This is what I found when I went out to water the garden this evening:

Backstory: the only (and I do mean ONLY) way I’ve been able to repel slugs this year* is with copper. Slugs’ chemistry means that they get an electric shock when they try to cross copper, with their disgusting slimy bellies. I buy copper tape from the gardening store, cut the bottoms off little yogurt cups, and wrap it around the top.

1. The copper cup was removed from this tomato start, and all its leaves were eaten.

2. This string was supporting my peas. It has been snapped.

3. Copper cup removed from tomato start and placed carefully beside it. Upside-down. Tomato start un-damaged.

I found no tracks, and no other damage.

I suspect this is the work of raccoons. Possibly raccoons working in tandem with slugs. I can’t imagine deer removing the copper-taped cups before eating the tomato starts. I also can’t imagine deer eating tomato starts. But slugs might.

It still begs the question of why raccoons removed the copper-taped cups, and why they removed those copper-taped cups and not any of the others.

If I cared more about the garden, I’d pitch my tent and sleep out there tonight. But this is the sort of thing, I find, which sounds better in theory than in practice. In practice, I’m too old to sleep on the ground, and there would be mosquitoes, and also allergies, and who wants to get dressed and walk a couple hundred feet into the house to use the bathroom in the middle of the night? Bah, it’s just tomato starts.

* The slugs are very bad this year, and lo, even slug bait has not been sufficient to stave off the hordes.

ETA I looked up “repel raccoons” on Google, and found this page which is apparently a newsletter for parents in Berkeley CA.

“We also had raccoons who came in through the cat door. Not only did they eat the cats’ food, but they played with our son’s stuffed animals. We didn’t know why the stuffed animals started losing noses and ears until the middle of one night when we were awakened to the sound of Tickle Me Elmo laughing his little head off. Upon investigating we found Elmo stuck in the cat door unable to stop laughing and vibrating. The raccoons had abandoned him when they couldn’t squeeze him through the door. Elmo’s mishap started explaining a lot of strange toy problems in our house. The only thing that worked for us was to get a locking cat door, and lock it at night. Locking up the food, or moving it away from the door just encouraged the raccoons to explore further into the house.”

And…

“Our house is along side a creek and our raccoons are very, very smart. They have figured out everything from how to open a smart pet door (with magnetic lock) to opening the refrigerator and taking out a ten pound sack of potatoes and then proceeding to open the bag and take the potatoes out the cat door one at a time.”

So on the list of things to be thankful for: the raccoons aren’t in my HOUSE. Stealing my STUFF.

(Does it make me a bad person if I laughed at both of those stories? Really, really hard. The mental image of the potato thievery? PRICELESS.)

I scampered back inside and fetched my digital camera. Okay, so the video portion of this recording is… not super exciting. Owl calls can be heard at 9 and 25 seconds*. If you turn up your volume, you may hear the farther owl calling in sequence.

(Can’t see it? Click here to watch.)

After taking the video, I went back inside and fetched my Peterson Guide. This would seem to be a barn owl. I was a little disappointed by that… barn owls just seem so common. But I haven’t heard one here before, so that’s neat.

I recently learned that the Swinomish tribe (my cabin is on Swinomish tribal land) considers owl calls to be bad luck. This seems counter-productive to me, since owls are very common out here. I’ve heard at five different kinds of owls. Well, six now. You might as well make “blackberry bushes” or “overcast days” bad luck.

Bonus kitteh picture, while I wait for Google to finish processing my video:

Brady likes to gather all of his feet together when he sleeps, into a little toe bouquet.

* The background drone is a boat passing on the Sound, about a mile away. It’s quiet out here; sound carries.

Yay!

Mushroom spawn!

So that I can begin my own forest floor shiitake empire!

Yay!

Yarn!

So that I can knit my next sweater, once this one’s finished!

BOO.

A letter from the IRS.

Because I screwed up my taxes, so instead of receiving a stimulus check, I have to do my taxes all over again.

In other news, if you have not yet watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (written and directed by Joss Whedon, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day) I insist that you do so post-haste.

Parts 1 and 2 are available now. Part 3 will be posted on Saturday. On Sunday, all three parts will be taken offline, and will be available on DVD only.

ETA Part 3 is up now! GO WATCH IT NO REALLY I INSIST!

Bo-ring!

I’ve been so busy in the last two weeks that I’ve barely had time to knit a stitch on the Mr. Burrito Commemorative Sweater. I’m working on it at a rate of about .75 rows per day, on average. So sad. It is roughly two inches longer than the last time you saw it.

Um… quick! Distract the masses! I made jam last night.

Did you know that jam is really easy? I mean it is if you don’t care about doing it the “real” way. If you’re fine with just freezing your jam until it’s ready to use, then jam is easy.

I bought 1/2 flat of local strawberries and 1/2 flat of local raspberries. When combined with a packet of Ball No-Cook Freezer Jam and 1 1/2 cups of sugar, delicious jam results.

(The bread’s a little wonky, but it’s still edible.)

I think we need an Apocalypse Knitting certification course. Or maybe just a merit badge. Come the apocalypse, Apocalypse-Certified Knitters would… oh, I don’t know, get their first pick of the turnips fleeces.

The following are a list of skills I believe an Apocalypse-Certified knitter should possess:

1. Mending

Practice weaving over holes, re-stitching seams, and creating seamless patches.

2. Pattern-Making

An Apocalypse-Certified Knitter should be able to improvise a pattern for the six most common garments (socks, sweater, hat, mittens, gloves, and scarf).

Naturally, we all have extensive collections of knitting pattern books. However, one can’t count on making it through the apocalypse with one’s library intact. Your house might catch on fire, you might be forced to flee the area on foot, or - worst of all - the apocalypse might strike when you’re at the office.

The ability to take measurements and draft up a basic pattern will be a crucial skill. It will make the difference between “valued member of the community” and “that crazy guy who keeps knitting those damned garter stitch scarves, and SWEET MERCY aren’t we’re tired of those, we all have like six of them already, why won’t he stop?”

3. Sheep to Yarn

Let’s face it, we’re pretty dependent on yarn stores today. Sure there are a lot of spinners in the world, but their numbers are dwarfed by the knitters. It’s going to be a spinner’s market. The Apocalypse-Certified Knitter should be able to shear a sheep, prepare the fleece, and spin it into something resembling yarn.

The sheep may be shorn clumsily, the fleece may be prepared poorly, and the yarn may be spun in an amateurish fashion. That’s okay. You don’t have to be good at it, you just have to be able to perform the basics. After the apocalypse, you’ll have plenty of time to improve your skills. PLENTY.

4. Needle Creation

Using a few basic non-power tools, the Apocalypse-Certified Knitter should be able to create a set of wooden knitting needles (including small caliber DPNs) in any given diameter and length. As with item #3, they don’t have to be good, they just have to be good enough.

5. Recycling

The Apocalypse-Certified Knitter should be able to identify the characteristics of a sweater (or other knit garment) which can usefully be ripped back into yarn. Proper skeining, washing, and hanging technique is crucial.

6. Sock Knitting

There are only so many hats and sweaters that your community is going to need. However, post-apocalyptic dwellers will have a near-infinite need for socks. What with all the tramping through the ruins and walking the beeves* out to pasture and all.

The Apocalypse-Certified Knitter should be able to improvise and knit at least one form of sock from memory, either top-down, toe-up, or that wacky Cat Bordhi shit. Knitter’s choice.

7. I Can’t Think of a Seventh, But I Like The Number Seven

Fill in the blank, my faithful cadre of survivalist knitters!

* You’re right. I just wanted an excuse to say “beeves.”

“Imagine these folks like this passing out free textbooks, running holistic programs for kids, creating local knowledge management systems, launching microfinance projects, mobilebanking and complementary currencies. Helping rural landowners apply climate foresight and farm biodiversity. Building cheap, smart, quality housing for displaced people (not to mention better refugee camps), or an Open Architecture Network for cheap informal rehabs of run-down suburban housing. Hacking together DIY windmills and ad hoc smart grids, communication systems, water treatment systems — and getting really good atadaptive reuses of outdated infrastructure. In other words, these folks would be redistributing the future at a furious clip.”

This isn’t just idiotic and ill-conceived, it’s actually offensive.

Having lived in cities my entire life, and a rural area for the last two years, I can assure you: when the apocalypse comes, rural communities are going to come out on top. (First and most obviously, we have the food. And the means to continue making the food after all the systems crash.)

When you drive through a rural area, all you see are little houses in the middle of big open fields. Occasionally you might pass a little town, or a grain elevator. What you don’t see is the web of interpersonal connections.

Everybody knows everybody else. Everyone has a skill. The barter system is king, and social networking occurs here on a scale that boggles the mind.

Rural areas represent a system of distributed information which is, shall we say, heavily weighted towards the practical. People out here know how to do stuff.

Here’s how it will work:

Alice puts up jars of blackberry jam. She trades them to Bob in exchange for having an outhouse built. Bob’s teenage son Charlie doesn’t have any skills per se, but he’s young and strong so he’ll go up the road to Donna’s place and help her dig a rainwater collection pit. Donna has a green thumb, so she’ll give Edward advice on putting in a potato patch. (In exchange, Edward will give her a bushel of potatoes this fall.) Edward is a retired construction foreman. He’ll borrow Charlie for manual labor, and the two of them will go down to Freda’s place and build her a barn out of scrap wood for her new baby goat. (In exchange, Freda will supply them with goat’s milk cheese next winter.) Freda will breed her doe with George’s buck, and they’ll split the proceeds from the sale of the kids. Meanwhile it’s been raining, and Donna’s rainwater pit is filling up nicely, and Bob and Charlie stop by once a month to fill up their 50-gallon drums. Freda’s first batch of goat’s milk cheese turns out well, so she trades some to Alice for blackberry jam. Charlie helps Freda milk the goats every morning in exchange for fresh milk, which he trades with Edward for fresh eggs from Edward’s chickens.

I know that’s how it will work, because that’s already how it works. Somewhere in that vast network of people you can find an author, an artist, a doctor, a veterinarian, an electrician, an architect, an engineer, a lawyer, a soil scientist, a math teacher… any skill you need, it’s out there. It’s incredibly patronizing to assume otherwise.

How are a bunch of fresh-faced Apple-wielding urbanites with History degrees going to help, exactly?

But really, we should thank Cory for sending them our way. Unskilled manual labor is always going to be in demand. (Someone please tell them to bring their own work gloves.)

I was puzzled by the news that Family Guy is getting higher ratings than Venture Bros. in the Sunday night Adult Swim line-up. We’re not talking about the Fox Sunday night line-up - this is the rerun of Family Guy that Adult Swim shows at 11PM.

People! Honestly! I do not have time right now to list all the ways in which Venture Bros. is better than Family Guy.

If you are the sort of person who is inclined to watch a Family Guy rerun on Sunday night Adult Swim, you have the following assignment: don’t change the channel afterwards. Watch Venture Brothers! (And if you’re still awake after that, watch Metalocalypse, too. It’s pretty awesome.) I demand it.

Fortunately, show creator Jackson Publick reports that “our ratings are excellent this season, with each episode scoring higher than the highest-rated episode of any previous season.”

No heating or air conditioning required today.

Forecast: sunny and clear.

Fresh local berries from a vendor up the road. That’s a half-flat of local raspberries (half price because they were held over from yesterday), $8. A pint of local raspberries picked fresh this morning, $2.50. A pound of fresh Rainier cherries from Eastern Washington, $3.

I used to go nuts over the California raspberries which appear in the stores around May. Now they hold no interest for me. They’re like raspberry simulations cleverly crafted out of styrofoam compared to the local berries.

Rainier cherries are so very tender and delicious! I don’t think these get shipped out of state. Unlike regular old red cherries, Rainier cherries are delicate and don’t ship very well.

If you live outside the sphere of Rainier cherries, I’m so sorry!

Oh, but I know why you’re really here. Burrito updates!

Cute Overload-style X-treme close-up!

He’s really happy with his new fambly.

There was one item on the list that I realized I’d never tried. 36 years old and never tried sardines! Well that’s no good.

I went to the grocery store today and purchased the most expensive can of sardines that Safeway had to offer. (I have been given to understand that the more expensive the sardines, the better they are.) I shelled out the $3.50, plus another $2 for a nice box of crackers.

Once at home, I cracked open the can. Oh dear, the smell. Only the spirit of scientific inquiry carried me forward. I carefully pulled out one sardine, mashed it up in a bowl, and scooped it up with a cracker.

Result: DO NOT WANT.

At least I have the crackers to console me.

Also, something bumped my desk when I was sitting here earlier. When I looked down, expecting to see one of the cats head-butting the furniture, nothing was there. Maybe it was the Ghost Furby.

Anyway, I was able to get in a lot of work on the Mr. Burrito Commemorative Sweater yesterday. I finally reached the part where you set aside the sleeves on waste yarn. Thank goodness for that; I never thought I’d make it.

This is a basic top-down raglan sweater. I tried using the calculator, but I’m working with two outlier numbers: a very heavy yarn, and a very large size. I’ve found that the calculator’s algorithm works best for sweaters that fall in the middle of the bell curve.

At the beginning, I ripped it back three times before I gave up. Then Dorothy helped me. And when I say “Dorothy helped me,” I mean that “I cried and sent Dorothy all my numbers and begged like a wussy and she did all the math and wrote back with instructions on how to knit it and that is what I have been following.”

Kitteh: