May Favourites

 Not many!

It was a busy month - a few extra days in work, and a friend staying so we went on a few outings. So I'm afraid I still haven't had time to do anything with photos from Paris. There's a culled but unedited album here - https://photos.app.goo.gl/4brZEY1At6UgA7yWA  

We had pretty much two full weeks of sunshine and bright sunny days - making it hard for our friend, who left Ireland 25 years ago, to remember what Irish weather can really be like, and also making it harder to spend time on photos - too warm and too bright. Normal weather has now resumed...

One of the things I did with Rod on a day that C was working was book a visit to Farmleigh House, something I'd always meant to get round to, and this was the perfect motivation. I must have picked something up when we were out shopping in the morning because when I went to get the bicycles out, mine had a totally flat tire. Luckily there was just time to replace the tube and still get there in time for the tour that we had booked. 

I'll add a couple of photos of the house, since there are plenty of the garden on the blog already.

The painted ceiling, if it's possible to click in and view it larger, has swallows flying around. It was painted when the Guinness of the time was confined to bed and unable to get out and about, so it brought the outdoors in. 

Example of book-binding

The blog header this month is a photo from last June, taken on the beach at St Georges de Didonne - one of the many sunsets we sat and watched. 

April Favourites

 April! Whatever happened to March? I'll have to look back. 

Not many from April. I hope to be along shortly with photos from our trip to Paris, but live has been a bit busy since we got back. I was also sick for a week, so not many cards that qualify as favourites

.

And just a couple of photos from Paris till I get time to edit them...

The header photo is hawthorn from the East Coast Nature Reserve last May. 

Cork catch-up

 I said that I had been down to Cork in February, and I shared a few photos in my February Favourites resumé. If I'd known we'd see so many birds I'd have packed either a tripod and longer lens or my bridge camera which has a longer zoom, but I was stuck with what I had. The full album is here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/MJj9cU2yvrvwXPsm6

The small castle is Blackrock Castle and Observatory, which my sister said we'll visit another time. 

Since I already shared the bird highlights in that earlier post, I will here include a few shots from my January visit, which was a walk in the same place but closer to the city along the river Lee. 

And having caught up with January and February, that means that I should be able to add a post from Farmleigh some time this week. We've had a couple of lovely sunny days where you could really feel the warmth of the sun - Thursday was one of those, so after doing the shopping I took my camera and headed out straight away seeing that Friday's forecast was not so good.  The first days of sunshine were so welcome - the amount of grey days with no sunshine at all was getting to be so long that it was making newspaper headlines. 

February Favourites

 Once again are thin on the ground...

We had such dismal weather - it was making the news headlines when some parts of the country had seen no sunshine for 10 days. So my sister and I decided that last weekend was probably a better bet than the previous one for me to go down to Cork. It probably was - Sunday was very wild, wet and windy but we had a lovely walk along the Lee in the afternoon on Saturday, and with the tide going out, got to see more than just seagulls. It was especially lovely to see two curlews - we heard them on one of our walks elsewhere last year but didn't see them. This time it was see but not here. I still haven't edited my photos from that walk yet, so I'll just add a few photos here and then (hopefully) have a link to an album next time I manage to make a post. 

Curlew, curlew with oystercatchers, turnstone, plover, and a painted drainage something or other - the little ladybird was painted over a protrusion in the pipework. If I'd known that we were likely to see so many birds I'd either have brought my Nikon or a longer lens for my Olympus, but with the weather forecast being what it was, I had no great expectations. 

This month's blog header is some snakeshead fritillaries in Farmleigh, taken last March. 

January favourites

are very slim pickings...I like the first one which was almost entirely scraps from various containers on my desk, apart from the crimped ATC base, crimping being what was called for.  And the third one was fun because while looking for something to create a background for the dolphin, I spotted the cover of a pad of watercolour paper.

I visited my sister for a weekend in the middle of the months. Days were still shorter then (loving the already noticeable lengthening in the days) and the weather wasn't very inspiring, but we did go for a walk along the Marina Walk by the Lee. They're doing a lot of flood relief works so not all of the paths were accessible, but it was somewhere I'd never been before and it was a pleasant outing. Small (15 photos) album is HERE. 

The blog header is from a February visit to my sister last year - again, pretty dismal weather. As I recall, at that stage my sister had put her camera away, it not being in any way weatherproof. 

December favourites

 Wishing everyone a peaceful new year, and as good health as possible. 

My header is taken from a day trip my sister and I took on her birthday last January, to Castlefreke strand. 

Cards include one I made for one of my aunt's good friends/carers/dog sitter, and the one I finally finished for C on Christmas Eve. The stitched toadstool was a purchase with money for making cards for my sister-in-law and her husband. It was way out of scale with the snowmen but I wanted to include it. came down with my third cough and cold in as many months the day after I finished work, so everything has been a bit of a drag. 

 The first one is by way of being a vintage depiction of a local attraction, so it represents the Phoenix Park with its gas lights and herd of deer. I just ordered, and am in the middle of reading, a book called "The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park", which is in part a general history of the park and more specifically the family which provided four generations of lamp lighters. The two elderly gentlemen I used to see are now retired from active service but I was told that they still help out in the workshop. 

Peaceful Christmas wishes

 ...to you all. 

It's looking like being a mild one here. I had been watching the weather carefully and decided it was just about perfect or me to leave sourdough loaves proving overnight on the patio on Saturday, to bake on Sunday meeting and bring one up my brother and his family. Temperatures fell below the forecast minimum, and to my horror they had not risen as much as they should have when I went out in the morning. I baked the smaller one for us first and thankfully it rose nicely in the oven, so all was not lost. 

November Favourites

 Not a lot of cardmaking till near the end of the month, when I had to fill an order for sympathy and Christmas cards for C's sister and her husband. But - we finally have new staff in work and from now on I should have a bit more free time. The last three cards are some of the designs I made for John. Printy the Snowman  was a one-off using a dictionary page with part of the definition of snow - afterwards I thought I should have scanned and saved the page. But then I thought - it's an old dictionary (it was my mother's, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary in two volumes, and it's been part of my life for as long as I can remember), and nothing could replicate the feel of old paper. And it's not as if I'm short on dictionary pages, it was just fun to use a relevant definition. The split circles is a nice technique because it automatically gives you two for the price of one. 

It was also hard to find a header from last December, which was pretty busy between work and visits to my sister. I had a couple of photos from work, several of my sister's kitty and the one I used which is a pedestrian bridge over the Liffey in the centre of Dublin, and which I must have taken one of the nights I got the bus back up after spending time down with my sister and her husband.  Oh - the other photos were of our huge array of begged, borrowed and bought jerry-cans after C filled our (diesel) car with petrol and we had to empty the entire tank. That, at the time, was doubly stressful because exceptionally we really needed a car over Christmas as we were spending it with my sister, but fortunately there were no ill effects. We still haven't finished using all the slightly contaminated petrol (gas) - C is happy to use it in the lawnmower but a bit reluctant to put it in his more thoroughbred motorbike, so there are still three or four jerrycans in the back yard.