Prabnasky Prague, part 2

The second part of the Prague photos was delayed a bit, as I first suffered through a few days of some weird flu-like thing, then got tendonitis (at least I think that's the word in English?) in my left foot. It's not been my week. But now I have chocolate, icecream and appropriate painkillers, plus orders to stay put (in front of the computer) for a few days. So, here are more photos!

Those of you who know me from the Thief community will understand why half of this post is pictures of a cathedral. Mmmm, pretty architectural detail. =)

On the second day in Prague we went to see the Prague Castle, within which lies the St. Vitus Cathedral. Oh yes.

Ohhhhhhhh yes.

I wonder what it would take to have a couple of gargoyles like these constructed above our balcony? Instant über-coolness.

That door! That pipe! Instant Thief nostalgia. (Ignore random tourist.)

The view from outside the castle is fantastic. I love those red tile roofs.

And here I thought Finland was the only place with such a silly sign. Silly, because to me it looks like that kid is playing football with someone's head. "Warning! Homicidal Neighbourhood Ahead"

At times it seemed like the people of Prague are trying to cover their city in vines, like this. I heartily approve of such endeavours.

The memorial to victims of Communism. It's one of the creepiest things I have ever seen. Seriously.

And with that creepy finale, I conclude the series of photos from Prague. I'll have to go back some day, if only to go look inside the cathedral and see the stained glass designed by Mucha. I'd like to get lost among the Old Town's streets again too. My kind of place. =)

Prabnasky Prague, part 1

I have returned! After spending a week with fellow fish pathologists at a conference in Prague, Czech Republic, I'm back in good old Finland. Which went and turned all autumny on me while I was gone. Tsk. Fun was had, oh yes, as well as cheap yummy food and drink, but afterwards it was good to come back home to my poor pining husband.

There were a couple of days of sightseeing before the conference started, fortunately. According to the traditions of this blog, all travelling must be documented with much photography, or... else. So without further ado, here's photos! With commentary!

Ah, such pretty scenery. My first day in Prague was mostly spent wandering about the Old Town, seeing for example Charles Bridge here on the right.

Naturally, I had to go see the astronomical clock. I must admit it was smaller than I expected. I didn't see the show this time, but perhaps another time.

I don't really know what this place is, but the pictures made me laugh. Note the little ones below too!

Don't know what this building is either, but it sure looked pretty. At night the little windows in the towers were lit up, very nice.

An alternative way to take in the sights of Prague. Didn't try it though, it looked a little too potentially lethal for me.

This seemed more like my style of sightseeing, but I didn't try it in the end. Maybe next time, if I can convince myself it isn't as uncomfortably bouncy as it looked at times. All those cobbled streets!

While our hotel was nice, getting there could have been easier. Or how would you fancy walking up these steps after travelling all day, with a suitcase? That's what we get for not taking a taxi. We (co-workers and I) did try to look at it from the bright side and figured that at least we'd have buns of steel after this trip, walking up and down these 69 steps a few times every day.

The neighbourhood wasn't the fanciest either. This was the, uh, delightful view from my hotel window. The hotel was surrounded by train tracks on three sides, something we didn't know when booking the rooms. Fortunately I didn't hear much of them up on the 7th floor, so I slept like a rock.

Well, that was the first set of photos. More to come later, mostly cathedrals and other fancy architecture. Stay tuned!

Ridiculously Easy Blackcurrant Pie (but oh so delicious)

Blueberry pie, you have a competitor! We got a big pile of blackcurrants from my parents' garden and I decided to make a pie. At around 9 in the evening I had little energy left, so I threw one together like so:

1. Defrosted a storebought sweet pie crust and flattened it into a pie dish.

2. Poured in as many blackcurrants as would fit (something like 2-3 dl or 1 cup).

3. Mixed together 1 dl (a little under 1/2 cup) sugar, 2 tbsp potato starch flour and 1 tsp vanilla sugar, then sprinkled that on top of the berries.

4. Put it into the oven at 200°C (392°F) for about 30 mins.

5. Let it cool a bit, then served with vanilla icecream.

6. Entered a state of joyful bliss.

What a pie! A Pie with a capital P, even after I put only the bare minimum of effort into it. I will hoard all the leftover berries from my parents' garden into the freezer so that I can make this again. And again. And again!

I hate computers

Dear silly developers of various applications like Chrome, Firefox and iTunes.

Yes, I'm a Finn, born and raised in Finland, and have lived here all my life. However, my 1st language isn't Finnish. Plus I like to do my computer stuff in English. My Windows is in English and my browser is set to English.

This means I want to do my internetting (yay, a new word) in English. It means I DO NOT want all your installers and webpages in Finnish. Especially if your installer installs only the same language version as the installer itself (I'm looking at YOU, Google Chrome). Would you kindly check what language I'm using for my internetting, not my location.

That is all.


(As you may have guessed, I'm in the process of switching computers and have been installing apps all weekend. As a result, I feel like strangling something and have to let out steam before the computer flies out the window.)

(Also, Mr Morrgan had the same sorts of trouble after relocating here from New Zealand. It was great fun watching him at the time. Now I understand his frustration only too well.)

This summer's annuals - a flowery review

Warning: Humongous post ahead!

As August nears its end, I thought it would be a good idea to write a list of the good vs. the bad regarding the summer flowers in the balcony garden, so I’ll know what to do next year. This post is thus pretty selfish; basically a list of things to remember next year for me. I suppose someone might get something useful from it if they happen to have a similar balcony (windy, day & afternoon sun, somewhat hot at times), but I suspect such people are few and far between. But hey, at least there’s pretty pictures of my pretty flowers!

So, the verdicts.

Petunias
I’ve never been much of a fan of petunias before. They always struck me as a bit boring and the first one I got this summer I only got because Mr Morrgan wanted it. But I now realise I’ve been a fool. Both of the petunias I got have turned out to be the most grateful, easy to care for little plants, flowering all summer with a huge amount of flowers despite occasional lapses in care. These will definitely be back next year!

Marigolds (Tagetes)
Marigolds are another flower I’ve been quick to dismiss in the past, but which I have now come to think of more highly. This is actually due to seeing them in my mother’s garden – they weren’t so successful in the balcony, alas. The two I got suffered a bit from our vacation, when the flowers were without water for a little under a week, and have a had some trouble since. They have bloomed almost the whole time, but the flowers have been a lot fewer than I expected. I got them fairly late, so I think they just didn’t have enough time to root before the vacation and thus didn’t have the best beginning. I think I’ll give them another chance some other year.

Dahlias
Ah, the dahlia, one of my faves. I had a bit of mixed luck with these – the one I got as a beautiful little plant suffered from the vacation drought and now looks rather sad, whereas the one I bought as a rather sad-looking thing has become huge and gorgeous. Go figure. I love them though, so they’ll be back in the future regardless.

Annual phlox
This one I got on a whim, knowing nothing about it. It turned out to be a good purchase, for it has bloomed non-stop since I got it. The vacation slowed it down a bit, but only a little. Plus it has such a lovely scent! Might not get it again next year, but it will make a comeback in the future for sure.

Cockscomb
I’m not sure what to make of this. I can’t quite tell if it’s meant to look like this or not. Nor can I quite decide whether or not I like the appearance. Hmm. At least it has a funny name, har har.

Flowering tobacco
I can’t help but admire the tenacity of the flowering or jasmine tobacco. It’s been through the vacation drought, attacked by icky bugs several times and knocked around by a clumsy gardener (ahem), yet it’s never stopped blooming. And it blooms a lot! Such a trooper. This one is definitely coming back next year, maybe as the red version.

Lobelia
I’ve always liked lobelias and growing one in the balcony certainly didn’t change my mind. It’s been thriving all summer with lots and lots of pretty flowers, regardless of occasional dry spells, wind and sun. My kind of plant!

Pansies
Ack, poor pansies. The great failure of this summer. I got 8 of them and only one survived until now, and that one only just. They just withered and died, with or without bugs, one by one. And just now I found that the lone survivor has some moldlike stuff growing on it too and doesn’t look very happy. *sigh* I suspect the problem may have been
a) too much heat/sun,
b) too much/wrong fertilizer (the biggest witherings happened soon after fertilizing) or
c) the fact that I got them not too long before the vacation and the dry spell may have been just to much for plants that weren’t properly rooted.
Possibly a combination of all three. Oh well. I like the look of them so I’ll probably try again some other year and then make sure they get a good start.

Another Glove-Knitting Frenzy

I've been knitting things in batches lately. First it was the monster scarves, then creature magnets, then hearts gone wild and now, fingerless gloves!

It's funny, but knitting is the one thing I can do after work in the evenings. Work has been busy lately and I've had basically no energy left after I get home. I blob down on the sofa and turn on some nice music while my brain turns itself off. However, subconsciously my hands reach for the needles and yarn and get to work. Eventually, some gloves appear! Zen knitting?

Anyway, most of these are my usual styles, but I also made a new kind of fingerless glove based on requests my customers have made for custom orders. This new style, based on my previous design for fingerless gloves including the striping, now features a longer cuff and thumb. I'll be making more of these, as well as the older styles, from different materials and colours, all on the whim of my subconscious zombie brain. Keep an eye on the Etsy shop for more!

Spicy Banana Cake

It seems whenever old bananas gather at our place, great things happen. There's something about them that makes them a magical über-ingredient in any baking. Honest.

The recipe for this spicy banana cake is one I've adapted from the banana cake in the Swedish version of this book. (I picked this book up on a whim at a sale and it's become my most used baking book. It receives the Morrgan seal of approval. =) The secret ingredient is the buttermilk, which makes the cake oh-so-moist.

Spicy Banana Cake

100 g (3 1/2 oz) butter
3 dl (~1 1/4 cups) sugar
2 eggs
5 dl (a little over 2 cups) flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
2 bananas
~3/4 dl (~1/3 cup) buttermilk

Beat butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add one egg at a time. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger and cinnamon together, then add slowly to the butter-sugar mix. Slice the bananas and add them. Finally mix in the buttermilk.

Pour the mixture into a greased and floured tin (about 2 l - 8-9 cups). Bake for about 1 hour at 175°C (~350°F) in the lower half of the oven. Let it cool before serving (it is yummy when still slightly warm, though).

Animal Magnetism

I've been busy again, oh yes. In my spare time these past couple of weeks I've been working on something I've wanted to do for a long time: expanding my line of animal & plant magnets. They're cute, they're strong and they want to help organize your papers on your fridge - what more could one ask for?


It's my favourite kind of fiddly knitting & crochet. =)

A few of the ones in the photo are spoken for, some are already listed in my Etsy, DaWanda and ArtFire shops and I'm adding the rest to them too eventually.

I've got a few more ideas in the works, but if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments!

It's a Fail Cake!

Remember the tshirts I got a while ago? One of them was "Fail", the one featuring cows and which I'm in fact wearing right now.

Well, look look look look! It's a CAKE! Made from the thsirt design I'm wearing!



Eeeeee, how cute! It's Erin Okuno's submission for the Threadcakes contest. I also found a couple of the other designs we got, "The Day the Fire Brigade Went on Strike" and "Defend the Kingdom", among the entries.

My only question is, how can you eat those sweet little (vodka-containing) cows??

A busy week and a monstrous weekend

This past week or so, I have...

...gone on board a huge and pretty ship.

...received a giveaway prize: a cute little planet by Kreativlink! If you haven't heard of Kreativlink before, you're missing out and must immediately check out her journals and other fun things. So there.

(The tiny owls are trying to figure out if anyone's home. They're not sure yet.)

...finished a whole bunch of hearts gone wild.

...harvested the first of my balcony garden's radishes! They are yum. =)

...also fiddled with other things in the balcony garden. This is how it currently looks.

...baked a blueberry pie with fresh blueberries. Another yum. =)

...and finally, made lots of monstrous scarves this weekend.

Rescue 911: Hedgehog Edition

One sunny day, Mamma and I had been out picking strawberries in my parents' field. We were already on our way indoors with a bowl full, when Mamma decided to show me some new trees they'd recently planted. A good thing she did, because next to these trees, on the other side of the fence, is the neighbours' strawberry field. In it we saw this:

A poor little baby hedgehog, stuck in the strawberry net!

We immediately called for Pappa and my brother and organized a rescue. The neighbours were away, so Pappa decided to go check things out closer and cleared the fence with haste (and style).

The strawberry net was attached tightly to the hoglet's spines, so Pappa cut him out...

...and handed the little one to me to get the rest of the net off.

The net turned out to be wound tightly around the poor guy's neck and had to be carefully cut off, with the help of my brother.

The baby hog was so tiny! And completely exhausted after fighting the net in the hot sun for who knows how long, he seemed to fall asleep in my hands as I was checking that we got all the net off. (The red sticky stuff on his fur is strawberry, by the way, nothing serious.)

The baby hedgehog is one of three that live in our yard with their mommy. We brought him (and a plate of water) near the nest and let him go. He was so shaky on his feet and had to take several breaks on the meter-long walk, but he made it home to the others.

The next day we could breathe out with relief, for we spotted all four hedgehogs alive and well, one of them bravely exploring the lawn. The rescue mission was a success!

(Thanks to Mamma for all the photos! She never forgets the camera.)

More photos! Of plants!

The balcony grows and thrives. Well, the plant life in it, that is.

The window box I showed to you earlier has developed quite nicely into what I had in mind. Once the ivy grows a bit bigger I'll be a happy girl. If only the weather would be more cooperative, haven't been able to sit outside and enjoy the pretties for too long.

The veggies in their green box are doing well too, it seems. The box seems rather small these days.


Yum yum yum!

(I have no idea if the radishes are supposed to show like that? Should I cover them up or leave them be?)

My Weekend by Morrgan

This weekend, it was time for a ladies' sauna evening. Off to a lakeside cabin a group of us fine ladies went and arrived after much (mis)adventure with missed buses, forgotten bags and car trouble.

What a pretty view awaited us upon arrival! After the enjoying the surroundings a bit, there was much sauna and swimming in the lake. Joy.

We even spotted a couple of lizards.

But oh noes! Rain!

Lots of rain! The most rain ever* poured down from the sky!

(Click on the photos for bigger versions, to see how the lake looked like it was boiling from all the rainfall.)

* This may or may not have been an exaggeration.

Fortunately we were inside the cabin by then, with much drink and foody delights such as this strawberry dessert. Mmm.

The only problem was that the conversation tended to turn into shouting, in order to hear and be heard over the rain and thunder.

Just as dinner was finished and we were ready to head out to the bus stop, the rain ended and we got to enjoy the setting sun on the opposite shore. A suitable finale for our little weekend excursion.