A smiling owl

A year ago in the Helsinki zoo we met a lovely owl.

The owl was posing for everyone!

Toys cosplaying Twilight Princess!

Today my toys said to me, “Katya, we're gonna cosplay The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and you will take photos please!” Here are the results of our little play. ^^

Link and Epona.

Midna and Wolf Link.

Cute tiny squirrel

I had a lovely visitor today! Although it's almost summer, the squirrel was still wearing her winter coat. It's greyer and thicker.

We had rain in the morning.

A little bit about my writing

Sometimes you don't know you need something till you get it.

Writing is a solitary process. You scribble in the middle of the night, you daydream figuring out all the plot points and character development, you draw your characters, you edit... all of that alone.

And then you get stuck. And you try to find solutions to your plot problems but nothing seems to work. Or you lose inspiration and get distracted with non-writing things. Sure, reading interviews with writers or articles on writing is inspiring, it feels good and I often get ideas! But... I rarely do any actual writing afterwards... ^^'

A pheasant. Fasaani. Фазан

Phasianus colchicus that we met in Espoo some time ago.

For some reason he didn't have those long tail feathers pheasants usually have.

Grumpy Dog

We met a grumpy dog once.

It was adorable.

My old book friends

Whenever I have guests from Moscow I ask them, if possible, to bring some of my old books. Last time I counted my books – which was a year or two before I moved to Finland – I had ~260 books. I bought a few more after that, just a couple... Right now I managed to move about 100 of my old books, so we're far from done yet. ^^;

Here is what my father brought this time:

New Camera Test: Nikon D3200

This happy fan of photography finally saved enough money to buy a new friend! I've never used a DSLR camera before, so it's quite a change for me. (My old camera is a simple point-and-shoot buddy.) The other day I, my husband and our dear Nikon D3200 went for a walk to test the camera in the wild. Note: we didn't know the settings very well yet, so these are probably far from the best shots that could have been done with the camera on that day. ^^ Anyway, let's see what we captured!

Click to enlarge!

Bunnies ／(^ x ^)＼

Back in April 2014 we went to the Helsinki zoo...

And met these cute little bunnies!

Penny and Snow

In winter, I promised Penny, my plush penguin, that I'd take her for a walk, and we'd make a snowman together. But... I kept sleeping late, and weather wasn't perfect, and I'm a master of excuses, so... The snowman didn't happen.

However, snow returned in March.

She had to drag me out of bed.

April reading: South Africa, birds and Japan

My April reading is introduced to you by The Bookend Horses. I read a few South African books because a certain person made me curious about that land. And reading the world is fun!

There will be LOTS of photos in this post. :)

• Suzanne van Rooyen “Obscura Burning” [South Africa] 
• Niki Daly “The Herd Boy” [South Africa] 
• Vuoden lintukuvat [Finland] 
• Deon Meyer “Devil's Peak” [South Africa] 
• Lauren Beukes “Zoo City” [South Africa]
• Aya Kanno “Otomen” ( オトメン / 乙男) vol. 1-5 [Japan] 

Obscura Burning

Wearing pride in my hair

Soooo... I bought hair extensions for the first time in my life!

The colours are from the genderqueer and non-binary pride flag.

Toys playing Wii U

Keiju likes to play Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.

Maybe she likes mushrooms?

(Surely not the money...)

Fanart: Delenn from Babylon 5

Tough, beautiful, wise, kind, ruthless. Ambassador Delenn from Babylon 5.