arbness

iPhone shot from my train journey to copenhagen the other day.

i'm running on a minimal iPhoto library while my big iMac is in for a big servicing (before its warranty runs out) and i'll admit i feel handicapped by it. i usually start a blog post by knowing what photo will go in it. unless it's a rant. those usually just come right out, photo or no photo. but i have only minor complaints today, no rant, so i give you an equally random iPhone shot. i do love that instagram app.

planet jr. no. 3 seeder

~ it's gotten rather chilly over the past couple of days and i'm missing our warm, sunny days already. there was even frost the past few nights. so i'm back in sweaters and tall socks and not that happy about it. but i'm glad we hadn't gotten out the seeder (above) and planted a bunch of things yet, because the frost would surely have gotten them.

~ there was a dying horse in a pen at sabin's riding lesson last evening. the vet had been out and run all kinds of tests and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. but it was clearly in a lot of pain. the vet was going to be coming back at 8 and they would make a decision about whether to put it down. very traumatic experience for the little riding girls to witness. all of them were very upset.

~ one of the joys of living in the countryside is that it's difficult to mouse-proof an old ramshackle house like ours. but i'm happy to report that traps are succeeding where our indoor cat has failed.

~ yesterday, we got our rusty old planet jr. cultivator in the mail from my sister. we'd bought it on eBay, but the seller, being typically americentric (or possibly just unaware that other countries exist), wouldn't ship it to us, so my sis had to be involved. however, that worked out very well, because she filled in some of the crevasses of the package with some fabulous urban decay eyeliners! and now i'm totally sold - urban decay eyeliner rocks. i've got perversion, ransom, binge, electric, stash, mildew and rockstar. with names like those, how can you go wrong?

this is the planet jr. cultivator - one man's rusty bit of metal is another man's treasure.

~ my order of heather moore's fabulous cut out & keep for cloud 9 fabrics is stuck in customs and those jerkies are slow to respond, tho' i provided all of the requested documentation a WEEK AGO.

~ i find it disturbing to convert my life and activities into dollars. a price that seems ok in danish kroner seems really disturbingly high when converted to dollars. i knew gas was expensive, but does it really have to be nearly $11 per gallon?  apparently it does. it makes me want to ride my bike.

~ i think a lot of people are getting fed up with etsy. it seems so flooded these days with crap - either stuff that's not really handmade or stuff that's not really vintage or PDFs of copyrighted material at a deep discount or items using stolen photos. and they're so not choosy about what's on the front page. there was a whole treasury of shipping options on the front page a couple of weeks ago. what? and then another front page treasury which featured a half-used up tin of old children's watercolors (artfully photographed, of course) for $12. really? is that really vintage? and don't even get me started on the people who sells sticks. plain sticks. and the odd tree stump. and then there's the whole fact that they don't take complaints of copying seriously and do anything about them. i did recently put some smaller items in my etsy shop, but i think i may be using just big cartel going forward. if you want to laugh (or perhaps be outraged) about some of the crap that's on etsy, check out regretsy.

and that's all the randomness i've got in me at the moment. i blame it on my allergies. so i'll be wandering off to pinterest now (they claim the app will be here in 5 days, but i'll believe it when i see it).

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if you want to read more about our bees, go here.

and if you're hungry for blueberry muffins, go here.