@memsomerville.bsky.social

@memsomerville.bsky.social

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Scientist. Lacemaker. #LostCanadian lacecouvige.com for Wikipedia project

Screenshot of the NYT homepage top article right now. Says: Live 6m ago Abdul El-Sayed Wins Democratic Senate Primary in Michigan Dr. El-Sayed, a progressive, and his moderate opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, moved quickly to project unity after a race that divided Democrats.
A section of the Massachusetts Bay laws from 1636. The link goes to the whole page in the archives, but the part I'm interested in says this: "That no pson, after one month, shall make or sell any bone lace, or other lace, to bee worne vpon any garment or linnen, vpon paine of 5sh the yard for every yard of such lace so made or sould, or set on ; neither shall any taylor set any lace vpon any garment, vpon pain of x' for every offence; pvided that binding or small edging laces may bee vsed vpon garments or linnen."
Screenshot of my third guess text on today's wordle. If there was only one solution left and this is a valid word--but not it--there is not just one solution left. Text: "There was only one possible solution left — and this wasn’t it. XXXXX is a valid guess and you have a great vocabulary, but I don’t consider it a likely solution. What other Times readers did No one in our sample of 215,400 completed Wordles faced this scenario!"
A car selfie of me with my Medical Reserve Corps shirt on, in the car, traveling to a vaccine clinic for seniors in my town. I'm bringing the Flat Fauci that was a hit and a lot of people took their vaccine photos with him.
A white cat sits at on a white bar height chair, with an empty plate and place setting in front of it. It looks prepared to eat but kind of miffed that no food is actually in position. But it also looks a bit like that cat from the yelling meme. However, there is no yelling here. Only the intense cat stare about the absence of food.
A bar graph of my solar panel production on my Somerville MA roof. This is the week of the Canadian wildfire haze in July 2026. Most of the week the bars are at about 50 kWh production levels. On July 14 it only hits around 37 kWh, and on July 15 it is a very small bar that registers about 13 kWh. Today was clearer for the early part of the day and it's back up to 50ish.
Screenshot of the first couple of paragraphs of the Boston Globe story about Biddeford Maine history. "Hanging inside Mayor Liam LaFountain’s office in Biddeford, Maine, is a newspaper page from September 1924, recounting a day when city leaders and residents stood at the bridges over the Saco River and prevented members of the Ku Klux Klan from marching into the city. During that period, the KKK in Maine was targeting immigrant communities, including French Canadians, Italians, Poles, Greeks, and Lithuanians, as well as Catholic and Jewish residents, according to the Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center. Just over a century later, LaFountain said that episode still reflects how the city understands itself."
A screenshot of the Instagram post of the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast, the Sarah Bradlee Fulton episode. It shows some text about the subject, but there is a memorial stone with Sarah's name and dates on it (1740-1835) and it says Heroine of the Revolution. Erected by the Sarah Bradlee Fulton DAR. There is a pot of dried flowers with a blue ribbon askew against the stone, and a metal marker for Revolutionary War honors.
A small beginner bobbin lace project in rainbow color threads is underway on a rectangular lace pillow. There is a small stitch sampler that is almost complete here. It teaches the 3 basic stitches. A new lace maker's hands are shown touching the bobbins on the right side as they work the stitches. Text on the graphic say: Beginner Bobbin Lace Workshops coming up in MA Visit lacecouvige.com/sstore Worcester, Ipswich classes planned
Screenshot of the headline on the homepage of the Guardian. It shows what appears to be 2 young Chinese children sitting on debris in a muddy and flooded street. Roof debris and other damage is apparent all over the nearby structures. The headline says "China" and: Venomous snakes escape breeding farms in southern China during flooding 8hr ago
Screencap of the part of the ISO New England page showing the Resource Mix Graph and the Resource Mix chart. Each of the charts now shows a rose pink color item that indicates batteries as a source. It's not really visible on the line graph because it's small now. And it shows up as less than 1% on the circular one. But at least it is appearing now. It appears and disappears though. I caught this particular screenshot to show the pink box on the Mix chart.
A hand held temperature sensor aimed at 2 different locations in the same few minutes in 2021. On the left one aims at the ivy covered wall and it says 95F. On the right a nearby plain brick section says 113F.
A re-used candy tin on my lace pillow is full of brass pins and the spools of thread I'm currently using on a project. Lace bobbins with small amounts of discarded thread are strewn around the box as well. The picture on top of the candy tin is a recreation of the Gainsborough Blue Boy but with a tabby cat head. It is both regal and silly. The threads are silk and are all shades of blue and some are nearly used up, but there are also some beige and golds and greens in there that look like the painting background colors.
Screenshot of 2 reviews on the IMDB site for Dicks: The Musical. Upper review: gets a 7/10 WTF I love both you, Nathan and Megan but WTF were you thinking. I'm only a half hour into the movie and I'm like, did Nathan do a ton of mushrooms during Covid lockdown. How did this happen? Campy? Check. Bizarre? Check. But this is like John waters decided he wanted a gay coming out movie premiere. In still going to finish it. And I'm not disliking the movie just not what I was expecting and not really sure what to think, how to feel, or if I should really watch this. And I'm a 53 yr old gay man with a theater background from NY city Broadway. Seriously? This long without an original and this is what you come up with? Other than what I've just said I'm speechless and will never speak of this again. Second review: 1/10 Cinematic Crime I had such high hopes for this movie walking into the theater; I was really rooting for this to be a success. I couldn't have been more predisposed to seeing all its best qualities. An hour and 26 minutes later, I regretted every one of my decisions to see this pure piece of garbage. What adds to the heartbreak is the inclusion of such exceptional performers like Megan Mullaly and Nathan Lane. Not even their talented genius could flog this DOA dumpster fire back to life. The writing lacked originality and wit, and saw fit to instead substitute tortured jokes that begged for a pity laugh. Each song became more and more forgettable. You could feel all six people in the auditorium begging for a swift ending to put us out of our misery. When the writing and the music aren't competing for the Gold Medal in the Film Failure Olympics, the bizarre, shoe-horned gags are hard at work making you cringe. A disjointed plot line about sewer monsters and a detached vagina pile onto this crime against cinema, which should be tried in The Hague. It would be less painful to watch the movie musical Cats.
This is a screenshot of the "List of Passengers" for a steamship that ran between Prince Edward Island and Boston in 1882. It has the form fields filled out in that lovely 19th century cursive with a very sharp pen nib. The ship name was Carroll, and there are other official names and weight items. The top line of the table of passengers is shown. The fields are names, age, sex, occupation, place of birth, place of last residence, If in America before-yes or no, condition.
A brick front porch in #SomervilleMA. I'm seated in a camping chair and you can see my denim skirt covered lap is full of a small calico cat. On the back of the cat I have rested my wooden tatting shuttle. In me left hand I'm holding my work in progress, a turquoise blue scrolly tatted corner of the "magic square" pattern from the linked website. It's about the first quarter of the square.
A bobbin lace roller pillow with about a dozen pairs of bobbins on a table on a front porch. The pillow is green velvet, the bobbins are wood with white linen thread wrapped on them. You are seeing the view from the lacemaker's perspective. Behind the lace pillow a lazy calico is stretched out, not watching the lace activity but seems to be watching what's going on down the stairs and out on the street. Or maybe birds. A lot of birds pass by here.
My completed project of small bright red maple leaf earrings with beads on the leaf points. They are on gold ear wires. Also on the small white handkerchief is the tube of small seed beads I used, my favorite tatting shuttle that is made of wood and has a tiny hook at the front point, and the red ball of Lizbeth size 40 thread that I used for my earrings.
A cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the horsemen of the apocalypse. They are riding horses and covered in black shrouds. From the left the text on their shrouds are: War Famine Pestilence Death Death looks over at the right and a new guy looking similar coming in. Death says: And you are? The new horseman says: Misinformation
An annoying calico sticks her face directly into the Irish crochet lace jar cover that I just got. It's a pretty ecru antique piece with nice clover and flower motifs, and it has a little net on the underside to fit exactly on a wide mouth canning jar. So apparently she needed to inspect it really close up.
The back liftgate of my Solterra is open while I'm charging my blue-gray EV at a service plaza in CT. I can paw through my books (which I did) while I was charging for about 30min. There are about 24 plastic bins full of books piled all over the back in a sort of tetris-like manner. A small cargo net sits across the part right above the bumper area so nothing falls out if it gets jostled.
A tin box of shortbread cookies from the Campbell's company. It's a hinged lid reusable tin which I am always looking to use for lace or sewing tools, as the joke about cookie tins goes. There are 3 tabby kittens on the cover, two on the left are doing some kind of dance moves but are wearing little tiny kilts that are swinging with the movement. A third kitten to the right is playing the bagpipes and wearing a tartan tam. Some print over their heads says Scottish Wild Kittens and Pure Butter Shortbread Shapes. The tin is about 5 x 8 inches--a great size for a tool tin. Near the new tin box are 2 laces that I picked up at the antique stores. One is a lovely white square about the size of a coaster with lovely needlelace work around the edges. The other piece is a fine Irish crochet beige piece that appear to be a former collar trim. It has typical clover and flower motifs in the center and is in pretty decent shape except where it was cut off its previous garment.
Screenshot of an newspaper article from 1789. HALLIFAX Jan. 10 The following experiment of the effect of electricity on vegetation, made by a gentleman In England, merits the attention of the curious : he planted two turnips in two boxes, each containing 24 pounds of earth : he kept them in the same exposure, and all circumstances the same in each, except that one was electrified twice a day for two months, at the end of which time it was in full growth, and the skin bursting, and weighing nine pounds; the other, at the end of four months did not grits reach thar weight--a strong proof that the electric fire [I think it's fire] had a remarkable power in promoting and quickening the growth of the vegetation.
A very small baby cap, kind of a beige color, made of a very fine weave cotton (according to the museum records). Reportedly from early 1700s. The back of the cap is gathered into a small oculus surrounded by an immense number of tiny cartridge pleats that are astonishing. In the back where the fabric meets there is a tiny insertion of a white or beige lace piece that I was trying to evaluate. The photo shows the cap through a small hand held magnifying glass.
My lace pillow out on the porch on a sunny spring day. It shows the pattern wound on the roller and the 11 pairs of bobbins for the smaller beige linen thread, and a single bobbin with a heavier outline thread. My impish calico stands behind it looking at me like she's about to walk all over it. She soon did.
On the Sudbury MA town common, a bright warm spring day. Under a tent at the Revolution 250 festival. I'm in a colonial outfit that includes a black lace shawl that was very fashionable in 1790. My lace pillow is in the foreground with dozens of bobbins and an Ipswich lace pattern. I'm showing 2 visitors some of the other Ipswich lace books and items on our display table nearby.
An irksome calico is sitting directly in the center of an embroidery hoop on my work in progress. Threads and other tools are nearby. She has this goofy look on her face that indicates she clearly knows she is being obstructionist and feels very smug about that.
Poster for the General Strike. It's a red background with black boxes for some of the text, some in yellow and some text in white. Text from the top down: Workers over Billionaires People over profits GENERAL STRIKE Friday May 1 Hit them where it hurts NO work * school * shopping Withhold your labor and spending and make them listen WE THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER
A small round object that appears to be a campaign pin. It says: ESOPHAGOSCOPY ROOSEVELT 11-2-40
An article called "Lost & Found" in Boston, has mostly images of weird and quirky things in local history. The subhead is "10 weird but totally true Boston stories". There is a photo of a large array of items on small paper cards that have household objects stuck to them. Often there is some kind of typewriter description and a date from the 1930s. You can hover over each image and it shows it larger to the right. This one is so creepy. It appears to be a little doll hand. The text says CELLULOID HAND LARYNX and 10-6-31 Ew.
Front page of a short pamphlet about lacemaking schools for Indigenous women in the late 1890s. Three women in western/euro clothing are sitting on their knees with their craft work in front of them. The two on each side have bobbin lace pillows and the woman in the center might have bead work. A paragraph of text below introduces the project of Sybil Carter who was doing missionary work and teaching lace as an income program for women. This is the not completely racist part, it gets bad in the center of the pamphlet of course.
Screenshot of the homepage of the Boston Globe story about the Onion acquiring Infowars. It has a small image of Ben looking thoughtfully at the ceiling on what looks like a stage answering questions of an interviewer on the left, who we see from the back. Text says: The Onion CEO, a Mass. native, on why the satirical news outlet kept fighting to take over Infowars Their alt text seems to say: Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, spoke with Jackie Kucinich, Washington bureau chief of The Boston Globe, during the 2025 Globe Summit.
The steeple of the the Old North Church in 2025. In the very topmost windows there are 2 lanterns lit. That's in the wooden tiered section. On the brick tower below, a light from a projector puts this yellow text on the front of the building: "Let the WARNING ride forth ONCE MORE: TYRANNY is at OUR DOOR"
A Correction at the bottom of a CBC story. Screenshot. Text says: Corrections An earlier version of this story said Bryce P. Tetraeder is the CEO of Global Tetrahedron. In fact, Ben Collins is the CEO, while Bryce P. Tetreader is the name of the fictional owner the company made up, and which it uses in various company communications. Apr 20, 2026 4:34 PM EDT
My worktable with the gridded mat below, and my frame with a sprang project in the center. It is gray and yellow and the appearance of the yellow is either coherent or flecked, depending on how I twisted the threads. It's matching at some points and a mess in other sections. I'm at the tying off point and my crochet hook awaits for me to pull a thread and finish that in the dead center. To the left is the previous project in solid yellow. It's twisty when you take it off the frame because it's not blocked yet. To the right is the Sprang Unsprung book by Carol James, my instructor. The frame is two wooden dowels on each edge, and a top and bottom holder that runs horizontally to hold your threads.
A cast iron blue painted old telephone holder of some kind. It's attached to a wooden phone pole on a street corner. It gives me the vibes of a 1940s film, but I don't know how old it really is. A assume it was some kind of public phone station but there's no coin thing evidence on this remaining shell. One old wire hangs down from the upper overhang part. The word TELEPHONE is written in raised text across the upper overhang. There's at least a 1 foot space where presumably there would have been a public phone of some kind. There's a platform on the bottom where it would have sat. There's an intersection behind the pole and a 2 story brick apartment building to the right. Otherwise a pretty typical dense urban street in Somerville MA.
Screenshot of an email from PirateShip that just came, their logo in the upper left. Text says: Ahoy [redacted]! USPS has announced a temporary 8% price increase for domestic shipping rates for anything shipped on or after April 26th, 2026. This time-limited price change is driven by higher transportation costs across the market ⛽️ [Image here of a guy from a 1950s looking sitcom in a white delivery outfit pouring a dry can of gasoline over to show it's empty] USPS expects this rate increase to stay in place through January 17, 2027, with an 8% increase across these services: Ground Advantage Priority Mail Priority Mail Flat Rate Priority Mail Express
There is a wrought iron arch over the pillars at the base of the stairs to the Handicraft Club building. Poking out perpendicular to the arch is a triangular additional piece that appears to have a seated woman with some pottery behind her and a spinning wheel and distaff in front of her. But it's in flat black metal silhouette like and I might be interpreting that wrong. The sky is a beautiful clear blue behind as I shoot this from the sidewalk upwards. You can see a corner of the old Federal style looking building in the corner.
The charging services receipt for my EV charging, dated today. Some name and account information is redacted. The rest of it says this: Station ID: SOMERVILLE MA / HEALEY SCHOOL Somerville 6.6 kW AC Charging duration: April 3, 2026 at 12:37 PM - 5:56 PM Total Energy Dispensed: 29.0340 kWh Energy Rate 29.034 kWh @ $0.25/kWh 12:37:03 PM - 5:56:29 PM $7.26 MA State Energy Tax 6.25% $0.45 Total $7.71 Price set by City of Somerville MA
A sign on the mossy old tree says "El Arbol De La Resistencia The Tree of Resistance" Another says: "Making the world better one tree at a time" And "Tree of hope" And another soggy one with a butterfly on it and "love knows no borders".
A wooden cod fish hangs from the vintage suspended ceiling frame. It is a lovely warm brown wood color and a nice carving. It's probably 3 feet long and looks like it has all the right fins and anatomy. It is a nice piece.
Screencap of the Boston Globe first 4 paragraphs of the story about Lyons. I have highlighted the part about missing holiday or game days. And then the part about 'breaks up families' in yellow to emphasize it. "s head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons has a particular preference for members of his security detail: agents without children. Working in Washington while his family lives in Massachusetts, Lyons knows what it’s like to miss Thanksgiving together or a kid’s football game. “He didn’t want to take guys away from their children,” said his uncle, Jack Lyons. Yet the agency he oversees often breaks up families in its controversial campaign to fulfill President Trump’s mandate for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Since his appointment last March, hundreds of thousands of people have been detained and deported from the United States, many leaving families behind."
Three incredible cool potato sized rocks from Devereux beach in Marblehead MA. The top potato is brown with white specks all over it. The second rock is a yellow and green swirly mix. Rock three is black with spiky white shards of something else embedded all over. They are sitting on the bed of beach pebbles.
A white woman with brown hair and glasses, in a fleece shirt and a blue overcoat. I'm standing next to an EV charger that I'm using to charge my car. Behind me is the adjacent school playground, you can mostly see chain link fence and bare trees.
A sculpture in a tree edged park. The sculpture is on a granite base that says: An Gorta Mór The Great Hunger Ireland 1845-1850 Dedicated by the President of Ireland Mary Robinson July 23 1997 There are four figures on the top. On the left a woman in the clothes of poverty holds a small child as she sits on a stone. Her thin arm reaches out to the figures on the right. On the right a man, also with thin limbs, holds a small child to his shoulder and he reaches to the side to the woman's direction. But they are several feet apart. It's a gesture of both love and longing and distance it seems.
A Belgian lace pillow with a piece of bobbin lace underway. It has a drawing of the pattern partially visible under the red linen threads attached to a bunch of wooden bobbins. It has a flower motif and a crescent motif and a decorated complex right side edge. I think it's the same lace as Elizabeth is wearing around her collar.
An 18th century painting of a woman as a gif. It starts as a black and white image of a woman all covered up in a black cloak with a big white collar. Her arms are crossed and she looks a little stern as she glares at you. The original underpainting reveals that Elizabeth Perkins Wildes Bourne was actually wearing a lovely cornflower blue dress, trimmed with lace around the large collar area down to her waist, with a little bit of her white undergarment shift showing that also has lace trim. Her cap has lace trim too. It's actually an important discovery of the white lace for me. But it was almost completely covered by someone that I would like to have a talk with. What were they thinking?
A Victorian funeral sleigh in an old barn in New Hampshire. It has an oval window on the side where you could see the coffin, and black fringed drapes that are so characteristic of that era.
Screenshot of an article in the Boston Globe. OPINION [Bold headline font] When a tyrant dies, decent people rejoice [smaller text] The ayatollah is gone. The people he terrorized have every reason to dance. By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist, Updated March 4, 2026, 3:00 a.m.
A screenshot of the display of our solar panel layout on our roof. It has 3 rows of panels, and there are 12 panels in each row (except for the spot in the center where our vent pipe sits). The panels are colored according to active production. Light blue ones are cranking along with values in the high 300 Wh ranges. Medium blue is in the 200s. Dark blues are in the double digit watt range and those are the ones mostly in the bottom row that aren't cleared fully of snow yet.
Screenshot of the streaming newscast of WCVB. The bottom banner says "travel ban along south shore and cape" and has the Storm Team and logo info. A cybertruck sits off the road behind a snowbank and the back lights are lit up across the trunk line (maybe those are the brake lights, I don't know). But they appear to be stuck.
A tatted piece of lace that is about the size of a small doily. It uses pink and green variegated thread to create these variable clusters of floral motifs inside an outline of beige thread. It's not complete yet so the tails of the last row are still attached and my shuttle used to make it sits to the left. It's a silver oval tool with a pointy nose.
A basement set of stairs inside a house. The side basement door somehow got opened and there are piles of snow on each of about 4 stairs and a crust of snow on the cement wall. Where the door is wedged open you can see bright light, and the wind keeps forcing more drifting snow inside.
Screenshot of the liveblog of the blizzard at The Boston Globe. Market Basket to close most of its stores at noon — 11:51 a.m. By Dana Gerber, Globe Staff In the southern United States, there is a well-known gauge of a hurricane’s damage known as the “Waffle House Index” — if a location of the breakfast chain is open and serving a full menu, the neighborhood couldn’t have fared that poorly. In New England, the strength of a nor’easter may best be measured by the Market Basket Index — and an announcement from the Tewksbury-based chain indicates we’re in for a doozy. “Due to the severe weather today, and for the safety of our associates and customers, the majority of Market Basket stores will be closing at 12 PM noon today, Feb 23, 2026,” Market Basket said. Thirteen stores, none in Massachusetts, will remain open, according to the notice. Those stores are located in New Hampshire (Claremont, Concord, Milford, North Conway, Plymouth, Swanzey, Tilton, and Warner) and Maine (Biddeford, Westbrook, and Topsham).
An urban street in the darkness, but it's a little brighter because of the old snow cover around and the dense clouds reflecting some light. A street with a flatbed tow truck speeding by and a little blurry as it takes away a car parked on the wrong side of the street, most likely. In the foreground a big black jeep is parked in an old carved-out parking space surrounded by the glaciers remaining from the previous storm. In the background a couple of older houses, one under renovation. It hasn't started to blizzard here at all yet.
A screencap of a Retweet by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of Mike Adams the @healthranger on twitter. Who was at one time banned from the site for the worst misinformation peddling, conspiracy theories, and other crankery. Here he is criticizing the Trump order on glyphosate. With typical crankery I'm not repeating.
A screenshot of 2 reddit replies. One says [Removed by Reddit]. The second one says: I had a long reply here that reddit claimed was "hate speech" that was nothing of the sort. I imagine it was keyword searched for words now that I cannot type or this would be removed. So you cannot read how I think the country might get really bad because reddit censored it. Alas. Go now. Save yourself.
A square of tatted thread. Lots of the little loops and chains that connect them. Colors are very vibrant. Turquoise, purple, yellow and pink are all in the same variegated thread. It looks a lot like King Cake colors.