DIY -- 2015

So I bragged last year about how much money I saved in one quarter of a year and you're all yeah, yeah, I wanna do that.

First, you need storage space.  You need storage for flour and yeast and your mixing bowls and baking pans and, if you use one, your breadmaker, before you can save that $1-3 per loaf of bread.
Pickles take up to a month to cure, depending on what it is.   You need storage space for the empty jars, for the full jars, for the canner if you use one, for the pickling spices, sugar and vinegar.  That's why DIY is so difficult for people living in those tiny apartments being built nowadays.

Second, you need to plan.  This is tiring work and for jellies and jams, split-second timing.  If you have to drive 100 miles to get to the pick-your-own place, you will be too tired when you get home to do the work.  By the way, that drive just ate up all your savings.

Third, you need to clean.  You cannot leave your tools dirty when you're done because they will only be harder to clean the next day.  Bread dough will crust on the bowl, jelly leftovers will jell in the pot.  You need energy not only to do the preserving, but also to do the cleanup.  That includes the floor.  I guarantee stuff will get on the floor.

But most important of all, you have to follow instructions.  You must make sure that your dill pickles are under the brine or they will rot.  That's another guarantee, and it means you just wasted a bunch of money.  You must turn the heat down on your jelly at the right time to get it to come out to the right consistency, otherwise you wasted your money.  You have to measure ingredients correctly when you corn your own beef otherwise it doesn't corn right or it's not appetizing.  You must use a pressure-canner, not a hot-water canner, with green beans and wax beans, because you will risk botulism.  We've mostly forgotten about that except as a cosmetic treatment, but it can be deadly especially in children who can't or don't tell you when they are experiencing symptoms.  You must get your pressure canner tested for reaching the right pressure, or you risk botulism anyway.

I was reminded of these issues while watching Frontier House on Youtube.  Some people absolutely failed to realize that their success depended on taking things seriously.  They hung onto their old bad habits, translated to the frontier. 

DIY gives you a terrific sense of empowerment, as well as creativity and the savings.  But you have to take the instructions seriously; they come from generations of experience, including failures and deaths.  If your head is in a place where you will take the warnings seriously, go for it.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- listening

The blackbirds are back.
They were holding congress yesterday morning in the tall trees near me.
I heard them talking.
I'm sure they were saying "this isn't what we expected at all."
Everything was coated with ice.
And I couldn't put down de-icer in some places because the birds pick up dropsies there from the feeder.
Luckily the mail carrier uses the walk on the opposite side of my house.
It was clear but I put down more pellets to make it obvious the walk had been treated.
But at least it wasn't snow.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Knitting -- wrist warmers plus

A well-known clothing retailer sells a pair of high-tech wrist warmers for $20.
They're for people out running or working.
You need to keep your wrists warm inside; you can lower the temps in your house a couple of degrees and still feel warm if you keep your wrists warm.
In Victorian times, women used to knit or crochet something called muffetees for this purpose.

Let's knit some wrist warmers and learn to cable stitch at the same time.
Use waste yarn for this first set and then you can buy some yarn for a set you can wear in public.
100 yards of yarn ought to make you two wrist warmers.
You need double pointed needles the right gauge for your yarn.
If your yarn is worsted, get a set of at least 4 double-point needles in U.S. size 5 to 7.  (You already have these if you've been knitting socks.)
You also need cable needles.  They look like a double point needle with a camel back in the middle.
They often come in packs of three of three different sizes.

Now remember that the gauge on worsted yarn is going to be about 5 stitches per inch.
My wrists are 7 1/2 inches around; I need to cast on 36 stitches at least.
The number of stitches you cast on have to be divisible by 4.
Now move 1/4 of those stitches onto two of the other DP needles; I end up with 9, 9, and 18 on 3 DP needles.
Now use the 4th DP needle to knit the first stitch (it has the tail of the original slip knot), making sure that the chain of stitches is not twisted.
Now work k2/p2 rib to the end of the stitches on that DP needle.
Recycle the needle you just cleared off, using it to work rib with the stitches on the next needle, and so on.
When you have done at least 4 rounds of k2/p2 rib, knit one round.
When you get to the first stitch again, run TWO stitches onto the cable needle that is the right size for your yarn.  Usually the largest of the 3 is OK for worsted yarn.
Let the cable needle lie on your side of the knitting; this will give the cables a left-twist.
Knit the next 2 stitches (they were purled in the rib).
Now run the cable needle through the stitches that are on it so you can knit from the opposite end of the cable needle.
Knit the stitches from the cable needle back onto your DP needle.  You have just done your first twist.
Knit 4 stitches, then do another twist.
Knit around to the first twist.
Knit 4-5 rounds.
Do another twist round and make sure you are DIRECTLY above the twists that you did before.
Knit 4-5 rounds.
Do another twist round.
Knit one round.
Do at least 4 rounds of k2/p2 rib.
Bind off.

Do this all again and you have a pair of wrist warmers.  Put them on, pull the cuffs of your sweater or long-sleeved blouse over them, and see how much toastier your arms feel.

If you want to use cabling, there are a couple of things to remember.
1.  Do a knit row above your rib.
2.  Do a twist row above that.  This will keep the bottom of the cable stable.
3.  Plan your knit rounds so that you do one more twist before your shoulder seams, and a knit round above that.  Same reason as (2).
4.  Don't do more than six knit rounds between twists.  Otherwise the cable sort of seems to unravel.

You can find patterns online and in books that do fantastic things with cables, such as interlace them or create nests for bobbles. 
Cable is a neat thing to learn because it is crucial to those beautiful aran and fisherman sweater patterns from the British Isles.
You can also put cables on your hand-knit socks, with or without intervening ribs.

Try it.  Work slowly and patiently so you don't drop the cable stitches.  Then get adventurous.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Stop it

A wonderful man died this weekend, Leonard Nimoy, known to generations as Mr. Spock.
He knew what killed him and campaigned until the end to keep it from killing others.
If you are using tobacco, STOP.
Now.
If you are using e-cigs, STOP.
Now.
It took 80 years to catch the nicotine pushers at their lies and make them pay the people they sickened and the families of the millions of people murdered by their products.
We have an opportunity now to save millions of lives.
Stop e-cigs.
Their manufacturers are nicotine pushers.
We don't know everything they are putting into their drugs.
Any more than we know everything a heroin dealer puts in his drugs.
But we do know that e-cigs deliver poisons along with the nicotine.
Stop them.
Stop yourself.
No tobacco.
No e-cigs.
Not now.
Not ever.
Stop it.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- women as persons

We’re working on the laws in Deuteronomy 22:13-29.  These laws allow a groom to charge his bride with adultery if he thinks she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night, a charge subject to all the same due process rules as murder.  But if it’s his fault, and her father doesn’t forbid it, he has to marry her and can’t divorce her.

But the girl isn’t stuck in the marriage.  A long time ago I pointed out “the law of daughters,” which says that a man who takes more than one wife has to allow all of them proper food, clothing, and their conjugal rights.

If the husband hates the wife he was forced to marry and refuses her conjugal rights, she can get somebody to go to court for her, and the court can force the husband to agree to a divorce.  It’s his fault, and the money he put down for her marriage contract goes to her.  Mishnah prescribes the situations in which she can demand this divorce.  For example, if he is in logistics and goes with his caravans to far-away cities, she may have to put up with only a couple of nights a year with him.

If he refuses to clothe and feed her, there’s another situation.  Mishnah describes the minimum support a poor man has to give his wife, and then says “and it’s all according to his wealth.”  It reflects badly on a man if he has a median income but his wife has to dress like a poor woman because he won’t pay for more.  What’s more, whatever she does around the house, she can use for income.  In those days, women were responsible for turning the family wool into fabric.  She was allowed to sell this.  If her husband failed to support her, she kept the money.

Mishnah also made the husband responsible for paying for the wife’s burial, for redeeming her if she is kidnapped, and for paying medical bills when she is sick or after childbirth.

Two other situations could lead to divorce.  If a husband took a performance oath not to fulfill his responsibilities, and the court tried to annul the oath but he wouldn’t co-operate, they could force him to divorce her.

Finally, if the husband refused to let his wife go to weddings and funerals, he turned his wife into a social outcast.  His only justification was if he could name people who frequented the house who had bad reputations or even were known criminals.  If he couldn’t do that, the court could force him to agree to a divorce, and he had to pay her the money put down with the marriage contract.

In the west women became non-persons upon marriage.  It was extremely difficult to get a divorce, no matter what the situation.  Usually she had to prove both ill treatment and abandonment, while the husband only had to prove adultery to divorce his wife.  What’s more, the husband could and sometimes would take entire possession of the wife’s property at and after marriage, waste it and leave her to starve.  She couldn’t do a thing about it, except possibly run away, and he could sue to make her come back, because the man had the conjugal rights and he could sue to enforce them.
For next week study Leviticus 21:7 and 9, 13 and 14, because I will set aside your objections based on verse 9.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:20

Genesis 2:20

 

כ וַיִּקְרָא הָאָדָם שֵׁמוֹת לְכָל־הַבְּהֵמָה וּלְעוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּלְכֹל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה וּלְאָדָם לֹא־מָצָא עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ:

 

Transliteration: va-yiqra ha-adam shemot l-khal-ha-b’hemah u-l’of ha-shamaim u-l’khol chayat ha-sadeh u-l’adam lo-matsa ezer k’negdo.

Translation:    The man gave names to all the domestic animals and the flyer of the sky and all the wild animals but no help opposite him did he find for the man.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

מָצָא

He found

 

See lesson 56 on Genesis 2:10 for the conjugation of yatsa.  Matsa is identical, except in the future/aorist, because yatsa has that yod at the start which frequently disappears in the future, while matsa has a mem which never disappears.  So I’m only going to give you the future/aorist of matsa.

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֶמְצָא	נִמְצָא	First
תִּמְצָא	תִּמְצָאוּ	Second/masculine
תִּמְצְאִי	תִּמְצֶאנָה	Second/feminine
יִמְצָא	יִמְצְאוּ	Third/masculine
תִּמְצָא	תְּמְצֶאנָה	Third/feminine

 

Notice that this is NOT the same word as matso, the unleavened bread of Passover.  Matso ends with a heh, not an alef.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- "You knew all along"

We’re working on the laws in Deuteronomy 22:13-29.  These laws allow a groom to charge his bride with adultery if he thinks she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night, a charge subject to all the same due process rules as murder. 

The charge falls to the ground without witnesses, or if the judges can’t vote a supermajority to convict.

The girl could raise three defenses: migo, admitting the facts but with an explanation of accident.  She could also say “you did it”; according to some local customs, the groom was secluded with the bride before the wedding ceremony.

The third defense is this.  If the girl is put on trial for adultery, and convicted, the court has the option of declaring a delay in the execution to bring in witnesses.  This actually happened once to somebody accused of trying to convert Jews to paganism.  He got 40 days in jail while the court waited for these witnesses. 

During this period messengers go out announcing the criminal’s name, crime, verdict, and witnesses.  Anybody who knows of exonerating testimony is expected to show up and prove that the witnesses were false.  The court can declare a delay as long as through the entire cycle of three pilgrimage festivals; a crime that took place the day after Sukkot ends could potentially result in a delay through the next Sukkot.

Because of arguments over the ketubbah, and the hardship and expense of travel in those days, the groom might have been in town between the signing of the contract and the wedding ceremony, and he would have known about his fiancee’s transgressions through gossip in the town. If the ketubbah was signed early, he might have heard about the adultery from the messengers who were looking for witnesses.  He went through with the marriage anyway.   The girl’s defense is “You knew what I was and you married me anyway.”

This also is the background for the verses saying that the man can never divorce her.  If he was the one who took her virginity, either in the city or in the town, he has to marry her unless her father absolutely forbids it.  Then he can never divorce her. 

Which brings up another issue that separates Jewish family law from western family law over the last, oh, 25 centuries.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved