Lariath- Live a Little.

I've been really wanting a glass tank for Tim for ages, mainly so Tim has more space but also I think they look really nice and Tim can't chew on any bars etc. Don't get me wrong, the DIY Bin Cage  that I made is awesome, more so after  Adding a Door , especially for new hamsters for taming purposes. I will be keeping the bin cage for when I go away and Tim goes to a friends house to be looked after, let's face it moving a massive tank to a friends house for a week is never going to happen. I've seen a few people using an IKEA Detolf glass cabinet (put on its side/back) as a hamster cage and for a glass tank it's a really good price for an amazing size too. The only issues I have with the Detolf are space to put the cage and transporting the cage when we move....but we will deal with that when it happens. The only other issue is that Syrian hamsters, such as Tim, can escape the Detolf if there is no lid (the glass door that comes with the Detolf cannot be us...

My good friend Sarah, her son and I went away to Scotland recently. It was a nice time away, the cottage we stayed in was awesome, the view was amazing. There were young cows surrounding us...if you know me you know I love cows! Sarah brought a gift for me to try out whilst we were there; a spindle and some fibre. I have never even considered spinning before but I love to learn new things. Here is the spindle and a bit of the fibre that I was given: It is Fondant Fibre- White Faced Woodland (Rare Breed Collection) not sure how many grams I got but there was quite a lot in the bag. My first go at spinning wasn't so great the yarn was really thick and most of it was over spun. It is that thick that it will have to stay as a single: My second try was slightly better. This try I managed to get thinner bits, however it varies in thickness massively, this one will be kept as a single: My third go was a lot better, much thinner and less varied in thickness. I'm ...

I have never tried watercolour painting before, well I probably did when I was very young but I don't remember. I love to learn and try new things so I want to give it a try. For my birthday I asked my friend to get me some watercolour paints. She asked me to paint her a picture so that is what I concentrated on for my first try at watercolour. My friend loves Japan and her favourite flower is a cherry blossom so I searched for some watercolour tutorials to help me out, with this theme in mind. I found  This YouTube Video  (Keep in mind I completely new at this and my painting is nowhere near as good). I am a newbie and don't really know any techniques yet, but I thought my friend would appreciate my first attempt with the gift she gave me. Here it is: I made a little frame for it to make it looks little neater: I am hoping to try more watercolour painting in the future but it will be a long time before I am any good at it. There is so much to learn! Enjoy this p...

I wanted to make a good friend of mine a bracelet with a design of something that she loves. After searching for a long time to find something I decided on an anchor pattern. The pattern is quite simple, I decided on an alpha pattern as I find these a lot simpler than the 'normal' knotted patterns. I used 5 white background threads (or two white threads folded in half plus one more white thread), 2 blue background threads (or one blue thread folded in half) and blue as the main colour, which I kept on the skein as I didn't know how much I would need. Turns out I needed one and a bit blue skeins. I made the buckle loop out of square knots as I explained in my  DIY Spiderman Bracelet  post. The tails were made by doing a four strand plait/braid which I learned by following  This YouTube video . Click  Here  for the anchor pattern that I used. The bracelet didn't turn out as good as I would have liked but practice makes perfect. I have been asked to make ...

I enjoy growing plants that I can eat, there is just something about growing my own food from seed that I love. Especially basil, I adore basil. At the minute my house is rented so I can't trash the garden with food experiments so I'm stuck using the kitchen windowsill. My windowsill is full of herbs and 'speedy salad'. Anyway onto hamsters. I feed Tim bird seed just to add some variety to his diet, it's perfectly healthy as an occasional treat. While giving him his bird seed I had a random thought; I like to grow things from seed....these are seeds.... Oooooo. So I sprinkled a little bit of birdseed in a little pot of soil (my DIY Recycled Plant Pot  no less) watered the soil quite well and allowed it to drain then sprinkled a little extra soil on top. After a few days I had some green shoots coming up, then after a few more days I had this: Most of the shoots just look like grass, I cut a few pieces of the grass shoots about an inch above the soil and give ...

I have recently got into drinking green smoothies. Mostly due to the fact that I hardly used to eat any fruit and wanted to get some into my diet. If I'm getting fruit into my diet why not make the smoothie even more nutritional by adding some greens too? Adding greens to my smoothie was something I was very uncertain about because I thought that it would taste nasty, but surprisingly I actually like it. I like to drink my smoothies in a morning as my breakfast I guess (I don't generally eat breakfast). However I start work at 6am and using a blender at 5:30 in the morning would not be so pleasing to the neighbours, or my other half...To work around this I have recently started making my smoothie the day before, at a more reasonable time, and freeze it overnight. Then take the frozen smoothie to work, allow it to defrost and have a lovely cold smoothie a few hours later. (If you are going to freeze smoothies in glass jars do not fill the jar to the top, leave about a third sp...

My parents bought me a tub of beads as a gift. They know me well, I have had a strange obsession of beads since I was very young. So this tub has been sitting there for a while now I figured I should probably use them instead of just admiring their tinyness. I very simply found some thin yarn that the beads would fit on, thread all the beads I wanted onto the yarn (starting with a larger bead). Then I started to chain stitch whilst randomly adding a bead to one of the stitches (there are many tutorials on how to add beads to chain stitch on the Internet). I did this until the length of chain was long enough to wrap round my wrist 3 times. I made a little loop at the end of the chain just the right size for the larger bead to fit through as a clasp. A darker yarn would have been more suitable than this, in my opinion, but out of all the yarn that I have this was the only one that these beads would fit on. It is, however, quite a strong yarn so I don't have to worry about it...