The cat, kind soul that she is, wanted to let me know she thinks my keyboard could use a bit of a cleaning. As she is perfectly and clearly understandable when she meows and purrs, but her human personnel are a bit slow on the uptake, she had to use drastic measures to demonstrate the cleaning necessity.

Which was achieved by hooking a claw underneath the Alt-Gr key and pulling. This, of course, was at first misinterpreted by her desk-sitting, cat-petting human as a mere coincidence, as she likes to knead when she's hanging out on the desk. The human was soon aware, though, that there was an astounding amount of dust and cat hair under that key... so obviously, there must have been a reason for the cat to do this. Right?

[caption id="attachment_3236" align="alignnone" width="902"] The culprit, erm, the graciously observant cat right after the deed, acting like nothing has happened.


So I did take the hint, and subsequently the small vacuum cleaner with a little brush (after Madame had left the desk, of course, as she is not fond of vacuum cleaner noises), and removed more astounding amounts of cat hair and dust from underneath the other keys.

Then came the fun task of figuring out how the three bits of plastic are supposed to fit together... and after two or so false starts, I managed to get them into correct order and position again.

[caption id="attachment_3238" align="alignnone" width="436"] One of the plastic bits. And cat hair.


Placing the two white parts together again required bending the smaller one to get the little axles into their sockets again; for the rest, it was the combination of sliding something into one holder, then pressing the other end down until it clicked into place - once to fasten the white bits to the key plate, once to secure the whole setup to the keyboard again.

[caption id="attachment_3237" align="alignnone" width="768"] The two white bits, reunited, waiting to be set back into place underneath the key plate.


Actually, that was fun, if a bit scary when doing the bending-to-set-into-place-bit (especially as I had to do it twice, not getting the stacking order correctly at the first go. Not something I'd have chosen to do this morning without the cat prompt, but I do find it interesting to see how things like that work - and putting torn-apart bits together is an excellent way to figure that out.

Now, though, I hope the cat will abstain from pulling out more keys - I do have actual work to do...

We went off to harvest some cherries a while ago, and together with loads of them, we accidentally brought back this guy:


Which, the Internet helpfully tells me, is the caterpillar of Orgyia antiqua, the rusty tussock moth, or, in German, Schlehenbürstenspinner (it seems to go for unwieldy names in both languages). I've never seen one of these caterpillars before, but they seem not to be so rare.

When searching for what this might online, I found a nice site with quite a lot of caterpillar pictures to help identify their species: Schmetterlinge Westerwald. There's 152 different caterpillars there, and the photos alone are worth a look to wonder about the variety of shapes and colours that these tiny critters have!

The one in the picture, by the way, got set outside onto our own morello cherry tree - where it will hopefully be okay...

The trusty online dictionary tells me that the English equivalent to the German "Was lange währt, wird endlich gut" is "Good things come to those who wait". Which is a fancy way to tell you that finally, finally... the miniatures for the Space Cadets game are painted and varnished and matte-varnished.

FINALLY.

I've had a lot of fun with them, and then I sort of fell into the trap of wanting to have them perfect, which meant that it was still fun, but a very long-term type of it. Also, some of them were really hard to paint with all the nooks and crannies, and tiny details. Which meant that I had to be relaxed and awake and fit enough for the painting, and there had to be enough light, and that was not always the case, especially not when there were lots of other things to do, so they took a bakcseat for a while, until I pulled them out again, and did some more work on them.

Then they were finished, and we did our research homework on how to seal them. The savvy Internet told us that a very good way would be to use glossy varnish as a first coat, as it's more durable than matte varnish, and then use an anti-shine coat on top. Which means that if you handle them a lot, they will get shiny first, before there's real damage to the paint - and you can just re-matte-coat them. (And that's probably way, way over-engineered, but hey. Who cares, right?)

So we had the plan, we had the varnish, but what we did not have was the coincidence of a) decent and warm enough weather, b) no wind and c) time and leisure to actually apply the coats.

Until this weekend, when all came together and I could finally, finally finish them off. So here, after this wall of text, is your picture proof:


I'm quite happy with how they turned out - and now we can go and save the Earth as Space Cadets!

This day.. somehow got away from me. Or at least it cunningly succeeded at hiding the fact that I hadn't blogged yet. There were a lot of things getting done, and with this and that and then a phone call inbetween and my parents stopping by for a short visit, somehow the day flew past, and there I am, suddenly remembering a lack of writing.

Well, you're not getting a long text now - but I have a few garden pics for you:

[caption id="attachment_3131" align="alignnone" width="600"] Everything is blooming these days - the white bellflowers...


[caption id="attachment_3132" align="alignnone" width="600"] ... the wild poppies...


[caption id="attachment_3133" align="alignnone" width="600"] ...one last iris is holding its own, while its comrades have already finished...


[caption id="attachment_3134" align="alignnone" width="600"] ... there's yellow and purple lilies...


[caption id="attachment_3135" align="alignnone" width="600"] ... and finally the elderflowers, filling the garden with their sweet smell. Maybe we'll manage to make fritters of these during the next few days!

Here's a stack of things you might enjoy... first of all, the children's quiz show that I was filmed for in January is online for four more days, and you can watch the episode here. (It's the second question in.)

Here's an article about the hatpin in the early 20th century and its use for self-defense.

Looking for something less martial? Here's a 14th century recipe for doughnuts, courtesy of the British Library.

If you are interested in studying Experimental Archaeology, the UCD is offering a new course for a MSc in Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture. Application deadline is on June 2, so if that sounds interesting to you, you will need to be quick.

Speaking of programmes, the Nobilitas Akademie this year will be 10-12 November on Burg Hessenstein. As usual, there's a variety of different topics, all sounding quite interesting! Their programme is online, and you can register for it; if you do it soon, you'll get a bit of an early bird discount, too.

Finally, here is a blog article about a spinning technique with hand spindles that I have on my list of "things to try and figure out how to do" - rotating the spindle in the hand, but not with the hand and finger position similar to short suspended spinning, but more or less horizontally. I've seen this a good while ago for the first time and have since dabbled some with the motion (which is totally intriguing), but as I said, it's still on the list.

Hope you enjoy one or more of those!

Today's morning was spent outside, catching guys. One of them ended up in my pocket for a while, and then got a number glued to his back.

Have I confused you yet?

I was off to the next practical lesson in how to keep bees - and today's programme for our group was to check two hives for queen brood cells (to see if there's danger of swarming) and to catch a drone or two, to learn how to grab and mark a bee (so you can handle the queen, if necessary, without damage to her).

The not-so-willing subjects for this were drones, because a) they have no stinger, and b) the hive can stand to lose a few of the drones, who are not doing any of the hive work (except helping to keep it warm). So each of us in the group got to catch a drone bee and put it into a little cage to keep it safe for a while. (The cage then went into a pocket to keep the little bee warm.) After we'd finished checking the hives, we went off to practice marking queens - on the drones.

When you have a hive queen, it gets a little sticker on the back of the thorax. The sticker colour marks the year the queen is from, so you can tell how old the Grande Dame of the bee-hive is (which is rather important, since they live only for so long). There's special tools for holding the bee while you put a little bit of (special) glue on the thorax and then gently push the sticker onto the glue, which makes it much easier to do this (I'd have imagined it to be more difficult). Obviously you don't want to damage a young queen when marking it, so it makes sense to practice with drones beforehand, just like with the gripping.

To my inordinate joy, when my turn came up to stick a little green plaque onto the back of my little furry drone, one very special number was still available:


Meet Mr. The Answer, with his shiny new plaque stuck smack dab to the middle of his thorax. (And yes, I'm easily amused.)

 

Things happening here, in no particular order:

The cat is sleeping. Well, mostly - sometimes she wakes up and goes "meow". Sometimes she wakes up and has an itchy ear, which results in something like this:


The first seeds from the surprise seed mix have sprouted, and it's cress:


Also green, but a long way beyond being a seedling? My hippeastrum. It's blooming.

And just in case you are wondering what I have been doing, apart from taking photos and annoying the cat by waking her with the camera click - I've been doing some weaving. Proof here:


That is silk and gold thread, and I can tell you right now that the warp is a nasty thing to handle - the silk and gold are quite, quite different in their elasticity, and the gold especially needs careful handling. I did test runs with the materials, but with a shorter, narrower warp, and it does not scale without trouble, so I had some figuring out of solutions to do (and there might have been "aaaargh" sounds along that way).

For now, though, it seems like I've found ways to compensate for the different takeup of the two materials, and should I ever do this again, I'll definitely be smarter. Well, maybe. Hopefully.