There is a point where you start to question your decisions when it comes to long projects. It’s a little early for this project in particular but soon I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting there. As I’m filling out more of the first section I am starting to come across one of the things you dread the most in a large project: the missed square.
You find them all the time, be the project small or large. That random square of one color or another that’s in an awkward spot or just off to the side of the main group and gets missed in the first pass. That brings you to the greatest choice: go back with the correct color to try and get it all done according to the pattern or just put a close-ish color in the spot as you go through and accept that no one is going to know the difference. (Because they won’t. You may even say “I’ll know”, but you won’t either. After a few years you’ll maybe know you missed something but you won’t remember where it was or what color it was supposed to be.)
On a positive note I’ve finished The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m not sure how my family has felt, mostly because I’ve been sharing fun plant facts with them. Some of those fun facts?
Mangos and cashews are part of the poison ivy family.
Grapes are different between the Americas and Europe due to cultivation methods – in Europe they were cultivated by people who wanted to eat them or use them for wine. In the Americas grapes were largely cultivated by birds who wanted them to be smaller so they were easy to eat and darker blue, because that would make them easier to see.
As much as I enjoyed listening to the audio book I will say The Drunken Botanist doesn’t read like a novel. It’s more like a reference book or encyclopedia with short sections focussed on a specific plants. This is especially true when it comes to things like herbs, nuts and fruits which aren’t used in the actual fermentation process and instead are used as additives or mixing agents for drinks.
Now that I’ve finished I’ll be going back to my murder mystery as I pick through my pattern, adding slightly different shades of beige and brown to what I’ve already put down. I think I remember what’s happening in the murder mystery well enough to get right back into it, but we’ll have to see once I start it back up.
