that needs to be taken care of should be attended to in rather short order.

In some ways, there is not much “business” left to attend to. All of the grain has been threshed that there is to thresh and this cold snap has put an end to any last lingering vegetables that were under the false illusion that they would make it to ripeness.

The beehives are girded up for Winter: feeders filled, access limiters in place, wrapped as they always are in hopes that anything is better than nothing (overheating here in Winter is not an issue). They, along with the quail, remain my biggest concerns, a non-replaceable asset if and when they finally die.

The inside of the Cabin has been reorganized for what feels like the 10th time since the start of Summer. Things were of course ferried over from Pompeia Paulina’s house, but even more things seem to have appeared in the last few days: jars of canned vegetables I have never seen before, a rather large collection of blankets, a stack of puzzles.

I started to ask but then got the raised eyebrow. I carefully found something else to concentrate on.

The stove is in almost constant use at this point – even more so during the last few days. I am re-evaluating whether in the depths of the incoming Winter we just plan to sleep on the futon that serves as our couch – yes, the bedroom is literally right around the door from the stove, but “right around” is not the same as “in the same room of”.

With the stove, of course, comes the wood. It does not use much, but even “not much wood” is going to be hard to come by this time. With deadfall and what was left from last year, we probably have enough to make it through to more temperate conditions. Probably. But there will likely still be expeditions every day as I am able to find more wood.

I think we are as prepared as we can be, Lucilius. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca