So.  I have this standing collar, it's featured on my web site.  I took it out a month or so ago, and decided the lace around the edge looked horrifically plastic and modern, and switched it out for some vintage lace I have.  Then I got a mad idea and dug out some reproduction lace I got years ago for Bob, and actually went ahead and made him a lace-edged falling band and matching cuffs.

So far, so good.  While Bob's falling band does not need starch, his cuffs, my cuffs, and my standing collar all did, and Niagara Spray Starch just wasn't going to cut it.  While perusing Patterns of Fashion 4, I had noticed there was a bit in the back about starching ruffs and such with rice starch, so I went back and looked at it, and then ran into a bit of a problem; one of the steps, after painting on the dissolved rice starch, was to bake the ruff in the oven.  The book says that the starch will not cook unless you do this, and the iron won't work.

I don't know about you, but baking my precious lace in a regular old oven, the type most of us have, no matter how clean, did not seem like a fabulous or easy idea to me.  I dithered, I tried baking the dissolved starch with an iron (indeed, it does not work), and I dithered some more.  Then I realized, by mistakenly putting the starch in the microwave to heat it up, that potato (and rice, but I was using potato) starch cooks if you heat it.  If your ratio of starch to water is too high, you will end up with jelly.  If, however, you work with a ratio of approximately 1/4 cup starch to 2 cups of boiling water, you will get something you can work with.  Yes, you're going to get lumps and lose a bit of starch, but the important thing is you don't have to bake your lace in the oven to make it work.

For the oven-shy among us, this seems like a good thing.

So, here's what you start with:

( Instructions and pictures! )

Actually, you're going to get two posts, because all the things that have been going on deserve a mention (mostly my ever-abundant wildlife), and I want to to the "how-to" post and tag it so people don't have to wade through a bunch of "wildlife" tags to find it.

First, the wildlife:


( animals! pictures! )

I'm swearing to myself that I'll sit down and write an actual post before I leave for Double Wars, but I've been running errands all morning, and I'm exhausted.

It looks like I have Hashimoto's Hypothyroidism (my antibodies are positive), but since my hormone levels are still within the normal range, they'll check on me in 6 months.  Personally, I'd prefer to see if a little bit of hormone replacement will stop my hair falling out and my skin doing a creditable imitation of a crocodile, but I can wait for the next checkup to whine at them.  It's not a big deal - 3-5% of the population has it, and it's perfectly manageable.  It has to go untreated for an extremely long time to get to the "fall down/coma/death" stage.

Anyway, once I've got my act together, I have a fun post on starching standing ruffs with potato starch.  I have pictures, even.  I promise I'll post it before we leave on Thursday.  After that, I'm getting my Swedish freak on, and embarking on the Attack Laurel World Tour (scheduled stops:  Geneva, Switzerland, Copenhagen, Denmark - both just passing through -  then:  Tyringe, Sweden, and London England.  It's a small-ish world tour, but I'm told I'm big in Europe).

The vulture chicks are starting to attempt walking by themselves.  They wobble forward on one foot, then flap their little arms frantically to stop themselves falling over.  Then they get tired out, and fall asleep.  It is adorable.

*flap*flap*

I have achieved vulture domination documentation!

This was the pic I got two days ago:
( peeeeek-tures! )

The vulture chicks are born! 

They were born yesterday, but I haven't been able to get a good photo yet - Mom sits on them and keeps them safe, and all I hear is hissing from under her wings.  The only reason I know they're hatched is the incredibly bad smell (it's a safety feature) and a fuzzy little butt poking out from under Mom's wing.

Pictures as soon as I can get them.

Just a quick note for those of you playing along at home:

The thyroid results are that I have "small nodules" all over, but none look dangerous, i.e., requiring a biopsy.  My thyroid panel was "normal", but clearly my symptoms are showing something is up, so I have an appointment with an endocrinologist in April.

I prefer to think of it as my thyroid is branching off little pieces of itself, in an attempt to build an entire army of attack laurels who will then rule the earth in a benevolent (but extremely authentic) dictatorship.

Which puts me in mind of my oriental lilies. They did not perform well last year, so I pulled them out and put them in a trash pot that I meant to compost, but was lazy and forgot, so they sat in a corner all winter.  As I was tending to my pots (they're looking all perked up and lovely) on the patio, I noticed that suddenly the lilies have decided to grow in great profusion, putting off little nodules (okay, technically they're called corms) of themselves.  So I put them into one of my patio pots so they can take over that.  I'm rather pleased with them; they were so disappointing last year I thought I'd bought a bum batch, but now it seems they were just biding their time.  Hopefully I'll get a nice display this year.

My Knockout rose, despite benign neglect (I forgot to prune it), is happily putting out buds, so that will be nice soon.  And my vine that is being trained over the pergola, which I cannot for the life of me remember the name of, is putting out beautiful little white flowers that start out looking like pods, then burst open and fill the air with fragrance.

And my baby vultures will be hatching soon.  I can't wait.  What matters a lumpy thyroid when Spring is so lovely?

xkcd has it right.

I love Cadbury's Creme Eggs. I buy many every year when they appear about three weeks before Lent (or in January, depending on where you shop, but those ones are a little stale by Easter), and slowly savour one of them every week or so until they run out, occasionally eating two in one day.

Now they have the mini ones, but they're not exactly the same. For one thing, you can't put them in an egg cup, crack off the top, and eat the filling out with a spoon...

I've said too much.

We went out today to look at how the daffodil naturalization programme is going on in our woods (very well, as it turns out), and Bob found this little one:

( pictures! )