I've blogged before about my chili pepper plant shenanigans - after sadly killing off all my Ecuador Purple chili plants, I tried to grow new ones from my seeds, but alas, they were too old and didn't germinate anymore.

So I threw seeds from a spice jar into soil. They were taken from my own chilis, so there would have been a chance of them being Ecuador Purple, but I had no luck there. In parallel, because I wanted to make sure, I mail ordered some chili seeds, and some tomato seeds while I was at it. Those, obviously, included Ecuador Purple seeds.

Well. The spice jar plants all have rather similar upright, slender, pointed peppers in a boring green, maybe with a hint of black in one or two plants. Some have a curved fruit here and there. Altogether... rather boring; I'd have expected some more variation, because they were taken from different plants that, by all rights, should not have been true-to-seed (yet). Anyways, one of them at least now has produced a single fruit that is sort of dancing out of line:



Possibly that is an effect of cross-pollination; our place and the chili plants were definitely well-visited by insects working hard to pollinate. If it is, the same effect may be the reason why this oddly-shaped fruit is growing on an Ecuador Purple plant:



This is definitely not the shape you'd expect it to be. However, I suspect that the guy I bought the seeds from does not grow his plants well-separated from each other. There was a lot of variation between the individual pepper and tomato plants regarding their size and growth shape. One of the tomatoes and several of the pepper plants were also very far away from the breed description.

Also, there's this, which is also supposed to be an Ecuador Purple chili:



The plant has several of these weird winged fruits.

I don't mind too much, since I mostly want the chilis for their decorative value, and that is certainly quite decorative - but if I had wanted 'proper' breed seeds, I'd certainly be very disappointed. I am a bit disappointed about the tomato seeds, in that regard. I'm also not really happy with the germination quota (which was not very good - and yes, I note down how many seeds I stick into the soil, and how many plants come out). So I'll definitely not order seeds there again.

What I will do, though, is grow plants from those odd fruits, and see if anything even odder will come out!

Have you ever noticed that different languages use different words to mimic or describe animal sounds? A professor in Adelaide has made a compilation of the sounds for animal sounds in different languages - you can find it here, complete with some common commands as well.

I can only speak for the German bits, where there's actually more sounds that can be used; at least I have heard other sounds as well in German language. In some cases, there's also a difference between mimicking the sound and describing it, and the table seems to mix both of them in some cases. I find it very interesting, though, and quite amusing to learn that French pigs go "groin groin"!

The pandemic goes on, and numbers are rising about everywhere. Well, at some places they are not - The Most Patient Husband of Them All works in a company connected to the car industry, and their numbers of sales are currently (obviously) not going up so much.

Which means that he's going to be on Kurzarbeit throughout October. For those of you not familiar with that thing, Kurzarbeit means that the workers get to work less hours per week, they get paid a bit less accordingly, and the state supports the company with some money so that they can keep their employees instead of having to let them go.

The good bit about that? Someone's going to have long weekends throughout October. The difficult bit about it? There was Kurzarbeit for him earlier this year already, and I found out that having someone around who is getting a day off is really bad for my work morale (and nobody but me only is to blame for this). So I have very wisely decided to take the Fridays in October off as well... which means you'll get no blog post tomorrow, nor on the other October Fridays.

You're getting a progress pic from the cat embroidery today, though, to make up for it!

Well. Sometimes, things just happen. And sometimes, they happen and sort of, um, escalate.

A while ago, we were riding the bike somewhere and happened to come across a cloth bag lying on the street. It was wet and dirty and had been driven over multiple times, and we picked it up and brought it home. As you do.

It was mostly white afterwards. Mostly, with a few sots still on there. It also had a hole.

Some time later, I was dyeing a few t-shirts (with modern dye, in the washing machine...) and there was still dyeing space left, so in went the bag.

It came out spotty, but in a nicer colour. So... there's still that hole, right?

I was thinking about just stitching it up. Then I was thinking about sewing a contrast colour patch on it. And that, somehow, transformed into...



The design is inspired by a medieval manuscript marginal drawing of a cat, yes, licking its ass. Unfortunately I don't know exactly what manuscript this is from, but I don't really care too much about that at the moment - it's a cotton bag, it will be cotton embroidery, I'm not really transferring the thing exactly, and people won't (probably, hopefully) ask me all the time where the motif is from. (I do get that question a lot with some of the more historical sample things I drag around with me, and it's completely understandable that this happens - I know the source for these, of course.)

The hole, in case you haven't spotted it, is right on the nose of the cat...

On October 10, there will be a moderated text chat about historical textiles on the EXARC discord server - apparently there was something similar on another topic (brewing, I think), and that went so well and was so much fun for the participants that the idea came up to do the same with textiles.

So in case you're interested - it's free for everyone, no need to be an EXARC member. You will just need a Discord login (which is also free) to join the fun!

More information and the link to the EXARC discord server can be found here.

My current side project: Sorting wool.

I've enough of a stash of Valais Blacknose wool now that it should be possible to have it spun into yarn; my plan is to get both yarn (single) in around 1 mm diameter, and a bit of the same stuff as two-ply yarn suitable for nalbinding (or knitting). The single would then be suitable for weaving a medium-quality, common type of wool fabric with about 10 threads per cm, something very hard to get these days.

Before sending it in, though, the wool has to be sorted - there are some bits of the fleeces not suitable for going into the yarn. Either because there's too much small vegetable matter in the part, or the wool bits are not a good enough quality (the areas around the sheep's bum may have yellowed or browned and brittle fibres, and those are tossed out), or there are second cuts (which are very short fibres, and thus something not wanted at all in a good yarn). So there I sit now, sorting the wool - and I'm quite curious to see how much I will end up with once I'm through the stack.

Some of it will, of course, stay unspun (so that the shop will stay stocked), and the carded wool will also still be available. But, if everything goes according to plan, I will have yarns too! The yarn price will then depend on how much ends up spun, how much of that is plied, whether the wool will have to be washed before processing (I'm sending in the washed fleeces, as I don't store them in the dirt, but as my washing is very gentle, there remains some lanolin. Depending on the machines and the exact processes, that may have to be removed). So things remain exciting, and interesting...

And of course, the cat helps with her own unique brand of quality control:

[caption id="attachment_5578" align="alignnone" width="902"] Spot the cat!

It's Friday, and for this Friday, FFF have planned to take up protests again - because even though we're all still in the grip of the pandemic, and numbers are unfortunately going up about everywhere in the world (gaah!), our other issue, the climate change, is not going to go away. Especially not with all the extra single-use plastics that are currently necessary (more or less...) due to hygiene requirements.

I'm hoping that the extra restrictions placed on vendors will peter out quickly now, or get lifted, but I'm not getting my hopes to high. It's time to make it possible again to fill customer's containers, in order to save single-use packaging. Germany used to be at the point where it was finally possible at most bakeries and butcher's shops to bring your own bag for baked goods, and your own boxes for meat, and get those filled. This has largely been stopped by the extra measurements taken due to the pandemic. Which I can understand - but now that we know more about the virus and how it spreads, and especially that touching items is not the primary vector of the virus by far, it's time to get back to more sustainable ways of shopping.

So. Fridays For Future protests today. Here in Erlangen, it won't be a single one, intending to be a huge central protest, but there's several smaller ones taking place - so that protesters can keep their distance (plus wearing masks). If you're up to something like this, you can find protests taking place near you on klima-streik.org for Germany, or on Global Climate Strike for all over the world.

See you there!