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

The secret pond

The first day I came to live here, I went for a walk, mostly with intention to pick up the nice white jug, but once I was out, I thought I might as well explore the surroundings. I walked and walked and found out that there is everything I need here. There is the police, post office, food shop, cash machine, even a fitness centre with Pilates lessons (but I was too shy to go in). However, the most striking and surprising thing was the lake. Yes, I moved next to a lake without actually knowing that there is one!! The moment I first saw it, I was so happy I almost ran into it to find out more.

So now I know. It is a 5600 square meters big pond with reeds and white water lillies, ducks and moorhens and toads and there are willow trees and walnut trees around it and carp in it. I also saw a spider web and I believe that if I walk around long enough, I will also find some actual spiders and snails. The banks are steep, but I managed to find a depression in the ground into which my bum fitted exactly, so at least I could sit. And the wind blew and the water surface waved and the reeds waved and the grass waved and my hair waved and my thoughts waved with it and it was beautiful and it felt so good and I would have stayed there for ever if only I didn’t need to pee so badly.

Homecoming present from the neighbourhood

The first time I came to spend the night at the new apartment did not start greatly, but eventually I managed to take my computer and a backpack filled with pillow and blanket ready to spent the first night at my new home. The weather was incredibly hot and I couldn’t wait to be indoors. I walked from the bus stop, around the lawns and under a walnut tree and around the recycling rubbish bins... and there it was standing. Someone put it on the pavement next to the glass bin.

A white porcellain jug with blue flowers on it, nice, shiny and completely undamaged. I decided to drop my things at home and come straight back to pick it up. And so I did. It is mine now and although it does not necessarily match the interior of my room, maybe one day it will find its place at my parents' place or somewhere else, but any place is better than a rubbish bin.

Natural bits and pieces

I just wrote a long and detailed post about our trip to Slovakia and managed to delete it afterwards. Grr!! So here are some bits and pieces of our wonderful nature instead, which will surely not please my Mum who says that details of leaves, snails and drops of dew are all nice, but she would like me to take some actual photos. Pche!

Rock in the woods - frog - patterns in the wood - stream in Vtáčnik mountains

Views of ruins of Trenčín castle - view from a rock under the castle - Palcmanská Maša lake

Sometimes it's OK to scream...

On  Sunday I taught a child at work the difference between red and blue tap.

As I went to the toilets in the restaurant, I spotted a little girlie standing behind the door next to a sink. The water was running and she was standing there with wet hands in the air and a few tears were rolling down her cheeks. At first I though: This kid is wasting water! So I went to turn it off and meanwhile asked her what is wrong.
"The water is hurting mee-e-ee!" she sobbed. The poor kid turned the tap on, but managed to move it all the way to the left and then tried to wash her hands in the steamy hot water and when she couldn't, she just stood there and cried and suffered quietly while her teacher waited for her outside the toilets.

So I explained the difference between red and blue and what they mean, we turned the tap to the right, colled the burnt hands down in  cold water and washed the hands properly. Then explained it all to the teacher, who wiped the tears away and explained: "Oh Honey, why didn't you tell me? You have to let me know when something like that happens. Sometimes it's OK to scream, you know?"
Yes, sometimes it is even necessary. Unless you want to suppress your pain and boil your hands.

Summer trip to the UK

Once again I went to the UK to visit A and his family. We had a good week, even though we both had things to do, but we did have a lot of fun, well, because... because we are both slightly crazy :)

England is great - teas, cream teas, sandwiches, bagels, muffins, cupcakes, gardens, accents, fish and chips, fast moving clouds, puddings, sweets, digestive biscuits, roast dinners, red phoneboxes, post offices, double-decker buses, beautiful houses...

... and also England has something that Czech republic nor Slovakia do - HOBBYCRAFT! It is an awesome store, but very tempting to buy things that you actually do not need. Trouble with this is - as soon as you buy something that you find "nice", it pulls you into an entirely new craft that you have to try out and makes you buy more... I spent seven quid there only on buttons, which inspired A to try to make some wooden buttons, which turned out rather nicely... (more about them later)

Well, I had a good time :)

A wedding bird

My friends M. and J. got married quite some time ago and unfortunately I wasn't able to come to their wedding, but at least I am sending this little card to them today.

One lazy summer evening...

... at the children's zoo.

     

Goats chewing happily in the evening sun.

 

Pigeons everywhere.

Little black visitors.

Muffins or cupcakes?

Finally, after a long time of wondering, this site has expleained to me the difference between a muffin and a cupcake.
It says: " Muffins are usually bigger and not as sweet as cupcakes and they are also made and served without frosting . "

I used the recipe for "Basic Muffin Dough" on cooksunited.co.uk and mixed cranberries and chocolate into it. I filled half of the cups with it, then added lots of cocoa into the second half and filled another half of the cups.

However, I am not sure what I would call mine, since there is not frosting on top, but the size of the cups is really tiny. Options are frosting-free cupcakes or mini muffins. Whatever they are, I hope my friends will like them this weekend.

How do they get out ?

Another story from my day of looking after visitors at the gorilla pavilion at the zoo...
In the afternoon a group of people came in. Most of them were people with some kind of impairment. One came to me and started asking questions about gorillas. Then he asked:
"How do they give birth?"
"Well, how, just like all other animals, they carry the babies in their tummies."
"Yes, I know, but how do they get out."
*A bit of a thoughtful moment for me*
"Well, the lady gorillas have a hole for pee, a hole for poo and between them is another very special one and that is only for babies.And they get out that way."
"Oh, I see," he said with an illuminated facial expression like things finally clicked together for him.
He gave me a big smile, offered me his hand, I shook it (his was sticky) and then he tapped my back as if saying well done and went on. It was very nice.
But phew. I did well. I think it was very educational. Maybe I explained to him what people refused to talk to him about all his life. I only hope I did not cause any problems. And I am glad he did not ask the most obvious question - and how do they get into the tummy ?

They are people !

A mother came to the pavilion of gorillas today with her children. The little girlie exclaimed:

"They are people! They only have different skin and different colour!"

I say, these kids are going to be no racists :)

An afternoon with those who feed on our blood

Hypostome of a tick

I am spending a few days with my parents at the moment. My Dad and I have been going into the woods around our city for the past three days, hoping to find some samples to help me with my uni coursework. Two days in a row - nothing. Today the wood was a particularly nice one, but we found nothing. However, it does not mean we brought nothing home with us!!!
Coming out of the wood, I noticed little thingies moving up my arms - you're guessing right - ticks! Bloodthirsty eight-legged invertebrate maniacs trying to get a sip of my body fluids!
No way!! I took five off my arms while they were still climbing and announced it to my father as well, after which he started persuading me that ticks really cannot be that small and that he can't believe that normal people can see that and that they get so big after they are full of blood etc.

Coming out of the shade of the forest, he surveyed me for more and tried to persuade me that those are all freckles, never mind they were slightly mobile and had tiny legs on themselves. On the way home I quietly agonised over one that was already attached to the place almost under my arm, thinking of all the possible bacteria and viruses these little creatures can transmit, taking off my clothes as soon as I entered the flat, shaking them all over the bath tub and my hair too. Six more ticks fell down from me. I also worked on the one that I had and finally got rid of it, then my Dad and I started checking each other for more. Such a lovely family underwear reunion, picking each other like a pair of naked monkeys.
I found two sucking on him and a few more running around (seriously, what kind of forest IS that?? Tick paradise?) and I managed to get so clumsy that the head of one of them stayed in, so I had to operate with a needle. What a bloodbath. I actually felt a bit sick. I'm a doctor's daughter. And I got sick while I operated on a doctor. What a shame. Then I found one more on my calf while having a shower. You wonder how many you can have on you after one hour in the woods. And then, while working on my computer, one fell down from my hair, black onto the white desk. Like from a horror movie.

Great, I am going to dream about lyme disease.

Birdie for J. flies to Croatia

My felt obsession continued with a few days and nights which I spent in a "thirty minutes of work and thirty minutes of resting/craft" way, durig which I created a birdie template and made several of these felted stuffed animals to hang somewhere. The first of these is already on its way to a new home to my Croatian friend J. as her birthday present. I really hope she likes it ;-)

 

I see a lot of people having photographs of their items with wonderful garden and planty backrounds... I do have my beachy rocky backrounds for friendship bracelets, but I thought that birdies would look nice on something live and green. After all, birds belong to the trees...

So I set out on a trip to my uni's botanical garden and tried to place the thing on everything that looked pleasing to the eye. It was horrible! Of course the sun would disappear as soon as I had it all ready, the bird would fall from the tree, the wind would blow so much that the picture was blurry and the "best"of all - the botanical garden being a public space and the time being Saturday afternoon, there was someone walking behind me all the time, which wasn't very encouraging, so I guess I have to try another day, a more hidden place or simply wait until I have a garden of my own to take pictures in.

Three days in České Budějovice

Based on a recommendation of our friends, me and my flatmate Z.M. decided to go on a three-day course to České Budějovice .

We went to lectures,lived in a dorm (and had to witness and listen to a nearly all night long post-exam celebrational balcony barbecue with guitairs and singing) walked around the little streets and lanes of the city centre, ate breakfasts in a buffet, lunches in a canteen and dinners in local restaurants, drank beer and coffee and had a good time. The time seemed to slow down for a while and even though it was three days of work and studying, it felt like a little holiday.

A few photos from the town:

I was surprised by the amount of crafty shops in the city centre. There was one of them in particular called "Tvořivá ovečka" (meaning Creative Sheep !!! ), which sold yarns of all kinds and was really tiny and in spite of the opening hours saying it had been closed for more than hour, there was a very nice lady in it, who invited us in.  The visit got even more interesting when I spotted a spinning wheel in the corner and the lady offered me to try it. I was actually too scared to have a proper go, because I was worried I might actually do something wrong to the thread, but I stepped on the pedal and watched her spin the wool with her fingers. A few seconds later I decided I need to learn how to do it! Well well, one more thing to give me if you run out of ideas for birthday presents :DD