I love plants. I can’t go through the supermarkets without at least glancing at the pot plants, or go to visit my gran without plotting when and how I can take cuttings from the houseplant on her coffee table, so I can propagate them. Ironically my most recent snippets, from a Watermelon Peperomia I gave her for her birthday a couple of years ago, and one I have successfully propagated four plants from two leaf cuttings, has now a plant of mine that she’s coveting, since the mother plant is starting to look a little worse for wear.
That’s why I love propagation, you can share and re-share your favourite plants, grow an army of your favourites and keep ancient relics from your family tree alive. For example, the three yellow tree peonies I started growing, were seeds from my grans garden. I planted them more than over a decade ago, they took two years to sprout and this year, finally, they flowered.
Peonies can take between seven and eight years to be mature enough to flower, so for the past few years I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see whether they would be true to colour or not. Then these beautiful buttercup yellow flowers appeared and all that time waiting was worth it.
As are the hot pink flowers about to open on both my Christmas Cactuses, which are cuttings from one which belonged to my great gran, and is now a huge plant that lives in my grans house and every time my grandparents were away, I was charged with not killing. Only almost did once, but I blame a blistering hot summer and a south facing window.
This is my very long winded way of say that propagation is an amazing way to increase the number of plants you own, and acquire new ones from your existing plant babs, from friends and from family without having to go out and buy new plants. Though, it does open you up to looking for pretty pots and vessels in which to place your cutting while you’re waiting for them to root. So here for Day 3, one I covet, one I aspire too and one I’m almost there with…
Water propagation is my preferred method for growing cuttings, and the one I have the most success with. Mostly that’s because it is simple. All you need is a clear receptacle filled with room temperature water and pop it on your windowsill, changing it out once a week if you remember. If you’re lucky, you’ll see fine roots start to develop and once they’re a couple of inches long you can pot them up, and the worst case scenario is they die off.
But, while jam jars, glasses and vases are all excellent options, the lure of a pretty propagator is always a risk, especially - for me - when they look like little terrariums!
So, the objects I am currently coveting for propagating are these enclosed terrarium style hydro vases by [10¹²] TERRA, a Japanese design team comprising of Daisuke Tsumanuma and Kenichi Yamada, and these are designed specifically to show off the root system of plants. And as hydroponic growing becomes more popular, and I can understand why.
Simultaneously protecting the plant while exposing its delicate root system, making them look almost like displayed specimens, this type of growing system isn’t just good for propagating your cutting. With the right kind of plant, they can happily grow in water alone, dispensing with the need for soil, pot upgrades and the accompanying mess. It’s just a really modern and attractive way of growing plants in your home and for cuttings, can be filtered down from a beautiful vessel like this, to simply using a jam jar or vase.
Now for something I aspire to, and that is the beautiful, aesthetic and lush way interior designer, Hilton Carter, has decorated his apartment using hundreds of plants, cuttings and propagators.
Honestly, this is the stuff that plant lovers dreams are made of, and my knowledge of him stems from an interview and apartment walkthrough on YouTube and this wall of test tube propagators (known as Cradles, they are sold by Carter on his website in a variety of sizes and finishes) with its neon sign above, in a narrow hall.
I fell in love with this wall in particular, along with his apartments entire aesthetic I even went as far as buying his book, Wild at Home. It’s a beautiful way to create propagation station within a tight space, giving a permanent area for your cuttings, but also a way to really enjoy how beautiful the form, colour and shape of the leaves can be, even without the mother plant. Carter, who is also known as one of the OG plant influencers on social media, is showing how wonderful plants are as pieces of design within a home, but not only as someone who designs interiors for a living, but just as someone who truly loves plants and can’t live without them.
Plants in the home are wonderful and calming, they can improve your mood, they can improve the air quality of your space and I can’t imagine not having a home filled with them. But I aspire to create a wall like this one day, not only because it’s simple, yet stunning, but also because it’s achievable. Test tubes aren’t that expensive, and while Carter’s Cradles are beautiful, they’re also potentially DIY-able for those who don’t have the budget, so as long as you’re power-tool savvy, or know someone who is, you could easily bring something like this into your own design aesthetic without much difficult.
For that I found a tutorial by self taught carpenter, Jen Woodhouse, which gives a very similar aesthetic and I shall now be instantly adding to my future diy board on Pinterest.
Lastly, after something I covet and something I aspire to, I give you something I almost did. By that I mean that I did have the intention of creating a propagation system like this simple hanging vial and string set, even to the point where I have the tiny bottles. In fact these are what I do most of my propagating in these days, the small ones at least, there’s no way I could root an avocado in one of these teeny things, if I could I’d definitely be a witch.
As vessels for cuttings go, these are small, but really effective, and while I got them with the intention of stringing them together, I never did, I got ahead of myself and wanted to use them before I strung them together, and while I may string a few purely for the aesthetic, but it would ultimately be flawed for one reason, cleaning. By tying the vials together it would make them really hard to clean and do water changes, and since the only way I’ve managed to successful and thoroughly clean them is to soak them in Milton, a sterilising liquid used on baby bottles, which works like a dream when you can’t get a bottle brush to fit.
Thus, until I think of a work around, they will sit quite happily on a windowsill in amongst other pot plants and be the perfect size for little cuttings.
With the cold this winter, and everyone trying to keep the heating off as long as possible to save on bills, it’s not the best circumstances to start taking cuttings from your plants. But there’s just something really satisfying about growing a plant from a cutting, and water propagation is the simplest way you could get started without having to buy any vessels… even if it’s stupidly pretty and you can’t stop thinking about it.
A bit like how I can’t stop thinking about/am completely obsessed with the idea of emptying my antique type-case of all the nail polish and bric-à-brac it’s collected over the years, and filling it with polymer clay and paper miniature plants! Just because artist Hannah Lemon, posted the pictures of her beautiful handmade miniatures on display in one!
Social media can be brilliant, it can be beautiful, creative, funny and encouraging, but it can also suck.
At times of crisis, sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Instagram can be great ways of getting up to date news, information and opinions about what's going on in the world, but it is also filled with fighting, aggression and misinformation, 2020 certainly showed that. This even got to the point where they had to actively censor posts, marking them as misleading, or at least potentially so.
Even where former President Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Shopify, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Discord and even Pinterest.
Not a loss in my books.
But where social media can be a scary place, it can also uplifting, so that's what Day 11 will be, things I've found uplifting on social media over the last twelve months. I'll refrain from making ninety percent of them cats being cute... unless you want that?
Maybe next year.
Number one with a bullet is Barnaby Dixon's Dabchick, because in January the puppeteer's foul mouthed bird character instantly started making fun of the pandemic and trying to raise the spirits of Corona imbibers all over the world...
But Dabchick wasn't done yet, as we officially went into lockdown, he outed all of us for what we were really doing while we were working from home and socially distancing...
... not that everyone did obey the rules of quarantine, so of course he had to make things clear with a song...
So, now we're into national lockdown 2.0, listen to Dabchick and "stay inside you silly moo!"
I've posted about Barnaby Dixon and Dabchick before, and not only do I find the mechanics of his puppets fascinating, but Dixon's also incredibly funny, and at the start of the year these posts were a welcome distraction given by social media.
Now, would it surprise you that when I was a kid, I loved Polly Pocket?
Created in 1983 by Chris Wigg for his daughter Kate, Polly Pocket are tiny doll houses in makeup compacts which were produced by Mattel since 1989 and were the home for a tiny doll named Polly. I didn't even care about the doll, let's face it, she probably went missing five minutes after the toy was opened, but I loved the tiny world inside a shell, heart or star shaped case.
I'm a sucker for that aesthetic, so when someone I follow online mentioned the work of Brittnie Marcil (EverGreenQveen), I was sold instantly...
She even made a Polly Pocket style BMO, a character I love from Adventure Time!
These are gorgeous illustrations, and full of detail and little Easter eggs relating to the artists favourite TV shows, movies, games and things from their childhood, including an I Believe poster from The X Files (1993-2018), BMO from Adventure Time (2010-18), a Poké Ball and a No-Face mask (and soot sprites) from Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away (2001).
And if these pocket worlds weren't enough, I found a polymer clay sculpt by Adeena Grubb of the sets from Beetlejuice (1988)!
I mean! The compact is a freaking sandworm, the model village is there, so's the waiting room, attic and infamous prawn cocktail on the dining table... it's perfect. Grubb has also made The Simpsons house, the Addams Family Mansion and the Overlook Hotel from The Shining (1980).
Polly Pocket art, very cool and very much mood improving for myself. Do you think I can work out how to make Mushnik's Flower Shop from Little Shop of Horrors (1986)? I already have plans to try and make an Audrey II this year, maybe I need to try a Little Pocket of Horrors too.
In March 2020, with gigs and performances cancelled until further notice, Ms. Trixie Mattel (a.k.a. Brian Firkus) graced her fans with Full Coverage Fridays, where she would live stream a sing-a-long and weekly live chat on YouTube.
Trixie is a drag queen who I didn't love the first time she was on Drag Race, but she has grown and grown on me ever since, and over lockdown I started watching her live streams, seeing her play with makeup to create her iconic look and baking with an easy bake oven, it genuinely gave me joy and she's become one of my favourite queens from the show.
Drag in general brings me joy. I love drag, I love the creativity and art of it, and as they say on Dragula, "Drag is art and art is subjective", which is a statement I think not only applies to drag, but to any creative practice. So it's okay if it's not your cup of tea, or if Trixie's makeup isn't your favourite, you don't find her funny or you dislike her singing. But I like her, her makeup is iconic to Trixie, she plays a zither which is weird and cool, she's obsessed with Dolly Parton - who isn't - and she's incredibly positive, funny and happy, which is exactly what I needed this year.
Throughout lockdown Trixie was great fun to watch, and when her videos or IG posts arrive in any of my social media feeds, it's uplifting.
Plus can I just mention that in January 2021 we're being blessed with both Drag Race US and Drag Race UK posting new episodes at the same time... double Drag Race...
Going in some kind of chronical order, at entry four we're already in lockdown and officially in spring in the UK, which means it's time for some Instagram story posts that honestly made me happier than they should have.
They were comedian Joe Lycett's garden updates on his Instagram stories...
I don't know why someone getting sweary excited about gardening amused me so much, but it did.
True, I have a huge soft spot for Lycett, I really enjoy his stand-up, I sat trying to resize mask patterns watching his shows, I found his book is really funny, I love him as the host of the Great British Sewing Bee and I much prefer him to Hugo Boss...
... but him waxing lyrical about his veg and the slutty flowers in his garden was just really entertaining, and borderline familiar.
Lycett added basically a full year of him fucking about in his garden to his Instagram highlights if you want to read more, and hopefully - with more time in lockdown looming - he'll start again in 2021.
When Netflix released season two of The Umbrella Academy in July 2020, I had watched half of the first episode of season one. I'd started it at some point during the previous year and clearly wasn't in the mood for it.
However, to alleviate the mood during a lot of stressful evenings at the end of the summer, we started putting on the first few episodes while most the family had dinner, mostly for mum because she was intrigued by it. Needless to say, after the first couple of episodes, I took it upon myself to binge watch the entire first series... then, as the second series was already there, I just kept going.
The series based on The Umbrella Academy comics by Gerard Way, revolves around the Hargreeves, a dysfunctional family of made up of seven siblings, all born at the same date and time, to seven unexpecting mothers, all over the world. They're adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), who wishes to train them as superheroes because each possesses superpowers, but instead of naming his children, he numbers them.
Number One:Luther (Tom Hopper), Number Two: Diego (David Castañeda), Number Three:Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Number Four: Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Number Five: Five (Aidan Gallagher), Number Six: Ben (Justin H. Min) and Number Seven: Vanya (Elliot Page).
Each of the siblings have a different power, except for Vanya, who, while her brothers and sister are fighting crime, is raised to be exceptionally unexceptional, and eventually, in one way or another, all move away from the family business, move away from being a family, and they only come back together, to bury their father.
But things are never that clear cut.
I pretty quickly got sucked into the series and what do I do when I find a series I love, I look for like-minded individuals who create fan art.
The Umbrella Academy is a series I would definitely recommend, so if you've not watched it and are looking for something to while away the hours, I would suggest this.
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, is one of my favourite books, radio dramas and the miniseries staring David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale, created by Amazon Prime in 2019 is one of my favourite series probably ever. I can watch and re-watch it and know that it will reliably make me happy now matter how many times I watch it.
I may have watched it more that a couple of times over the past twelve months.
So again, I get drawn towards fanart and that was when Plantziraphale demanding choccy milk from Crowley appeared in my life.
Created by Masaomoshi, Plantziraphale is one of Crowley's more demanding plants, and is the most darling characters I think I've ever found.
It's a Sink Dragon by illustrator Rebecca Crane... it's stupid cute and reminds me of university where someone left a piece of coffee stained paper on coffee table and it looked like a dragon, so someone turned it into a dragon and we hung it up beside the obviously not well followed cleaning rota...
... which because I'm too lazy to drag out my external hard-drive and search through thousands of old college work and photos, I've just lifted straight off my own DeviantArtpage.
It's surely not stealing is it's your own photo?
Does however mean you're scuppered by your own watermark, but it's a coffee stain and a dragon having a bath in a sink, I think that's almost too appropriate.
As with the point of all these eleven social media posts, this appeared in my feed in September and made me smile because the dragon is so damn cute, 2020's wash all the things attitude and a memory of a silly sketch in university.
Mari Kondo can get lost, apparently stains and rubbish bring me joy!
Oh! And Allie Brosh, creator of Hyperbole & A Half and the infamous 'clean all the things' meme, returned after a six or seven year long absence with her second book! Yay! She's really funny and I greatly missed her blog posts, so I'm really glad she's back. So check her out too.
Illustration is obviously an artform that brings me a great deal of happiness. It can be joyful, moving, funny, perceptive and relatable, they can celebrate our favourite things and explain your feelings when you've not been able to find words.
And in 2020, when we're not allowed to go anywhere, characters in illustrations can go on adventures, and indeed set off on qwests.
Delicious Bradley, the mushroom, is a character created by illustrator Adam Ellis for the online magazine Tenderly, and features in a series of little adventures, often involving his friend Young Garlic.
This is - especially for Ellis - a really sweet and gentle webcomic series, and given the more acerbic wit in his usual illustrations, Delicious Bradley was a real departure. It's just sweet, it's the only word for it.
Another sweet adventurer that started to appear amongst the anti-mask, politically and racially insensitive posts of 2020 was part of from Matthew Wills' webcomic Swords, in the character of Quest Sprout:
First appearing back in May 2020, Quest Sprout became an instant it from readers, Reddit users and he even made his way into mainstream media, including BBC Newsbeat, being dubbed "the most wholesome thing on the internet", and I couldn't agree more, because all Sprout wants to do is 'Qwest!'
Endearing characters appearing in our social media streams was the balm a lot of us needed during a year where we were all having a bad time, and Delicious Bradley and Quest Sprout were just sweet and soft enough to help bring a little light to peoples day.
Did it seem to anyone else like there were a lot more houses decorating for Halloween this year? And it wasn't just for a couple of days, it seemed to be for a few weeks before, and at least one house on my grans street, had them out right up until the Christmas decorations went up.
This year, even though there wouldn't be any Trick or Treaters, or Halloween parties, people embraced it because it was something that would bring fun into the house and it was still too early to decorate for Christmas.
Obviously lots of people online decided to create costumes, as they always do, but someone won Halloween for me, and it's been a YouTube creator, cosplayer and home sewer who I have enjoyed watching all year and that's Rachel Maksy. And it's down to one set of costumes, Greg and Wart from the animated mini-series, Over the Garden Wall (2014).
She also made a dress inspired by Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)...
... and another so she could get dressed up as Enola Holmes (2020)...
... not to mentions she made Baby Yoda not once, but twice, makes her own period clothes (I love her aesthetic which is half vintage, half Hobbit), she can transform into a lot of different people really convincingly, is really personable and funny, and she also has a dog named Frodo, who insists on sitting on every pattern and piece of fabric Maksy puts on the ground.
Honestly, she's one of my favourite channels to watch and I've enjoyed watching her work on her sewing and craft projects all year.
Another Halloween themed social media post that my sister actually sent me was from plus size model Tabria Majors, who had a completely different approach to the holiday.
Instead of celebrating Halloween, Majors celebrated Beylloween, paying tribute to Beyoncé by creating a compilation of her songs and recreating the iconic dances and videos that accompanied them. No mean feat for someone who isn't a dancer...
Majors pushed herself to learn all the choreography and lyrics to lipsync, and it's flawless. She not only nails the dances, but the costuming is perfect, so is the hair and makeup, and she looks incredible.
Only thing that was missing. The song Hold Up from Lemonade with that yellow dress and the baseball bat. But maybe next year.
This is a weird one because I have nothing to show you.
Somewhere during the year YouTube recommended to me a video of two content creators doing an army assault course. I ignored it for a while, partly because of the name of the channel, but eventually I clicked on the video and figured I'd at least see why the social media site was recommending it to me. And the answer was because it was fun.
The channel was called Unus Annus, which is Latin for One Year, which was a declaration by its creators as to its intended lifespan.
The brainchild of Mark Fischbach, a.k.a. Markiplier (right)and Ethan Nestor, a.k.a. CrankGamePlay (left), the joint project launched on November 15th 2019 and would consist of a new video being uploaded every day for one year, after which the channel would be permanently deleted from YouTube, meaning a years worth of content, videos and affiliated social media would disappear.
The channel was partially a statement on Fischbach's opinion that not everything needs to be immortalised on the internet, and that there is joy in the fleeting and unique moments, because they are the ones that mean the most to us. This is also why 'memento mori', remember death, was a common term used on the channel, the content often assuming the form of a bucket list.
This would allow the duo to make videos about anything they wanted. They did each others makeup, tried helium therapy and sensory deprivation tanks, ate a Play-Doh Thanksgiving meal and attempted escape rooms together. They made cheese, butter and wine, tried to learn aerial acrobatics (in a week where Mark broke his nose twice), took the presidential fitness test, taught one another to swim, speak Korean and play trumpet, as well as going casket shopping and trying cryogenic therapy. Most often the content lent towards to the ridiculous, but also at the times they made slightly more serious and poignant posts about reaching the end of life. This of course was all planned prior to the pandemic, but the pair chose to continue though some plans would no longer be possible. Religiously however, they uploaded for 365 days.
Unus Annus amounted 4.58 million subscribers and 867 million views when the live stream ended on November 14th (2020 was a leap year) and the channel ceased to exist. And even though I can't share any of their content with you, their bucket list of videos became a strange part of my day in 2020.
The pair were funny and endearing, and yes the majority of their videos involved one torturing the other, or doing the ridiculous things people joke about but never do, but it was a few minutes of silly. It was uninhibited, because all they had to do was make one video a day for a year, a video about anything, no idea was too silly or too small, it was about the act of being creative daily, not about the posterity of the outcome.
This was a weird bit of social media that I enjoyed, and I actually do miss now the channels gone.
While Unus Annus wasn't permanent, lots of things on the internet are.
During a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, was asked an interesting question...
... yeah, you thought after mentioning kittens I wouldn't bring up kittens? Of course there were kittens coming, because the bring me joy and enflorphins (fluffy endorphins, as my sisters and I have dubbed them) distract us from negativity and bring positive feelings that help to make us happy.
Fluffy animals make you happy. Enough said, but I'm still going to share my favourite cat channel with you and hope that it brings you happiness too. (Sorry if you're a dog person.)
Kittisaurus is a South Korean YouTube channel which features ten glorious felines. There names are: TT, DD, CoCo, LaLa, ChuChu, NaNa, ToTo, DoDo and LuLu, and their lives with butler, Claire.
The reason I love this cat channel more than others is simple, and easily demonstrated...
They're just stupidly cute and LuLu is a glorious little monster.
Relying on our pets to bring us joy is something we all do. Some know when you're sad, others won't leave you alone, some nonchalantly ignore you because, while they allow you to live in their house, they don't have to make you feel welcome, no matter how many ear skritches you give them. Mine, Charlie, is needy, he likes to be with someone but would prefer you don't move, make noise, talk to or touch him too much... unless he requests it, and if you drum your hands on your thighs he'll come running, if give him a head nod or the Neo 'bring it' gesture...
... he'll jump up on the table. He'll even wait until invited by the gesture, give you cuddles, sit on whatever you're working on and then try to bite you when he's had enough.
I said they bring joy, not that they weren't catholes.
doomscrolling break:
this person trying to do an audition tape while their cat just wants attention pic.twitter.com/SC282aotCk
They're also adorable, and ridiculous and when they make those little squeaky sleepy meows and snuffles while they're taking up the entire bed, the enflorphin run high.
I'm sure there are tonnes of people who go onto social media purely for drama, or news, or social commentary, but I generally go to places such as Instagram and YouTube in the hope of feeling happy, amused, inspired and creative.
I also love that that's a lot of the stuff I've shared with my family during the pandemic. Yes, we've sent one another information and news etc, but more often than not it cats, illustrations and silliness. Because that's what we needed.
That's what I needed.
Happy New Year & Merry Christmas! The end it nigh! Day twelve tomorrow...
