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Archive for May, 2010

I used to be hard to buy things for, because I earned good money so I bought things I wanted for myself.

Now I’m skint, so I can think of lots of things that I want 

So if any family members are stuck for ideas for my looming birthday, take a look at my wish list here.

When I lived in Hamilton, we used to shop at Big Fresh supermarket.  They had a fibreglass cow in the dairy section that mooed when you pushed a button, and sometimes you could buy big bags of chicken feet.  On Saturdays they sold goat meat, and there would be a big banner hanging up in the meat department saying “Saturday is goat day!”

Well, Saturday might be goat day, but Sunday is definitely moose day.  I have seen moose on the last 3 sundays in a row, so clearly I’m on a roll.  The first was when driving between Bjursås and Falun.  I spotted a moose standing just in the forest at the edge of the road, canoodling with a tree.  The following Sunday, we had just come back from a garden fair in Gothenburg and were sitting in Linus’s mother’s house when a moose went galloping across the open field in front of the house, pursued by a flock of birds.  And the next sighting was, we think, the same moose – we were there again, waiting for a taxi to collect Linus’s grandparents.  We saw the taxi pull into the driveway to the neighbourhood, and then stop … because a moose was standing in its path.  Once it had let the taxi go by, it came for a stroll back past the house.

So, if you want to see a moose, come to Sweden and hang out with me on a Sunday.

In other wildlife sightings, I’ve recently seen a fox (much nicer looking than London foxes – orange, with a bushy tail & everything), plenty of deer (who’ve been eating my tulips – more on that later), and two badgers.  Both of the badgers were road-kill, so Linus said that I wasn’t really allowed to count them in my wildlife tally.  But as my friend Ben pointed out:

“Dead Badgers are still badgers. If I saw a dead Dragon I would count that as seeing a Dragon.”

So I reckon they count.

On her first birthday, Anneli naturally got a few toys as gifts.  Several of them have become strong favourites, both for her and us, and they’re all the ones made of wood.

I think Anneli’s favourite seems to be the Brio stacking clown.  It’s a set of wooden rings that sit on a pole, and if stacked in the right order they make a wee clown.  The box said “19+ months” so I was expecting it to be ages before she had the coordination required to put the rings on the pole, however she cracked that part of it within about 2 minutes!  She still likes putting all the rings on, but of course they’re never in the right order.

The Brio stacking clown

My favourite has to be the Buzzy Bee.

Buzzy Bee

Of course it’s a NZ classic and I’m sure she’ll end up with a lot more Buzzy Bee merchandise in the years to come!  Now that Anneli has started walking I hope she’ll realise soon that she can drag this little fella around the house and watch his wings spin 

Anneli also likes boinging the tail on this sausage dog, also from Brio:

Brio sausage dog

Again, she’ll hopefully realise soon that she can take him for walks rather than just boinging his springy tail and flossing her bottom teeth with his leash.

Finally, there is this great wooden puzzle from Kärnan:

Wooden farmyard puzzle

We go through the various animal noises together, but the only ones she seems interested in imitating are the lamb and the tractor (yes, the tractor counts as a farm animal).

It’s been quite a while since I blogged.  Anneli had a cold for the most part of the last 2 weeks, so was kept out of daycare.  Luckily she has a grandmother close by who really enjoys her company, so we got lots of baby sitting.   We also spent a weekend up in Falun, which was a great way to switch off for a couple of days.

On the way home from Falun, we stopped at a beekeeping store in Töreboda.  We are both keen to get a beehive, but it won’t be this year because we don’t really have the spare cash to get all the equipment.  Instead we bought some bees wax, and I had a go at making some hand cream.

Home made hand cream

I followed this recipe, and added a drop of lavender essential oil.  It feels quite oily for a few minutes after using it, but otherwise I love it.  Most of all I love that it has a really simple ingredient list and I know what all the ingredients are – no mysterious chemicals at all.

Linus then had a go at making a lip balm:

Home made lip balm

with bees wax and honey, and this is similarly lovely.  He’s also rolled some candles from the wax sheets.

In other crafty news, I finished a pair of socks last month, the “regurgitated parrot socks”.  I called them that because I think that if you chewed on a parrot for a while, and then spat it out, it would look at least a little bit like this yarn.

Regurgitated parrot socks

I really enjoyed the entrelac knitting though, which was something I hadn’t tried before.  These socks have a project page here.  I recently went through my archive of sewing and knitting projects, and started creating a project page for each one – you can see these pages by clicking on the “Craft” tab above.

Finally, things are coming along in the gardening department.  We are often spending our evenings digging up rocks in order to make the vegetable patches larger, and we have an army of baby plants gathering their strength inside in preparation for moving outdoors soon.

Plant babies

There are tomatoes, pumpkins, broccolli, peas, cabbages, green kale, and more tomatoes.