Deb Merriam
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debmerriam.bsky.social
Deb Merriam
@debmerriam.bsky.social
1.4K followers 3K following 860 posts
DebMerriam on all other SM. Ex-academic bluenoser in Treaty 6, past chair of the Local Good (YEG), fibre artist, solarpunk, earth-centred inclusive beliefs. She/they,🏳️‍⚧️parent, mom friend, trying to make a difference.
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debmerriam.bsky.social
I see from my Halisky friends that it’s time to don the festive apparel @joannemerriam.bsky.social made me
A charcoal grey tshirt with Woody, the Talking Christmas Tree, depicted with fangs and the words “Shop all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die.”
November 12, 2025 at 5:43 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
On today’s walk to the grocer I was admiring a gorgeous plant with its leaves turning blue as the chlorophyll dies and scarlet berries. So pretty! Turns out it’s bittersweet nightshade, Solanum dulcamara, an invasive weed with several other common names that allude to its poisonousness. Oh dear.
Bittersweet nightshade growing up through one of my MIL’s shrubs. It has glossy leaves just starting to turn blue and lots of delicious-looking-but-inedible scarlet berries. Bittersweet nightshade leaves turning indigo-blue, growing through New York asters whose wee purple daisy-like flowers were feeding a number of bumblebees.
October 24, 2025 at 11:24 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Okay, Halifriends, what is up with there being only one place on this side of town that delivers lobster rolls? I mean these look incredible, thank you staff at La Cucina, but c’mon now
Paper take-out box containing a lobster roll, french fries, and homemade ketchup
October 24, 2025 at 9:39 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Currently in Nova Scotia very briefly to help my MIL with some stuff. Proof of beach:
A photo taken at Rainbow Haven Beach, Cole Harbour, NS of a purple jellyfish (an Aurelia species, probably) and some bits of seaweed stranded on beige sand by the outgoing tide.
October 23, 2025 at 9:27 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Coffee date at Mokha (newly-opened Yemeni café in Windermere) with my sweetiepie. It’s packed. Very stylish! My Spanish latte is delicious! They need to add more soft surfaces to absorb sound and reduce the echoes.
Looking down from the balcony at the cafe’s order desk, you can see a glass display case containing 5 uncut cheesecakes and a selection of bottled drinks; a geometric brass chandelier is reflected in its surface. Not shown is the long line snaking its way to the door. Most of the remaining empty tables are upstairs right now; this photo shows a channelled upholstered armchair in the foreground (very comfortable) and one of several intimate plastered alcoves.
October 12, 2025 at 5:07 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
For the record, this is the final (for now) version from this afternoon:
An (attempted) photorealistic rug hooked portrait of a toddler in 2- and 3-cut wool flannel on linen backing. The two tools I was hooking with are laid alongside the completed face.
September 24, 2025 at 4:04 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Everything is stupid, but I am having fun making textile art with my friends at Prairie Harvest Rug Hooking School this weekend, and maybe in another day this WIP will look like my toddler did, despite being made of loops of wool flannel bits.
Work in progress: a hand-hooked rug using a narrow cut to depict a (hopefully soon) photorealistic face of a pale-skinned toddler with green eyes and sandy-blonde hair. Only parts of the face are hooked so far, and there is bare linen showing around the child’s mouth, forehead, and inside the hairline.
September 21, 2025 at 5:41 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
I’m at Strathearn Art Walk demonstrating #RugHooking with Edmonton Rug Hooking Guild in booth Red34 - come visit! #yegarts
My pal Ruth is working on a colourful stripey rug made with a hand hook, wool flannel strips and linen backing in a hoop frame. In the background you can see our guild’s promotional banner and some other rugs.
September 7, 2025 at 11:22 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Now to embroider in some vines and finish the edges. I am not sure I am completely happy with it but done is better than perfect. (I often feel like that when I’m working toward a deadline.) #RugHooking
Folk-arty colourful rug-hooked self-portrait, untitled, edges as yet unfinished, 12 inches x 16 inches. A woman with a pale complexion, round glasses, and long brown hair streaked with grey faces the viewer. Her body, seen from mid-thigh up, is filled with a rainbow of colours representing an energy centre visualization (the simplified western-yoga version of chakras). A blue ‘evil eye’ motif sits over her forehead, and a ring of violet and cream emanates from her crown. The background of mixed shades of black is filled with an ‘aura’ of streaks of colour echoing those in her body. This piece was started in Cec Caswell’s “Funky Faces” and Meryl Cook’s “Chakra Colours” classes in Sept 2024.
September 3, 2025 at 4:42 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Progress on this WIP! It’ll get surface embroidery once I am done hooking. Have I mentioned that pulling loops of wool fabric is a slow creative process?
The same colourful hooked self-portrait as in the prior image, still incomplete, now with an aura of bright lines radiating from the body and a background of very dark green (a.k.a. antique black), very dark burgundy (a.k.a. antique red), and true black.
August 31, 2025 at 3:10 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
30 years ago today:
A photo of a photo of the newlyweds. Young me smiles broadly, facing the camera in a white wedding gown with puffed sleeves snatched waist and a pearl-embroidered skirt, henna-red hair, mom’s pearls, braided faux-pearls around my bun and veil blowing in the breeze, holding a bouquet of white roses tied with forest-green ribbon. My husband in his rented tuxedo is standing behind me with his hand on my arm. We’re in front of the gazebo in the Dartmouth Commons with Halifax Harbour visible in the background.
August 19, 2025 at 7:59 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
From a single branch of the ‘Early Gold’ pear tree we planted about a decade ago:
A reused box with red plastic liner designed for a dozen grocery store peaches, containing approximately four dozen small greenish-yellow pears. (We’ve previously learnt to our chagrine that if we wait until they’re yellow to pick, they are rotten inside.)
August 18, 2025 at 1:01 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Good morning from this vestal moth
A small white moth, photographed from the inside of the glass, has landed on a window. It has one leg lifted above its head as if it’s waving hello.
August 3, 2025 at 3:58 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Zooming out - looks like the southeast corner of the province may also be responsible for alerts, depending on your settings?
Zoomed out map showing the southern half of SK, Radville and Weyburn are just west of a line of intense storm activity
July 21, 2025 at 1:50 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
hey Fray, here’s a screenshot of the precipitation map for yxe area, hopefully someone in-region can give you more information too:
A screenshot of the ‘map’ page on the WeatherCAN app showing several severe thunderstorms in the Saskatoon SK region
July 21, 2025 at 1:33 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Am I damp? Slightly, lol. Leduc Arts Foundry are so good to #yegvolunteer with - food vouchers for several food trucks and local restaurants. I’m warming up and trying the pork menudo at Rico’s:
An oval dish of Pork Menudo, a rich Philippine stew that’s served over steamed rice. Diced pork, carrot coins, waffle-cut potatoes, and red, orange, and green oeppers in a thick sauce with spices I can’t identify - freaking delicious!
July 19, 2025 at 9:08 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
#yegarts Friends! If you’re coming to Leduc Art Walk, drop by the Activity Centre (by the Bob Ross photo booth) and say hello! I’m demonstrating #RugHooking with the #yeg guild.
A table under a pop-up tent covered in small hooked rugs in various styles. One frame in the foreground has linen labeled “Give rug hooking a try! 😃” with our guild’s website. Another is my work-in-progress, a tumbling-blocks geometric pattern hooked as a colour wheel with added decorative stitches. The table of hooked rugs viewed from another angle. Faye Swenson’s “Dream Hook Create” work in progress is in the foreground.
July 19, 2025 at 5:44 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
I can’t credit the person who shared this information originally, because it was forwarded to me by a colleague, but here is how to opt out of AI use of our work on Academia dot edu:
A screenshot from a computer logged in to Academia dot edu. In “my account”, the bottom menu tab is “AI settings” - you can toggle off the permission (automatically set on, grrrrrr) to create “AI-enhanced outputs” based on work you or your colleagues have uploaded that is connected with your account. Supposedly this also revokes permission and causes them to delete podcasts or summaries “an AI” has already made.
July 2, 2025 at 2:18 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Then and now: coffee break edition. Yesterday I found a suitable replacement for my broken C3-P0urover at a thrift shop; meet PORGover.
Tweet by me dated 20 Feb 2016, with a photograph of my kitchen counter’s contents: a sculpted bright-yellow mug of Star Wars droid C-3PO’s torso, topped with a glass Hario coffee-filter holder full of grounds and boiling water, beside a badly-etched glass liquid measure (thrifted), a water boiling gizmo from Japan that is our most-used kitchen appliance, and a coffee grinder. It reads, “C-3POurover”. Front view of a thrifted mug sculpted to look like a Porg (furry bird-like creatures from the planet of Luke’s self-imposed exile in “The Last Jedi”, invented because removing puffins from the footage was impossible). Mostly its portly white belly and grumpy-cat-like facial expression are in view; its large bugged-out shiny black eyes point in opposite directions. The mug is topped with a Hario glass pour-over funnel holding an unbleached paper coffee filter, sitting on a beige granite kitchen counter in front of a stainless steel appliance. Side view of the sculpted Porg mug, which is big enough to hold two cups, showing its’ owl-like brown wings, the roundness of its white belly, and its pug-like snout and protruding eyes. The handle on the back is barely visible. (Originally this was sold as part of a series of Star Wars themed sculpted mugs at the Disney Store, according to the label.) It is topped by a Hario pour-over funnel, with its filter now full of wet coffee grounds, and sitting on a beige granite counter in front of a Tiger boiling-water tank.
June 14, 2025 at 7:35 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Pea sized hail at Sherwood Park Mall for the last five minutes, sorry about your gardens friends #yegwx
Photo taken during thunderstorm through my parked car’s sunroof, those hailstones are each 3 to 9 mm across (I am eyeballing it)
June 14, 2025 at 12:12 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Then and now: baby oak tree edition
A tweet from me from 9 July 2019, with a photo of a new oak sapling with four true leaves and two rounded seed leaves, in a small pot. Tweet reads, “A tiny thing I am doing to help (me) cope with the climate news is attempting to start trees from seed on my windowsill. This beauty is my first to sprout, currently seven inches tall, from an acorn picked up in the oak forest surrounding Oathill Lake in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.” A six-year old oak sapling grown from acorn, with five newly-emerged leaves on each branch. By the time it starts to shade the garden the fruit trees should be starting to decline. It is still not quite knee-high, and probably has a bigger root system than above-ground structure.
May 25, 2025 at 3:48 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
#yegarts Come enjoy some coffee, tea and homemade snacks courtesy of the Edmonton Rug Hooking Guild while seeing a wonderful variety of beautiful rugs handmade by guild members.

Guests are also able to try rug hooking for themselves and can buy a kit to take home.

Everyone is welcome!
Edmonton Rug Hooking Guild Spring Tea and Rug Show (Photo of a hooked mat by ERHG member Beverly Leeck, of a vase of flowers on a windowsill) (Inside a yellow bubble) $5 admission Thursday May 1, 2025 11 am - 2 pm Pleasantview Community Hall 10860 57 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta Tea/Coffee and Homemade Snacks Beautiful Rugs Everyone is welcome!
April 30, 2025 at 10:25 PM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Mine is this fine rug hook, which my dad handmade; the turned oak handle was once part of the deck of the Bluenose II, pulled out when the boards began to rot & needed replacement. Someone involved with the project knew my uncle & slipped him a bit for woodworking, & he in turn gave it to Dad.
A narrow pencil-shaped rug hook, with an elaborate spindle-handle made of dark-stained oak wood that was turned on a lathe, with a steel hook made from a nail using a metal-file. It is laying on an oak floorboard that is finished with a blonder stain.
April 13, 2025 at 2:17 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
I saw one of Edmonton’s ‘ghost’ magpies today, scrounging for nest-twigs with its friends!
A leucistic magpie in profile, perched in a Manitoba maple in the west end of what-is-currently-Edmonton, Treaty 6 territory. Its’ plumage is white and… shades of grey?!? I crept too close! So here is a photo of the magpie flying to a nearby blue spruce tree. Unlike its’ pals in tuxedos with iridescent blue feathers, this handsome wee dinosaur is sporting a mix of pale grey and white feathers.
March 27, 2025 at 1:26 AM
debmerriam.bsky.social
Moooooooooon
A longish-exposure zoomed-in iPhone photo of the lunar eclipse, in a finally-clear sky to my south. 1:11am MDT or thereabouts.
March 14, 2025 at 7:18 AM