have a heart for pink, hand-knitted Shelly

Why? Because this turtle is a guy! And he is pink!! And named Shelly!!!

Not by me though but from its maker Liisa.

Liisa, I can assure you, is one of the most awesome persons I’ve ever met. We only spent like 4 days in Vancouver together, sleeping in the same room and all that (not what you think, since we were staying in a 4-bedroom in a Hostel), and we are still friends! Even if we didn’t see each other in over 2 years.

But not only is Liisa an awesome friend but a serious knitter as well that “won’t tolerate failure” (it’s in quotes because that’s what she is saying about herself). And she has her own knitting blog socks-a-plenty!

That’s were I found Shelly… in green. Shamelessly posing without his removable turtle shell.

How can you not fall in love with him when he is “doing his naked lambada”?

And Liisa, being the overly nice person she is, made my own Shelly and send him on his way from Finland to Germany. Squished in a tiny package where he got a little bit out of shape.

But I made him look good again in his pink wool and his golden bow and now he is sitting on my shelf, flirting with a green turtle that I bought at Ikea years ago. Didn’t see him making the lambada yet but maybe he is just shy and waits for the darkness to come around.

From time to time he tries to look intellectual and is reading a book. In German. Yes – he is pretty good in understanding languages. He just never speaks.

But I made a picture as a proof :)

And? Did you fall in love as well?

when life stands still

Before summer started in Germany (and trust me, there wasn’t much of it yet even if it’s nearly over) I was visiting some botanic gardens.

Let me tell you that I wasn’t a big fan of those gardens before. They always seemed like a place for old and odd people that knew every name of every flower or plant.

I feel uncomfortable among them, knowing nothing about the beautiful nature that’s all around us and feeling guilty of being the seemingly uninterested young person to those that have the greatest pleasure in having a big knowledge about a certain theme.

But I’m neither uninterested nor that young that I seem to be to some people. I just don’t know all those biological Latin names. I’m more interested in the pure beauty. Which is of course in the eye of the beholder - but I guess you know what I’m trying to say.

However - on this day, in the early and pretty cold but sunny spring, I decided to mix among those old knowing ladies and gentlemen (and hoped for less odd people) and made my way to the botanic garden.

I had bought this new close-up lense from Tokina (which was on my wish list forever and took as long to save up for) and didn’t even had the chance yet to take more then 5 pictures with it. So I was hoping for exciting and interesting subjects that would make myself proud and justify the purchase of my awesomely expensive lense.

Well – things never turn out the way you expect.

Of course spring had just started and nearly everything was as dead as it could possibly be. Except for the grass… that I wasn’t too keen on banning on a picture for history. There was not even a bare branch of a tree with a thin layer of ice or something that would have made a photo at least a little more interesting. It wasn’t that cold anymore. And suddenly my adventures trip to the botanic garden seemed a big fail. On top of that there was indeed this one odd middle-aged guy that was following me around and I had to make an escape through the skeletal bushes (I still crossed his way 3 times after that).

Not the first time that something like that happened to me but I always fear murder or something like that, which of course is massively exaggerated, but I can’t help it.

Anyway – at the end it was all worth it because I got my picture!

You see, there were some of these artificial lakes all around and most of them seemed to have a brown mass in it. But one of them looked different and what I found was this:

Amazing, right? It seems that this water-plant took its last breath before falling in a deep sleep for winter. The frozen air bubbles are still all around! 
I called the picture “when life stands still” and I think it fits perfectly.

So my conclusion for that day was: I thought I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then I couldn’t have been in a better place at that one moment :)