iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

I've been teaching myself simple band weaving with the help of various blogs and YouTube videos. So far I've just made a couple of simple headbands to hold a veil, but I'm enjoying it and I'm going to tackle something larger next. #sca #mysca #weaving

Green white teal small woven band about a finger width

Green white teal band on an easy Weaver loom partially completed

Blue white red band about a finger width

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Getting my visualizations out there to make a trip to Japan, a lifetime bucket list item, happen in 2026 in the fall! Let's see if we can do this! #watercolors #japan

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Hummingbirds like to visit the scarlet runner bean flowers, and one posed for a picture this morning! 🌱

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Finished harvesting and shelling the Carlin peas. Got a little over two cups, which is great since I started with 25 peas and only 15 to 17 of them turned into plants due to germination failure and predation. Medieval recipes await! Also saved some seed for next year. 🌱 #sca #mysca

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

A few more small cups. These were turned from 1 lb lumps of clay, which I found much harder to center than the 1.5 lb that I've been using earlier. I think they came out pretty decently, not fabulous but decent. #pottery

Three clay cups ready to be fired as greenware

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Making art. Alcohol markers, metallic pens, glitter pens.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

About half the Carlin pea harvest is in! Not bad for starting with only 25 peas, of which only 18 sprouted and 15 made it past the snails. This medieval style starch pea will be the source for some pottage experimentation. #sca #mysca

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

cherry clafouti, baked this morning before it gets too hot to turn the oven on! #whatscooking

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Even though I snipped off the buds, that central stalk will not dry out like the rest of the onion and cause them to rot after a couple months. Looks like I'm going to be chopping a lot of onions over the next few days and putting them in the freezer! 🌱

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Harvested all my onions today and set them out in the pop up greenhouse to dry out a bit. Unfortunately I won't be able to store them for months like last year. The cold snap we had this spring tricked them into thinking it was their second year and they all sent up flower stalks. 🌱

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Had a great time at the W7PXL Valley Radio Club field day operation yesterday. I made my first contacts on 20m! My husband's radio trailer was the 15m station. #hamradio #fieldday

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Suszę każdy z nich osobno, ale mieszam je w trakcie gotowania.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Snipped some summer herbs to dry in the garage for fall. 🌱

Basket of herbs each to strings on clothespins

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Carlin pea update: we have lots of pods! I'm hoping for a good harvest, enough to try some traditional pottage recipes this fall in combination with my potherb garden. #sca #mysca

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Pretty happy with these cups, trimmed and ready for bisque firing. #pottery

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Traditional medieval field/starch pea, the Carlin pea. They grow like no other pea I have seen, with the leaves on the central stalk and crazy vining tentacles on the sides. These are only a month old, let's see what they look like as they mature! 🌱 #mysca #sca

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Coffee shop art. My new sets of washi tape came in!

Our reach is as long as our roots are deep.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Super quick and easy dinner: quiche with sun-dried tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, and wilted spinach! #whatscooking

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Had a lovely hour walk on the loop trails at Dorris Ranch a couple of days ago. The meadow areas are blooming with camas lilies and the forested trails have larkspur and columbine.

Larkspur or Columbine I'm not sure which

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Coffeeshop art. Ohuhu alcohol markers on mixed media paper. #art

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Congratulations! I got a happy twinge reading Barony of Settmour Swamp, I had some good friends who played there as the house of the confused cat. Their heraldry was a confused cat with ferrets rampant on either side. Alas, that was 40ish years ago, but seeing the name gave me a happy memory.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Taking a few minutes to just sit in the sun and listen to the wind chimes. There's a chicken in the smoker, I just checked the moisture level in all my planters and they're all okay, and there's nothing I have to be doing right this very second except enjoying the smell of the lilacs. 🌱

Peaceful garden scene, kind of cluttered but that's just how we roll

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I feel your angst, I grew up in New Hampshire and northern Maine!

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

This year I'm trying to grow Carlin peas, a medieval starch pea that's been used for centuries. I'm really impressed by how different and weird they look compared to normal snap, snow, and shelling peas. I feel like I'm growing little aliens in the garden! 🌱 #sca

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

Having fun at the Albany Oregon carousel. What an amazing project this is! All of the animals have been made from scratch by volunteers and the whole operation is run by volunteers! The mechanism is donated by a member of the Dentzel family and was restored by volunteers.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

The lemon balm is really starting to take off, so I snipped a small bunch for my first tisane of the 2025 garden season. Fresh lemon balm tisane is lovely either hot or iced! It's still a nice tea herb when dried, but the fresh flavor is really special. 🌱 #whatscooking #tea

A small bundle of lemon balm sticking out of a whimsical teapot

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

They are going to be my pumpkin patch and spill out over the lawn next to my garden beds.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

More mad science today. Learning to use ChatGPT. I now have a map of easy wildflower and waterfall hikes within a 2 hour drive of my home in Eugene, of 4 miles or less, and less than 350 foot elevation gain. I constructed the map by hand using MyMaps. www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/e...

google.com

Strata's Hikes of Interest - Google My Maps

Wildflower and waterfall hikes of no more than 4 miles and less than 350 feet of elevation gain

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

They are not everybody's cup of tea, but if you are interested in getting all of The wheel of Time novels and benefiting the ACLU, there's an $18 humble bundle now for them in ePub format. www.humblebundle.com/books/robert... #books

humblebundle.com

Humble Book Bundle: Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time

Experience time reimagined in the world and stories of Robert Jordan’s 14-book epic Wheel of Time saga. Read great novels and help support the ACLU!

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

I am super excited, the mad science is working! It's day four of conditioning my straw bales and the temperature 3 inches below the surface of the bale is over 100°! Wow! 🌱

Pen digital thermometer stuck in a straw bale; reads 107F

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

It's not really clear to me yet how well they will do. The Albions are everbearing, and it was their first year last year. I didn't think to actually track my harvest, I just treated myself to a strawberry or two when I was doing garden work. This year I'll be more observant.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Started my straw bale garden yesterday-- got bales and started 12 days of conditioning them with water and fertilizer. Meanwhile, strawberry towers are doing well, and so are the annuals hardening off in the pop-up greenhouse: calendula, cosmos, alyssum, viola. 🌱

pair of straw bales at the head of a raised garden bed

two strawberry towers and a long skinny planter of daylilies

10x20 garden tray with pink 6-packs of annual starts

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Made a little "mother ocean" mermaid stuffie at the retreat.

purple-haired mermaid small felt stuffie

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

They are getting nibbled by something but are ok

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Sorry I missed this, I can't seem to connect to the original posting to figure out where I was visiting. But I haven't had any bad tea anywhere I've been!

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

They are big containers so I let them grow to maturity there. Then we do a two-person lift of the container up to the wheelbarrow and dump it out in the wheelbarrow. Makes it really easy to harvest potatoes!

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Sorry I missed this earlier! Our trellises are wire cattle panels made into an arch and attached to metal t-post fencing stakes

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

I stopped using fun color in my hair about 14 years ago when I started doing more corporate work and shut down my consulting company. It's only taken me a year and a half of retirement to realize hey, I can go back to having fun! Just a few purple streaks to start with, more later.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Chicken and poblano pepper white chili over corn chips. I grew the poblanos last summer and chopped and froze a bunch of them for winter chili. #whatscooking

Bowl of chicken poblano and white bean chili

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

While I was there, I picked up some cups and a small bowl that I had done a few weeks ago and had come out of glaze firing. Purple rain interior and rim dips, two of the bodies in tenmoku and two in woo's blue.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Went over to Clay space, to participate in the make-a-thon for a future fundraiser sale. I threw four successful cups out of seven attempts. I've never worked with that small a ball of clay before, only a pound. Much harder to center! #pottery

A small bowl and three cups, or arguably two small balls and two cups. I don't have great control over form yet.

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Strata Chalup @strata.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

We took a nice walk at the Eugene Rose Garden yesterday lunch time. The huge heritage cherry tree is blooming, and so is the enormous magnolia. Gorgeous flowers everywhere!

Looking up through the blooming cherry tree

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