Giant Bubbles Video by Household Hacker

 

Scientific Super Bubbles 

I heard about giant bubbles through an eco-website. However, they had gotten the recipe wrong and it did not work!

This is a wonderful video by HouseholdHacker - they post science videos on Youtube - will post pictures when we follow this exactly...

Truly amazing footage of giant squid in natural habitat

We were lucky enough to catch this documentary on Animal Planet. Noone had ever seen a live giant squid "with their own eyes". Dr. Kubodera and his team went into a submersible into the deep, dragging along bait. They filmed him for some time.   With eyes as large as dinner plates, and using water for propulsion, he or she is an amazing creature - far more beautiful as a living creature.  But no one expected their rippling skin to shine like gold.

If you don't have the opportunity to watch Legends of the Deep: the Giant Squid in its entirety (it helps to have this experience presented in context), you can catch the highlights on this Youtube clip, above.

Seamoss Forest Jumper - a gift of love

Here is an important post for me - my first ever knitted jumper (sweater, sorry I speak New Zealand now). 

Some people might say, why bother knitting a jumper?  You can buy a warm jumper for not very much money made in a factory.  But then that's what my gift would be - not very much.

First, when I visited home and my husband wasn't able to come - my sister showed me how to kettle-dye wool, and I chose then to make something for Shane. I wanted to choose both the blues and greens of the ocean, and also the deeper darker greens of the NZ bush (forest) - Forest Green, Avocado, Moss, Turquoise.  (To see the post on how Wendy kettle-dyed the wool with acid dyes, go here.  It was the way I showed my love for my husband who wasn't able to be there.



My sister also instructed me on how to knit the jumper when I got home - demonstrated circular knitting, which I hadn't done before, and showed me a diagram or two of Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system, and gave me a pattern based on this method.  I didn't really understand at the time, but took the info home with me.  I practiced and learned circular knitting on smaller projects, which I loved.  When I felt confident enough a few months later, I started the jumper.

(My sister-in-law Iris had also showed me her mother's old German lovely cast-on method as well on this trip, so I had learned some great tools.)

Here are the diagrams,  from Elizabeth Zimmerman's book - Knitting Without Tears:

 

Basically you use circular knitting to knit the trunk from the bottom up - knitting rib, then increasing by 10%.  You then keep knitting until you reach to just under the arms.  Then you put on hold 8% of the stitches (if there were 100 stitches around the girth that would be 8 stitches), which means pulling a large needle with some wool through them and tying a knot to save them until later.  

Then you put the whole trunk piece down, and knit the first sleeve from bottom (hand end) up to the armpit, starting with rib.  As you go you increase 2 stitches every 5th round so the arm piece gets fatter.  When you reach the armpit, you put 8% of stitches on hold (e.g. 8 stitches if it's 100 round girth) in the same way.  

Now this next part is really cool, and is how the sweater results in having NO seams except under the arms.  I had to call my sister to understand.  You put the whole thing now on the circular needles, both sleeves and the trunk, but not the cast off stitches, so that the outside of the sleeves and the trunk form one circle.  Then you just keep knitting upwards the one jumper in one piece - reducing in an exact location in front and behind arms.  That seam looking line from armpit to neck is a "reducing" pattern - not a seam.

Isn't that cool?

See, like this - the pink shows the circle that now goes onto your circular needles.

I had to do it to understand it - that's how I work.  But it also helps to have a knitting expert one phone call away!  I did have to "rip out" and reknit just about every section over again - until I did it right.  And it's still not perfect - I knitted this first jumper so tightly that I actually just barely ran out of wool so that I wasn't able to knit the back of the neck higher than the front as you are supposed to do at the end (you go back and forth at the back a few extra times before knitting the rib round the neck to finish).  I had to sew a little label inside so he knew which part was supposed to be the back of the jumper.  (However, Wendy says if it's knitted tightly it will last longer).

I knitted Shane's "NZ Seamoss Forest Jumper" on the rocks by the ocean while he fished, in the evenings, driving in the car.  Whenever he wears it now, he remembers all the love and effort that went into it - and that is the value of the gift.

 

 
The pattern I used for the NZ Seamoss Forest Jumper is on Ravelry in English here, "Joukahainen" designed by Kristel Nyberg - originally published in Finnish in Ulla 3/07.

To learn the German cast-on method of Iris Jones's mother showed me, see the video below.  It is a wonderful flowy method once you learn it - her mother's family knitted alot, and sold their knitting. Play it and practice it many many times, you'll soon get it - it is just a series of movements!  After each series of the movement shown, a knot is made perfectly on the needle.

Earthship Down

 

In 2005 a huge tsunami wiped out most of the population on Nicobar, Andaman Islands. Michael Reynolds and his crew went to help build housing after an urgent plea for help, as the needs of shelter, sanitation, clean water, were great. Earthship building, developed for people to be more self-sufficient for hard times in the future, was perfectly suited for these kinds of conditions.

This beautiful house is made from recycled materials - with earth rammed tires in a circle as the basis, then formed with bottles, concrete and earth.  It's a very independent little home as it collects rainwater from the roof, has self-contained sewage, and the biomass of the earth and tires regulate temperature.  This is a good idea at any time, but was especially useful for the urgent situation on the island after the tsunami of no utilities.

See above for a documentary about Michael Reynolds and creative and visionary architectural style - Garbage Warrior: Turning trash into treasure, a film by Oliver Hodge. 

 

Amazing Mazes Download

Kids  bored over the school holidays?  Try these:

Magic Elasmosaurus Maze
Click on maze for high quality image size.

Helicoprion Maze
Click on maze for high quality image size.

Primitive Shark Maze
Click on maze for high quality image size. 

Silly Snail Maze
Click on maze for high quality image size.

Nonnie's Gourmet Butternut Pumpkin Soup

After a frenetic summer, although my use of my energy in gardening is not very efficient yet - I have managed to store away a few huge beautiful butternut pumpkins grown from seed in my garden for use in the winter.  After feeding them with worm compost a few times, after they were grown I let their skins harden in the very strong New Zealand summer sun for a few weeks before storing them.

Today, I went down to my food storage room in the basement and found the largest one, after returning home from work, and made butternut pumpkin soup.  When cooked with some ginger, chicken stock I had made myself (was stored frozen), with spices added, a few vegetables from the fridge (a leek, a carrot), a bit of sauteed garlic and onion,  a dash of curry spices, and a small chunk of cream cheese melted in it - salted with natural mineral sea salt - it was awesome.  

As I cut the pumpkin up - the colour was bright orange, showing alot of good vitamin/food content.




Nonnie's Gourmet Butternut Pumpkin Soup

Cut up 1 large butternut pumpkin into chunks, and add to a huge pot partway with water, and some chicken stock, after the water boils.  (Try not to use too much water, so you don't have to pour too much nutrition away at the end.)

Cut up most of 1 leek (or whatever good green veggies you have in your fridge) and add to pot.

Cut up 1 carrot, add to pot.  

Peel a large chunk of ginger and throw it into the pot (to be retrieved later).

Put the lid on, for it to boil until soft.  

THEN cut up 1 onion, 1 large garlic clove, and a few slices of a hot pepper (I used a few slices from a large jalapeno pepper I had grown in my garden) and fry in oil until soft.

When the pumpkin and veggies are soft as well, it's basically ready to go.  Turn the elements off.  Take a look at the boiled pumpkin and veggies - guess how much water you should pour off so the soup won't be too runny.  (I would save the liquid you pour off in case you pour off too much.  This water has vitamins from the veggies in it - so it's better to add it back rather than new water.)  Then add the garlic/onion/chili mixture to the boiled veggies.  Fish the ginger chunk out.  Sprinkle curry spice across the top of the whole thing.  Throw in a few pinches of sea salt.  Now just blender it all up, one blenderful at a time - ladelling it in.

Pour the blendered soup into a different pot, adding a chunk of cream cheese to melt in the hot, new, vibrant and healthy orange spicy butternut pumpkin soup!  I put some coriander leaves on the top of each bowl of soup, and served with buttered soft white bread.

DAS clay

 

My elasmosaurus

  

Various creations

  

Troy Dale (7)

  

 Savannah Dale (18)

  Georgie MacDonald (7)

 

 

Even little kids can paint a shape from a mold (this is from a dragonfly cookie mould that Luke (5) pushed the clay into himself, and later painted by himself).

 

Phoebe Gibbins (5)

Terracotta coloured air drying clay.  We really enjoyed working with it - had a really good session.

It tends to dry out quickly when working with it – so have a bowl of water handy. (And toothpicks - and beads for eyes.) Very fragile until totally dry. Other than that, a very low-fuss clay for working with kids (and working with yourself.)

Paint with a high quality white primer first if you want your colours on the surface to be bright (I always steal a teaspoon of my husband’s expensive house renovation stuff.)

I also like how warm the terracotta clay looks, unpainted.  It reminds me of Etruscan art - they often used brown clay - full of warmth and life - compared to other cultures.  Even their art for burial focusses on life, not death.