Terrarium fever and yarn

I love terrariums but this is silly. The world of knitting and crochet is a bizarre one. Just having lots of yarn and lots of time isn't a justification for making some of the stuff they have patterns for. Pick up any knitting magazine and you see at least 5 car wrecks of yarn-tastic horror. There are more pictures on Why Would You Knit That? a super cool site that lives up to its name.

First kill

Here's a really awesome video of a Venus fly trap growing. It's facinating!

My terrarium is doing really well. I was nervous about transplanting it into a new environment but it never even drooped. I've kept it nice and moist and had it sealed most of the time to keep out gnats. We have a fungus gnat problem in the apartment right now. It sound's gross but it's no worse than fruit flies, though they're a lot smaller and slower. I guess one of them got into the snifter (there's that word again) and now one of the traps closed and there's a tiny gnat shaped shadow in there. Ha ha! If you enlarge the first picture you can see the shadow. I wasn't going to feed it for a week but it took the initiative which makes sense with the new growth I spotted. It's growing, that means it's happy and that makes me happy.

Terrarium

I’ve got terrarium fever! I found a flickr group a while back that made me really excited, then I found the perfect glass brandy snifter when thrifting, finally when I was at the store last week I saw some awesome carnivorous plants. I recalled seeing some in terrariums somewhere with carnivores but I wanted to make sure they weren’t fast growing or needed anything weird I already bought one plant that wasn’t suitable for the miniature snifter wonderland. I had all the ingredients except plants so I went back and $5 later the wheels of this project were set in motion.

Take one jumbo snifter*

Add a layer of pea gravel

Add some soil mixed with sand.

Plant the new plant and add some more pea gravel and a few decorative stones

Now just add water! Distilled water that is. I’ll give my new friend a week or two to get her bearings and then I’ll feed my precious pet.

S suggested I make some small skulls and bones to go around it. I love this idea, after all venus fly traps seem to have a significant role in pop culture. Cleopatra was the name of the Addams family’s carnivorous plant.

I do want some more moss in the terrarium. The sphagnum moss that came around my plant had a few green spots. Maybe it’ll grow and form a soft carpet around my little friend. Maybe I’ll add some. One terrarium site recommended if I take moss from the wild I should keep it in isolation for a while in case it has any thing that could infect/infest or contaminate my other planty friends.

* I know I keep saying snifter and there’s a reason for that. It’s an awesome word, just say it out loud: snifter, snifter, snifter, snifter. See what I mean?

Thrift score

In the last week I have purchased these lovely items. All together less than $20 for the lot. The spice jars are glass with removable sprinkle caps (aka plastic thingies with holes) and metal screw-on lids. These will be perfect for dried herbs, or homemade bath salts. The cookie cutter was 49 cents, you can never have too many cookie cutters. And the jumbo brandy snifter is perfect for a terrarium. The source of my terrarium lust is here. The stand is wrought iron and super sturdy, perfect for plants. Woo hoo! Thrift score indeed.