Projects | cathleenvought-1

These are a few short examples of articles and blog posts I've written recently:

Ghostwritten foundation article

Maybe it's a few tiles that have popped loose in the kitchen; or some cracks have appeared in the brickwork outside your front porch. Either way, it's time to get to the bottom of things – by taking a look at what's happening to your home's sagging foundation.

The foundation of your home can be like the shoes you chose to wear; flat flip-flop slabs, high-heel piers, solid work boot basement walls. But what happens when you step in the mud or loose sand? They sink in, and your stability goes right out the window. There are basic repairs you can make to your foundation, and others where it's best to call in the professionals. But how do you decide which is which?

Ghostwritten glass article

After the first glassworking class I attended, I was completely and utterly hooked. A mesmerizing substance, glass in the flame acts like honey, malleable and fluid, only to turn rock-hard a few seconds after leaving the flame. A torch was purchased, followed by a kiln; I heard early on the horrors of glass stress, a property caused by uneven cooling that causes stress fractures hours, days or even months after it is manufactured. Glass annealed in a kiln often will not break even when dropped on a hard surface, due to the lack of stress in the matrix.

Glass is a unique substance which, when cooled, does not form a crystalline structure like a solid does, nor does it flow like water. Different flame chemistries can bring rusty tones out of turquoise, a strong silver sheen to the surface or a rainbow of colors to bloom on the surface of a bead, vase or sculpture.

Examples of my work:

The County Restoration Handbook: A project to address emergency preparedness, disaster response and long-term transition off oil dependancy at family, community and county levels. Co-written and edited.

Pages from an Ozarks Herbal, 2nd Edition (Draft): A guide to edible, medicinal or otherwise useful plants, I provided editing support and some copy on previously unlisted wild plants as well as helped develop recipes.

Collaborative Works:

From The Modern Farmer's Wife blog:

I love mulberry season on our farm. It's during those beautiful warm-to-hot days, cool-but-comfortable nights during the spring and fall that make me remember why I love this corner of Missouri.
It's also the time of checking-children's-faces-for-stains before going to town, watching the chickens work their way into the tree after the juicy berries, occasionally watching the same chickens let out a squawk as they lose their grip on the branch, and the tin roof of the stone barn becoming a slide with a three-foot drop at the end.

Fortunately, chickens have wings.