Kotatsu Heating

Blessings Darlings!

Winter has finally arrived here on the east coast of the US. It's 31 degrees F as I type, and not due to get much warmed today.  A second round of freezing rain is due tonight/early tomorrow morning.  Nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

Being broke, cheap, and green, I keep the heat here turned low.  The house is set for 60 F right now.  Spawn has a tiny space heater he occasionally runs in his bedroom, Chubby Hubby has a larger space heater in his lab. My areas - the kitchen and my office - have no space heaters.  I feel the cold less than they do, for one thing.  Second, when I'm in the kitchen I'm cooking and otherwise moving.

But in my office I'm sitting at my desk all day. And my office is in the basement. With the heat vent closed. What I do to keep warm on days like today is, well, first line of defense is dressing warmly, but what I'm typing about today is a modification on the Japanese Kotatsu heating system.

Kotatsu heating is having a small heating element under the table you are working at.  Houses in Japan aren't the Tyvak'd air-tight things we aim for here in the US - they allow air in, so here weren't problems with carbon monoxide poisoning!  So you'd have the tiny smoldering fire under the table, a light table cloths, and you'd be kept warm in a cold room.

Now they use electric heaters.

Me, I've got another system going. I have one light tea light candle, in a glass jar.  My desk has a partition (so my legs don't show if you were sitting across from me) so that side holds in the heat, and it has sides on the left and right.  My legs go into the cubby hole ... and I have attached a curtain (using Velcro) to that opening.  This keeps the heat in.

It really makes a HUGE difference in my comfort level on cold days.  I'm not saying my upper back is very warm, it's not (I might put on a sweater on colder days), but my legs are VERY happy and my hands are very happy (I can put them under the curtain for warmth, but they don't seem to need that with my legs warm.).

And tea candles are cheap!  Craft stores have them for about a dime each on sale, and I get the for way less at garage sales. 

One candle. An unused piece of material. Hours of warmth for a nickle.

I'm a happy Fern.

Frondly, Fern

Them Bones

Blessings, Darlings!

Being Green and Organic and witchy and Frugal, I like to re-purpose everything that we use at least one time.  More if possible.

Tonight's re-purposing theme, in line with Mystic Trad/Amok oral tradition, is FIRST YOU TAKE A DEAD CHICKEN.  So, the dead chicken - in this case, two backs, three drumsticks, and one thigh (all out of the freezer, bought on sale, etc) - will start off being breaded and fried.  And eaten for dinner by the family - purpose #1.

Usually I re-purpose chicken bones into soup stock.  I'm rather lazy on how I do that.  Roast the bones after removing all edible meat.  Take the container of dried veggie scraps - onions, celery, carrots - out.  Put both in big pot, add water, some salt, a few whole allspice/pepper corns/cloves, a few mashed cloves garlic, a few slices of ginger.  Bring to a boil, covered, for 5 minutes.  Put in the hay box cooker
 that I'm sure you've already built.  Leave it there 12 hours.  Strain.  Put back in pot.  Reduce by half.  Done! Purpose #2

However, I don't like what the breading left on them after being dipped and fried does to the stock, and I've been after some vertebra for a while.  So these bones are going to be re-purposed for magic. Purpose #2B

So I'll have to invest time removing tendons and ligaments from them all, and separate them all from each other.  I may simmer them to do the latter, so the house is still going to smell really good.  I'll probably have to bleach the vertebra to get all the gunk out of them, experience tells me.  Then the fun begins!

Using a saw (I'm hoping I can find a friend with a band saw, ours died years ago), I plan on making 'round' slices of leg bones, maybe for beads.  The vertebrae will certainly be used for 'beads'.  If I had ribs, I'd be making Ogham staves out of them.  Some bones will be kept for healing work - when a friend was hit by a hit and run driver, cracking vertebrae, I used some for that.  Some might get kept for artwork. 

I can't WAIT to get my share of our next steer - if no one else wants bones, I'm gonna have LOTS of fun.

All of this might also be used in a sideline online sales business, along with the runes and ogham I already make.  I love having multiple income streams!