The Torley Manor blog has been quiet for some time. Maybe we’ll get back to it, maybe we wont, but I just wanted to let you know that i’ve started working on a new blog. I’m just trying to get back into doing some more writing on a regular basis. It’ll be some personal stuff, hopefully some interviews, some drawings, some photos. Please check it out here: Not Distance/But Depth
Thanks,
Q
So we are both doing the Fun-A-Day project again this year. My project is to do a drawing each day (i know i’ve done it before, but i like it and the parameters are different this time around). This year I am taking 3 elements from my previous day and then working them all into a drawing. The drawing above is day one — including an outing to see ‘Lincoln’ the movie, a snowy bike ride home and the waffles we made for breakfast. Keep track of my photos by following this set on my flickr account.
Emma is keeping track of some of the things that make her laugh out loud. She is documenting them on a separate tumblr account over here.
For more info on the Fun-A-Day concept in general and other projects that folks are doing, visit the Fun-A-Day blog here.
The Fun-A-Day art show is scheduled for March 1st, 2013 at the Mr. Roboto Project (5106 Penn Ave) as part of the monthly Unblurred event.
We received this as part of a Xmas present. Functional, yes; but we couldn’t really figure out a good reason to have a double-headed rubber spatula. Your thoughts?
So in 2012 Emma and myself attempted to get kinda serious about biking. We were pretty successful, becoming regular bike commuters, running many of our errands around the city by bike, going on several bike trips, etc. Of course, it is much easier to be a consistent biker in the summertime and into the early days of autumn. But as temperatures begin to dip from highs in the 60′s to 50′s to the 40′s…well, it begins to get a little tougher. One of the things that makes it really tough is cold fingers, so we both decided to invest in full-fingered bicycle gloves.
We weren’t sure if we were committed to biking into the depths of winter, so we didn’t get anything super insulated or anything — just enough cold weather protection to keep us going and to see how far into the winter we could go before we either 1) gave up biking for the season, or 2) decided we were going to keep biking but needed better gloves. We decided if we were still riding on a regular basis as temps dipped into the 30′s consistently, then we would plunk down some money for some winter bike gloves.
And option #2 was the one that came to be — we were still biking well into December but longing for a little more protection for the fingers. So one day while down Xmas shopping on the Southside, we procured some new gloves at the REI. It seems that most of the time people recommend the use of “lobster claws” — a type of split-fingered mittens that puts your pointer and middle fingers in one part of the mitten and your ring finger and pinky in the other section. REI had one pair of normal lobster style gloves by Pearl Izumi, which were nice, but had velcro’d cuffs that we weren’t sure would do a good job of keeping out the cold air.
Then they had some Novara gloves that featured a four finger design. The thumb, pointer and middle finger are all separate like a regular glove and then the ring finger and pinky are the only two fingers doubled up. We were a little less sold on this aspect of the design, but they had larger cuffs that would go up and over your jacket cuff and could be pulled tight with a quick pull of a tab. Also they were the cheaper option (by about $30), so we went with them.
top!
bottom!
Having the 4 finger design, it didn’t seem right to call them “lobster claws”. After looking at them one day, it hit me, they are “Simpson’s gloves.” This was reinforced when I caught Emma staring at her hands as she wore her gloves in a manner reminiscent of Otto (in the episode “Weekend at Burnsies”) at the pro-pot rally — “They call them fingers but I never see them fing. Oh, there they go.”
Anyway, they are warm gloves. Emma has said they are perhaps a bit too warm. The warmth comes at a bit of a cost in the nimbleness of your fingers, which is to be expected from any winter glove really. Mainly we’ve noticed this mostly in our ability to get full braking power with our hands positioned on the brake hoods. I’ve found it best to drop down to the drops if i’m concerned about needing full brake power. Otherwise, these things have been treating me pretty great.
After taking a week off from riding around the Xmas travels, Emma and I have both been biking for the last three days straight, including some rides in the snow. It’s been a great adventure and hopefully it’ll keep us active during these gloomy winter months. More tales of winter cycling to come, I’m sure. Stay tuned.
Emma and I found out about the 2nd Annual Coffeeneuring Challenge via the Bike Pgh messageboard. The idea behind this challenge is to hit up at least 7 different coffee shops via bicycle between October 1st and November 11th. There are rules: only one trip per day, trips need to be at least 2 miles in overall length, Saturday/Sunday trips only, you must document your rides with photos and a write-up, etc. Even though it is the Coffeeneuring Challenge, other beverages were acceptable: tea, hot chocolate, hot cider, which works good for me as i’m not a coffee drinker.
Here’s the write-up of my 7 Coffeeneuring excursions:
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Emma taking a break along the GAP, day zero
This year Emma and I decided that we were going to do the Pittsburgh to DC bike trip utilizing the Great Allegheny Passage and the C&O Canal Towpath trails. Emma broke down and finally bought herself a new bike back in June – a Surly Long Haul Trucker – her first never-been-owned-by-anyone-else bike. Shortly thereafter, suffering from a severe case of bike envy, I stumbled upon a used Surly Cross Check at a good price and I picked it up. Now we were both equipped with good hardware to make the trip.
Emma had never really spent any time in DC, so we wanted to make sure that we would have some time to explore once we got there. I hear of so many people who bike the trails, get to DC and then immediately return home and it seems like such a missed opportunity. Part of our plan to allow us enough time to do this was skipping the first section of trail right outside the city and starting out towards Ohiopyle.
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We grew Red Norlands this year, and they look like pink jewels coming out of the ground:
We only dug up one plant to see how things were looking, and jeez louise, they are lookin’ GOOD! We were out and about running errands and decided to stop at the community garden plot just to see how things were looking and could not resist getting at least a little dirty.
The beans look pretty safe since we deer-proofed them, but of course the deer went for the next unprotected crop: the sweet potatoes. So we netted those too, for now.
Honestly, if we get nothing from that plot but those gorgeous red potatoes, I think I’ll still be happy.
Also, this Saturday (7/9/11) is the Fourth Annual Torley Manor (Angry) Gorilla Blues and Folk Fest. Q and I will be performing a handful of fun songs, and we are making mountains of food. I confess that part of my excitement is that I’ll get to give garden tours!
And so have I: Artnoose saved the very last “UP THE PUNX over 30″ card for me!
How is it that every year, after a long winter of eating string beans that we’ve blanched and frozen (and then steamed for dinner), I forget about the soft fuzz on a brand new freshly-picked string bean? Every year I forget this and am amazed to be reminded.
Well shoot! We’ve been doing a lot in the garden (and on a million other projects) lately. A quick run-down of the home garden before I move on:
As you can see from that photo, dill has volunteered all over the garden. I’m perfectly happy with that, as it brings in the good bugs, and puts me in the good graces of friends who like to have fresh dill heads for pickling. Let me know if you want any!
Torley-on-Stanton updates below!
Things are going well out at the community garden plot. We spent a good amount of time re-turning over the soil and getting things planted in the last couple weeks. Two weekends ago we finished turning stuff over and got all the corn and beans planted. We’ve been dealing with some issues with the peas. And the potatoes are looking great.
PEAS
Somethings been munching on our peas
Although we haven’t actually seen any, we assume its something like a rabbit. We realized that the holes in our gate were big enough to let smaller mammals through, so we put a little hardware cloth over the bottom section of the gate. We also have been spraying the plants with a cayenne pepper/water mixture. As a final step, we decided we would try to trellis the peas (which perhaps we should’ve done from the beginning) to keep them as much off the ground as possible. All these measures have had an effect as the plants seem to be recovering and are getting some flowers on them. We’re still holding out some hopes for a good harvest.
POTATOES
The potatoes came up a couple weeks ago
Since then they have been growing at a pretty good pace. As they have been growing, we have been hilling the dirt back over the plants. Into the mix with the garden soil, we have been adding layers of straw and some leaf mulch from the pile at the community garden. Even if we only get a small handful of potatoes from each plant, with a 25′ row of potato plants, we’ll be looking at a pretty decent harvest.
BEANS! BEANS! AND CORN!!
We planted 8 rows of corn (4 rows of white, 4 rows of yellow) and 10 rows of beans (1 row of baby limas, 1 row of Calypso beans, and 8 rows of black beans. It’s our grand experiment to see if we can grow ourselves a good supply of beans to dry for use over the winter months. In the last week, there are good signs of life from all of the seeds.
black beans — at one week
Calypso beans — at one week
Baby limas — at one week
ETC. ETC.
We also planted a few extra brussels sprouts plants out at the community garden (we have 3 plants in the home garden as well.) We cut the bottom off some old unusable freezer boxes and used these to protect the small seedlings.
Other things out at Torley-On-Stanton include one paste tomato plant and a handful of sunflowers (no photos, sorry). We still haven’t figured out a water situation out there and we have a summer’s long fight with the weeds (so much ragweed and so many thistles!), but we’re feeling pretty good about how things are looking at this point in time.