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. 

October Favourites

 The first two were made for a challenge to use ephemera. The iris folded one took me back to my early card-making days. 

It's been a busy month, I haven't had time to do anything about sharing photos from my trip to Cork in September yet, and here we are looking at November. I'm hoping for a bit more free time from now on, though. 

My header is the only photo I have on my phone from last November, as I haven't had time to get up to the computer all week to see if I had anything else to choose from. It's the  Parkgate Street entrance gates to Phoenix Park on the day of Storm Debi.

 

September favourites

 ...are extremely thin on the ground, two attempts at image transfer using inkjet printed images and Applicraft transfer glaze, and one shabby chic. Work has been busy.  Weekends have been busy. When I get time next week I hope to upload photos from my last visit to my sister, two weekends ago. It was the tail end on an Indian summer week, we spent Friday afternoon doing gardening stuff that required two people, and then went for an outing on Saturday. 

Photos from last September are also in short supply - I think I was still spending all my days off out at my aunt's house. Sadly the initial sale fell through recently so we're back to scratch on that one. I'm hoping it will be sold by Christmas! So for my header I'm using a photo of the Japanese anemone my sister gave me. We had pink ones in the garden growing up, but the ones I already had myself are white. 

I also have a couple of photos from a very misty morning a couple of weeks ago. I was hoping for a bit more sunshine by the time I was going through the park, but it was still very dense. In fact I kept having to stop to wipe my glasses dry enough to see, and I'm glad it wasn't the day C was driving to the Ploughing Championships, it would have been awful driving in those conditions. Having taken time to bring my camera with me, I thought I should at least try a couple of shots. 

Donegal in sunshine

 We took a couple of nights away earlier this month. C had been up in Donegal for work back in February, and came back full of enthusiasm for the scenery. His dad was  from Donegal but a different part to where we went. I had a couple of childhood holidays there, but I suspect that it was only a couple because the cottage belonging to my aunt was a bit too small for a family plus dogs and usually at least one cat. All our later holidays were in rented houses in West Cork for a couple of years and then in Connemara for as long as I went on family holidays, initially in a house right beside the sea, then in one on a little almost island in a lake.

Anyway, the place we went this time was near where C had been for work, and also very near where I went to Irish Summer College when I was about 14 or 15 - it's an Irish speaking area. We were blessed with the most amazing weather and I was regretting having forgotten to pack my swimsuit as I would definitely have got in, and I also wished I had sandals for the half day we spent walking around Glenveagh National Park. We walked from the carpark to the castle, around the castle gardens, up to the viewpoint above it, then took the electric shuttle bus back to the carpark and did the short nature trail, so we probably walked about 6 miles in all.

Apart from that we spent most of our time visiting two beaches - one just down the road from our guesthouse, and one a little further south which had a very picturesque ruined boat (Bád Eddie, Eddie's boat - the first time I said it C thought I was saying "bald Eddie" and had no idea what I was talking about). It's the ever diminishing remains of what was a small fishing boat just needing a couple of timbers replaced back in the seventies. We ended up there with a snack picnic supper at sunset on the first evening because the pizza place we wanted to go to was closed, and we went back again for sunset the following evening. 

On the way home, C had already decided that we would go home a different route and because that meant passing very near to my early childhood holiday location, I checked the tide tables and asked could we visit Muckross Head. We didn't have time to wait for low tide and therefore couldn't walk all the way round the base of the cliffs, but otherwise it was exactly as I remembered it, and was new to C as it was too far off the beaten track for him ever to have been there in the days when he was a delivery driver. 

Small selection of photos - if you have the stamina for a full 100, the album is HERE. 

Dunlewey

Port Arthur Beach

Gola Island, known to all Irish schoolchildren (at least of many generations) from the song "Báidín Fheilimí - the tune was "instant total recall", my sister said when I sent her a photo

Mount Errigal

Maherclogher Beach

Glenveagh National Park

back to Port Arthur beach

And back to Maherclogher beach

Muckross Head

rock pool

Dungloe - one of my mother-in-law's favourite Irish folk songs was Mary from Dungloe, and C often used to play and sing it for her. 

I make mention of the sunshine because one of the years we had a family holiday there my mother had forgotten to pack waterproofs. After three days confined in the cottage, she decided to bite the bullet and buy us new raingear in the local fishing village. I still remember those macs and sou'westers - red for me, blue for my brother and yellow for my sister. 

August Favourites

 are very thin on the ground - I made quite a few Christmas cards I was very happy with, but I don't tend to share those off-season. Apart from that, there are only these few that stand out as being favourites...

I just missed running over a caterpillar on the way home from work - and then went back to take a closer look at it. My sister and I both think it must be a white ermine moth. The patterning down its spine is quite beautiful.

The header photo is what I remember thinking was a very late moorhen chick. I had been saying that it was the first year I hadn't got to see any mallard (or other chicks) along the canal or in the park, and then we spotted this family down on the lily ponds. 

A Walk in the Park

 It was beautiful and sunny when I got up this morning to turn the griddle on for pancakes for breakfast. Not so much an hour later, but we still thought it would be good to get out and get some fresh air so we went for an amble in the park. Most trees are still green, certainly along the avenue I cycle along going to work, but there were a couple of young saplings that were really starting to show colour against a dense dark green background.

(A couple of photos are from earlier in the week. I had seen on Monday or Tuesday that they had cut the long grass in one of the meadow areas, and I was surprised the following morning to see that they had already baled it. I have a couple of photos on my phone - it goes without saying that when I brought my camera the next morning, it was much duller and more overcast and while the quality of the photos is better, they are not as atmospheric.

We were both struck by the reddish colour of the bark in this tree, and surprised that we hadn't noticed it before. I know we were walking in the opposite direction to normal around the pond, I don't know if that had anything to do with it. 

Juvenile tufted duck