Get out your tiara…wait no! It’s not that day. It is Western Monarch Day. It is a day to celebrate the Western Monarch butterfly. It travels from place to place but this day specifically we give thanks for their return to the central California coast. Why is this so important? It is important to watch and make sure that they do return. The monarch butterfly is facing a terrific decline in numbers. Many conservation groups are calling for it to be protected as an endangered species and claim that the number of declines could be as high as 90%!
The Monarch butterfly is a stunning mix of grace and beauty. With rich tones of gold, red, yellow and orange they fly across the landscape and take over the job of pollination. They somehow know when it is time to move. Their migration can be tracked from north and east to south and west, and then back again. Amazingly each way of the migration takes four generations! Can you imagine? Taking into account how much they pollinate, and the fact that their migration takes such a toll on their population it is imperative to understand what their decline really means. Can you picture the toll when I say the decline of Monarch population is near 90%? Let me share a visual with you. Let’s talk people instead of insects. If we were to make a comparison, the loss to the butterfly would be as if all the people in the United States of America died except for those in Ohio and Florida. Stunning isn’t it?
With that picture in mind, can you now see why there is a Western Monarch Day? A day to bring awareness to this frightening decline? A day to find a way to make a difference!
Did you know that if we all took a few simple actions we could help to save the Western Monarch Butterfly? Currently, three conservation groups are working to get endangered status and protection for this creature, but is it enough? No. It isn’t. So what can I do you ask? Great question! One way is to share a little bit of your yard with them. The main plant that they need is milkweed. This plant is critical to their survival along the migration routes that they take. It provides nectar as well as the fact that it is the only plant in which the Monarch butterfly can lay their eggs in. In the Midwest of the United States of America, this plant is quickly disappearing as more and more land is being used for farming. If you go to Free Milkweed Seeds & contributions for Live Monarch Foundation- Get your milkweed seeds for the Monarch Migration you can help by planting these free seeds. Give the butterflies a rest in your garden and you can help to ensure their continued well – being. When they come to feast and lay their eggs, you will be able to help document their numbers if you choose. But better yet you can enjoy their beauty knowing you have helped them!
On a personal level, once abundant, I believe I saw my last monarch flying around my garden TWO summers ago. I fear that their population is very endangered. As a group, perhaps we can pay attention to whether we see passing monarchs in our area. They say it's a lack of milk weed, their food source. I never saw milk weed seeds for sale or I would have planted them here. I went to the link above, they offer the seeds for free but also for a contribution. 
Word of the Day
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| Definition: | (noun) The capacity or activity of a tutor; instruction or teaching. | ||
| Synonyms: | tuition | ||
| Usage: | Michael's crowning achievement, under Daughtry's tutelage, in the first days in the stateroom, was to learn to count up to five. | ||
Idiom of the Day
be a huckleberry above a persimmon— dated To be better than average among similar things. Primarily heard in US. |
History
United Artists Film Studio Is Founded (1919)
In 1919, four of the leading figures in Hollywood—Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks—decided to form their own film studio to better control their own work. Though initially successful, United Artists foundered as films became more expensive to produce. It was taken over in the 1950s and began to thrive again until the 80s, when it was bought by the studio MGM.
Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron (1934)
Aaron was the first US baseball player to hit more career home runs than Babe Ruth. After playing briefly in the Negro leagues and then in the minor leagues, Aaron moved up to the majors as an outfielder with the Milwaukee—later Atlanta—Braves in 1954 and was National League MVP in 1957. Upon breaking Ruth's record in 1974, he was besieged by the media and badgered by racist letter-writers, and retired just two years later.
Roger Williams Day
Roger Williams was the founder of the American Baptist Church. Born in Wales, he arrived in the Massachusetts colony on this day in 1631 and soon found himself in profound disagreement with the local Puritans. He fled south to what is now called Providence and founded the Rhode Island colony. Under his leadership, the people of Rhode Island were the first to establish a Baptist congregation on American soil (in 1638) and the first to build a community based on this principle of religious liberty. |
Scientists Create a New Kind of Matter: Time Crystals
| Crystals are structures in which a pattern of atoms or molecules repeats in space. Now, two teams of researchers have figured out that crystals' repeating patterns can also exist through time. |
Scientists Create A New Kind Of Matter: Time Crystals
1846 - "The Oregon Spectator", based in Oregon City, became the first newspaper published on the Pacific coast.
1861 - Samuel Goodale patented the moving picture peep show machine.
1924 - The BBC time signals, or "pips", from Greenwich Observatory were heard for the first time. They are broadcast every hour.
1931 - Maxine Dunlap became the first woman licensed as a glider pilot.
1952 - In New York City, four signs were installed at 44th Street and Broadway in Times Square that told pedestrians "don't walk."
1953 - The Walt Disney’s film "Peter Pan" opened at the Roxy Theatre in New York City.
1972 - Bob Douglas became the first black man elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA.
2014 - Archaeologists decrypt the 13th C Viking jotunvillur runic code
READERS INFO
COLORFUL FUN FACTS!
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.
Cats have over 100 vocal sounds; dogs only have 10.
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up.
Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.
Johnny Appleseed planted apples so that people could use apple cider to make alcohol.
Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day
Bees have 5 eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a bee’s head and 2 larger ones in front.
Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married their first cousins
Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.
In Utah, it is illegal to swear in front of a dead person.
A scholar who studies the Marquis de Sade is called a Sadian not a Sadist.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
The people of France eat more cheese than any other country in the world.
In Baltimore USA it is illegal to wash or scrub a sink regardless of how dirty it is.
Beauty Revealed is an an 1828 self-portrait by Sarah Goodridge (1788–1853), painted in miniature with watercolors on a piece of ivory. Depicting the artist's bared breasts surrounded by pale cloth, the 6.7-by-8-centimetre (2.6 by 3.1 in) painting was gifted to statesman Daniel Webster, who was a frequent subject and possibly a lover, following the death of his wife.
THIS HUNGARIAN FISHING LAKE LOOKS
FROZEN IN TIME
Situated within a nature preserve just outside of a 2,500 person town called Sződliget; you will find a tiny fishing lake that was originally established as a sport fishing lake in 1949
knit - VALENTINE'S DAY
thanks, Rae
knit
thanks, Leah
knit
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mock-cable starfish hat pattern by Fruitcake Knits
Gauge 20 stitches and 36 rows = 4 inches in garter stitch
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knit
thanks, Helen
kriskrafter
U.S. Size 9 (5.5mm) needles
Worsted weight yarn (use 2 strands of worsted held tog.)
Sole: 114(120, 130,140) yds
Slipper body: 124(136, 142, 158) yds
Mens Sizes:
Sm (8-9), M (9.5-10.5), Lg (11-12), XL (13)
For women's sizes see here:
http://auntekristy.blogspot.com/2016/09/better-dorm-boots-free-knitting-pattern.html
Gauge: 14 sts = 4” in Stockinette (w strands held double)
Abbreviations:
k = knitp = purl
yo = yarn over sl-1 = slip one
PSSO = pass slipped stitch over
p2tog = purl 2 together
k2tog = knit 2 together
ssk = slip, slip, knit (see how to perform one of these descreases if you don't know, google it)
WS = wrong side
RS = right side
PM = place marker
Rep = repeat
DIRECTIONS:
Starting with Sole: Using sole color, Cast on 52(55, 57, 59) sts using a long-tail method and with 2 strands held together.
Row 1: Knit.
Row 2: K1, yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k2(3,3,3), yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k1. [56(59,61,63) sts]
Row 3 and all odd rows: Knit. *knit the yo’s through the back of the loop.
Row 4: K2, yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k4(5,5,5), yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k2. [60(63,65,67)sts]
Row 6: K3, yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k6(7,7,7), yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k3. [64(67,69,71)sts]
Row 8: K4, yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k8(9,9,9), yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k4. [68(71,73,75) sts]
Row 10: K5, yo, K24(25,26,27), yo, k10(11,11,11), yo, k24(25,26,27), yo, k5. [72(75,77,79)sts]
Row 12: Size Sm, ONLY: K6, yo, k(24), yo, k6, yo, k6, yo, (k24), yo, k6. [77 sts]
Row 12: Size M O
Row 12 Size XL: K39, yo, k40. [80 sts]
Row 13: Knit (knit any yo's through the back of the loop)
Row 12: Size Sm, ONLY: K6, yo, k(24), yo, k6, yo, k6, yo, (k24), yo, k6. [77 sts]
Row 12: Size M O
NLY: K6, yo, k32, yo, k31, yo, k6. [78 sts]
Row 12 Size L ONLY: K6, yo, k to last 6 sts, yo, k6. [79 sts]Row 12 Size XL: K39, yo, k40. [80 sts]
Row 13: Knit (knit any yo's through the back of the loop)
FOOT
Change color now if making foot different color than sole.
Row 1. Knit
Row 2: (WS) P34 (34,34,34,), PM, p9(10,11,12), PM, p34(34,34,34,).
Row 3: K27(27,27,27), ssk 2x, k3tog, k9(10,11,12), sl1, k2tog, psso, k2tog 2x, k27(27,27,27). [69(70,71,72) sts)
Change color now if making foot different color than sole.
Row 1. Knit
Row 2: (WS) P34 (34,34,34,), PM, p9(10,11,12), PM, p34(34,34,34,).
Row 3: K27(27,27,27), ssk 2x, k3tog, k9(10,11,12), sl1, k2tog, psso, k2tog 2x, k27(27,27,27). [69(70,71,72) sts)
Row 4: Purl
Row 5: K23(23,23,23), ssk 2x, k3tog, k9(10,11,12), sl1, k2tog, psso, k2tog 2x, k23(23,23,23). [61(62,63,64)sts]
Row 6: Purl
Row 6: Purl
Row 7: K35(36,37,38), ssk,
turn. [60(61,62,63) sts]
Row 8: Sl-1, p9(10,11,12), p2tog, turn. [59(60,61,62) sts]
Row 9: Sl-1, k9(10,11,12), ssk, turn. [58(59,60,61) sts]
Row 10: Sl-1, p9(10,11,12), p2tog, turn. [57(58,59,60) sts]
Row 8: Sl-1, p9(10,11,12), p2tog, turn. [59(60,61,62) sts]
Row 9: Sl-1, k9(10,11,12), ssk, turn. [58(59,60,61) sts]
Row 10: Sl-1, p9(10,11,12), p2tog, turn. [57(58,59,60) sts]
Rows 11-26: Repeat rows 9 and 10. [41(42,43,44) sts]
Row 27: (RS) Sl-1, k9(10,11,12), ssk, DON’T TURN, k14(14,14,14). [40(41,42,43) sts]
Row 28: P24(25,26,27), p2tog, p14(14,14,14). [39(40,41,42) sts]
Row 29: Size S/M ONLY: (Removing markers as you come to them) Knit. Now proceed to row 32.
Row 29: Size L/XL ONLY: (Removing markers as you come to them) Knit.
Row 30: Size L/XL ONLY: Purl
Row 31: Size L/XL ONLY: Knit
Row 29: Size L/XL ONLY: (Removing markers as you come to them) Knit.
Row 30: Size L/XL ONLY: Purl
Row 31: Size L/XL ONLY: Knit
Row 32: P1, p2tog, p2tog, p across to last 5 sts, p2tog, p2tog, p1. [35(36,37,38) sts]
Row 33: Knit
Row 34: Purl
Rows 35-36: Rep rows 33 and 34 once more.
----------------------------------------------------------
RIBBED CUFF
Row 37: Sizes S/L ONLY: [k1,p1] 8(-,8,-)x more, k2tog, p1, [k1,p1] to end. [34(-,36,-) sts]
Row 37: Size M/XL ONLY: [k1, p1] to end.
Rows 38-45: Work 8 rows of 1x1 rib.
Row 33: Knit
Row 34: Purl
Rows 35-36: Rep rows 33 and 34 once more.
----------------------------------------------------------
RIBBED CUFF
Row 37: Sizes S/L ONLY: [k1,p1] 8(-,8,-)x more, k2tog, p1, [k1,p1] to end. [34(-,36,-) sts]
Row 37: Size M/XL ONLY: [k1, p1] to end.
Rows 38-45: Work 8 rows of 1x1 rib.
Bind off loosely.
Sew seam using single strand of matching color(s). I turn the slipper inside out and seam using a simple whip stitch. Take care to make your stitches small and close together for best results.
Weave in any loose ends.
Sew seam using single strand of matching color(s). I turn the slipper inside out and seam using a simple whip stitch. Take care to make your stitches small and close together for best results.
Weave in any loose ends.
P.S. I spray the bottoms with the spray version on Plasti-dip to make my soles non-skid.
crochet - VALENTINE'S DAY
crochet
thanks, Mindy
crochet, newborn - 3 mths
crochet
thanks, Rosa
thanks, Phyllis
DROUGHT EXCLUDER
annabooshouse
(Patterns are in UK terminology- for US, change 'dc' to 'sc')
Pattern
You'll need:
approx. 1280g / 256m of tshirt yarn (about a third of this is colour A, two-thirds, colour B)
12mm hook
approx. 500g cushion stuffing
From Rnd 1, the draught excluder is made in a continuous round of stitches, but you don't need to bother with a stitch-marker.
Stuff as you go.
In colour A, chain 20, join with a sl st to first ch.
Round 1: 1ch (doesn't count as a st), 1dc in each st around.
Rnds 2 - 18: 1cdc in each st around.
Flatten the beginning end and slip stitch the two sides closed.
Rnds 19 - 20: change to yarn B, 1cdc in each st around.
Rnds 21: change to yarn A, 1cdc in each st around.
Rnds 22 - 67*: change to yarn B, 1cdc in each st around.
*or until desired length reached - mine needed to be 90 cms .
To make up.
Finish stuffing and slip stitch the other end closed.
Fasten off and push the ends inside.
Cauliflower Pizza Dough - 2 ingredients
rachaelrayshow
Ingredients
1 pound cauliflower florets
2 eggs
Preparation
Preheat oven to 400°F.
In a food processor, process cauliflower until finely chopped.
In a microwave-safe bowl, cook cauliflower for five minutes or until tender. Place cauliflower in a towel, and squeeze out excess water so it is completely dry.
In a bowl, mix egg and cauliflower until well-combined.
On a parchment-lined baking sheet, spread cauliflower dough out until it resembles a pizza round. Bake for 40 minutes.
Top however you want and bake in a 450°F oven for 7 minutes or until cheese and toppings have baked.
CROCKPOT RECIPE
SWEETS
thanks, Joanne
City Buildings Doodle
CRAFTS
thanks, Kathy
PUZZLE
Superb Starling Grubs Jigsaw Puzzle
QUOTE
CLEVER
Yarn Feathers
Make these beautiful yarn feathers with this tutorial at Infarrantly Creative.
thanks, Shelley
Letter of Recommendation: Hot-Water Bottles
nytimes
A dowdy, old-timey cure-all that still has its charms.
My mother started with hot-water bottles in her 20s after moving to Florida. A migraineur, she had long relied on ice bags, but in Orlando she found succor in the sun’s intense rays, letting them blast her brow and temples, and realized that heat did much more for the pain. She could simulate that. She could bring the sun to bed in a darkened room, and did with hot-water bottles, those red rubber vessels that look as if they just wobbled out of a Stefan Zweig novel: Old World but in a way that seems silly and harmless. They became a fixture in our household, the sole reason we ran the microwave; they traveled everywhere with us, always among our suitcases’ earliest inductees.
Children can appreciate the thing their mother uses to make herself feel better, and in this regard I was no different, though I expanded her definition of the hot-water bottle’s usefulness. I have held onto generations of them not just for the headaches I inherited but for bellyaches, cramps, the cold, a cold, the side effects of antimalarial pills, tennis elbow. I’ve found that a hot-water bottle excels at palliating less-specific aches, ones that don’t answer to “Where does it hurt?” Try one for heartbreak, uneven work-life balance, self-doubt and elections. They will even serve after you take in a regrettable amount of limoncello, when you have to place an emergency order for one through the Postmates app, along with saltine crackers and ginger ale. I feel about hot-water bottles the way Sylvia Plath felt about baths: There must be quite a few things they won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
As a child, I assumed everyone used them just as my family did, until my worldview was shattered at a sleepover. Suffering from nothing more serious than a bit of social anxiety, I asked for a hot-water bottle. From the look on the officiating mom’s face, I suddenly understood that they were not, in fact, stocked in everybody’s linen closet. This is a travesty.
Much of human history has been an effort to maintain 98.6, but it wasn’t until the 1840s, with the invention of vulcanized rubber, that the hot-water bottle even became a possibility. Before then, people warmed bricks and stones in the oven; others had earthenware, tin and copper canisters for water. By the early parts of last century, hot-water bottles were recommended for every home and hospital in Europe and North America.
Florence Nightingale used them personally and for her patients. (“Stone bottles are the best,” she wrote in a book on nursing, “or India rubber.”) Salvador Dalí once spotted one at Sigmund Freud’s home. Greta Garbo, upon seeing Katharine Hepburn’s, patted it. “Yes, I have one too,” she said. “Vot is wrong vid us?” In the 1960s, with electric blankets, better insulation and medicine, the bottles started to date.
Perhaps its healing properties are no longer held in such high esteem, but the device has retained a certain kitschy charm: a whoopee cushion with shoulder pads that acts as a to-go cup for thermal springs; a just-add-water delivery system for the most unfailing source of comfort of all, warmth. It is as easy as putting on the kettle — super easy, because mine is electric — then slowly tanking up, pouring about two liters of 160-degree water down the bottle’s throat. The process produces a smell like a balloon and a sound like a brook and is an at once undignified and ritualistic scene, as if a rubber chicken sneaked into a Japanese tea ceremony.
Last, screw in the stopper and make contact with the body. The bottle’s touch owes as much to its weight as to its temperature. The pressure bears down, spreading the heat creamily on the head, belly, back or feet, holding the masses of nerves totally rapt, making them forget what it was they were screaming about. You will find the bottle powerfully restorative, belying its status as an artifact too unsexy and unfashionable to be advertised.
The bottles sold at drugstores in the United States are mostly cheap plastic bladders, which stick to your skin like a leatherette car seat. I prefer my classic, all-rubber model, by the German company Sänger. It looks like a period piece and, in a sense, it is. Somewhere in a dense jungle, bowls fill up with a milky substance; that latex sap is air-dried, hardened, dyed and cast in the shape standardized at the turn of the last century.
To me, this lineage is yet another source of comfort. My bottle seems to have emerged from the past; not the real past, but an imagined past. It’s a fetishized time, like childhood, when your mother always held the answer and could minister the cure for whatever ailed you — and even if she really couldn’t, it’s nice to revisit that place anyway. The bottle cannot put everything right, after all. It is not exactly the Swiss Army knife you would bring to a deserted island, but it’s ideal for withdrawing to the couch, convalescing until such point that you feel a little, or a lot, better. Then you can get up and empty the bottle out — into your houseplants, if you like. The deal is as fair and rectangular as that.
In fact, so boringly decent are hot-water bottles that, in “Some Like It Hot,” (my second favorite film, The Wizard of Oz being my first!) Marilyn Monroe’s all-girl band got away with using them as cocktail shakers; the gag worked because their chaperone would never suspect it. This dowdiness makes them good fodder for insults too. Speaking of Henry Kissinger, Gay Talese once said that men like him “don’t go to bed with anything, except maybe a hot-water bottle.” A Parisian friend of mine once called them “sad sacks for sad sacks.” But that was before she picked one up for herself.
crochet: Crochet Hot Water Bottle Covers - Welcome to Butterfly Bright ~ Sherborne, Dorset
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