Oh, Balls!

I have been feeling very ill this week, dragging my 2-gallon puke bucket from room to room.  What?  What's wrong with a puke bucket?  When I was little we had this huge plastic bowl named the Vomit Bowl, and it was a glorious conglomeration of harvest gold, white, and pink speckles in an avocado green base.  I must now make due with what I have.

But I digress. 

Since I haven't been able to leave the house much or function like a normal human being, and the motion of the Elder Scrolls Online beta test is making me carsick*, boredom has enhanced my interest in crochet. 

I have not crocheted very much... my only "finished" project is a scarf that I never embellished.  Today's project was a "perfect sphere," with the goal of keeping track of the stitch count, perfectly increasing and decreasing stitches, following an actual pattern, and creating my first 3D object.

It worked out pretty well!  I mean, it's a little lumpy like a hackey sack 'cause I stuffed it with dried garbanzo beans... but at least every stitch is in place. 

A good use of the cheapest yarn I could find.

It looks like I'm not the only one who enjoyed the sphere.

Perfect size for a puppy mouth.

And now, I'm off to improve my yarn tension while Stormy destroys my hard work.

*ESO is fantastic if you don't have a finicky stomach. 

Henna Requests

This morning a random lady on the hiking trail asked me for henna information, and she tried to memorize my 10-minute-rant of henna instructions.  Earlier this week, a nurse had me write it down for her as well, on the front and back of one of those peel-off stickers they print out and put on blood vials.  It really wasn't enough, 'cause I had barely scratched the surface of what they wanted to know.

It happens frequently enough at the grocery store, the park, or public transportation.  I get even more requests for exactly what I do for my hair care.

My hair transformation in health, color, and texture has been pretty big over the last several years, and it is not a usual sight, so I can understand the curiosity.

This is what happens when I'm too lazy to take a current picture.  For 3 years.

I need to make a big blog entry about hennaing hair, so that all I have to write down on their scrap of paper is the web address!

And so, in the future I will subject you poor readers to a series on henna and hair, to answer ALL the questions I get that require a very lengthy explanation.  I have done way too much research on these topics, so it'll have to be broken up into several segments.

Expected posts:

• How to choose your henna source 
• How to perfectly prep and test the henna
• How to use the henna to dye hair
• How to grow long hair (aka, healthy hair care)
• My exact hair care regimen (all hair is different, but this is the #1 request)
• How to make different long-hair buns/hairstyles
• How to use the restroom without peeing on your hair (it is easier than one would think!)
• Why I'm not growing it to donate it
• What the heck is that yarn thing on my head, and why, and how

  

My favorite fancy bun.

Is there anything else henna/hair-related that you're curious about?  I'll add it in.

Memed Brother

After my brother's graduation, I took a photo of him posed with his arms magestically stretched wide.  

Thus began the Jesus Kylen meme.  

Pot Adventure

No, no, it's not what it sounds like.

I gathered all the unused plant pots around the house, in the garage, in the tool shed, tossed about the yard by the storms.  What I found was great!

Pardon the white-trashiness of my potting area.

I have lots o' pots available in various sizes:

• Wine barrel x4 (not shown here)
• 16" x 4, 2 shallow
• 12" x 6, 1 with no bottom (I'll use it to lift a tomato or cucumbers in a shallow bed)
• 10" x 6, 1 strawberry pot
• 8" x 8
• 4-6" (seedling size) x 32
• bonzai x 3
• windowboxes x 2 (each equivalent to a 14-inch pot, good for lettuce or herbs)

I'll definitely have enough little pots to get me started with all the indoor seedlings.  All of these pots have been previously used, so they probably need some sterilizing in 10% bleach before anything else happens... I know some of the plants from these pots died mysterious, possibly diseased deaths.  The pots are not pretty, but they're free.  Maybe I can paint them and call it "upcycling," that's cool these days, right? 

The old soil will also be recycled:  pour a kettle of boiling water over the old soil to sterilize, then mix with an equal amount of new potting soil.  Add just a bit of organic fertilizer, and that should do the trick.

Let the games begin!

The Garden Layout

SmartGardener is great for obsessive organizers!

For the most part, it looks like this will be my main garden plan.

So.  Many.  Plants. 

It is a little hard to see, but if you click it, you can open up the screenshot I took from my SmartGardener account.  To give you a sense of scale, each of the largest round spaces is a half wine barrel.

Weekly State of the Garden, Feb 17th

There's not much to this week:

• Plant 1/2 of the arugula.
• Fantasize about the garden.

Yep, that's it!  Arugula's the second-earliest thing I can plant outdoors (garlic is the first), and it should be harvested from the latest first frost in early April until the end of May.  Compared to the other plants in the garden, it looks like it would fit well in the spaces that tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and cilantro would go, because those plants start going in sometime in April.

What the heck, I might mix in some more cherry belle radishes while I'm at it, just to see what happens.  It's not like I'm going to run out of my thousands of seeds.

Things I will miss about lab

And now, a light-hearted look back at things I will miss about lab, to balance out the things I don't miss.

• Slime mold jazz hands.

Physarum was always quite the performer.

Valentine's Day Traditions

Happy Heart-Shaped Meatloaf and Pink Mashed Potatoes Day!

It has always been a tradition to make these culinary items happen on Valentine's day.  As an adult now (am I really an adult?) I find it to be a little more sincere of a celebration this way, and a little less tacky/commercial than the obligatory box o' chocolates.

Plus, the husband really loves him some homemade meatloaf.

Oops, it's a little lopsided...

This year, the mashed potatoes were colored with powdered beets, and you can't taste the difference.

And I got to use the new bowl and special spoon that my mom gave me!

Do it!  Dooooooo it.

Mmmmm, so good.

What's your Valentines' Day tradition?  

Planting Plan

Using smartgardener.com (which is free by the way, and fun to use), I was able to formulate a plan for my entire spring's worth of planting and harvesting.  I did succession planting as every 2 weeks.

Below is an example of how I used the SmartGardener program.  You can pick the variety of plant that you want, and it will show you the year's plan depending upon whether you want to start it indoors or outdoors.  The light teal is indoor planting, dark teal transplant, dark olive sowing outdoors (if it's long, you can do succession planting), light olive caring for the plant, and rust is the proposed harvest time. 

Bull's blood beet... my favorite salad "green" so far!

You can also see that there is a recommended amount of plants for you to grow.  If you go into the Settings section of the website, you can enter the number of adults and children you are feeding, and it will estimate how many you should grow.  Of course, this is a rough guideline, so if you like to freeze pesto, grow 300 basils!

I'm going to be adding in a few things to the plan, especially doing the long black radishes quite early (starting now to try it), since I want to be able to pull them as I transfer tomato seedlings into their place. 

Let's take a look at a summary of my SmartGardener plan:

Seeds Ahoy!

Whoa.  Somehow, the planting season started today already! 

My ultimate goal for the garden this year is to grow 456 pounds of produce, which is half of what we'll theoretically need for the year.  I figure this could produce all of our plant needs during the harvest season.

The finalized seed selection.

Things I will not miss about lab.

Since yesterday was officially my last day of vacation/employment, this post is appropriately timed.  Let's have a light-hearted look back at a few things I am glad I will never have to do again.

• Make fly tea.

 This was for Saprolegnia (a water mold) to eat.  Mmmmm.

Weekly State of the Garden: Feb 10

This is the week the garden gets started.  There is much to do:

• Decide on all the seeds.
• Make a planting/harvest schedule.
• Decide locations and numbers of every plant in the garden.
• Fertilize all the garden spots.
• Do an early test-planting of long black radishes outdoors, covered in clear plastic as a fake "window box"
• Start the tomatoes, peppers, and thyme indoors.
• Severely scold Stormy for destroying half the drip system.
• Begin working on prevention of the destruction of said drip system.
• Harvest the last of the radishes and lots of greens from last year's fall garden.

Wish me luck!

Fitbit One Review: Exercise Tracking

The setup only took a few minutes to hook up with the bluetooth on my computer and my iPhone... it should be noted that it will only sync on an iPhone 4s and up due to the bluetooth compatibility (unsure about other brands).  Guess it's a good thing I dropped my 4 in the pool last week and switched to my husband's old 4s.  My old phone still works... it's just that while I was waiting for it to dry in a mason jar of rice, I realized that his phone has a better camera.  But I digress.

I tested the Fitbit One about 10 times in 100-step increments to see how accurate it was.  Most of the time it was exactly 100, which was quite impressive, though I did see a 98, 101, 102, and 105.  It is accurate enough for my needs, especially considering that other pedometers I've tried have been 20% off.


The step tracking of the fitbit is darn fun to follow on a graph.  This was from my first day, after digging it out of the mail around 11am.

Looking at the graph above, 12pm represents me walking around the pool to test out the Fitbit.  2:30pm is when I took the pup and husband for a 3-mile hike, which is also where those 42 floors came from... the Fitbit One measures changes in air pressure to determine how high you have climbed, and one floor equals 10 feet, so 420 feet in elevation was darn accurate.  6pm was a game of puppy chase, and 8pm I walked around the pool to make sure I got in my 10,000 steps.

If you want to track ALL of your steps during the day, the Fitbit is not going to do it.  It appears to only count your steps once you have made about 10 steps in a row, and then it counts those 10 plus whatever else you do afterward.  If you make 5 steps and stop (say, if you are cleaning my kitchen), it is going to look like you weren't active.  I actually like this feature, because it only counts the "real" exercise you do.

It will also not accurately count activities like yoga, pilates, swimming, doing headstands, or weight lifting.  There is a section where you can record that activity, and it counts toward your calorie burn.

One last note about the calories on the bottom right of the picture... those are my total calories for the day, basal plus exercise, not just what I burned making 10,250 steps.  I'll write more about the diet/calorie tracking in a future post... it actually has a fun and easy way to keep track of them.

In summary, I am LOVING seeing the progress in graph form.  It is darn motivating to get those extra steps in and not miss a hike.

That said, in some extremely ironic timing considering I just got the Fitbit, today my doctor forbid hiking, and I am to "take it easy."  I'll probably just do several smaller walks over the day instead, but I may have to rethink my goal of 5 miles a day.

Betta Fish

Let me introduce you to the newest member of our household, Chthulhu.

'Sup.

Chthulhu is so named because his neon blue stripes and white fin-tips look like tentacles, and the red crosses on both sides of his face look like battle scars.  He is vicious, the most ornery one in the aquarium store.

I love having a betta in the smaller fish tank.  Since we aren't using it for shrimp, and we have tested many other fish (which tend to jump out since there is no lid), it has been the best choice for a flashy interactive fish.

Do you have any aquatic pets?