Aronia in the autumn

Well, I've got 176 autumn photos, mainly of leaves, but didn't have time today to got through them and pick out which ones to post so I ended up just picking one -- of aronia with its beautiful, beautiful leaf colours -- to play with in the photo editing software. I call it höstmys which might have been the name of the post too if I knew how to translate that into english.

And on that same theme, I'm spending time adding some photos to my Candlelight and light ideas pinterest board. Mainly candles, including some creative hand-dipped branch candles. So check it out if you too need some candlelight now that the sun sets so early (yeah, I know, don't remind me that it's still late as the sun sets after 6 o'clock unlike in midwinter...).

Meowy Monday: Cat photos of the week

I was planning to skip the Meowy Monday post today as it's such a dull day you just want to stay in bed, or rather -- considering I managed to get up earlier today -- get back into bed as fast as possible. Yesterday I got photos of brilliant autumn leaves bathing in sun, today it's just wet and grey. Autumn sure changes quickly -- luckily, it changes back to those beautiful sunny days too. It's not november yet. And grey doesn't have to be too bad: I got a few more photos today and captured colours just as pretty as yesterday.

Yesterday, how ever, I also caught Mimi on camera as she started follow me around while I was taking photos. Had a bunch of other cats with me first when I was in the garden, but when going down to the greenhouse it was instead Mimi that that tagged along.

Being in a very playful mood she ran around, hit me in the face with her paw, stretched against trees -- and, finally, zoomed up the greenhouse room. Have no idea how a cat can scale a greenhouse that quickly! She was as fast as lightning, getting up there.

Of cause, roof ridges are the places for washing yourself if you're a cat. Even if the space isn't much wider than you and washing means having to move from one slightly unstable position to another. (Now you might say "well, they're cats, they're good at this sort of things", but I think all cat owners have seen their cats trying to lick themselves sitting somewhere stupid, resulting in hilarious falls. Hilarious for the humans, that is -- especially if it's being filmed.)

You know you're a beader when...

... you have the nightmare I just had last night. Now, I don't normally chat about my dreams, but this one was sort of fun in retrospect. Or weird depending on if you are (or understand) a beader or not.

It was a simple, short dream/nightmare. It all started with me coming home only to realise that someone had broken into the house. The thieves had gotten in through the door to the "bead room" and had taken all my beads and the cabinet with all my paints. Probably also my tools and fabric and yarn stash, but I don't know as I was so upset by the loss of the beads. It was horrible, like the worst thing imaginable. And here's the thing: they'd only entered the bead room and taken my whole bead stash. Nothing else. The other rooms where fine and not one other thing was taken. But they'd taken my beads! My stash that I've been gathering for years and which mainly is made up of modern seed beads and czech beads, but also include some unique vintage beads, antique 30/0 seeds, unusual pendants and hard-to-find components. It was such a nightmare. I'd been less upset if they'd taken the telly, computer and credit card! I was really grieving the loss of the beads. Completely forlorn.

And then I woke up, happily realising it was just a dream and that I still have my precious collection of beads in the room below. So relieved!


Now, in retrospect I have to wonder what kind of thieves steal acrylic paints and glass beads but not flat-screen tellies, jewellery and money/credit cards. Not that we have much fancy stuff or expensive jewellery, but even a stupid thief would surely nick a gold-plated necklace thinking it was precious metal rather than stack up on craft supplies, right? In fact, I've even thought for myself that I'm not afraid of burglars because they would never understand the value of my bead stash (which is the most valuable thing I own pretty much) and thus leave it alone. But maybe there are burglars who bead or just have learned to spot an expensive finish on Delicas and identify fancy vintage swarovski crystals? I hope not!

Copper and lime/chartreuse

I don't know... am I weird for loving this colour combo? I know I have a couple of colour combos that no one seems to like as much as I do. This might be one of them -- or is there others out there that likes this too?

It's especially the mix of coppery autumn leaves and yellow-green foliage as you can see in these pics of wild strawberry plants and fallen horse-chestnut leaves. There's just something about the brilliance of the colours that I fall for even if such bright lime/chartreuse colours, almost neon at times, isn't usually my cup of tea (OT: I don't like tea so tea isn't my cup of tea either). Perhaps it's the environment in which I find these colours that does it. The garden when summer turns into autumn with leaves often bright and crisp as they've been washed by a rain shower or covered by dew after a cold night. Add to that the warm light from a sun that sets early -- now more to the west than during summer and thus in a straight angle to the garden.

This isn't a new thing either, not a sudden love of an eye-catching colour that'll fade as fast as it came (as my current interest in neon pink -- have suddered at the mere mentioning of neon, but loved them as a kid and kind of fell in love with that crazy colour again when neon came into fashion again). This is something I've been thinking of and enjoyed taking photos of for several years now -- see e.g. this post and others tagged autumn. But still I've probably never used the colour combo in my works. Probably because I worry about not finding the right beads, that the colours won't have the crisp vibrance they have in the leaves around the farm.

Alas, I just have to mention that there's a sad thing about these photos. Had I taken them these few last weeks it'd would've been nothing but lovely autumn photos, but they're taken on july 25th. In the middle of the summer our beautiful, big horse chestnut tree looked like this:

Half the tree never even got leaves this spring and the half that did started shedding them way too early. I so hope it isn't really diseased and have to come down. There's been something afflicting horse chestnut trees around the country for some years now and I hope this isn't it. I'd cry seeing this tree being cut down. It's always been there in the middle of the garden for as long as I can remember. Not an ideal climbing tree, we still tried to climb up it several times. We've played around it and gathered conkers and leaves every autumn when we were kids. It's not the farm's vårdträd ("warden tree"), I'd say the ash by the road is that, but it's still one of two remaining big trees in the garden (the other being the much older ash, the third used to be the century-old pear tree that snapped in a storm years ago and which is now but a stump though still alive). I just wish it has many more years left to live. It'd leave a big empty space behind if it died, not just literally in the garden but in my heart. I love our big, old trees.

The bead budget rant

Ok, so now that I'm well again I can afford to complain about my illness or rather what it did to my wallet. Now, first of all consider yourself warned after my use of the words 'rant' and complain': this is a somewhat whiny post. Short but whiny and full of self pity.

The frustrating part for me right now is that I have to completely redo my personal budget and plans on shopping this autumn as the cost of both Ubbi's and my illness (doctor/vet visits + meds) came out of my bead budget (which some of you at least knows only is refuelled when I have my seasonal job during spring and summer). Now, one could say I've got a lot of stuff already and it might just be good to dive into the stash and work with what you have, but you do need a little injection of new stuff every now and then -- and sometimes you need something specific for some projects, something you can't substitute. And add to that that there are things I've planned on buying for a long time, which makes me a bit disappointed now that I'm not sure I can afford it anymore. And I wanted to buy the new swarovski pearls because, you know, purple.

Just to taunt me, I got a sale catalogue from Panduro while ill. Gah, interesting bits and bobs for really reduced prices. (Though I rarely order because of the shipping costs anyway so my dented bead budget has little to do with my "torment" over whether to shop or not in this particular case).

So while I'm happy that both Ubbi and I have recovered and you can't put a price on that (it wasn't super expensive anyway, just felt like it because my budget is so very tight), I do feel somewhat down about what it did to my bead budget (not just beads despite the name, obviously, it also includes tools, embroidery supplies, paints etc). I'm an addict, I always want more and find it hard to resist a lot of things. It can be frustrating to have an idea, but having to stop halfway because there's something missing you can't buy. Saving up to buy something later is a real treat and so now it feel a bit like I've been cheated on a promised treat.

Of cause there's still a bit of the budget left (I think), but right now I'm feeling sorry for myself and see more of what I've lost and less of what I still have left. It'll change and I know how to live on a small budget even when it unexpectedly gets smaller, but I've had some big expenditures these last couple of months and it'll just take a little time to get passed the feeling of money just pouring out of the wallet. Just need to rant a little, vent it so I can get it out of the system and move on.

Meowy Monday: Cat photos of the week

Not counting when I wrote about Mini, I haven't made a cat post all month. Because it would be too sad to do the first Meowy Monday in ages about Mini, I picked out some recent photos of a tired Figge.

And, lastly, a photo of when he first heard me pick up the camera. Then he got back to sleep so I could take some photos of the cute, sleepy sweetie.

September bead soup palettes

Just before september turns into october, I got a monthly colour palette together. Didn't think I could manage so first I just threw something together from an old photo illustrating a post on using multi-coloured thread in beading (as seen here), but then I made this palette. As I didn't want to waste a photo I thus ended up with two palettes for a month that looked like it would have to make due with none.

Both palettes are very autumnal, perhaps because I feel wistful about missing many of the beautiful, sunny september days while being too ill to enjoy them (ironically I'm writing this with the sun shining on a blue sky outside the window *embarrassed*). The basic theme was green and red(ish) as so much of nature and in the gardens are turning into that colourway: the apple trees, rowans, swedish whitebeams (oxel), virginia creeper, himalayan balsam etc -- and soon even more will follow like the aronia and the japanese maple.

For this, my second palette that you can see above, I just picked up three of the six shades of the new luminous delicas that I couldn't manage to avoid buying some time ago. Three earthy, autumnal colours.

My original, just-something-I-whipped-together palette focused wholly on thread. More specifically, it was all about this space-dyed braided silk thread from Stef Francis (may remember if from the Challenge of Travel reveal). The colours can easily be changed by using lightly coloured transparent beads instead of clear beads. Topaz yellow hues will add a warm autumnal tint to the colours while black diamond (transparent grey) will add a dark antiqued colour.


These are two rather different palettes, but to me both speak of september. The latter palette is more about apple trees; green leaves mixing with green and rose-to-red apples (matte waxy apples can look more rose than red). The former is more about changing leaves with its earthy, warm hues. Now, for that autumn forest feel, you might need to add some stronger colours too (brown, red, yellow, even green). This is a very soft palette, but I like it that way too.