I’d put this project aside while I indulged my knitting obsession for a few months. And to be honest, I was finding the whole thing a bit of a struggle. It’s a lot of stitching!

My original approach was to stitch one colour at a time (cross country), I then changed to a small subset of colours, but was eventually kind of bored by that too.

When I picked the project back up a couple of weeks ago, I decided to stitch whatever colour I’m feeling – a chunk here, a chunk there – at random, without any great plan. A more vibes-based approach. This is much more satisfying.

To set myself up for success with this “do what you feel” approach I made stickers of the symbols for all the colours and moved the skeins into larger plastic bags than those pictured. Much easier to access and grab skeins at random.

There’s still a very, very long journey, but hopefully a little less difficult!

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+ April update
+ March update

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Neighbourhood footpath. Vote yes.

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Someone’s celebration will be wanting.

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I have a book where I capture a ton of notes for my German^^ studies (such as they are) but decided it was time to branch out to a second book to document the verb conjugations separately. Because why not?

If you’d asked me three months ago what conjugating verbs involved, or what an infinitive was, you’d have received quite the blank look. I’m not sure why anyone would actually ask this – but if they do, I’m now ready with answers!

You may well ask why I did not lovingly craft handmade books for this purpose. That would be because I only just now thought of it.

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^^ who is this diligent and studious person?

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Could these little green balls actually be very, very tiny mangoes?

I mean, I’m fully certain they won’t reach adulthood (if adulthood is the word I want), but how astonishing!**

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** they could also be absolutely nothing, much like the not-pinecone

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I was recently browsing the ikea as-is section, as you do, and found a single bed sized linen sheet in dark pink for $19.

And I thought, this would make great pants! Or a skirt … or a something.

I’m thinking to make the same pants I made here, because they are excellent messing about pants!

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Duolingo really does bring out my worst competitive qualities.

I was quite determined to get this and spent a quite ridiculous amount of time in the last week on the app grinding away getting points (mostly through speaking practice).

“Won” in this context means I was in the top 10 of my tournament league. I am quite pleased with this outcome and the shiny flair that comes with it.

Now I can relax and get back to learning!

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Weird morning sky

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Earlier this year bought a small packet of vinyl for $3.30 from Daiso with the intention of making tiny vinyl houses. I thought this was probably some time in May. Imagine my astonishment to discover it was in January. January!

I love how in that post past me was determined to execute the plan by the end of that month. Ha!

At some point I made a house shaped template from lightweight card. Who knows when? This year has been weird – my sense of time is very much distorted.

The template has been sitting on the noticeboard above my desk for at least a couple of months, reminding me to set my subconscious to work out a house-construction method.

I rediscovered the vinyl sheets while book-making^^ a couple of weeks ago and decided it was time to get this idea out of my head and into the world! After my brain had done all the heavy lifting over those months, it was fairly straightforward and I’m quite pleased with the results!

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Cutting and punching.

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I am such a fan of those quilting clips, they’re useful for all sorts of things! Stitched with a heavy weight sewing cotton.

I’m sure there’s a completed version of a house with the clips still attached as a metaphor for … something

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Fin! And supplies for more houses!

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A set of wee houses – mostly experiments by me.

The wall/s in the not-craft room really do need attention.

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^^ a post for another time!

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My intention was for annual updates, but we’ve gone a smidge past that – it’s more like 18 months since my last gardening experiments post.

My current gardening policy centres around benign neglect with occasional watering. Despite this (because of this?), most everything seems to be doing pretty well.

For the past couple of years we’ve had mild, wet summers, so I’m not sure how everything will survive the forecast apocalyptic heat. In our summer-will-be-appalling planning, we didn’t anticipate a 6 month lead time on our pergola – which won’t be installed until early autumn. I may have to rig up some sort of shading if it gets too horrendous out there. For context in 2018 we had temperatures of 47.8oC on the upper balcony where most of these plants live!

We do need to have a plant reckoning when the pergola is installed – there will be some very difficult decisions to be made on what plants to keep. This will be A Sad Day. Fortunately when I put plants out on the footpath with a “take me!” sign affixed they’re always quickly snapped up.

Previous posts:
2022
2021

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Experiment 1: seeds from a Xmas lunch 2019 pomegranate

Shoved some seeds from our Xmas pomegranate in a pot and here we are!

92cm

It’s quite a pretty tree and the only deciduous tree in that space. Our crow friends very much enjoy digging in this pot – as evidenced by the mulch scattered all over the tiles.

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Experiment 2: mangoes planted from summer feasting in 2019/20!

I threw some mango seeds in soil and they went bonkers!

also 92cm

They’ve flowered (amazing!) and definitely need another pot, but at some point they’ll be way too heavy for the somewhat fragile balcony. I think I need to stop experimenting with Giant Trees. But I didn’t really anticipate such success!

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Experiment 3: ginger

Harvested. Underwhelming. Experiment complete.

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Experiment 4:lemons

The under-performers of the group. Fave food of the local caterpillars. I’m astonished they still have leaves.

45cm

These don’t live on the upper balcony, but there will probably be wrapped up in A Reckoning at some point. Either that or they’ll be chomped to bits.

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Experiment 5: cold-stratified muscat grape seeds

I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured cold stratifying might work – and much to my surprise it did!

Thriving!

I tried the same method the next year and while my seeds sprouted well, the seedlings all died off. The Information Superhighway tells me this is likely damping off.

These are the ones I worry the most for in the extreme heat!

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In other plant-experiment updates:

Way way back in 2016, I harvested wee figgy seeds from the ground near my favourite tree when we were regularly bike-riding.

170cm

These live at the front of ThePalace(OfLove) and are not thriving quite so well as they were in 2022. The conditions are tough out there! I think they probably need to be pruned a bit (a lot?). I have a complex arrangement of supports, which are barely adequate.

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Stone pine grown from seed bought in April 2020. My first time to cold stratifying anything and astonishingly one wee plant survived!

35cm

Branched! That wee pine-cone-like-shape held more needles! I feel like this has something to do with the crown, but who can know?

No way is this going anywhere!

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Star jasmine flowers bursting out!

Gorgeous, but slightly worrying that they are flowering this early! It’s usually at least another month.

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