Autumn Zebra

I haven't used Blogger in so long... I am always late posting Christmas, because I am too busy with it, and then too busy with projects. Some pre-Xmas shots from my sister's house. A pretty little basket of presents. A variety of pilfered left-overs from too many Christmas parties. Don't let them go to waste! I was impressed with her coasters. She can't remember where she got them from, but they are hand-made, but very nicely (so they don't LOOK it until you examine them).

Some graffiti I saw a while back: Photo: Pink writing on concrete saying "What are the pirates doing here?" Indeed that is a worthwhile question, but my question is - why are the pirates affiliated with Cthulu? Photo: Pink skull and crossbones on concrete with tentacle mouth.

I found the guy who has been eating our mail: Photo: brown patterned snail shell

I grew these babies in the garden. Ok, I am kidding - they are not babies, they are broad beans. But I guess beans are baby bean plants. I'm pretty sure I planted these at the very wrong time according to the books, but the plants grew the best of anything. Broad beans seem to be one of the few vegetables that are not destroyed by insects in my garden. Photo: A colander with fat broad bean pods in it

Judging where it falls amongst my photos, I took this on boxing day. It's not a fantastic photo, but it is interesting how much wear-and-tear there is on the beetle's exo-skeleton. In fact, it looks kind of dead, but I'm sure it was alive. Oh, that's right, we found it on the pavement in the hot sun and it was barely moving so I moved it to the edge under a bush. Photo: blackish waisted beetle with a lot of whitish patches around the edge of it's body, like paint worn away.

I haven't written a blog post in a long time. During the holidays, I have been wearing mostly just tights with long t-shirts over them, which is very comfortable but not very practical for going places. I accidentally went to dinner at an Indian restaurant in green leggings, a "Lost World" t-shirt, an old loose cardigan and my Mum's too large ballet slipper-like shoes, but luckily it was in South Dunedin, where people regularly go to the supermarket in their pyjamas and being weird is normal, due to it's very low socio-economic status. Strangely, it's also pretty much the only area where you can get dinner or coffee after 9pm (and to a perfectly reasonable standard with good service and comfortable surroundings). So, anyway, I didn't have any sensible clothes, so just before the holidays are about to end, I made a long tunic top. It is made of 100% merino (10$/m, amazing!) and it is based on a Burda magazine pattern. I made the pattern bigger and lengthe...

I have finished making my compost bin (pictures later?) and today got grass from our garden rubbish pile to put in the new compost bin, and then was getting decomposing stuff from our plastic compost bin to put on as the next layer before covering it with more old grass and leaves. The plastic compost bin never really produced any compost in 5 years, but never got full either - it is a black hole of kitchen refuse and weeds. So I took off a layer with the garden fork and was stunned by how many worms there were. They were everywhere, crawling away from the light. There were big tangles of them squirming around getting in the others way so that they couldn't escape. All different sizes of worms. I'm not even sure how such a small amount of compost could support them all. Also, the compost was very dense, and there were areas that probably got little air and did not decompose much at all, so it didn't really look like a good worm-farm kind of matter. I decided not to put a...