Canyon Matka – Part 1v2: Pathways cont’d

Here are some more pictures of the walk back from the caves, I don’t think any particular commentary is necessary, just enjoy. Although these are more demonstrative of the treachery inherent to any wild and untamed place that feels the heavy hand of human civilisation: rebellion lies not far beneath the surface.

©rq, all rights reserved.

In some places, the railing was completely absent. From the pale scratches on the rock below, it was deduced that this was relatively recent damage… So the walk continued with frequent glances upslope! ©rq, all rights reserved.

©rq, all rights reserved.

©rq, all rights reserved.

This, I think, was the most uncomfortable place of the entire hike. ©rq, all rights reserved.

©rq, all rights reserved.

©rq, all rights reserved.

Gateway to a magical world… ©rq, all rights reserved.

Is this the tomb of Amontillado? Or simply a bricked up cave? The words ‘Open Sesame’ didn’t seem to have any effect at all… ©rq, all rights reserved.

A Day at the Zoo 15: A Different Kind of Tit Picture

© Giliell, all rights reserved

Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Our orang utans are doing their best to help with the species conservation, although they demonstrated well that humans can’t plan everything. About 12 years ago a mature orang utan lady and her daughter moved in, hoping that the lady would breed with our male. Turned out the female adult was pregnant already, surprising everybody with a baby in summer. But even after the baby was grown quite a bit, the lady told the dude in no certain terms that he could stuff his dick into the meat grinder or she’d do that for him.

He waited a few years until the daughter had matured and then successfully mated with her, having several kids. He got sent to a different zoo last year to see if could keep up his good work in the conservation of this wonderful species.

Canyon Matka – Part 2: Reflections

One of my favourite books has a great bit about Truth, Illusion and the Edge between the two. And the edge of Canyon Matka is the mirror of the water. The mountains reach into the sky, but if you peer down into the water, you can see that the mountains descend into the depths as well – but more about that later.

It was a quiet evening. And the rocks, glorious rocks, dipped into the river and rose out of it, in bends and folds eons in the shaping.

©rq, all rights reserved.

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A Day at the Zoo 14: I don’t know if any of them is called Alvin

© Giliell, all rights reserved

Chinese chipmunks, also known as cute overload.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

I love those little tufts on the ears, so much like tiny horns.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

And a grey chipmunk that inhabits the ground of the enclosure. It was not chilled out as the other one.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

 

Harakka in Autumn: Chapter 15

It’s time to join Ice Swimmer on his walk around Harakka.

Chapter 15 – East

Emerging from the Wetland ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

The bird watching shelter we visited earlier is on the right. Sunday was definitely brighter than Saturday. Across the water are the island Särkkä and Suomenlinna Sea Fortress.

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Canyon Matka – Part 1: Pathways

Week 1 here in Macedonia has been successfully survived. It’s a long-established truth that the more disaster you expect, the less you will get (like bringing an umbrella to prevent the rain), but it was still exhausting, and some recovery was in order. Apparently it is trendy to use nature exposure these days, so that is what we – my two Lithuanian colleagues and I – proceeded to do. This will be a long series of posts, because I finally had the time, the freedom and the unhurried companionship to take a… decent… amount of photos. So, here is part 1: Pathways (which will be in two parts). Let us take a walk! Also OMG it’s been so long since I posted!

©rq, all rights reserved.

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Jack’s Walk

Happy Birthday to me! ©voyager, all rights reserved

Today is Jack’s 11th Birthday, sort of. Jack is a Leap Year Baby and since there is no February 29 this year we’re celebrating today. So far, Bubba has listened to his parents sing to him off-key, had bacon and eggs for breakfast and then had an exciting romp up at the lake. Plans for later in the day include gifts (a new rubber pig that honks and squeals and a bag of his favourite treats – Greenies,) more singing (Jack loves to sing) and a nice bit of salmon to top his kibble for supper. All in all, I’d say that’s a pretty good day for a not-quite birthday.

A Day at the Zoo 13: Budgie does as Budgie can

© Giliell, all rights reserved

There’s a walk in aviary with budgies, many of them happy to say hello to the visitors (the zoo provides feed you can give them). The keepers probably spend a lot of time checking for escapes, but some of them always do, although they also seem to return as soon as it gets dark and cold. Except for this little fellow, who has decided to move out permanently and make its home in the wooden beams of the aviary. Literally. It seems like the keepers have just decided to let it go as an example of how wild budgies nest.

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New Books to Read Arrived

The situation at my work slowly deteriorates further*, nobody is sure whether they will have work tomorrow or not, management assurances to the contrary notwithstanding (we have been lied to before). I have already decided that should I get the sack, I will not be looking for a new job forthwith but I will dedicate a year to learning and perfecting my crafts – knife-making and wood-carving.

I already have decent knowledge of metallurgy, some rudimentary knowledge of history and even some skill, but there is a lot of potential for improvement on both the practical and theoretical side. And to expand my knowledge of theory, I have just invested non-trivial money into these beautiful books.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

They arrived today and I am eager to dive into them. I expect to already know some of it, but by far not all, or even most, so I hope to get a real knowledge boost. Which will be of course mostly forgotten afterwards, but that is the way of the world. I still should get out of it ahead knowledge-wise. I glanced through each, some are more pictures than text, some the opposite, but they all seem to be cramped with information on each site and right now I have no regrets of buying any of them.

If anything I still think they are not enough, I wanted to buy much more, but many books that I have got my eyes on were not available. Well, after I am done with these, I will look again. These should occupy me for a few weeks, or even months.

If you have some recommendations on the theme of blade making and blade history, feel free to post them in comments.

  • Honestly, in the pursuit of their greed, american corporate managers are capable of dying of thirst by refusing to drink when given a bottle of water instead of the lake they demanded.

BBC: Badly Behaved Cranes

Every spring and autumn, the cranes pass our little neck of the woods. And every spring and autumn I look out for them, but usually they’re so early or late in the day, that it’s hard to spot them, flying in their majestic V form, but today they were here at around 11 o’clock and my camera was ready.

Of course they did not show their typical pattern, but I think the shots are pretty nevertheless (I had to do a bit of post production, but I swear it did not involve copypasting crane silhouettes). Do click for full size.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

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A little project on the side

We haven’t had a craft post in a while, and I know some of you are still waiting for your horses (they’ll come). I do have a larger work in progress that I can hopefully show you soon, but for most of this year I hit a creative dry spell with just being too exhausted after work.

Well, I got holidays and I used them for a little fun project. I wanted to do something with wood again and if you hit youtube, you’ll find dozens of “secret wood” tutorials (though why they’re called “secret wood” is a mystery to me, it’s quite obvious, isn’t it?), but I wanted to do something a little different:

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

For these I used an old stick that was lying around and cut off some pieces. The bark had already withered away so I only cleaned them up lightly, leaving all the natural signs of withering in place. I then drilled a hole down the middle, starting with a size 5 drill and then going up to 10 over 8. After that I started to make the cuts with my little Dremel tool. In the green one I first tried to make two parallel cuts and then take out the wood in between, but that didn’t work that well, so I just make the cuts as wide as possible and then used other tools to define them. I think it will take a few more goes before I really get the hang of this.

Though this project showed again that my BFF J and I are actually one person leading two lives. I showed here these and said “I’ll need to ask your husband a favour” and she replied “you want to used some thicker wood and have him drill out the middle so you can insert some lights”, which is exactly what I’m planning to do.

And here’s one more thing, a leftover mermaid:

© Giliell, all rights reserved

I still had some green and blue resin left, so I made a pretty pendant. One of the easiest things to do with resin is to print out stuff on a transparency (got to be a laser printer, though) and then insert the result into the resin. Because my resin was starting to cure I couldn’t get the bubbles out, but for once I think they’re actually adding to the whole thing.