My Unfinished Travel Blog?

I'm completely enjoying myself and am not going to sit here for too long blogging. But I'll share some pictures, and then you can wander over to flickr and look at the rest if you want.


Sumburgh Airport "Airplane Crossing".


The Path to Sumburgh Lighthouse


View from partway up Compass Head


Brave (or stupid?) Sheep

If only "translate this page" translated that page well

Not sure if I'm being berated, praised, or just mentioned as a kind of antipodean curiosity with a coffee theme, but find my "Pot calling the Kettle..." earrings featured on this Russian Coffee Blog.

Google translate doesn't help much, so if anyone out there is up to the challenge of quenching my mild curiosity I'd love to hear from you!

Update

It's been awhile since I blogged. I've been busy and lazy... which one would assume is not possible to be both at once, but here I stand (sit) both busy and lazy. I think the correct term is procrastination.

The garden is looking good, and I should post some photos of it soon so you can admire the vigorous green of the mustard (and envy my stalky bed of garlic). Sadly the effort I expended in the garden turning over clay and rocks has left me with a rather sore back. I can't sit for long periods at a computer, and digging is a bit out of the question for a while. The physiotherapist says a strained muscle - so nothing too serious like a slipped disk.

I've got a multitude (well, six) more designs for "Idiomatically Speaking". And I've got one design that was a custom request from an awesome English teacher in Grafton. It's not so much an idiom as a common phrase one would use. Like "road kill. We all know what it means, and that it's not actually that the road has gone on a psychopathic murdering rampage...

So now all I've got to do is make several pairs of each, photograph them and list them for sale. Would it surprise you if I said that the part that I find the most time consuming and tedious is the photographing-them part? I think a macro lens for my camera may help there. I'm contemplating allocating money from the sales to a lens, as it's not something I'd consider buying if I weren't frequently photographing jewellery.

I had a fabulous party the other week - at least that is what I'm told. I wasn't in the room much so I'm taking their word for it. Everyone looked amazing in their 1940's costumes and the question of who killed Lord Darcy Firth? was eventually solved. Buoyed by my desire to do it better next time, I'm working on writing another one for my next pseudo birthday party entitled "Grimm Reunion". Probably in a year's time, as I quite like having parties at this time of year and I don't think it clashes with any weddings or babies (that I know of).

All in all, I'm doing OK at the moment. I've started walking again longer distances again (ie: 2km each morning rather than 800m), which has improved my energy levels. Which in turn makes me feel better in general.

And despite the fact it is nearly Summer in the UK, my widget told me that there were 'snow showers' yesterday in Lerwick. I may need to evaluate my packing plan.

The Good Life, pt 2

Just before it got into Mozzie Hour, I snapped this shot of how far we got. Turning over the soil is going to be a mammoth task (I've done some in the section closest to the camera - where the ground looks a little ochre coloured). There are heaps of clay+rock patches that make it impossible to get the shovel into the soil more than a centimetre or two. You can see that in my next pic....
Despite that looking like it's just resting lighting in the top soil, I stood on that shovel with my full (substantial 'big-boned') weight and all I did was nearly fall headfirst into the dirt. About a cm of dirt and then its the stuborn blend of clumpy clay packed with pebbles & rocks. I've found a way to negotiate it with the fork, but it involves sweat-intensive labour, and sneaking underneath the clumpiest parts, levering them up and then crumbling the clumps by fork & hand tossing the larger rocks to one side (which you can see in the top photo, along the bench is a growing collection of garden variety rocks.

A Good Life

Do you remember that 70's British show about a couple who decided to escape the "rat-race" and live sustainable?

We had Earth Hour last night. I sat in my sister's backyard with candles (which probably weren't made in any environmentally friendly fashion) and ate our BBQ'd food. It was lovely.

However my sweaty contribution to sustainable living started earlier in the day when I decided started in on one stretch of backyard lawn that Mum & I had decided should be converted to a 24/7 organic, help yourself, food place.



Our plan is to dig up the existing lawn of weeds (as featured above) and plant a 'green manure' crop of bio-mustard, clover & lucerne. This will help enrich the soil for the vegetables we want to plant in spring.

Digging a little below the 'lawn' I discovered a whole lot of sandstone bits (possibly landfill?) and the soil is a hodgepodge mix of sand and clay and fairly bland topsoil. So I'm thinking we might want to remove some of that and cart in some richer stuff to turn through the existing mix.

Because I'm being pedantic about loving the earth, we're avoiding chemical solutions to removing the 'lawn'. I'm currently shovelling it up, shaking the soil out and tossing it into the green-waste bin. Tedious, and my legs are letting me know that they are noticing the squat-shovel-lift routine. But, well worth it!


This is my other contribution to global waste reduction. No more Mountain Spring Water plastic bottles for me!

Idiomatically Speaking...

I feel as though perhaps one of my sisters have shared their germs with me. But I don't really want to blog about how queasy I've been feeling since the bus left the city today.

What I want to blog about is Sunday night, but I'm too tired to do that so I'll settle with showing you pictures that I took on Saturday.

Firstly, (at least I hope it is first) a tiny coffee pot and tea kettle (more pics can be found here


Then a flutter of wings and a pouncing feline (more pics)



And now, with so frightfully few words of substance, (or idioms) I go to my bed to sleep off whatever it is I've got.

Yet another UfO lies waiting in my backpack, calling to me with snuggly voices of cashmere and silk. I'm attempting a knitted wrap, the pattern found on Knitty.com. It is called Muir and, besides being something I cannot knit whilst letting my mind wander, it is particularly pretty. And soft. And snuggly.

I imagine it would be difficult to file, polish and solder on an express bus to the city, I felt that knitting would be my the 'on the bus' project. Admittedly I feel I've spent 1/4 of my time working out where droped a YO stitch..... *sigh*

In other news, I've ordered three books from Amazon.com (after exhausting all my usual book suspects in Australia), which I justified as being cheaper than doing a community college course this term. Which they are. And they will provide valuable, long lasting resources for years to come. But it wasn't till I thought of the justification that I felt comfortable with clicking on the 'Confirm Purchase' button.

Funny how that works. The fear of buyer's regret is paralysing when you think you *should* get something, but you're not sure if you can.