The Amateur Gardener's Rebirth

My man is becoming a gardener. It's true. I have seriously changed a trained professional piano rebuilder into an amateur gardener. After his first totally excited gardening success with sprouting pumpkin seeds came the first gardening disaster when all of his seedlings died due to....... an unknown special and mysterious pumpkin plant disease (ehm, ehm). Now he bought seeds of various vegetables and is even excited about growing five-meter long pumpkin plants in his parents' garden (Do they know? Do they approve? Do I want to know? I guess I probably shouldn't know!!). Today's huge overnight pumpkin sprout was just SO exciting, that it deserved a text message, an email with an attached photograph and a blog post. Because seeing a plant being born
is an exceedingly interesting event.

May he watch over his planty creatures well. And may his parents share the enthusiasm for this new green hobby at least partially.

New Bracelets

Thesis time is showing in the amounts of bracelets that I am knotting these days. These two new bracelets have recently been listed in my Etsy shop. Follow the links under the photographs to see the listings.

This girly bracelet is a slight variation to a clasic "V" shaped pattern, but instead of one-colour Vs I made two-coloured ones. In my opinion, it worked out quite well.

The second bracelet is on of my very own patterns. The original idea was to have circles and crosses and even though the crosses worked out perfectly, the circles are not very round - I drew the pattern out on a square grid before weaving, but the knots are more rectangular than square, so the circles got a little "stretched".

What grew up in the millipede tank

My millipede is a fairly self-contained creature, so I do not check on it very often, as it only seems to like to eat old decaying leaves and wood, which I bring once in a while and then leave the animal to do the job. However, there are lots of little things that one can bring home with an organic material like this - I have had little centipedes, snails, woodlice, pill millipedes and other little arthropods, but the last time I opened the tank, I saw something unbelievable. At least half of the surface of the soil there was covered in a yellow net-like organism.

As my friends tell me (I am not great at identifying this type of creatures), it belongs to the group of Mycetozoa or slime molds. This phase of their life cycle can be quite sizeable and they have the most wonderful and bright colours imaginable. Next time you are in a forest, try zooming in a bit on a fallen log or something similar, you might be lucky to find one!

And the sun shone

Even though yesterday started with a downpour, soon the steely clouds were taken over by lovely sunshine, which my little Haworthias on the kitchen window surely appreciated. And me too, even though I have to stay in because I am ill. But I have enough work, food, tea, medicine and paper tissues not to have to leave the flat for another three days ;)

Also, three more leaf insects hatched today, I hope they will have no trouble with eating and will happily grow.

Colourful de-cluttering

These old and a bit low-quality yarns that I got from a friend some years ago and did nothing with are on their way to another friend of mine right now - a Czech blogger, mum, crafter and eco-gardener who will try some guerilla crochet with her friends during a one-day course that she organizes. I am happy to have a bit of space in my yarn box again and also that these get to be crocheted around a tree rather than rest in peace in a rubbish bin. Also, the leftovers of my green blanket half-eaten by my rats  and a tiny little freeform crochet piece will keep them company : )

Sugar, caffeine and happy thoughts

Just like I missed out on last year's summer because of writing my thesis and studying for uni finals, I am missing out on this year's spring (no matter how dusky and cold it still is) because I am writing another thesis. Yes, I call that writing. At the unbelievably successful rate of one page per approximately seventeen excruciating hours. Yesterday I conquered MS Excel, today I am fighting with Photoshop and at all times I am deepening my aversion to and depression from programmes having to do anything with molecular biology. Yorkshire Gold tea, friendship bracelets and my bed are currently my best friends. Less than one month to go. I keep planning and thinking about all the things that I will do when I finish uni. I am even looking forward to writing a CV and looking for a job, seriously : )

And I also baked a cake. At least when things are getting a bit rubbish and stressful, life throws in some discounted strawberries to put into a cake. But for my own sake, I bought a smaller baking tray and decided to take baking in smaller bites. It can only be beneficial.