Buttons

More than a month ago I mentioned my visit to the UK to see A. again and our little trip to Hobbycraft, where I purchased some really good looking big buttons. As we are both the type of people who look at something and think ”How was this made?” immediately (and unlike me, A. also has some skills), we thought about making wooden buttons that could be painted or decoupaged or decorated in some other way and how nice they would be. A few hours later, A. brought me a few round buttons that he made out of a spare piece of wood. He made them nice and smooth and some time after that rough square ones followed. After that some of them got painted. And after that I started to feel scared that I turned a professional piano re-builder into a button manufacturer.

Little creatures in an English garden

England is a very rainy country, but the good thing is that the rain always brings out little creatures and once you learn how to look, you will find them everywhere... All these little animals came out on A's rainy birthday barbecue during my latest trip to the UK.

 

So - wellies on and go exploring! And if you have kids, take them with you, they will love it :)

Summer break

So - after a few very very hectic weeks of moving, studying and trying to work on my thesis all at once, after days when I was at home alone everyone else was planning their holidays, shopping for medications (because what if a mosquito bit them on their holiday), arranging insurance (because what if something happened to them on their AWESOME summer holiday) and flying away and sunbathing and snorchelling with seaturtles somewhere in Zakynthos, I kept my mind occupied with very exciting thoughts of crucial life importance such as how hot it is outside, whether that plant has grown since yesterday, that I will need to buy more crickets or how to put cutlery into the washing machine so that it looks pretty while its being washed – after all that I handed the piece of writing in and flew away to (not Zakynthos) good old England, which is incredibly sunny now to see my man and celebrate his big birthday, sit in the garden, have breakfast and tea cooked for me, walk in the rain and freedive at the Wraysbury dive centre (which is not very deep but veeery pretty and they have most awesome burgers and chips there). Yes, that nutter below stirring the sediment and playing with alge is me.

Enlightened by the setting sun

The late afternoon pleasures of living in a west-facing room

One of my praying mantises Sphodromantis lineola
lineola out on a walk around the Ficus plant.
She was vey clever and managed to catch a huge fly.

Aloe plant that my Grandma has tortured by
overwatering, now happily growing in its
dry and sunny spot.

Detail of a leaf of my avocado plant. 

Christmas preparations

A friend told me that I am crazy just because I mentioned, that I already started writing a list of presents that I want to buy and making Christmas decorations for my shop. I do understand that it is the middle of summer and there are surely other things to do, but Etsians are already talking about the holiday season and making Christmas-themed items and as I know how busy I (and everyone) will be before Christmas and how the Czech post office has great trouble delivering packages in December, I thought it would be nice to have it all sorted by the end of November. My idea is that when everyone is rushing around complaining about having to buy presents, I will be going to various Christmas parties or sitting at home in my fluffy socks and sweaters sipping tea, making cards and baking deliciously smelling yummies. And then I will be the one tapping on my forehead and saying “You crazy person!” to them!

Right. I'm off to feed the ...

ducks      fish     RATS!

 

From what I saw before at the local pond, lots of people come to feed the ducks with their children, but compared to the fish, the ducks barely stand a chance. Unless you throw the bread right in front of them, they will not get to it. There are huge carp in the pond and thez sweep everything that is on the surface.

                                     
Many times when I was there, I had a feeling that something was rolling into the water - the sh-sh-shh sound of it falling through the dry grass and then a "blub"sound of it falling into the water. I wondered what it could be and today I got to know. It was not rolling, it was walking! And it was not a rock, not a fallen-down fruit ... but an ordinary brown rat! So I took a piece of dry bread I brought for the ducks/fish and threw it in its direction. It came, took it and swam away with it, quite skillfully. Later on, more arrived and eventually there were four of them - two big ones and two small and all were swimming and running through the grass on the bank... I managed to snap a picture of one (very blurry) before the battery in my camera died, but I swear I will go back tomorrow and get some better shots! I know they are pests and transmit diseases and everything... But they did look pretty running around the lake, in nature and in the evening light...

The "new place"

I have moved into a different flat at the beginning of August. Moving brought a LOT of totally silly and not very convient moments. I decided to pack in steps, taking one suitcase to the place daily and practically living in two different places at the same time for two weeks. In some situations, I thought I really should have planned this move better (It is not very funny when you find out that while you spent the night in one place, your clean underwear slept twenty-five kilometers away). Although this place is only at the other side of the city, it felt like moving to the end of the world.

And in some ways it really is the end of the world! It is quiet here, there is the tiniest post office (with the   s l o w e s t  ladies working there too), a nice pond, fields just behind the street where I live and apart from a little supermarket (a bit more expensive than the ones in the centre), there are not many ways to waste money. The Internet is also    s u p e r   s l o w   and sometimes I am happy to get my email loaded. Watching videos on youtube is nearly impossible and downloading anything larger than a photo is impossible. Which means that all the work computer stuff will be done away from home and then home is for resting. And that's exactly how it should be!

Sun shines in in the afternoon and I can sit by the open window and listen to the buzz of the garden and sounds of the street and a few houses down the street there is a very old lady who always says hi and then complains about the lack of rain and what a bad influence it has on her garden.

Plus - I have a pink carpet. I haven’t had a pink carpet since I was about five.

Om nom nom nom!

Praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola lineola enjoying her crickets

New!!!

This week has been very productive in terms of weaving - I finished these two friendship bracelets which are both available for sale now (see the pink one here and the yellow one here or in the SHOP section of this blog). While writing my thesis, weaving bracelets was a great way to relax during the little breaks that I took... And it is also a great way to change the abundant twitches of nervousness into something actually pretty... But I still keep the beading and needle-felting supplies packed far away from me, because with those nearby I would get no work done at all!! :)

Herb in a pot

My local supermarket sells lots of herbs in pots. And as I still have a tiny little space on my windowsill which I feel obliged to fill (those who know me are laughing now) and since it is summer and I live in a house now and my window is oriented into the garden, having a little herb pot garden to pick from while cooking just sounds too romantic to resist. However, I have given myself the condition that I can only buy one now, so chive was the choice. Sitting at the bus station, I kept reading my book and petting the plant as if it was a cat, enjoying the familiar smell that we knew so well when we picked chive before breakfast at our grandparents' cottage. And with some cheese on bread, it made great simple and fresh meal here too. Yum-yum.

One wet morning ...

One wet morning after a great storm with thunder and lightning, a little snail woke up under a bush at the zoo and went for a walk to stretch its foot after a few days' sleep. It crawled out from the grass onto a gravel path which was still wet from the rain. And as it crawled and crawled, Silly Sheep spotted it, picked it up and put it back to among the leaves of grass to make sure that nobody steps on it.

Anniversary post

This month it will be five years since I joined Blogger and started blogging in August 2007. I was 19 back then and I started a blog because everybody on Etsy seemed to have one and claimed it to be one of the best merchant tools ever. My first posts were all Etsy-centered, yet the sales did not come, nor did the views or the hearts and for quite a long time, I completely forgot that I have a blog at all, and only came back to it occassionally.

In the last year I started following a few blogs that have nothing to do with Etsy, blogs that belong to people who simply write about their lifestyle, their children, gardening, permaculture and nature. These people make no profit from their blogs and maybe exactly because of the fact that they are not “look at me and buy my stuff”, they are very popular and have many regular readers. This is the kind of a blog that I would like to create.  Bits of craftiness  - of course! But my newest thought is to show people bits of pieces of nature that we usually fail to see or fail to consider beautiful.

Thank you all for reading my posts during the last five years, commenting, following and inspiring me to make this blog better. I hope you will stay with me and keep reading.

Your Silly Sheep