Brad Sondahl's blog

June 1
2 stories about nature:
1.
When we lived in the fruit area of Lake Chelan, an orcharding neighbor had a huge cherry tree. It was so tall his tallest picking ladders would only reach halfway. It produced so many cherries that he invited the neighbors in to pick them for free, since he didn't have a commercial quantity. But I think it bothered him that he couldn't spray to the top of the tree, because one summer he cut the top out of the tree. The next year the tree bore heavily, as it would with a heavy pruning. But the birds, which had previously fed on the cherries high in the tree, now attacked the lower branches, and he no longer had cherries to spare for the community.

2. We were walking around the new property today, admiring the wildflowers. There was also a patch of irises planted in back, but it was clear they had suffered for years with too little water, and had no flower buds forming. Then we walked to the back of the property, where there's nearly a cliff.This was the area where they dumped their garden waste. Growing densely in some old fir cones was a much healthier set of irises, which had obviously been dumped there in the distant past... These had lots of buds. The difference, as far as we could discern, was that the flowering irises were growing in a pile of composted fir cones, whereas the others were planted in our very gravelly dirt. Dirt vs. compost--compost wins.

Here's the rainbow picture from several days ago. It drizzled most of the day today, adding up to a half inch of rain. The photo shows how it's brighter inside the bow. There is also a faint double bow a little farther out. I learned as a child that the second bow reverses the color order, but I still don't know why... I guess the light is bouncing the other way...

June 2
Here's the link to the latest article my son wrote, making use of his military history major...
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwi/articles/tannenberg.aspx

    So today I was eating lunch, when I got a call from the library inquiring as to my whereabouts. In true nightmare mode, I had spaced out that on Mondays I'm supposed to go in an hour early, theoretically to do day care visits or stories with preschool kids and their mothers. Neither of those was happening currently, so I thought I didn't work, but I was wrong. Nothing bad happened to me because of it, aside from losing an hour of pay, but it was jarring, as I am fairly meticulous about being on time for things.

June 3
    I finished planting the garden today. It was mostly corn, and corn needs a long time to mature... I planted in advance of the showers that began this evening, which saves on watering them to get them started.
    We also started removing the covered deck which was taken out by last winter's snowfall. But there's a swallow nesting in a birdhouse attached to it, so we're delaying for a few weeks. It would also help to have more people to lift, as we'd like to remove the roof in one piece, to reuse...
    One of the last balls to juggle with the library job is visiting local daycares, taking them books, and telling stories. I met one of the daycare people today, and arranged to start the rounds on Monday. The other major hurdle is the summer reading program, which came prepackaged, with insects as the theme. I'd like to make a terrarium and a worm composter bin as part of the ambience for it, assuming I find time...

June 4
    After work today I attached nylon hose to branches of our Royal Ann cherry tree, to fend off the cherry maggots. I'd previously attached some green nylon net bags I'd sewn, so now there are green and brown odd protrusions from many of the limbs of the trees. Each bag will yield only about 10 cherries, but it's better than none... To keep the flies out, the ends are constricted with the little metal and paper twistems used to secure garbage bags (and clay bags, my source).
    The weather continually threatens to rain, but with little accumulation. You can now Googlemap Spirit Lake's streetview, but it's only the highway going through town. When you get to the main street, it looks like a post office on one side, and a couple buildings on the other, which obscures the true glory of our small traditional business district... You'll know on the map when you're at the main street, because of the large plastic snow cone, which was there briefly last summer, and is now immortalized on our street view. Also the temperature was 89 degrees on the sign at the grocery, compared to our current high in the 50's...

June 5
    I started the worm bin today. I used a large low opaque plastic container, added leaves, compost, starter worms, and water, and covered it with a loose piece of opaque plastic, knowing they don't like light, but need air. I've already got chickens to eat our food scraps, so this is mostly to entertain kids this summer, if it works out. I used to fish, but I got over that, after not catching any useful fish for too many years... 30 years ago I saw my first worm composter bin, where a biologist was trying it (a new fad)... I also found a large slug while getting the worms, so I threw it in for good measure...
    Otherwise, it was pottery work and library work, and a bit of gardening in the morning, and rain in the evening... We're captive on a carousel of time...

June 6
    A full day, including the last scheduled chiropractor visit--sitting around with a couple other back sufferers saying how great this chiropractor was... After finishing there I roamed a few new trails at Q'emiln Park in Post Falls--there are enough trails that I've probably only been on about a third of them in several years of visits.
    I got home in time to make some huckleberry muffins with ham and eggs for brunch, and see my son off for a few weeks skiing on Mt. Hood (they're getting snow there still regularly).
    Then I worked at the library for 5 hours, got supper, and went off for 2 and 1/2 hours of gospel music practice.
    After that, I had 15 minutes of pottery work, and now the blog and bed await me, in that order. I guess I've done the blog...

June 7
    It was cold and rainy all day today, so I did some baking this morning. I made a large batch of pie dough, divided it in 6ths, and made 3 covered pies. The first took advantage of our abundance of spinach--spanakopita. This is a vegetarian recipe I learned from the Laurel's Kitchen cookbook. It's spinach and cottage cheese and eggs cooked in a pie shell. It resembles a spinach quiche...
    The other pies combined the last apples of last year, discovered in our root cellar, with the first "fruit" of spring--rhubarb. The apples we have aren't too tart, so the rhubarb provided the tartness. I think that's why rhubarb is often in combination, such as strawberry-rhubarb pie. By itself, it's so tart, that sufficient sweetening tends to be overkill...    We've always used Betty Crocker's 1950 picture cookbook as a baking guide, but usually cut the sugar called for in pies by about half...
    Before the rain started this morning, I reassembled the deer fence that protects our big garden. The green beans just emerged yesterday, and at this stage a deer can mow down a whole row and not have a mouthful... The fence consists of heavy fishing line strung between metal posts, held in place with strips of electrical tape. At the end of the season, it can be taken down and stored for reuse... (I wish I could remember where I stored last year's)

June 8

We walked for hours today at Q'emiln Park in Post Falls, since it didn't rain, probably about 5 or 6 miles. We saw at least three new wildflowers, two of which came out very blurry (my camera doesn't like to be too close). The lovely pink flower shown above is bitterroot, which I'd only seen in books before. It was indentified "for the books" by Lewis and Clark, and is the state flower of Montana. The flower was about 2 inches across, but with little supporting foliage--you can see the moss all around it. The park is full of bedrock, presenting a partial barrier to the Spokane River. Right at the park area the river divides into three parts, all of which are dammed now, but due to spring flooding are all flowing full bore. When asked what Q'emiln means, I quipped that it probably means "the place we used to catch salmon before the river was dammed." That's a cheap shot, since Spokane Falls (which is downstream) was probably high enough to deter migrating salmon...

June 9
I started making the rounds of the daycares today, reading them a story from the book I enjoyed most when I was their age--Little Brown Bear and his Friends. Kids are a little more hyper today, at least in groups, but most of them paid attention. My predecessor at bringing library culture to the daycares was there as well, with short simple stories and pop up books. I'll probably have to adapt...
Since my Mondays are shortened by going to library work by 10 am, I glazed a couple kilnloads after I got home this evening. This evening I played and recorded some more music. I'm not sure if the improvisations are worth posting on Youtube, but it wasn't much work to prepare them. "Kisses sweeter than Wine," according to Wikipedia, started as an Irish song that Leadbelly adapted, then the Weavers picked it up and wrote some new verses to it. So that about qualifies it as a folksong...

C Doodlin 2

C Doodlin

Kisses sweeter than wine

June 10
    I've been too busy to complain about the cold weather, but this morning it was just above freezing and I could see my breath, which isn't what young tomato plants like to experience. I think I'll cover some after I finish blogging tonight, although the predicted low is 38 (with snow and rain showers).
    June is a third gone, even though it's not been hot enough yet to open the windows even in the daytime. (This may correspond to the sun being at a solar minimum, with an unusually long time with little sunspot activity)  I'm still trying to get a lot of pottery made, expecting summer to happen sometime. I got a dinnerset order today, after spending the morning making lots of chip and dips, pitchers, and fruit bowls. The library job has currently settled down into "manageable" from "overwhelming."
    My son reported they got a foot of snow on Mt. Hood, and the temperature is in the 20's, so he's still living in the winter... Hood has gotten 71 feet of snow since last September, and a lot is left up there, so he's very happy...

June 11
    I went to a public radio sponsored concert which featured old and young classical violinists in the first half, and old and young fiddlers in the second half. Unfortunately the old-time music didn't come off sounding nearly as interesting as the classical. The younger old-time musicians did play very challenging material, although it was based on old time tunes, I doubt it was learned by ear. They actually represent a separate strand of music especially cultivated for fiddle competitions, laden (perhaps overly) with embellishments. The older ensemble played some nice tunes, in a dynamically flat style, which, though perhaps authentic for dance playing, doesn't make good concert music. They did sing a bit, which for me is crucial to the fun of old time music.
    While the concert went on, we added another 3/4 inch of rain to our soggy June. According to the forecasts, that might be it for a while, and temperatures will be back in the comfort zone by tomorrow.

June 12
    Because of the cold spell, the lilacs are still blooming, and the peonies and irises are just opening.
    A kiln didn't make it up to temperature yesterday, and today I found two burned out elements in it. I had 2 backups, but when I checked the other kiln, it had one burned out, so it's clearly time to replace them all. The elements are ordered, but it will be a week or more limping along on one kiln. When my wits are thoroughly gathered, I try to change elements in the spring before things get too busy. But I also tend to put it off, as two sets of elements cost around $500.00.
    Thinking about why $4.00 gas suddenly has people changing their habits... I think it's the backdrop of the "bear" economy that made the difference--if the economy felt really robust (the type of term economists prefer), people would just pay it, as we all did went it went from $1.50 to $3.00 per gallon. Although the current price of gas is caused by world supply and U.S. inflation, to me it's easy to see a link to the pedal- to- the- metal interest rates of a few years back, done by the Fed when trying to keep the economy from receding. The first eerie thing about that was when there was sort of a glut in used cars from everyone buying new ones at ultra low interest (I tend to notice used cars, being generally sort of in the market for one). Then it was the same with houses and the real estate bubble. My guess is the interest cut was an overreaction, that the economy was already, like Wile E. Coyote, run off the cliff, and extending the cuts as long as they did just made the fall a bit deeper. But no one wants to see a deep recession, so their reaction was understandable.

June 13-14

    The 13th was another day so full that I forgot to go to gospel music practice till they called. Our severely mentally impaired niece arrived to stay for about 10 days while the parents go on a trip to Central America.
    I started a dinner set order, then had to cover it by evening to keep it from drying too much to foot. (That just shows how much our weather has switched from too cold recently).
    On Saturday, I didn't want to start more pots that I'd have to cover, so I made figurines while listening to the radio. By the time I'd finished I was nearly up to 100-- ducks, rabbits, and penguins. I also thinned the pear trees of excess fruit, and mowed the lawns of our various compounds.
    It was a beautiful blue sky day, so I took a walk, and there were lots of nice things that I would have photographed, but as soon as I got to the lake, I found the camera battery was out of juice. So I just enjoyed it without trying to capture it...

    June 15
    I got the unique experience of seeing what a wallet looks like when it falls out of the pocket of a motorcyclist at 60 mph today. I was returning from doing a musical service at the Union Gospel Mission with our church group, when the motorcyclist in front of me seemed to have a bunch of papers explode right behind him. At first I thought it must be some trash he'd run over, but I didn't think a motorcycle would have enough drag to make these papers go flying. Then I spotted a black billfold in the middle of my lane. It took me a mile or two to figure out what I'd seen, then I had to decide what to do about it. The motorcyclist was into gesturing, mostly to other cyclists, but previously he'd gestured to me to back off when I'd gotten sort of close to him. I thought if I flashed my lights and tried to get him to pull over he'd suspect some sort of road rage event. But it turned out he turned off at a bar in a couple miles, so I followed him in and told him to check his wallet. It's a busy highway, but with luck he got back in time to recoup his belongings.

    The Big Back In lawnmower drag races had their nicest weather and largest turnout ever today. I didn't participate--but I watched a bit. Even though we're closed on Sundays, a lot of payments went under the door today, from quickly bored- with- lawn- mower females did some serious shopping. The picture was taken out the front of the pottery, mostly showing the size of the crowd...

    June 16
    All this sad news of flooding in Iowa reminds me of the time in college a friend and I hopped freights and hitchhiked for Spring break. After we got put off the train in Chicago at gunpoint (by the railway police), and told not to get back on the train, we started hitchhiking south. We got picked up by a black truckdriver, who decided he could drive on a highway near Cairo, Illinois that was closed due to flooding. The only thing to tell us where the highway went were the reflective markers. I guess we went a couple miles through the backwaters nearly two feet deep before making it into Cairo.
    The farthest out point on that trip was Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain. We walked around the quaint tourist town like typical tourists, then hitchhiked home again.
    Hitchhiking isn't common now... The last time I picked up someone was in Montana, where he held up a cane and a gas can. It turned out the gas can was just a prop, and he was fairly crazy, in a harmless way--wanted to know if I was his guardian angel, stuff like that... I was glad to let him off where our roads diverged...

June 17
    Since I employed the "just not in time" strategy for kiln elements, I'm still limping along on one kiln--firing it daily. One nice thing about electricity for firing kilns, it's not as volatile in pricing (around here anyway) as other forms of energy, since it's state regulated. Clay transportation expenses, and some glaze chemical prices, are affected by the current economy. After a slow Spring, the nice weather has still yielded reasonably good sales, which were certainly in doubt from the recession...
    I thinned the few apples that are on the trees this year today. One tree did well, the rest only have a couple dozen apples, probably due to a late frost or something. We'll value the applesauce we still have frozen... One nice thing about diversifying--it may be a great year for strawberries or raspberries, and the pear crop wasn't as affected as the apples, so it will hopefully all balance out in the end. So far the deer have only come in the garden once, somehow evading the fishline fencing I'd put up. I'm hoping with the wet year they're finding more to graze on outside of town...

June 18
    On a slow day at the library, such as today, you know you're just getting paid to watch the time go by. But with the library, as with retailing, you never know when people will appear. The minutes crawl by, but go faster if you stay busy, so I'd grab an armload of books to reshelve that were close enough to the circulation desk that I could watch for patrons. For a while today I thought I was going to a librarian convention in Post Falls in August, until I realized it was the date of our summer reading program. I've already been tentatively scheduled to go to another convention this fall in Salt Lake City. I've always avoided these kind of things in the past, so I guess I'll find out what I've been missing. I think Salt Lake City conventions would be a little more staid than those held in Las Vegas...

June 19
    We had a friend for lunch today, which is one of the meals I can still fix with the new library job, 3 days per week... What we have fresh and homegrown are eggs, spinach, and rhubarb, so we had spinach quiche with rhubarb pie, and fresh bread. We've also been having a lot of cream of spinach soup lately. The spinach used today was volunteer spinach that I hoed around when planting the garden. The main crop will be ready in a couple weeks.
    Last night I got thoroughly frustrated with what should have been a good idea. Companies are offering adapters for printers so you don't have to keep changing all those expensive little ink cartridges--a reservoir of inks with tubes that hook onto the cartridge, and hold about 6 times as much ink as the little guys. Unfortunately, after doing everything to install it that I could, I keep getting an error message that the cartridges are not compatible with my printer. So I thought I might be able to just inject the ink in the old cartridges, but the printer companies try to foil that by a little chip they put on the cartridges that have to be reset with a special gadget if refilled. I think I'll have to go back to the other type of inking, but maybe can add it before the chip senses the cartridge is empty...

June 20
I got invited to take photographs of Misty River, an all female bluegrass band from Oregon. I really like taking photos of musicians, so I enjoyed the event a lot. Here's the page of photos: http://www.sondahl.com/events/MistyRiver08.html

June 21
    Today's fun was playing at the Spokane Garden Club event. When I agreed to do it, I thought from 10 to 1:30 was two and a half hours. Actually it's 3 and a half, and we quit at 3 hours when our fingers were sore. The event did start on a bad note--my camera fell out of my pack about 3 feet to the ground. It apparently got shaken up badly, as it started freezing up and not responding well to the buttons. Regular blog readers know how much I enjoy photography, so I immediately started shopping for cameras after getting home.
    When I lived on a curvy road by a creek in Dubuque, Iowa, my house became the place two people who crashed their cars (at different times) came to call for help. In both instances, they wanted to keep going, even though their cars were badly damaged. In the same way, when I realized my camera was broken, I went to look for the same model--"to keep going". My camera was only 3 years old, but it's taken thousands of pictures, and started to show signs of age, such as large grey bubbles that show up when photographing in the dark. So I was feeling ready to replace it, but I liked a lot of things about it. 3 years in technology is several generations of versions, with photo sizes jumping from 5 to 8 or more megapixels, and many other improved features like 18X telephoto instead of 12X. So I finally realized I'd like a more modern version, and looked for a Panasonic FZ18 at various places on the web. The "Buy it now" price for one on Ebay, used, turned out to be the price I could get it new through Huppins, a web savvy photo store in Spokane. Fortunately I have a birthday this week, and a mother who generally sends a check, so it gives me something specific to spend it on... The camera also has improved video capability, so my Youtube videos won't necessarily be so grainy.
P.S. I retried the camera after writing this entry, and it's working. I guess I'll have to see how erratic it is, before writing it off completely...

June 22
    The gospel group I sing and play with took our show down the road, to a small church outside of town in Spirit Valley. Our guitarist is a tough old buzzard, in his late 60's I'd guess. He's spent the last couple weeks cutting up steel equipment on his property and handloading it onto flatbed trucks for salvage--about 50 tons, I think he said. Last Thursday he was cutting a piece that got hung up, and reached through the steel to get it loose. When the steel came loose, it jerked down on both arms, breaking one below the elbow, and trapping it in the steel. His wife had gone to town, so he managed to get it loose by shifting positions, and got to the doctor, where they wrapped it to await the swelling to go down so it could be cast. That very evening he was there at rehearsal, still trying to pick with his thumb and a forefinger. And he was there today for the concert, still no cast. He mentioned he was going to have to have surgery this week to get a pin installed.
    I installed a boardwalk along the pottery house today in an area that tends to get muddy when it rains. And I went for a bike ride this evening, happy to see the same number of Mountain Ladyslippers blooming. I added a video from yesterday's garden concert featuring the bass player's 3 year old: Love sweet Love with Mia.

June 23
    Yesterday I went to check on a bisque kiln, and realized it was looking too bright in the peephole. Then I remembered not totally being focused when putting in the little cone that melts at the right temperature. So I shut off the kiln, and today I found I had indeed put in the wrong cone, and the kiln was way too hot. I've done this a time or two before...
    Because the pots were still hot when I unloaded them, I could dip them in glaze and they would dry to being handle-able in a few minutes. The issue here is that overfired bisque pots aren't as porous, and don't absorb glaze as easily. Sometimes There were a couple pots that I'd set at an angle or on some other pots that had warped in the firing which I had to throw out, but the rest will at least be "second" quality... That kiln is done firing, so I'll find out tomorrow morning.
    After loading the kiln, I made platters, fruit colanders, and mugs... And worked a full day at the library...

June 24
    The kiln from the overfired bisque turned out fairly well--only a few chip and dips with glaze too thin to look good...
    My skiing son returned from Mt. Hood today with a sore heel. We're not sure if it was a result of doing ski jumps steadily for two weeks, or the 10 mile hike he made afterwards one day to a mountain lake...

June 25
    On my 55th birthday, I worked on pottery and at the library. I gave a concert to about 50 young children in Athol, with songs about bugs, like "She'll be coming around bug mountain" and "There ain't no bugs on me." It went pretty well, considering it was outside near a busy railroad track (two trains went by). During one of the train passages, I did some pantomime stupid magic tricks, which I learned from my brother's first wife back in the 70's. One of the tricks is to stuff a handkerchief into a closed fist from the top, then ceremoniously pull the same handkerchief out from the bottom...
    I also got the heating element order today, so tomorrow I'll rebuild the kilns, and stop feeling half throttled at doing pottery.

June 26
    The kiln rewiring went smoothly. One down, one to go. On this kiln the timer had stopped working quite a while ago--a failsafe to help prevent radically overfiring of the kiln. It turned out the little wires going to the timer had melted from the kiln heat leaking out through a porcelain tube for the kilnsetter. While rummaging around for something to splice the wire with, I noticed an old kilnsitter had a special high temperature sleeve over the little wires. The newer one in the kiln didn't. I guess they started cutting corners, or expense or something. Anyway, a newly wired kiln fires fast. I'd do it more often if it didn't cost about $250 per kiln...
    The weather's getting hotter, and so is summer pottery business. It's supposed to hit 90 (34C) this weekend, which might make me start swimming... Warm temperatures are a mixed blessing making pottery. Larger items tend to dry too quickly, resulting in more cracking. The new clay I'm using is more prone to these cracks, being a finer clay body. I found 3 of the last 4 platters I made had wide cracks right through the middle from drying too fast. I made some more today, but will probably cover them with plastic after footing to slow the drying.

June 27
    A watched pot never boils, and an unwatched garden is soon overrun with weeds. Actually the garden is doing very well--but being unwatched for the latter part of this week, there are suddenly lots of ripe strawberries to pick. There's also plenty of lettuce, spinach, and broccoli, and irises and other flowers. And there are some weeds, but they're small and still hoe-able.
    This is the first night we've opened a lot of windows to cool the house down. Previously it would get too cool. So Summer is sticking to the calendar this year...

    June 28-9
    The old guitarist that I mentioned last Sunday as breaking an arm, had surgery, even needing a plate attached instead of just a pin. But he was smiling in church again, and we scheduled another practice for this week.
    Weeding and watering are the main agendas for the garden currently, and picking strawberries.

June 30
    June went out in fine style today. I started picking strawberries for an hour or so around 7 a.m.--got 2.5 gallons--ate a bunch, saved some for later, froze some...
Then I did pottery work for a couple hours till I had to go do my library thing. After six hours of that, it was back to glazing pots, with the temperature around 90 again. This high heat finally made me install a chimney pipe above the kiln room which should help draw the heat off so it doesn't warm our adjacent screen porch so much. The pipe was a heavy plastic one about a foot in diameter and 8 feet long. I cut a hole in the roof with a jig saw (there's no insulation in the kiln room) and secured the pipe at the bottom with some old door hinges, and at the middle with 3 guy wires made of kiln element wire (strong and rust resistant--it comes free with the elements). As a rain seal, at the top I looped a piece of steel roofing over it in a loose arch. I sealed it at the roof with tarry calking stuff, and on the inside with silicone. I'll be interested to see if it leaks. Some thunderstorms are predicted this evening, so I may find out soon...
    Near dark, I went for the first swim of the year in the Mill Pond, and the water was great. A grebe family was busily catching minnows for their 3 little ones. I'll have to bring my camera when the light is better to get a photo...
    This evening I did my book keeping, and found that sales were better in June this year than last year, which is nice news.

Books read, and films of note.

Film: Trouble in Paradise directed by Ernst Lubitsch. 1932. Given the times, it is easy to see why a director might portray a pair of "live by your wits" crooks over a rich capitalist. This was not a wise cracking screwball comedy, but still well worth seeing.

Film: The Way the West Was Won 1962: Featuring an all star cast, it was sort of like Steinbeck's East of Eden, without the edge. For its times, it did pretty well portraying the hollowness of the civil war, the betrayal of native rights in favor of the railroads and "progress." It doesn't shrink well to the small screen--it was filmed in cinerama, and I don't have a large enough screen to see well the actors' faces. I'd guess the actor by their voice...

Small Steps by Louis Sachar. This is a sequel to Holes , which was about juvenile deliquents forced to dig holes every day, and an accompanying mystery. This book takes a lot of uncomfortable topics for young readers-- illegal ticket scalping, interracial dating, and Britney- styled teen trainwreck pop stars, and manages to make a compelling story.

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers. What Walter Moers lacks in quantity of novels, he makes up for in quality. Each of his humorous fantasy adventures is jam packed with creativity. This book is a librarian's nightmare, vast underground caves mostly filled with old books, and nasty bookhunters, literary cyclops, and the sinister Shadow King. I expect Moer's star to rise with time...

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. There's a relatively new genre of books called graphic novels, that rely on drawings as much as words to convey the story. Libraries are still trying to decide how to catalog them, and whether to set them aside in their own area to make them easy for the mostly young aficionados to find them. This one was very good for me, because it carried a love of early cinema (with references to Harold Lloyd, and expecially focusing on Georges Melies, whose Voyage to the Moon (1902) showed early moviemakers that fantasy was possible to create with film. The book author used naturally rendered and detailed pencil drawings to good effect, often going from a couple pages of expository prose to 10 or more pages of images. I'm always impressed with author-illustrators...

Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Young Tiffany the maybe witch takes on the Queen of the Fairies, with the help of little blue men. It's better than it sounds...