Autumn Zebra

Best club juggling so far is 24 throws and catches (i.e. not dropping any, finishing with 3 in the hands) or 26 throws (finishing 1 or more dropped).

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.

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 Th...

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 ...

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 lay...

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 n...

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" ...

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 ins...

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

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 I...

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 ...

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...

So, there's these solitary predatory wasps that live in our neighbourhood, and in other places around Dunedin that I always noticed and wandered what they were because they're kind of large, and red-orange. Then this year, when it was summer, or whatever that non-freezing, not-constantly-raining season is, I saw lots of the wasps/the same wasp many times doing all sorts of stuff around the garden. Mostly that stuff was looking for and killing spiders, looking for a nest spot, and then dragging the spider to the nest. One time after it had found itself a spider and dragged it around a bit and then gone off to look for places to put it, I got the camera (which has since been taken by an evil university student) and took pictures of the rest of the dragging process. I also sent two photos to the museum and Anthony Harris at the museum said it was "Sphictostethus nitidus (Fabricius, 1775) with prey, Miturga sp. The wasp is the red spider hunting wasp, in the family Pompili...

I went to the 24 hour (runs from noon Friday to noon Saturday) regent book sale with my Mum on Saturday, 2 hours before it ended (we seldom go at strange and interesting times), and got some books, as follows: The Weaver's Craft by LE Simpson and M Weir, 10th Edition, 1967, Hardcover. There's numerous other editions of this listed on Amazon (but not available), including a new 2008 edition which is available. My one is a nice solid book with a sewn binding (not glued). It looks good and covers different types of weaving. 50 cents Weaving as a Hobby by M Ickis, 1972, Hardcover with a proper binding again. Aren't old books nice? The pages are nice and hardy too. This one only covers weaving on a large loom. 50 cents Step-by-step Weaving by N Znamierowski, 1967, Softcover. This is mainly about weaving on a large loom again, although it talks about frame looms, and has useful stuff on different types of weaves (eg. twill, basket weave, etc) and about natural dye plants. 50 ...

Since the last fortnight was Fair Trade fortnight, Trade Aid plus Forest & Bird were showing films at the Academy Cinema for $5 incl. free coffee/tea/hot chocolate and chocolate (fair trade of course; a product show case of sorts). We saw the one today where the feature ( The Greening of Southie ) was about trying to build a "gold" standard ( LEED certification ) building ( the MacAllen Building ) two years ago in South Boston. It was quite interesting: they used bamboo for the floors, a kind of mdf made from wheat straw, etc. Apparently, no one in the USA had really heard of dual-flush toilets - you know the ones with two buttons, for more or less water? Yeah, they really made a big deal of that aspect - partly because toilets are funny I guess, but given that this type is practically normal, it seemed really weird to talk about them at all. They sort of made all the labourers, cement workers, etc look/sound like morons, which was a shame, although they also appeared...

So I think everyone who reads this blog that I know, knows that Dad died on April 1st, but I thought I should post it here because of the last posts, before launching into posts about making hats or something. I posted on my LJ, if you want to read what I had to say at the time - link . Other than being April Fool's day, April 1 is also my husband's mother's birthday. So that's an odd collection of events, but it doesn't seem meaningful.

I might start writing various diary-like entries about depressing stuff, and other stuff, for a while... So I decided two weeks ago to make Dad a nightcap for "receiving visitors in the evening" (lol) and for when he is in hospital [ :-( ]. On the day when we didn't know what was wrong yet and he'd gone to the hospital to find out, I picked some seeds off a tree, the type that turn into "helicopters" to show him, because this is the sort of thing I do. Before they go brown and fall off the tree as helicopters, they are green and joined together - two wings or blades instead of a single one. I'd post pictures but I want to see if I've got any of mine at home (but I lost my camera/it was stolen and I think I hadn't got the photos off yet). Anyway, I got them to show him and gave him the best one. The point of this is that I decided to embroider these and the leaves of the same tree on the night cap. I used the shape of the one on this page on the ...

Very depressing; don't read if you're not in a suitable mental state. Four weeks ago we found out that Dad had cancer in his thyroid (which is in one's throat) and they were going to operate on it. Three days later we found out they couldn't operate on it and he would have radiotherapy that would make it shrink, but after that it would come back so he probably had months to live. One week ago he went into hospital with an infection. He stayed in hospital for nearly a week, during which time swelling and the cancer meant that he couldn't swallow. So now he can't eat, and he probably has a couple of weeks. If you want to say something and don't know what to say, say that you want to say something but don't know what to say. Not commenting will not be held against you. I'll assume all comments are meant in the best possible way, obviously. If you know me in real life, don't ring me unless you warn me first because I hate phone calls.

Well, RIGHT now, I'm listening to a piece of music on an online Polish radio station that sounds like they chucked an orchestra down a really long flight of stairs, with alarmed accompaniment on the trumpet*. It's "alarmed" accompaniment because it sounds like the trumpet* player is observing the disaster, but was not able to remove his instrument from his mouth before expressing himself or calling for help. The next piece seems to be "tuning up, played by a swarm of bees". *May not actually be a trumpet; I'm not good with brass instruments. Could be a trombone. Other than that I am trying to learn Polish by new and instinctive means, gardening a little bit, and studying a few things. Today I put some seedlings into pots and put them into the glasshouse - it is not-cloudy and not-raining today, which is a change from the last 5-6 days. I also poured boiling water on some weeds in the path in the hope of killing them and stopping them from growing back f...

A couple of years ago, I set up a search on Trade Me for the corset books that were generally regarded as pretty good, so that it would email me if someone was selling them. The likelihood that someone would first buy and then actually sell on TradeMe one of these books was low, but I was patient, and recently "Waisted Efforts" came up and I got it at a fraction of the price (like a half or a third) that it would cost to buy it from overseas, thus making it a price that I would reasonably pay for a book here if I really wanted it. Woohoo! It arrived today and it is thicker (fairly chunky), slightly bigger (about landscape A4), and a lot more readable than I thought it would be. I was sort of thinking of it more like a reference book only, but it looks like you could read through it rather than just flick to relevant pages. This is good. For some reason I thought it was written by a woman, and read through the overview and preface with this in mind, before seeing that the pref...

Wygilia is the Christmas Eve Polish feast, which is, as I understand it, very important and more important than the Christmas day (although, this might be changing in modern Poland due to general international influence on customs?). Maybe I'll just do pictures with identifying captions? Basically, we made some food and then ate it... :D Firstly, the table setting. One is supposed to use a white table cloth, so we do. I assume the white table cloth is so that it shows up the stains from any spilt beetroot soup better... We also have Polish bison grass vodka, and red wine in crystal glasses here. Matching table mats and plates too! Very pretty and nice. Barszcz (beetroot soup) with giant mushroom uszki (filled dumpling things) in it. We have these handy pierogi maker things (you put the circle of pastry on, put the filling on, then fold it in half and it folds it and crimps the edges for you) and we use the smallest for the uszki, but this makes them about 3 times bigger than when w...

There's this thing called "my creative space" where each week you post a pic of what creative stuff you're doing, and add a link to a list, so that everyone can go and look at everyone's stuff. I'm thinking of participating.... This week - more mindless than creative. That's a book with a picture of some stays similar to the ones I'm making, some cable ties that will be boning, and the fabric and embroidery thread I am using to make them - sewing boning channels in backstitch down each piece. Just another couple of dozen hours or something to go, sigh.. I'm not sure they'll work out that great even, but I wanted to hand sew some, just because I did. This weeks creative space link

Random pics of things I made or liked or whatever... It seemed like a good idea to follow the inspiration in the Spotlight catalogue and make food covers out of mosquito net with fabric around the edge as a presnet for my Mum. However, I discovered I don't really understand about getting a wide fabric border around a corner, and it was a total mess and really annoying. I wanted to sew one edge on, then fold it over and sew the other edge down on the other side like you can do with bias binding (as this seemed like it would be like a giant binding, essentially), but out of 4 sewing books, only one gave instructions for this kind of thing and those instructions were more-or-less "when you reach the corner, leave enough fabric to mitre it" and then when sewing down the other side "mitre the corner" - ok, not very specific there. I had the most success folding it in half first and sewing down both edges at once, and just messing with the corners when I got to them,...

I think I'll try and post some pictures from Christmas, before they become completely irrelevant... I made shopping bags to put everyone's presents in (except my husband's because I do most of the shopping so it would be like giving the bag to myself), out of fair trade cotton calico and leftover scraps of fabric I had. Since it's fair trade, and not on special, it's rather expensive, and with the cost of labour these shopping bags would cost about $50, as compared to $2 like they do when you get them from the supermarket. Of course, mine are a bit fancier than the $2 ones, but still... However, it was lovely lovely material, it felt very nice and it was really nice to sew. The weird thing is that cutting it felt a bit like cutting some silk I had- like the feeling through the scissors was similar in the way it sliced through it. Very odd. For those that like cutting fabric, you could cut this all day; it was lovely. So I did some of it batch-wise, and some of it in...