As promised, I brought back some photos of Austrian mushrooms. These guys really know how to have fun. But first, a small scene setter (okay, two, because I couldn’t choose):
Couldn’t see much of the valley through the trees along the trail, and the sun was rather faint.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
And then there were the open spaces.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Click through to the fun guys themselves:
It is rainy and cold again today and my walk with Jack was basically head down and get it over with short. I’m a bit fed up with this weather so today I’m going back in time to post one of Jack’s summer walks.
I’d rather be at the beach, Coin de Banc, Quebec, ©voyager, all rights reserved
One of our regular readers and commenters, Anne Cranky Cat Lady, makes journals by hand and she has kindly shared her latest project with us. Every journal is unique and Anne has chosen a lively and interesting range of papers so that each one is sure to please its recipient. Thanks for sharing, Anne. Your work is inspiring and I’m sure that everyone on your list will be thrilled to receive such a beautiful gift. I’ll let Anne introduce them.
This year’s crop of gift journals are finshed. Done, done, cleaned up after, done!
All but three which I made a few years ago were put together either last Friday or today. So you can see that they’re pretty quick. They’re made with Books by Hand kits or refill sets of boards and page blocks, assorted papers and ribbons, and, of course, lots of glue. The dimensions are small 4×4″, medium 5×7″, and large 4×8¼”.
The wood-grain one is going to Paul for our anniversary, the rest will be Christmas gifts or get stashed for later giving.
Small journal, open to show accordion page structure, ©Anne, Cranky Cat Lady, all rights reserved
Group 1 Small and Medium, ©Anne, Cranky Cat Lady, all rights reserved
Group 2 Medium and Large, ©Anne, Cranky Cat Lady, all rights reserved
Since you all seemed to enjoy the vultures so much, here’s some more of them:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Last weekend (or was it two weekends ago already?) the family and I had the opportunity to catch one of the last shining golden days of autumn, and we went out to the local nature reserve / park / artificial lake / walking trail. Thingy. It was well worth the effort, and along the way, I saw many fun guys having a great time in the damp moss beneath the pines. First, let me set the mood:
Gold everywhere.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
And then the party started…
This fun guy was having fuzzy feelings all over.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This fun guy was just trying to blend in.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This fun guy was lolling about in the needles.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This fun guy was taking a break.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This fun guy was moving up the social ladder.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This fun guy was kind of alien, and I’m pretty sure – no fun guy at all!
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
And a final lot of fun guys:
©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s raining again. It started yesterday afternoon just in time to spoil Halloween. Most of the little ones had parents with umbrellas and the older ones out in groups were scarce. Really, there weren’t many kids at my door. How was your Halloween? What was the best costume you saw?
This came in from Avalus several weeks ago and I suspect that this little critter may have succumbed to cooler temperatures by now. I did the google thing before I posted this and it seems that grasshoppers don’t survive winter. The adults mate in the fall, lay their eggs and then die off once this biological imperative is finished. It’s the eggs that survive winter in little curved pods that are buried underground. The pods are created by rolling spittle with dirt until it becomes a hard case and each pod contains about 20- 26 eggs. I wonder if that’s what this little grasshopper was doing? Avalus says,
This time it is a grasshopper that I found on a gravel road. I think she tried to lay eggs.
I did gently remove her from the path, when a tractor was approaching. (In fact, she climbed on my hand when I put it next to her).
It seems like an odd place to lay eggs, but I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. Thanks Avalus, for the interesting and wonderfully detailed photos.
©Avalus, all rights reserved
Let me start off by saying that I miss rocks. I grew up on the Canadian shield, and granite outcroppings were a regular fixture of my childhood, along with mica-and-quartz hunting, breaking beaver dams and catching leeches in the pond.
And while I miss all of those things to greater or lesser degree, I wasn’t prepared for my own rather overly emotional response to seeing large pieces of rock (as in, cliffs and boulders you can stand on and not individual erratics but part of a mountain!). I went up the mountain in Macedonia expecting a nice view, but got a shoe full of quartz fragments (pocket, but nevertheless) and tears in my eyes. It was beautiful. Well, kind of dull and brown and grey, but beautiful.
And then! Coming down the mountain (I have a story about this but I will place it with some pleasant picture of flowers in a later post) I saw many more incredible rocky things that warmed the cockles of my heart. Behold.
This is actually the view that made me cry. Glorious, innit? ©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
More after the break, but first, here’s your song.
Last weekend was the kid’s birthday party. I asked her what kind of party she wanted and she said “surprise me!”.
I went with “Under the Sea” and basically started the preparations a month ago with googling ideas, ordering moulds and fossilised shark teeth, trying out recipes and watching videos for inspiration.
The results were:
Ocean macarons
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Sadly the colours didn’t bake too well. The purple ones are filled with lavender buttercream, the blue ones with white chocolate buttercream.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The seashells are white chocolate with a bit of cocoa powder. I must say the silicone moulds worked perfectly.
Next are the sea foam cupcakes, on a pumpkin muffin basis:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The topping is marshmallow fluff: Lightly caramelised sugar poured into beaten egg whites, like for an Italian meringue. I then added some gelatine for stability. Tails and fins are fondant.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The sand is grounded almonds
And last but nor least, the cake:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
This is what it looked liked before being frosted. I baked the cake on Thursday and needed to get it layered and frosted on Friday, and that day, everything went wrong. The fillings are on a cream cheese, whipped cream and fruit basis with gelatine, but despite stirring in the gelatine as you should, it became lumpy. In the end, the lower filling was still lumpy, but you didn’t notice when you ate it. The lower filling is with fresh pomegranate seeds and I can only recommend that. They are delightfully sweet and sour and add texture. The top filling is blueberries, which are a safe bet for taste.
Also my muffin batter separated and when frosting more shit happened, but in the end it went well. I frosted it with Italian meringue buttercream and let it cool over night. In the morning I popped it into the freezer for a few hours to prepare it for the mirror glaze.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
This time the sand is brown sugar. I had already made the mermaid tails the night before, though I should have made them earlier to let them dry out more. Then I made corals by pouring caramelised and coloured sugar over ice cubes. This worked hmpf but ok. My cups were too small, my ice cubes not the right shape and the sugar started to crystallize again, but I got a few suitable pieces. I added those and more chocolate sea shells and this is the result:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
I could not decide between multiple videos, as usual, and last-minute decision fell on this one. It is a nice piece of engineering and the video is reasonably short and packed with interesting information.
It might also be Halloween appropriate? I have no clue, since I originate from and live in a country with no Halloween tradition whatsoever and honestly I do not understand what Halloween is supposed to be about at all. But I read something about murderers and monsters the other day, so maybe an (alleged) assasin’s weapon might fit in.
I have a day off and I planned to do some knife-work, but I have to pass on that since I am still not well.
They’re watching me, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Happy Halloween.
We had a trick today instead of a treat. Jack didn’t have his surgery because they found enlarged lymph nodes in his rear legs which they biopsied instead. Once we have the results back in a few days we’ll see what to do next. He had blood work done less than a month ago and everything was normal so that’s good. He’s also been happy and playful so I’ll try not to worry… too much. In the meantime these are photos from Jack’s evening walk last night. This is the best dressed house in the neighborhood. Click through to see where the eyeballs lead you.
I think that vultures are very halloweeny, because hey, they literally eat the dead.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Saule Brauca Debesīs (see title for translation) is a neat little Latvian animation film coming out soon (November 15). It’s part of the ‘100 Films for 100 Years’ cycle going on this year, what with the centenary and all. I think it quite lovelily demonstrates the oddity that is Latvian animation and art – it’s got its own style that is distinctively, traditionally Latvian, and the story is taken from folklore: folk songs and folk story motifs are a heavy influence. I think it’s adorable. Here’s the trailer:
I don’t think you need too much of the language to get an idea of the plot.