A Couple of Beetles

These photos aren't as clear - aren't as good close-ups - as most of the previous bug photos, although the second one isn't too bad.

The first one was at Mum's house on my birthday - yay, a birthday beetle!!
I think it's a type of long-horn beetle, but isn't one of the 22 or so in my book, although it looks most similar to the "pallid longhorn" (Calliprason pallidum, was Stenopotes). The antennae aren't very long for a long-horned beetle, but they only have to be 2/3 as long as the body to be considered long, and the male often has longer ones than the female.


The second looks to be some kind of "waisted ground beetle" (the corset-like waist effect is not as visible in this photo as it could be) of which there are 60 species in NZ, so unsurprisingly my little book did not go into them.

I Had a Birthday

Yes, I had a birthday :) I turned 1000 years old, although only under certain mathematical conditions. Ever since I've had a camera (I was... actually that was about the last time I was 1000, under similar but different conditions) I've taken a photo of my presents (for archival purposes, lol). Probably people will think this weird, but whatever.
Other than getting presents, I went to see "Where the Wild Things Are" and made everyone dinner at Mum's house: Moroccan food, which is like my destined cuisine or something - it's the most ideal type of food I've come across so far. If each person were born to a certain type of food, Moroccan is the closest I've found for myself so far.

Here's the picture!!


Contents:
[from Gwri]

• 3 striped juggling clubs
• booklet on juggling clubs
• booklet on juggling balls
• 90 minute DVD on fire safety (eg. for fire poi, staff, etc) (which you can get free with an order from "home of poi")
• "Where the Wild Things Are" stickers
• "Where the Wild Things Are" badges
• a very pretty card

[from Mum]

• a card she made :D
• a very nice but funky black and gold bag which doesn't look that good in the photo
• a vintage (age unknown) locket, of the kind you can actually put a photo in

[from Lisa]

• "grow-in-the-bag" borage - the bag has dirt and a seed sachet in it, and you make it like instant noodles; sprinkle in the seeds, add water, put in the sun
• "Desperate Housewives" season 1 on DVD

[secret santa]

• chocolates

A Difficult Dinner Dress - Part 1

I am making a dress to wear to Gwri's work dinner on Friday (as I write this it is Monday, in case you read this some other time). It is based on a drawing of a dinner dress from 1908, in a book that I got from the library but I've forgotten what it's called. I don't think I shall show you the picture until the end, ha ha ha.
I have so far spent nearly 20 hours on the pattern and mockup, including 1 hour writing out instructions for myself to follow so I put it together right, but not counting probably nearly as many hours again just thinking about how to pattern it and put it together, but that thinking time is normally done whilst doing something else, like lieing in bed hoping to go to sleep sometime soon (putting dresses together in your head isn't conducive to going to sleep, but otherwise I get bored).
Here's a random picture of part of the mockup. (The dress itself will have 2 sleeves.) I didn't take any other pictures of the process.


The pattern has 18 different pieces, and will involve 6 different fabrics, although it probably could have done with 4 if I had the right fabrics and enough of each.
The main fabric I really wanted to use only had 2metres on the roll when I went to buy it, which wasn't enough for the oringal design which involved the skirt being bias cut (cut diagonally rather than stright - uses more fabric but hangs differently) so I changed that, and also had to make the skirt less full than I would have liked. But then when I came to cut it out, there wasn't enough even for the pattern I had, so I had to take a bit off the skirt.
Here's the lining, which will hopefully fit me better than it fits the mannequin.... It looks more-or-less like it fits her here, but the bodice is way too long for her in the back, and the bust is a bit funny. It opens at the back. Hopefully these pictures do something sensible.

























So far, on the making side rather than the design side, I've spent 5 hours - 2hours 40minutes cutting the pieces, but I still have 4 pieces to cut, 1 hour interfacing parts, and 1hour 20minutes actually sewing.

Green Spot Bag!!

There's a curtain and furnishings store near our house that sells the most expensive fabric ever, a lot of which isn't even that nice. It's really odd. Their cheapest stuff looks a lot like the cheapest stuff from Spotlight, but costs literally ten times as much. I have spent much time trying to understand this, but have got nowhere. They do have a remnants/ex-samples bin where each piece is $2, which has many small, interesting pieces of fabric in it. The largest is generally only big enough to make a knee-length skirt or a sleeveless top, but the smaller pieces could be used as accents... or for bags!!
Which brings us to this awesome satchel-style bag I made.
The piece of fabric was just the right size to make this excellently sized bag, and the dots are a raised pile i.e. they're furry. I lined it in some nice, slippery fabric and bound the edges in cotton poplin. The strap is made out of the same poplin which was interfaced and then folded so that the strap is 4 layers of interfaced poplin thick - because all my straps and waistbands and so on always get all crinkled so I wanted to make it thicker and stronger.
The button is an awesome little red hand, and makes up 50% of the total cost of materials for the bag :D

It even has a pocket!

Felt Flowers

During the year I collect ideas for presents for people, including tutorials on how to make them, and save them in my email. One of the ideas was "felt flowers" eg. for brooches. We bought a gift for one of our "secret santa" recipients at Gwri's work, but I am feeling all crafty so thought I'd make a felt flower to add to it. I didn't much like the ones in the tutorial I had seen and saved, so I did a google image search for felt flowers to get ideas for shapes and styles and found lots of good ideas, and I decided to make one like this one (picture from this site):

I've got some pictures of some more "hippie" style ones that I, personally, actually like better, but they're probably not so universally attractive and acceptable, and we don't really know the recipient's style.
So, here are my two - the red one is for me, which I made to test the pattern and method, and the blue and white one is for her. They turned out really nice, which surprised me somewhat.

Luckily, the only beads I have that are larger than tiny happened to work quite nicely. They're about 10cm in diameter. The two inner most layers (of the same colour) are the same size - about 9cm diameter - and the bottom/outermost petals are slightly bigger.

Reading List

I've added a little bit to the sidebar saying what I'm reading, and hopefully I will remember to do some kind of brief review when I finish books and put the link to the most recent review in the "just finished" section of the sidebar. Or something. I might make a post that I update each time I finish a book so I can see what I've read.

Super-quick Bug Blog Post!

I'm probably possibly going to start writing some more on my blog again, so to start off this burst of activity, here's a picture I prepared a while ago that I don't think I've posted yet. This one has had only a sliver cropped off the side to make it more symmetrical, so is basically as it was taken - it's nice to take a picture that you don't need to change later.

Here is ... a dronefly on a flower.


And here it is close up (the aforementioned picture cropped around the fly) - looks like a bee.


Taken with your everyday type of digital camera (Mum's one), which had a large offset error in the view finder when taking closeups, and it was too bright to see anything on the screen, so I had to "point and guess" to actually get the whole flower in the shot. My new camera has no viewfinder at all because apparently no one wants them when you have the screen, so about 25% of all the pictures I took this weekend were entirely "point and guess" photos due to glare on the screen, etc.

The colour and light and focus all worked out really well and are fairly as-they-really-were. It can be difficult to take a good flower picture because it's hard to get the camera to see the colours the same way you do. I'm pretty sure the amazing flower came out of our garden; it was taken a while ago. Just behind it are those little white flowers you get with bought flowers.

Moth Pics!

So, moths are generally boring and ugly, and tend to mostly look the same (small and brown-grey) but still the insect books devote large amounts of space to every species of moth you might possibly come across. (They also devote a quite disproportionate amount of space to butterflies; I see one butterfly a year, but they take up one tenth of the book. I used to think I saw a few more, but they turned out to be day-flying moths.)
Anyways, yesterday there was an annoying big moth in the house, so I got my special bug-catching plastic container and caught it to put it outside since otherwise they fly around in the bedroom when I am trying to sleep and I can hear them, and sometimes they crash into my head. But then I thought, since it was big and seemed to actually have some markings rather than just being brown, I would look it up in my insect book moth section. And, there it was, quite - fairly anyway - clearly a "slender owlet" moth.
Since it had stopped fluttering around inside the container, I thought it might be possible to take pictures of it as it might stay still. The bathroom is the smallest, least cluttered room so I took it in there, and if it started flying around it wouldn't be so hard to catch again as in the rest of the house.
It's kind of hard taking close-up pictures with a snapshot-type digital camera as it is hard to tell if it is actually focused properly, and often it looks like it has focused, but when you look at the pictures later you discover it was not. In this case, I could see from the image on the display screen that in many cases it was passing through the correct focus and then setting it wrong, i.e. I get it to focus and it starts off on blurry and goes through it's range of focusing distances, including a nice clear one before finally settling on "very blurry". So obviously the lens could focus, but the camera couldn't work out how for that distance + zoom combination, and there's no manual focus.
Anyway, here's two of the pictures. You can see it's very feathery antennae quite clearly, especially in the second photo. The first photo is a bit washed out because of the flash, but it did pretty much look like this if you had enough light on it - when it was flying around or sitting on the wall it looked much duller as the light wasn't enough to bring out the patterns - like the Stargate-like orange w-with-a-line-over-it in the middle of each wing. It also has a weirdly pointed nose, and kind of looks like an aeroplane.



The moth's actual size is about 1" long, maybe a little more, and in case you missed the name, it is probably a Slender Owlet moth, but I don't have the book here to give the scientific name.

Monkeys and Midgets

Today I saw this written multiple time on the pavement at the University:

And I was wearing this today:

Huh, weird.

Completely unrelated to that, is that when going around the lecture theatres at the university, I often ponder the fact that if any of the lecturers were midgets, the cords used to pull down the projection screens would be too high up for them to reach.

Monkey Truck Clothes

Today I wore my new top that I have recently realised is actually supposed to be a pajama top, but no matter (what gave it away was the label that said "I only sleep in " and the word "sleepwear"). It is dark grey and says "embrace your inner monkey" in bright pink, and has a picture of a monkey (of course) who appears to be dressed like a Buddhist monk. After thinking about this for the last 6 hours, it has ocurred to me that this might be some kind of play on words with monk and monkey. If so, it's not exactly one of those funny jokes, more the confusing kind.
So I wore this monkey singlet top thing over a black wool top of the kind that you generally wear under other things to keep warm, and my new trousers that I made and haven't put up pictures of yet. Interestingly, if I pull the singlet top down over my hips, I look like some kind of weird mutant with a small top half and disproportionately giant bottom half. Generally close-fitting clothes look good on me because I have a nice waist (yes, I do) but this mutant business is some weird property of these trousers which are rather snug (over snug even) at the waist, causing a sort of accentuated hip curve springing out from just below the waist. Anyway, it looked odd, so I have to have the top artfully rumpled up to just below the waist.
Then, there was the issue of keeping warm - I needed a warm top to go over as although it was warm now it would be cold when the sun went down. BUT I wanted to wear my zip-up top with trucks on it, which is not-warm. You can surely see what a dilemma this was - trucks vs. not-warm. Obviously the trucks won and I wore the top, and luckily it is not that cold.
The end.

Goose!

Here's some pics I took of the goose that currently hangs out in the Leith outside the clocktower building.

Soup Day

Yesterday was soup day, because I made soup. Amazing how that works. I made lentil and root vegetable soup. It also had celery in it, ruining the root vegetable theme - but I categorised it as "seasoning" so the theme was saved, whew!
The veges were carrots, an old wrinkled parsnip (it is not necessary that the parsnip be in this state, but in my case I am trying to reduce food wastage so I had to use it on the double! It was rehydrated in the soup, good as new, I'm sure...), yams, swede... I wasn't quite sure if that even grew underground initially, but it does... Wikipedia says that it is a cross between a cabbage and a turnip! So you can eat the leaves, although it is never sold with leaves here. Actually, if you want more ideas on how to eat a swede - I can seldom think of any good ideas but buy them anyway - wikipedia has some cooking notes. Hmmm, looks like a New Zealander has been at that article as it specifically mentions that they grow bigger in the South Island than the North - which means it was a South Island New Zealander.

Want to see some boring pictures of soup preparation? Maybe I'll give you the recipe too - I wasn't going to because it is from a book, but we've changed it tonnes, so there isn't any infringement on their intellectual property.

First, we start off like the recipe does say - as soon as you even think about making this soup start soaking the lentils... You don't need to do it quite that soon, but the first step is to put one cup of red lentils in a bowl with one litre of hot water.
Then, chop up some onion relatively small, and fry it in butter or oil or a mixture of these. Cut up your veges relatively small too and put them all in except the swede, and "sweat" them - cook them for a bit. Put in your garlic at this time too (garlic and onion are both seasonings AND root veges! how wonderful).
Photo: you can even see the steam coming off it - when I took the first picture (not shown here) I was disappointed because it wasn't moving; a weird thing to think about a photo - which are well-known for being static - and also about soup - which also tends not to move. But it was the steam that wasn't shown so it didn't look like it was busily cooking away like in real life. This one is a bit better.


Now, add some ground spices - about 1 teaspoon ground cumin seeds, 1/2 teaspoon each of garam masala and ground coriander seeds, some ground chilli if you want - and fry it all some more briefly. Add the lentils and their water. Add the swede.


Cook until cooked.
Add chopped celery leaves that you saved from the top of the celery stalks. They are edible and presumably contain some nutrition so you might as well. Plus they are nice and bright green.
Eat it! It is quite thick, kind of a stew... If you leave it to go cold, it will get thicker, but will thin to an edible consistency when reheated.

Movie review

meh, I didn't like that post, so it is gone now!

Personality Imbalances

In dealing with more people through work than I would have normally dealt with, I have come to the conclusion that many of the incomprehensible things people say are in fact the result of certain problems they have, or, as I like to think of it (at the moment, until I find a better phrase) "imbalances in their personality". I can't identify what the imbalances ARE at the moment, but I'm imagining that there's a perfect state where people can deal with everything that comes their way, are pleasant to interact with, reconciled with their past, free of guilt, etc. Nobody's perfect however, so we all have problems. (Note that personality is probably not the best word here, because even people in the perfect state would still have their unique personality that makes them them - but doesn't include the things that make them miserable and unpleasant.)
Anyway, people are off-kilter, and this makes them respond to things oddly.
For example, today at work there was a problem with something. And someone said to me, "what are you going to do about it then?" and I said, "Well, the only thing I can do is...." And so he replied snippily, "Well, that's your problem isn't it?" and left. With me thinking - "well, why did you ask then?!" as well as - "yes, duh." There was more to his attitude, but I can't quite identify it so I can't describe it.
There's another guy here who complains a lot. Even when things are going well or fine, it's like there's a problem. This makes me wonder why?
Anyway, it's quite fascinating how these imbalances manifest themselves in people.

Poor Posting & Magic Man

I did not write a post yesterday. So I have to write two today. In case I do not have the inclination to write two, I'm writing this not very good one now. Actually - I really wanted to post some more photos today (I have a large back-log) - but I am working 7AM until 5PM! :O That would be 0700 to 1700 which is clearly ten hours (one of the advantages of 24 hour time is it makes the arithmetic simpler). Since my job is to help people in the lecture theatres, if they don't need any help I don't do much, so I will probably have the time to post something, the problem is thinking of it. I doubt much will happen today, although I have spent 45 minutes checking the rooms and getting a door unlocked and standing around looking at people.
I was momentarily thrown by the fact that one of the people setting up is the magician that did the (mostly) for children magic show in Oamaru during the Victorian fair; we watched it once and then I liked it so much we had to stay around for his second show so I could see it again.
We saw him somewhere else a few months later, and I watched my favourite trick again, which involves 3 lengths of rope that (apparently) change length. Part of the reason I like it is that it is very obvious (to me) how each part is done, but it is fun to work out exactly how he is doing it. That seems like it doesn't exaclty make sense, but think of it like maths or a puzzle like sudoku, you know how to do arithmetic/sudoku, but that's not the same as knowing the answer; you still have to aply the rules to solve it, it's just that you know how to solve it. Another favourite one is where he opens a book and there is a can of beer/coke inside. Cans are not flat, so how is it in the book, which is narrower than the can? If we assume he can't ACTUALLY do magic, then there must be a trick, a simple trick, but it looks so perfectly impossible.
So we have the easy to understand, and the impossible to understand. The other tricks are somewhere between, so not quite as fascinating.