Avocado seed flotation device

This one is even less serious than the previous project, but here goes.

More or less at the same time as Kirill finished writing his story Flor, I’ve started an avocado seed germination project. The illustration in the story was drawn from life. I was really surprised how fast it went – the seed cracked next day already, and a little root appeared within two or three days. We, along with all of Spain, were in quarantine situation, so a lot of attention was paid to small things. The speed may have something to do with the fact that the pear was local, ripe and that we live in appropriate climate.

Knit your fears, quarantine knitting project

It is still drying. It has been drying for a day now.

I can’t explain why I made this model of the virus that brought the most of the planet to a standstill. Maybe it is an attempt to domesticate the wild and fearsome, sort of like like what we do with bears, having teddies in our houses. I thought about making at night, and when I woke up, went and checked, and yep, some people thought of it first. Made it anyway, ибодабы.

The pattern is simple and based on usual 6-ray symmetry knitted ball. Ball is knitted first, and then the tentacles are crocheted on. I will record here the process and numbers, so that my next attempt, if any, has better proportions.

Lemon marmalade

I am not a huge fan of marmalade, but Kirill likes it. So we had a go at making it. The recipe came from this page; I will post it here with my remarks lest the page disappears. First remark is that is should be called marmalade, and not “jam”, as it contains peels.

Ingredients:

4 lemons (ours were medium-sized)
Juice of one lemon, strained (recipe says 2 tablespoons, but lemon I used only gave about 3, so it all went in)
1 cup sugar (my favorite cup holds 260 ml)
4 cups water

Sea glass project

There is a stretch of El Confital beach full of sea glass. Every time we go there, we end up bringing a few kilos home.

Playa del Confital

Sea glass is beautiful and just begs to be collected. Now we know one more use for it. We’ve created some images and an alphabet out of sea glass.

Round rabbit

The description that follows is for brown rabbit on the right

Since I first made my totoroid breakfast companion, I've made quite a few more, ranging from conical, through cylindrical to round, as shown. Now I decided to redo the description in a somewhat more precise manner. I was writing things down as I went along, so that you can see the exact result.

Renaissance ruff collar

I keep thinking up and trying out various types of 3D-knitting where the volume is created by the tendency of stockinette stitch to curl in and the reverse stockinette stitch — not unexpectedly — out. My previous attempt to utilize this property of the basic knitting stitches can be seen here.

This time I decided to do something a bit more complicated. I find the result interesting and reminiscent of a Renaissance ruff, but I think I need to a) overcome my dislike of knitting samples next time and b) generally work more on the idea. As with the previous version, it is reversible. Explanations to follow.

Very chocolatey cookies

I have a strong suspicion that I already wrote this recipe up somewhere, but I can't find it, so here it is again. The proportions got gradually modified over the years and the result is now much more chocolatey, so it not completely the same anyway. The "original recipe" was found in one of the blogs under livejournal umbrella; there it said that it was copied (also modified, I think) from a book.

Anyway, here it is as I make them now.