I have made a toy!

I promised photos, didn't I?

Okay, so, when push comes to shove it's really more of a "Manxvole" than a "Manxmouse" (I'll probably discuss that book at some point over on my other blog) - and it's riddled with errors.  But that's what first attempts are for, right?

Yeah, it took me a while.  When you only give something a few minutes a night, and you take a week or so between nights, something that might only be a couple of hours' work can stretch out a bit.  Especially when you've never done this sort of thing before, so everything takes a bit longer anyway.

I'm now starting on the second vole/mouse, and it should be a bit of a smoother process.

I shall make a slightly better mouse/vole.  And it shall have a tail that has been tested for disintegration (so hopefully won't do that).

The important thing is - it has begun.  I have started.  If I can just make myself continue, then I'll be onto something good.

Cabbage and Mince (Eesti toit)

I've been hankering for cabbage and mince for a while now.

It's hard to explain it, but I have some sort of deep memory of this dish - like I ate it once a long time ago and can no longer remember where, when or under what circumstances.

I expect my grandmother probably made it once.  She made cabbage rolls on more than one occasion.  My grandmother left Estonia when she was a child, and the only part of her culture she really kept was the food she made on special occasions.  Sauerkraut and skumbria, mainly, but occasionally cabbage rolls and brawn (we never called it "head cheese", and I refuse to).

My mother was never keen on cabbage rolls, so actively avoided encouraging the combination of cabbage and mince.  I made them once, under my grandmother's guidance, and realised that the amount of work involved wasn't worth it just for the delicious goodness of combining cabbage and mince.

Some time ago I bought a dual-language Estonian cookbook, and one of the recipes was for cabbage and mince.  I filed it away in the "I must try to make this" compartment of my brain.

Well, recently I've just been craving the dish.  I have no idea why, but something deep inside me has been saying "do you know what would be awesome?  Cabbage and mince."

So I rustled up a couple of different recipes, and sort of weaved a path between them that struck a balance between "tasty" and "lazy".

The results?  Good, wholesome food.  It really is awesome.  Plain, simple, yet tasty, and with a goodness that warms you from the inside out.  It honestly seemed like I've been eating this stuff my whole life.

And I fed it to my mother and she didn't hate it.  That's a success in anyone's books.

I think my grandmother would have enjoyed it, and it's a shame I didn't try making this years ago.

The recipe I cobbled together from a few different ones was as follows:

400g lean mince
1 onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
2 carrots, coarsely grated
1/2 a large head of cabbage, thinly sliced
beef stock (I used a heaped teaspoon of Bonox, but a crumbed stock cube would work)
Salt and pepper to taste
Cup of hot water
Bit of oil for browning the meat 

I also added about 100g of diced bacon, because one of the recipes I'd seen in the past had asked for a mixture of pork and beef mince, and my mother seemed more likely to eat it if the bacon was involved. 

Cook the cabbage in a pot with the cup of hot water, being careful not to overcook it. 

Meanwhile, in a deep frying pan, fry the onions and meat until the onions are soft and the meat is completely browned, then add the carrots and seasoning with a little bit of water to dissolve the stock.  Stir through, then add the cooked cabbage to the meat (including the water in the pot) and stir through.  

Cook for another ten minutes until the cabbage has infused with the flavours of the pan and the liquid has reduced. 

Serve with boiled potatoes and rye bread.

Of Mice, Shoelaces, Toys and Books

Well, I've actually started making some toys.  I will be a toymaker, and I shall be a toymaker.  One day I will be able to introduce myself to people by saying "Hi, I'm Sharon and I'm a toymaker".

I'm starting with a pair of pocket mice.

They are "pocket mice" because I'm making them out of the pockets of a recycled pair of denim shorts.  The process has not been without some complications.

I chose to start with a mouse because it's one of the simplest patterns I've found - a simple body with some ears and a tail sewn on.  It's supposed to be made out of man-made fur and felt, but I had the denim scraps handy, so denim it is!

I had only intended to make one, but I stuffed up a rather simple step - reversing the pattern to get both sides of the mouse.  I had two left sides and no right sides.  Fortunately, I may be an idiot but I'm also a thinker, so I just made the same mistake in reverse and decided to make two mice instead of one.

Then there was a slight problem with the tails.

The wool I was going to use to make the tails had been damaged (a storage issue), so I decided to use an old pair of shoe laces I had lying around the place.

As I was tacking the shoelaces in place, it occurred to me that I was actually using a spare pair of laces from my old school shoes - 25+ years after I'd thrown out the shoes in question.  A) I still had the laces, b) I knew exactly where they were, and c) I was getting some use out of them.  If this had actually worked, I might never be able to throw out anything else ever again.

Fortunately, cheap Chinese shoelaces from the 80s actually are crap.  They didn't break on me all the time when I was a kid because I was incredibly strong, they were just rubbish.  So I would have been perfectly justified in throwing them out, and should have thrown them out years ago.

Unfortunately, I discovered this when the tale on my first mouse disintegrated as I was turning the body right-side out.  Replacing the tale would have required unpicking most of the dang mouse, so I just said "This one's a Manxmouse" and left it sans tail.

That, of course, made me want to reread Paul Gallico's Manxmouse, which has a dear place in my heart.  It was one of the first chapter books ever read to me when I was a child - and it was read to me by my aunt when we were on vacation.

I can't remember much about that vacation, but I can remember my aunt reading me this book every night.

I've kept that copy all these years, but I realised that I hadn't actually read it for myself.  So now I'm essentially reading it for the first time.

After reading the first few chapters, I had a brief moment of doubt when sewing the ears on my pocket Manxmouse.  The blue colour of the denim was actually spot on for a Manxmouse but, by rights, if I was making a Manxmouse I should make the ears long and rabbit shaped with pink insides.  My ears were cut out when I thought I was just making a mouse...

I just decided to give it normal ears.  Partly because I already had them, and partly because I didn't have anything pink to turn into new ears.  If I ever make a Manxmouse on purpose, I'll make sure I get the ears right.

I'm starting with the mice.  Then I'm going to try a duck, perhaps.  Maybe graduate onto bears at some point.  The key is to do it again.

I have a tendency to do something once and then neglect to get around to repeating the effort.  If I can make a few mice, I'll get better at the mice.  If I can make a few ducks or bears or what have you, then I'll get better at making toys in general.

When I get to the point where I regularly make toys and feel as if I could say to another person "Yes, I will sell you this toy for actual money", then I will feel confident to say I am a toymaker.


Yeah, yeah, pictures are coming.  Give me a break - I can't think of everything, you know.  Besides I've been too busy taking pictures of the new bike.  Post on that coming soon.

Things that keep me awake at night: Beans

Like many people who have difficulty sleeping, I find I lie awake at night have thoughts of deeply important and worrying things run through my brain.

Like that night a few weeks ago, when I was still awake a few hours after going to bed, pondering the following deep philosophical question:

How did soy get to be The Bean?  Why is it the foodstuff that replaces everything?  

You think of any foodstuff you want to replace, and someone is probably using soy to replace that.  We probably have soy in more foodstuffs now than any other ingredient.  Why?  What's so special about soy?

Can you make milk out of other beans?  If you can, then why don't you?  Like butter beans.  Butter beans sound like they'd be a perfectly legitimate fake-milk ingredient.  You could make butter out of butter beans, I warrant, and people would probably think "Oh, okay" because the word "butter" is legitimately involved...

Actually, I've just looked it up, and butter beans are in the Phaseolus genus while soybeans are in the Glycine genus, so maybe they don't have the same properties.

But still, the question remains:  How did soy become The Bean, and why don't we use other beans in a similar fashion?

I'm telling you, this stuff is deep.

BAS is a thing. I have it.

Well, I've just officially started my folding bike collection.  Prior to approximately 10 minutes ago, I only had one folding bike, so it was just part of a larger bike collection.

However, I've been umming and ahhing about maybe bying a Strida (for quite some time), and the online shop I occasionally stare at just slashed the price by $200.

This means I could get the bike, a bag and a couple of other accessories for less than what the bike usually costs.

So, I've now ordered a Strida (a cream one) and I'll probably be posting photos of it soon enough.

Two folding bikes = folding bike collection.

Alternatively, two folding bikes + penny farthing + unicycles I still haven't sold/given away/disposed of = "novelty" bike collection.

It's probably best not to question too closely the reasons for buying another folding bike when I'm currently riding my "regular" bicycle to work due to the fact that I've blown out the rear tyre on my Brompton and I've decided I can't be bothered changing the tubes when I want to try buying some Tannus tyres anyway.

Bike Acquisition Syndrome is a bear of a thing to live with.

Gaming

So, wait a minute...

The Nintendo 2ds is about $100 cheaper than the Nintendo 3ds, but it plays all the same games and the only differences are:

It has a weaker graphics thingy whatnot (which I don't care about)

It only has a mono speaker which isn't as good as the other speakers (which I don't care about)

It doesn't fold up like a clamshell (which would be nice, but it's not a deal breaker - and it does improve the structural integrity)

It doesn't have 3D capabilities (which I don't want - if I got the 3ds I'd turn that off, so it's a waste of tech)...

That sounds like a pretty good deal, to me.

I wonder if it plays old knock-off games from the 1980s?  My favourite game when I was a kid was a cheap Donkey Kong rip-off called Jungle Kong.

This is why I'm not buying Apple Products any more

I have a beloved iPod touch.  It's about five years old.

Although I'm not much of one for shiny tech toys (the only reason I have a tablet is because I need one for work), something about this particular gadget found its place in my life.

I don't want or need a new gadget to replace this one.  I like this one.  It has my favourite things on it.  I've had it just long enough for it to become something I regard as part of my standard kit, but nowhere near long enough for me to think "oh, this old thing!  I ought to have that replaced".

I neither want nor need to make calls on the thing I use to listen to music and podcasts.  I'm happy for my "taking phone calls" device and my "general entertainment" device to be two different things.  Right now, the iPod is the thing that I have, and the thing that I want.

Apple is rendering it useless.

It's an iPod, right?  As in "Pod" for "podcast".  I can't get any new podcasts on it.  Apple has changed the podcasting function so that it is dependant on an app.  The app won't work on the operating system I have on my iPod.  I can't upgrade my iPod to a higher operating system, because it's "not supported" any more.

I also have a MacBook.  Its also about five years old.  It's not as beloved, but I was still liked and appreciated.  And then it too became un-updatable.  I can't update it to the latest operating system.  I can't get the latest version of programmes like EndNote without having the latest operating system.  Ergo, if I want to keep using "a Mac" into the future, I have to buy a new Mac on a regular basis.

So I now know this to be true:

Essentially, any Apple product I buy will be completely obsolete within a few years.  Its not just a case of "you won't have the best and shiniest of things" but rather "you won't have anything functional at all."

And Apple products aren't cheap.  It's a throw-away product that is sold at a "something special to keep" price.

Additionally, I've never been able to get my iPod to talk to my MacBook when I was offline.  If I wasn't connected to the internet, not only could I not move files between my iPod and my MacBook, but my MacBook would try to delete everything on my iPod.  I'm guessing it's because it couldn't keep tabs on me when I wasn't online and report my every move to the mothership.

Now, I'm not a complete idiot.  If you tell me "you can buy Product A or Product B.  Product A is more expensive than Product B and will stop working sooner - it's also not as forgiving or as flexible as Product B..."  Well, I can't make a good argument for buying Product A.

I've been thinking lately about whether I want to replace my MacBook, and I have to say I'm definitely leaning towards "Not particularly".  I also have no interest in buying an iPhone.  I'd get better mileage out of almost anything else at all, as far as I can tell.

So that's why I'm probably not going to buy Apple Products any more - I like value for money.