A lot of public libraries offer access to ReferenceUSA through your library card. I vaguely remember that queries are pretty customizable on there, and exportable to various formats. Despite the generic name, it's specifically for businesses. Would that work?
Oh geez that's tricky... My first instinct is to say Towa Tei's Sunny, the entire album. But the thing is, half of what I love about it is the nostalgia about how much I loved it the first time, and where I was when I listened to it. So maybe it'd be better to pick something you might've liked better under other circumstances? In that case... Hmmm... I'd say the audio drama Spines.
How was it? I've been ordering mesquite flour online because we don't have any species of them where I live lol.
I can't say that the ability to follow individual people is really something I care about, but coming from Piefed, it does seem to work just fine. So does Peertube and any of the other ones I've bothered to try.
All in all, I think it came out really well! The finished kōji had this incredible, indescribable taste/smell. Maybe kind of, flowers and mangos and peaches? I used it to make a ton of miso.
I used Modernist Pantry kōji kin and organic basmati white rice, and a makeshift immersion circulator/floating water bath incubator thingy. The rice was steamed in unbleached muslin cloth until just a little undercooked, then the same cloth was used to line a metal tray. The rice was spread into hills and valleys, covered with more muslin, then tented with some aluminum foil over the whole thing. The foil was mostly to keep condensation from dripping off the roof of the incubator onto the muslin cloth.
I put it in the incubator with the circulator st to 90 F.I stirred it at 12 hours and again at 24. It got appropriately matted, and for the most part it wasn't too wet. However, there were a few spots where I think it was getting on towards sporulation already, as you can see here:
Could have been some extra humidity collecting in those darker spots? The tinfoil tent kept the incubator condensation from dripping on it, but I guess nothing prevented the tinfoil condensation from dripping lol... Anyway, the entire process seemed to go way faster than all the guides lead me to believe. I broke it all up as best I could and put it back in set at 84 F with the lid open for lower humidity. By 24 hours it was maintaining about 97 F on its own.
Oh they do, neat! I wonder if there's some shared lineage in the symbols there? I was going off of this, mostly.
One of my boyfriends is heathen, so I dual-color 3d printed him a set of Futhorc/Anglo-Saxon runes. Hopefully they're correct, very much not an expert lol... The Wikipedia page made me a little unsure on which symbols should or should not be included. These are made from PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates), a new-ish thermoplastic that's naturally produced by a variety of bacteria, and breaks down harmlessly in any biome. Then, they were polished in a vibratory tumbler and anointed in black walnut oil infused with white pine, bog Labrador tea, yaupon, and sweetfern. I posted the files elsewhere if anybody wants to print their own!
Do they have a warrant canary? I bet they might, hopefully
Or rather salt rising muffins, but still. For those unfamiliar, it's an obscure Appalachian bread. Rather than being risen by the CO2 produced from yeast or baking soda, it's risen by the hydrogen produced by Clostridium perfringens bacteria. This gives it a different texture and a funky/cheesy taste. Still fermented, so I hope it counts for the rules! Crumb shot:
Mine isn't great compared to anything you'd get from Rising Creek Bakery, who literally wrote the book on salt rising bread. As you can see, mine came out pretty dense, but that's definitely not because of the kind of bread it is. I think it's more because of the 100% whole wheat, and my own lack of skill. It took me like 6 tries to even get the starter right lol. But I thought, maybe people have never heard of this and would be interested. I used wheat berries from Castle Valley Mill, which is only a couple hours away from me, and ground them in a hand-crank mill.
I'm a total amateur, but here's what I did:
The temperature in the beans generally kept about 2 degrees less than the chamber. I think we want the early fermentation to happen at 108 F and then cool to 100 F, so I tried to keep adjusting it based on that. Anyway, the result was pretty tasty!! The bacteria seem to take well to black-eyed peas. Might have been a little less stringy than "normal", but still delicious!
Those sound like a great addition! I think I might like to throw in a bunch of dried spicebush berries next time, seems like a similar complement to cinnamon and clove.
Wow, AND it broke despite being one of the strongest types of spider web! On the other hand, I think the way they plied it is not how things are supposed to be done, for good reason. Correct plying ought to make a world of difference. From what i saw in the video, it only seems like a lot of web if it needs to be continuous. To make yarn, it's not at all atypical to spin many shorter fibers together rather than few long ones. And caterpillar tents are super abundant! The differences in strength between insect webs might still be a real issue though.
Somebody else mentioned that they think caterpillar tent silk just balls up into a big stacky wad, so you might need to submerge it in something that would cut the stickiness first. That also made me think of another possibility. What if, instead of spinning it as-is, you dissolved it in a solvent and then electrospun it onto a rotating spool? And then plied the result?
This is a little off the beaten track as far as usual foraging posts go, but I had a question. Has anyone tried spinning Eastern Tent Caterpillar webs into a usable thread/yarn? I'm definitely not one of those people who hates them and wants them gone; they're native here and relatively harmless, despite what naysayers would have you believe. However, they sure do make a ton of webs! I'm sure they could probably stand to part with a little here or there right? Like, after they're done with them?
Not sure if it would work, but if it is spinnable, seems like it might be a convenient local source for an ahimsa silk alternative.
Sounds interesting, sure! What would that entail?
My prior Lemmy instance (lemmy.one) is abandoned and slowly losing functionality, and I had to find somewhere new to move, so I figured... why not PieFed? I like if so far! Seems to be playing well with the other thread platforms, hopefully I'm doing it right.
Feel free to post your work if you get back into textiles again!
Mirlo.space is working on federation too. I think they're not as far along in that regard, but further along in terms of being a bandcamp replacement? Last I heard, anyway. I buy stuff from there, payment works.