While you were looking the other way roots have been growing, wings have been stretched, and new connections have been made. Don’t worry, though; I wasn’t looking, either.
Let’s begin with the roots and work our way up. Last week I had a rooting peach seed that was almost large enough to plant in a pot. Other tasks and deadlines intervened and I put off the task until, look at the time, here we are on Sunday afternoon and I should take another look at that seed. I was delighted to discover that the tiny roots had grown through the damp paper towel, just as they had on the video I had watched all those weeks ago to learn about this process.
I gently pulled away the paper towel, but not gently enough to keep from breaking off one of the tiny roots. Oops.
The other five seeds still had a bit of slow action going on, so I tucked them back in for another week.
Now it was time to finally get out the pot and the potting soil and plant the seed. After I rewatched the first video in the peach-seed-germinating series, I watched the second video for the first time. In that video, the gardener re-potted his peach sprout in more soil so it would sit higher up in the pot and get more sun. So I put in a lot of potting soil for such a tiny sprout.
We’ll see what progress it can make in that window by this time next week. If it needs more sun I can take it to work and rest the pot on a sunny windowsill.
This week I added another typewriter to my collection, which totals seven unless we find my Smith-Corona electronic typewriter (“K9”) from the mid-80s. I took it to college with me in the fall of 1985, and it saved me (despite some professorial grumbling over the aesthetics) when my manual typewriter broke a spring halfway through a 20-page English paper in the spring of 1986. A few years later I acquired a Macintosh SE and a DeskJet printer, and now I’m not sure what happened to the electronic typewriter.
Anyway, I found this Smith-Corona Sterling advertised on Facebook Marketplace marked down from $40 to $35. I made arrangements to pick up the typewriter at the seller’s house after work, but when I arrived she wasn’t there and neither was the typewriter. After some hasty communications between me, the seller, and the seller’s husband, she offered to bring it to my house that night and drop the price a bit more. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry, but I agreed. When she got there the price became $30 until she pulled the typewriter out of its case and a piece of tape fell off with $25 written on it (the price she’d put on it, and forgotten about, at a rummage sale).
It’s a wonderful little typewriter, especially at that price, and after I fiddled with the ribbon a bit I saw that it types smoothly. Its serial number places the date of manufacture sometime in 1947. Since it’s very clean, it will be a good typewriter to start with as I learn how to do basic typewriter maintenance and repair. I now have three Smith-Coronas, so that will be a good make to focus on for now.
I also joined two sister Facebook groups: one for collectors of antique typewriters and another for maintenance and repair of antique typewriters. This isn’t a change of career, but since many other folks have gone before me to preserve and digitize so many typewriter manuals, I’ll have something I can read and learn from if I get snowed in this winter. (Because, you know, I don’t have enough books.)
Knitwise, I frogged the striped scarf that was too wide and cast on again with US7 straight needles. After about 4-5 rows it became rather crowded. I was at a craft store this morning to look for a few other items, so I picked up a set of US7 circular needles while I was there and moved the work over to it when knitting the next row.
This looks more reasonable for a “not too narrow” scarf, and I’ll aim for each stripe to be two or three inches deep.
If I finish the scarf too soon (what does that mean?), I can switch to this book’s patterns to use up some of the scrappier parts of my stash.
Chocolate Sheep 
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