Autonomous food production
That’s this year’s potato harvest. One full litre! V^(oo)^V
Earlier in the year I had several litres of radishes. The leaves were very tasty too — I used them like spinach in my daily pasta sauce.
I also grew cucumber and dill, but as the summer grew hotter, they were very unhappy in the wind and glaring sun of my 4th floor southwest-facing windowsill. Three little deformed cucumbers still managed to grow big enough to eat, and they tasted okay. (There are no photos because it was too depressing.)
However, now I’m renting a little piece of land outside the city. It’s a bit neglected, so I’m slowly fixing up the buildings and preparing the garden for next year. I’m too lazy to ever bring a good camera (usually I’ve had too much other stuff to carry), so I don’t have many good photos from there yet.
I test planted some seed potatoes that I had left, and at least one of them seems to be sprouting, and the slugs haven’t eaten it yet. There are quite a lot of slugs in the area. Perhaps that’s why my neighbour grows all his stuff in cold frames. I have a kind of greenhouse, so I will try to grow the things the slugs like the most in there, and the less attractive plants outdoors. I’m also trying a bit to attract hedgehogs with nice piles of leaves and twigs in quiet corners of the garden.
The wildlife certainly is really fascinating in this garden. There are hundreds of spiders, of many different kinds, some really huge. Once I watched one spider catch a fly that had been annoying me as I was drawing comics. The fly got caught in the net the spider had woven in a window, and the spider rushed there and rolled it up in web, then carried it up to its hiding place, presumably to suck out its juices. The spiders are very nice, and I have to be careful so I don’t disrupt their habitat too much.
There are two ponds in the garden, and in the big one there are frogs. I’ve seen one big green frog (sunbathing on the edge of the pond) and one medium sized brown frog (strolling around on the lawn). They make noises like human babies coughing themselves to death.
What I’ve already harvested from the garden:
- One (1) hazelnut: there is a big hazel bush, but apparently it doesn’t have a lot of nuts.
- Some plums: Somehow I missed the plum season (maybe I was thinking they should still grow bigger or something, d’oh), so most plums were overripe before I even realised. I ate some of the last good plums this weekend, and they were very tasty. In any case, the nice birds and insects have certainly been appreciating them.
What I’ll hopefully still harvest this year:
- Grapes
- Rose hips
- Potatoes
- Spinach, radishes, rucola and maybe some other stuff from the greenhouse
I got some seeds for interesting stuff like “Bear’s garlic“, Welsh onion, Mitsuba (only because of the name, yes …), and Tatar bread plant (!). It will be exciting to see if any of it will grow …
Trip to Leipzig
So we took the train to Leipzig yesterday to go see The Last Match at last. But the bookstore/gallery MZIN had closed early, maybe because the attendants wanted to see the football game. :o( Probably they don’t get a lot of visitors anyway.
All the little drawings!
Our plan B was to explore an abandoned printing house in central Leipzig. Doing it during the Germany vs. Argentina game was really perfect timing …
Dahlewitz trip
So Ilan actually seems to agree that getting a house outside the city could be a good idea. (Maybe he’s gotten nervous about my fantasies of refurbishing a construction trailer, like the one in the photo above …?)
We went to look at this fantastic old house today. It’s in pretty bad shape, and, most importantly, it is way too huge for us, so we aren’t going to buy it, after all … But it was fun to visit it nevertheless.
International Women’s Day history lesson with Driftwood
Click to go read!
Yesterday was the last day Ilan was home before leaving once again, so we celebrated IWD the Russian way: he took me out to eat. (Borsch and bliny at Gorky Park, mmmm …)
This morning I went to visit the Clara Zetkin memorial in Ahrensfelde, a tower block suburb of Berlin.
There were some scattered roses at her feet.
It freaked me out a bit that I only saw Germans in Ahrensfelde (though I’m hoping that some of them were at least non-German Northern Europeans).
* * *
20 down, 67 to go. V`(oo)´V
So what am I doing right now?
Right now I am at my mum’s place again, working as usual (ah, the benefits of freelancing – you can go anywhere as long as you have Internet and your laptop). And skiing.
The thing is that I needed to apply for a new passport, and since it costs 1000 Swedish crowns more if you get it at a Swedish embassy abroad, I might just as well spend that approximate amount of money on going to Sweden and enjoying the winter properly in the meantime. Ilan happened to attend the Pixelvärk festival in Gothenburg, so it all worked out perfectly.
And we get to hang out with mum’s ketteh Mr. Yellow:
On Tuesday, when there are decent bus connections (as opposed to the weekend), I’ll also check out the Art Comics Life exhibition about contemporary Nordic comics at the Watercolour Museum in Skärhamn, since it’s right here on the next island to the south.
Too bad that all the ‘happenings’ at that exhibition were on the weekend. Mum lives in the middle of the forest with no car, so we rely on the bus connections.
It’s not difficult at all, because besides the regular buses, there is a really nice “local bus” service that’s more like some kind of collective taxi – you order it the day before, and then it picks you up at your front door and takes you to town, and picks you up again two hours later. The bus drivers carry your groceries for you and help you with anything else if need be. It’s mainly elderly people who use the service, although it’s open to anyone. So when I go shopping with mum here it’s us two and then a bunch of happy grannies and grandpas in a minibus. The bus drivers are really sweet, and they are incredible drivers, driving up and down these tiny snowy roads in the hills like it’s nothing.
See more photos from Orust on my Flickr.
Fashion blogging (first and last time ever)
Ilan and I went to this fashion party (it was the fashion week in Berlin) where they had set up a photo session where all the guests could have photoz taken of their mad threadz combinationz skillz. The only reason we went was that Ilan’s friends Meneo were playing at the party. But the location itself – the Villa in Friedrichshain, a former brewery building, was pretty interesting too.
Photo by Iwo Gospodinow at fashionfreaks
After the shoot they tried to ask what brands I was wearing (they asked everybody about that). I said “No brands, all home made.” Here is the long answer that I did not give at that occasion …
Tinet – “Tatar swineherd at the local Kolkhoz”
Fur hat: dress uniform, Soviet government issue.
Wool jacket: home made by me.
Bathrobe: home made (?), inherited from my great-grandma Varma, 50’s or 60’s.
Skirt: home made by unknown person, found at thrift store.
Leg warmers: inherited from my mum.
Boots: vintage 80’s, any labels long since worn off.
Not visible: knitted bright red shorts made by mum, thrifted undershirt, panties from some Finnish department store I have forgotten the name of (vintage 90’s!!).
Okay, I guess I could have named H&M as a brand, because my wool-mix tights that are full of holes, two of my earrings and also my socks were bought there in the early 2000’s.
Ah, and I’m also wearing a cloth pad from Randumosity. Whee!
Severiina – “Rebellious youth”
Kheffiyeh: unknown make.
Spiked collar: thrifted, with a ribbon from a Sachertorte box and a metal chain found in the street.
Ilan’s outfit was even better, like he’d come straight out of a Moebius comic, and our Spanish friends were certainly some of the best dressed people at the party, just a bit more understated.
Severiina had a ball – she really enjoyed Meneo’s concert, and she was even invited to dance on the stage with those two wild Spanish boys!
Snabbeas
SNABBEAS from ilan katin on Vimeo.
While we were vacationing on Rügen, I helped Ilan make a music video for the track “Snabbeas” by GOTO80. My main contribution was that I made the black and white illustrations and most of the photography.
While we made this we got an idea for another fun video, but GOTO80 would have to make a suitable song for it first. We shall see if he will. :3
LOST DATA
My computer fell in a coma a few days before we left New York, either because of that ridiculous “Antivirus System Pro” virus (the first virus in my life – which I think I got from the IMDB forums!!!?), or actually because of a bad Windows update that I installed right after I thought I had successfully removed the virus.
In the process I perhaps most importantly lost my password for my Rambler.ru email account, so anyone who has tried to email me recently at kommiekomiks@rambler.ru and hasn’t gotten a reply, please try again, but this time to tinet.elmgren@gmail.com!
I salvaged a lot of files by first reinstalling Windows without reformatting the disk. But I of course still lost all Windows folders, among them “My pictures”. (I should have known that the “My documents” folder should be the last place to put important files that are not backed up! Let alone that there should be NO important files that are not backed up somewhere …)
With the help of Uneraser I was able to recover a lot of photo originals from my camera’s memory card, but the first ones in each batch had been overwritten with new photos. From my hard drive Uneraser could only recover thumbnails of some of those photos. Here are the best lost photos from the beach in Sandy Hook, New Jersey:
We were truly jinxed with our Sandy Hook photos – Ilan accidentally erased all his photos from the trip right afterwards. I was only able to recover some of the latter part of my Sandy Hook photos in original size. And to top it off, I forgot the nice singing seashell I’d found on the beach in Ilan’s parents’ apartment! Oh noes! But at least that one is safely stored until we meet again.
Here are a few of the best lost photos from various places on Manhattan:
All my day job files were neatly backed up, so no losses there.
But I lost all the textile design files that I had been working on in New York. However, I had already uploaded the most recent versions to Spoonflower, so they are not completely lost! I just can’t work on them on my computer anymore. But if the colours come out wrong in print I can still change them a bit inside Spoonflower. Whee!
I would have liked to use the Eva pattern for print projects, too, but maybe there is a way to scan it from the fabric so it looks decent.
Or I’ll just have to recreate it. V`(oo)´V (*piggy-sigh*)
There is a lot more to report. I got a new (well, used) camera – a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi -, I designed a website for the most eminent Miriam Katin, etc. … I’ll post more photos and write more later.
Here are a few tips for myself in the future:
- Don’t use Windows (Unfortunately I’m too poor to buy a Mac that would be as good as this PC, and that would actually have more than one(!) USB 2.0 port, among many other deficiencies. I don’t have enough confidence to create a Hackintosh. And Adobe keeps ignoring Linux, so …)
- Back up EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME.
- Never again put anything in the “My Documents” folder. Make a folder of your own on a different partition, or at least directly under C:\.
- Don’t let Firefox remember your passwords unless you are absolutely positive that you will never forget them.
IN NEW YORK
So I’m in New York now, and will continue to be so until the end of the month. Ilan is doing his annual visiting of family and friends, and I just tagged along.
What I’ve been up to:
* Working my ass off with my day jobs as usual
* Forcing Ilan to show me around interesting neighbourhoods
* Seeing Ilan and his band perform a few times
* Answering the question “So how do you like New York?” about five million times
* Eaten lots of very, very good food
Piggy street art in Williamsburg!
The doggies here are on average much smaller than in Berlin.
Stairs up to an abandoned house, one of three or four in a row.
There were lots of doggies in this room! Maybe it’s some kind of doggie day care center?
My plan here was actually to force Ilan to take me to the exact place where the main part of this video was filmed, but there is construction going on there right now, and you can’t access it. This is as close as we got!
There are many more photos on my Flickr.
As for my comics, you might have guessed that I’m in a rather wretched period right now. It has happened to me several times before, and quite often around this very time of the year. I just know that one day I will wake up and know exactly what I need to do next in Driftwood. Until then I will just have to suffer …
But in the meantime I’ve designed some more fabrics for Spoonflower. I made a new boar variation and a fabric with Eva(!). Sneak peeks below:
I made three different colour schemes for the Eva fabric. But we shall see how they look in print.
Some people have actually bought my boar fabrics. Whee!
HOMEGROWN LITTLE POTATOES
I grew some potatoes on my windowsill this fall.
From this ^ (July 19th) …
… over this (September 3rd) …
… to this (October 28th). At 106 days, they weren’t really ready to harvest yet. You should wait until the plants have died down completely, about 100-120 days.
But I couldn’t water them for the next month, since we’re going to New York, so we might just as well eat them now. :3
Still, we got a few nice medium-sized ones, and a lot of tiny little ones. :o)
In more comics-related news, the last weekend I feverishly drew some kind of autobiographical activist comic about racism. However, it was closely related to me having PMS, and now that my PMS is over I haven’t dared look at that comic again, since it’s probably really bad and embarrassing. :o(
I really wanted to draw Driftwood, but I only managed about half a page. The only thing I could draw without having anger outbreaks every ten minutes and having to punch the wall to abreact my frustration was this stupid activist comic.
Luckily Ilan was not at home most of the weekend. Poor Ilan who has to live with me. I did warn him about my PMS of Fury. :3
