iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

My pile of nonfiction reading these days. Well, the pile of nonfiction that doesn't include sewing, gardening, or newspapers.

Five books on a sewing cutting mat: The Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, Terrorism & the Constitution, and Give Me Liberty. In the background, magnetic pinholders, weights used to hold down patterns, beading projects, rotary cutters. We can have multiple interests!

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Today (the 26th) was my birthday, too. Happy birthday to you, and go embroidery! Have a random picture of my hat in progress.

Cluttered table in a sewing room. Odd-shaped hat in bright fuchsia with fern patterns in gold, black, and blue on a hat stand in the center; cut velvet in the mid-foreground; NordicTrack not being used in the background.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

For those who need cheerfulness today, here are some Malaysian small-clawed otters.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Great (or Greater, either name works) Argus at the Woodland Park Zoo yesterday. "Oh, he's a fancy boy," said the keeper cleaning the turaco's enclosure. His mate was not impressed. "She never is," said the keeper. (Video of Great Argus mating display; I don't see a way to put alt text on the video)

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

For the second day of #ArtAdventCalendar, have another hat. This was not my most successful silly hat, in that the duck's forrehead is too high and the duck's bill flops around, but it did succeed in its main aim, which was to make its recipient and her spouse laugh during a difficult time.

Distinguished award-winning author David D. Levine, wearing a blank stare and a yellow duck-shaped fleece hat. The duck's orange bill makes it a bit hard to see the rest of the hat.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Okay, I'll play along with #ArtAdventCalendar. Here's a hat I made some years back.

Small rust-colored fascinator mostly covered with rust-colored silk roses, with a fountain of curled and trimmed rooster tail feathers at the back, perched on a white hatbox.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

We took a walk in Kubota Garden today. It's a serious candidate for loveliest park in all of Seattle, a city with many lovely parks.

Looking up from the ground at some kind of very tall evergreen tree with a slightly crooked trunk. Bright sunshine illuminates some of its foliage; it casts shadow on the red deciduous leaves of trees to one side.

Great blue heron perching at the edge of a placid pond surrounded by shrubbery.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Good sign, my friend. I can't march, but here's my front porch.

Large white banner bearing the words, "Witness, work, hope, resist," in all caps and rainbow colors, hanging from a porch.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Post a random picture or everything else will go bad in September.

Extremely bizarre ceramic sculpture in Seattle Art Museum Porcelain Room. A rhinoceros head is its most recognizable feature, but there are also strange plant forms all over it and a rooster's head peeking out. I failed to write down the artist's name and am sorry.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

We went to the Ai Wei-Wei exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum today. I recommend it highly. The post box made me cry, though not as much as the first page of the Mueller report rendered in Lego bricks. Witness. Resist. Endure. Hope.

An exhibit of black and white photographs taken by Ai Wei-Wei on a museum wall under a large neon sign saying, "FUCK". A man wearing an N95 mask is in the foreground.

Label of a museum exhibit describing a post box as found art. "The blue U.S. Postal Service container is an innocuous part of everyday life in the United States. This one is an unaltered found object where the significance is impacted by the context and location of its display. In 2020, President Donald Trump questioned the role of mail-in voting in the U.S. presidential election, claiming, without evidence, widespread electoral fraud. For Ai, this slightly rusty, weather-worn object represents a prcarious democratic process in free elections whose neutrality could be easily questioned.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

I got dressed up in silk and velvet and beads and wore my best mask and a cocktail hat with frivolous feathers. (Mask shown around my neck in the picture because we took it in the back yard after we got home.)

Cheerful middle-aged woman wearing cocktail hat with curled feathers, grey silk shawl, black velvet tunic, and elaborate red beaded necklace showing off the bandaid over her first COVID-19 vaccination. Flowering quince bush and prows of two small kayaks visible in background along with neighbor's house and garage.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

I'm not marching today; too gimpy for a march these days. Here's my flag, because it's flag day and I'm as Barbara Fritchie as anyone, along with the banner I made for pride month. It's not the current guy's flag; it's ours.

American flag flying beside a white curtain with the word "Resist" in rainbow colors.

American flag flying beside a white curtain with the word "Resist" in rainbow colors, all on a bright yellow front porch, with an unruly rhododenron and even more unruly California poppies in the foreground.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

My garden has reached peak Pacific Coast iris. All of these are called Pacific Coast iris, but they are separate species. The dark purple ones are iris douglasiana; in our neighborhood, we call them stained glass iris. The yellow ones are iris innominata. The pale purple one is iris tenax.

Iris douglasiana. About a dozen iris blossoms, dark purple and pale purple petals, golden yellow signals,on multiple plants with strappy foliage. Healthy amount of native Pacific Northwest succulents as ground cover.

Iris innominata. About a dozen intensely yellow iris blossoms growing from one plant in a blue pot.

Iris tenax. One pale purple blossom above skinny dark green leaves in kinda lousy dirt, accented with plant bits from an overhanging tree.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

My favorite Pacific Coast iris opened its first blossom yesterday. We generally call this flower stained glass iris, because, well, just look at it.

Pacific Coast iris in full bloom. Dark purple sepals, pale purple petals. We refer to these as stained glass iris because of the intense colors.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Post a photo you took with no context to bring some zen to the time-line.

Late afternoon sunlight on the forest above the waters of Ranger Hole, a natural pool in the Duckabush River in the Olympic Peninsula, Washington state. You can't see the water ouzel dipping in and out of the water nor the enormous moths flying all over, but I saw them and I assure you that they were there.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I garden. My recent gardening pictures are of Sungold tomatoes we ate a while back, a tubfull of dirt with very recently planted winter greens, lacy phacelia blooming its head off, and the last of the summer's scarlet runner beans.

Cup of orange cherry tomatoes; Sungolds grown in my garden this summer, to be precise. The vines are now in the compost, alas.

Tub full of dirt with recently planted greens sprouting; they may be food for my household this winter, or they may just feed rampaging squirrels. Who knows?

Spiky pale purple flowers on twisty green stems. Lacy phacelia; it's a green manure crop and rather pretty on its own. The flowers have a faint pleasant smell.

Green beans on a cheerful yellow tile counter in front of a fruit basket containing ripe bananas, a beet, and an avocado. There's a red toaster lurking to one side.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

Here, have a drumming katydid. Not native to this continent, but a cute little bug nevertheless. It really, really did not want to move, but it was in the exact center of the porch. I used my powers of persuasion and a piece of paper to harry it on to a wisteria leaf.

Small green insect with tiny red spot on its back.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 20/09/2024

Here is my work in progress, which has nothing to do with anything that has happened today. That is, I didn't work on it today. It's just embroidery of a lustrous copper butterfly, with black spots to be added later. La la la, I can't hear you talking about politics. Nope. Nope. Nopity nope.

Background: reference picture of a lustrous copper butterfly. Midground: several skeins of orange embroidery floss. Foreground: orange butterfly in process of being embroidered on white cotton in circular embroidery frame.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 30/07/2024

World #embroidery day! Here's my ten-line June beetle in progress, along with a large picture of the source beetle. The adults are short-lived; I find their carapaces all over my garden these days.

Foreground: beetle embroidery in process. Midground: large picture of ten-line June beetle. Background: page showing a diving beetle from Jane Nicholas's awesome book, "The Stumpwork, Goldwork and Surface Embroidery Beetle Collection".

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 20/07/2024

Have some California poppies while you're inside, and get better soon. Thanks for isolating!

California poppies: bright yellow flowers in bloom over lacy foliage.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 20/07/2024

If you see this, post your purple art 💜 #bskyart #art #SciArt

Purple piecework curtain in process, back in 2020 (yes, I know it looks like a quilt, but it's actually a kitchen curtain I made for my late friend Jane Hawkins because her favorite color was purple. It still hangs in her kitchen, two years after her death. I'll always miss her.)

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 15/07/2024

July 14 (to my surprise) is Be Nice to Bugs Day. Repost with some of your bugs! Here's a ten-line June beetle, trying hard not to be seen and failing.

Ten-line June beetle at night. The beetle is about an inch long, with white and black stripes on its elytra, and a russet head. I thought it was a kind of ground beetle, but my bug book says it's a scarab beetle.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 14/07/2024

Here's a picture of blue-eyed grass.

Blue-eyed grass. The flower is actually purple, not blue, and the plant is a tiny iris relative, not a grass at all. There's California poppy foliage in back, on the left, Moroccan poppy foliage in the center back, and monkeyflower foliage on the right.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 22/06/2024

I have a Moen shower bench, which is not in the shower. It's attached to the wall by our back door stairs, so I have a place to sit down and change from my outdoor shoes to my indoor shoes. That space is too small for a regular bench, but the fold-up shower bench works well there.

Fold-up shower bench, installed in a stair landing rather than in a shower.

Fold-up shower bench in folded up position, sticking out about 3 inches total from wall.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 22/06/2024

Stuff I use to make life easier while my legs don't work the way I want them to*: Asia Ascend teak shower bench. It is not cold or slippery or ugly, all of which were features of the plastic and metal bath chair I used earlier. *An undefined time period, possibly the rest of life. Who knows?

Teak shower bench with wide seat, raised handles, storage shelf underneath.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 12/05/2024

Yesterday, Joanna Russ's irises bloomed. She didn't care about plants, but she wanted her yard to be tidy. Our friend Katherine tended her garden and kept it within bounds. She transplanted these irises to my yard, and when they bloom, I remember. Damn, that woman's brain was so sharp.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

That's nothing compared to the field of corn in Dublin, Ohio.

I took the picture, but the description comes from Wikipedia: Field of Corn, also known as "Corn Henge" is a publicly funded art installation in the city of Dublin, Ohio. The installation consists of 109 concrete ears of corn positioned in rows and standing upright in a grassy field. At one end of the field are two rows of Osage-orange trees, one pre-existing and the other planted for the project.

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Kate Schaefer @kateschaefer.bsky.social · 27/08/2023

Knits turn out to be forgiving once you get over their nasty habit of stretching when you don't want them to. I made a dress for surgery recovery that was long enough to look okay with the wheelchair and that had great pockets. (Am now done with wheelchair and walker; recovery went fine.)

Kate standing next to walker, showing cotton knit cowl-neck dress in grey and white stripes and glow-in-the-dark space fabric

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