Hartlam Colourways at Natural Yarns - August 2014

Hartlam Colourways at Natural Yarns

I have such an awesome colour range of Hartlam yarns at www.naturalyarns.co.za!

Argentine Swap Parcel

This is the VERY cool Argentina themed swap parcel I just received on the South African Swap group on Ravelry!! Come and join the fun!!

Flea Circus

It was always going to take something spectacular for me to return to my long-lost-in-the-process-of-carrying-and-having-a-child blog: Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up because this, is IT:

Oh my, where do I start... At the beginning I suppose. I have always loved cartoons - make-believe worlds where anything is possible - I love old-school animations accompanied by orchestral music... crazy, impossible things like flea circus' appearing on the TV screen.

As a student, I had a little black and white TV that's changing channels functionality involved a pair of pliers. One night, quite late after getting home from being out, I saw a real life flea circus on my little TV.

For years I have wondered whether I imagined what I saw on TV, or whether it was real... I haven't looked it up until now as I have been too afraid that I've been telling people about a Flea Circus that is completely fictional. (Well, wouldn't you look at me like I'm crazy??)

Friends: tonight I finally looked it up and I am pleased to announce that Flea Circus' actually do exist. Isn't the world fantastic?!

FACTS:

• The performers live for about 1 year.
• It takes 6 months for them to mature enough to be trained.
• It takes 3 months to train.
• They perform for the next 3 months
• They die.

Poster of William Fricke's Flea Circus, early 20th century.
(Tim Cockerill Collection)
Go here for more & 'Mexican Dressed Fleas'

I found this info from this source & really nice website: 

In the real Flea Circuses harnessed fleas manipulate the props and carry out the acts within the circus. Fleas are harnessed using very fine wire, which is tied around the flea's neck; this is usually made from jewellers 'gold wire' of a very thin gauge. Sometimes jeweller's are set the task of creating miniature chariots and carts!
The acts have generally been the same over the decades...
These include:

• Chariots and 'horse drawn' style vehicles are pulled by a flea.
• High dive - the flea dives from a diving board into a pool of water below.
• High wire - the flea crawls across the wire to the other side with a prop.
• Seesaw - the fleas ride the seesaw.
• Trapeze - the fleas jump from swing to swing.
• Flea cannon - a flea is shot from the cannon

SOME YOUTUBE EVIDENCE:

Furthermore:

• Lots of interesting info here
  
• These people look at "The Flea Circus Research Library's look into the microscopic world of educated and trained fleas"
• More videos here

Flea tightrope walking

My Room...

We are moving in 3 sleeps. That's actually just 2 days of packing left & I've just run out of boxes. It is amazing how many one needs for a move...

It has been a long time since I lived in my parent's house... I went to boarding school from age 14.5 which was my first big "solo" move - back and forth from Espin House with my big blue trunk. I still have dreams about packing my trunk - it would disappear to who-knows-where once unpacked at the beginning of term...and reappear magically at the entrance to the dorm room at the end of term - (or was it year end?) to prepare for home-going. Thinking back, it seems a bit like the Harry Potter arriving and leaving Hogwarts... how easy it is to  romanticise experiences when looking back!!

I went through so much in that room in my parents house. I fell in love for the first time... read letters from and wrote letters to my crushes... agonised about life, love and everything else with my best friend. I escaped here when I was feeling sad... read scary novels on my bed... cut out photographs and stuck them in my scrap book... recorded late night music on my tape recorder & listened to my collections until the tapes stretched...

I liked to move my room around once in a while - this mostly involved moving my bed to a different location within the room. I remember making changes late at night a few times when not being able to sleep. (I don't think that mom approved - especially when coming to wake me in the morning & things being different to how they were when she said good-night!) It was important for me that I could change things - make them my own in this small way. I must remember to allow my daughter to move her room around as she pleases one day too. ..and also remember that even though I am her mother, I will not always know what's best for her.

My parents have decided to make a move from life in our family home, and so they have put their house of 20+years on the market. Because I have not lived there for so long, I am not overly concerned about being sentimental that it won't be our family home any more. Our family home will be wherever my parents are - which, for the next chapter, will be their newly renovated lock-up-and-go flat in Mosselbay where we spent Summer holidays swimming in the sea, tanning on the beaches & walking through the streets on hot Summer nights (dodging cockroaches) with after-sun on our skin, the smell of the sea in our hair & ice-creams in our hands.

Romeo & Juliette?

Someone I'm following in Pinterest posted this image:

Skeletons locked in eternal embrace. It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love. Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in an eternal embrace and buried outside Mantua, Italy, just 25 miles south of Verona, the city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of Romeo and Juliet. After being found at the site where a factory is planned, people worldwide have speculated on the circumstances surrounding the couple's deaths. They are thought to have died young because they both had all their teeth intact. But beyond that, the skeletons are a mystery. Archaeologists announced Monday that they will move the entire block of earth the skeletons are resting in for further study and eventual display in a museum. source

This image touches my heart & makes me want to have a really good sob...It is incredible that there is the skeletal evidence of these two people who tenderly faced each other, entwined in embrace at the moment of death & so far beyond.

I look at this image & try and imagine what is most moving about it...
It could be that it is so obvious that they loved or were infatuated with one another - whatever the circumstances around their death...
...or that it is so beautiful that two people who adored one another, have their remains on this earth - that they have not been separated after death...
...or that I see myself lying in a similar posture with my love - close to him each precious night & I feel so blessed to have him - knowing we have a limited time on this planet together in human form: it makes my heart ache to think of it ever ending.

Baking Friday...

Grace's first birthday party was set for the 4th of June & I offered to make some duckie cupcakes & a cake topper for her birthday cake... It took me a few days to make all of these & I had a lot of fun mixing colours and trying to figure out how to make a duck not look like a chicken!! These were the results:

cake topper for big cake < >  mini-ducks for cupcakes

...and while I was at it, I baked a cake (mom's fail-safe best chocolate cake recipe) for Danelle's birthday party which we attended on the night of the 3rd which I decorated with loads of 'plastic icing stars'! :

Danelle's Birthday Cake :)