The Changing Seasons – February 2020

 

It’s time again for the wonderful challenge The Changing Seasons hosted by my dear friend Su from Zimmerbitch!

 

February turned out to be more challenging than anticipated.

After having taken care of my washing machine last summer (when I successfully replaced the broken heating element with a new one), the Thing decided to break down again – this time the bearing went bust.

So I made an awful lot of research, i.e. I watched tons of YouTube videos on this matter, and thought I might give it another try and do the repair myself.

My old washing machine partly disassembled and missing its front (February 2020)

 

As it turned out, it’s one hell of a repair because you have to disassamble the whole machine to reach the vital part you want to replace.

 

The motor of my washing machine – call me weird but I kept it!! You never know when you might need one. 😀 (February 2020=

 

All in all it took me three days to do that, not counting the weeks beforehand where I had to buy the spare parts and fitting tools.

 

Motor and tub (February 2020)

 

When it was done and I finally got the drum in its tub out, I faced a problem I couldn’t overcome – the stupid manufacturers simply glued the tub halves together with some sort of silicone, instead of using screws, which didn’t only mean that even if I succeeded at separating the halves, there was no way I could guarantee that there wouldn’t be any water leakage afterwards, even if I used a ton of silicone glue myself.

 

The tub and drum (February 2020)

 

So that was the end of my dream to repair my washing machine all by myself, and to save a lot of money.

But even though I didn’t succeed it was a valuable experience, and I learned a lot from it.

Now, as I’m writing these lines, the new washer’s busy doing its job and I can’t tell you how excited I am at the prospect of clean towels. 😉

 

Right behind that shiny middle would have been the bearing set that I wanted to replace with a new one. (February 2020)

 

At least I was more successful with my next project – I wanted to make my own crunchy muesli!!

For this I simply mixed oat, spelt oats, walnuts, sunflower seeds, hempseed (no worry, there’s no active drug in hempseed they’re merely a vegan source for protein)  and ground almonds in a bowl.

 

Mixed ingredients in a bowl (February 2020)

 

Then I put 2 tablespoons of organic coconut oil and 1 tablespoon of Manuka Honey in a saucepan to slowly melt.

 

Mmh! Yum yum – Manuka honey! (February 2020)

 

Coconut oil and Manuka honey in a saucepan (February 2020)

After which I added my muesli mix and baked that for about 5 minutes on medium heat.

Baked granola (February 2020)

 

The kitchen smelled so delicious that I had trouble not to eat the whole stuff before it had a chance to cool down!

 

Homemade granola and Greek yogurt (February 2020)

 

 

Not food for the body but for the soul arrived in the shape of this lovely postcard by my friend at A Wonderful Sheep!

Receiving handwritten snail mail these days is becoming so rare and I’m sure you can imagine me doing my happy dance when I found it in my mailbox. 😀

 

Wonderful postcard by a wonderful friend (February 2020)

 

Although news about the Corona virus are dominating all news media, my heart and thoughts are still with the people and animals in Australia that suffer(ed) from the wildfires.

With them in mind I decided to try and form a little clay sculpture of a kangaroo with her joey.

As you can see it still lacks all its limbs and tail but I hope I’ll find some time this weekend to fix that. 😉 If you’re curious and don’t want to wait for my next blog post, you can always visit my Instagram account @art_photography_and_ceramics where I’m regularly posting pics from the different stages of each project.

 

Kangaroo clay sculpture at the beginning (February 2020)

 

 

If you would like to join in, here are the challenge guidelines:

The Changing Seasons Version One (photographic):

• Each month, post 5-20 photos in a gallery that you feel represent your month
• Don’t use photos from your archive. Only new shots.
• Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons so that others can find them

The Changing Seasons Version Two (you choose the format):

• Each month, post a photo, recipe, painting, drawing, video, whatever that you feel says something about your month
• Don’t use archive stuff. Only new material!
• Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons so others can find them.

If you do a ping-back to Su’s original post, she can update hers with links to all of yours.