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. 

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. 

July Favourites

 Not very many - it's been a busy month in work and I had a couple of family events on.

I appear to have no photos from last August - again probably because I was still in the thick of dealing with my aunt's house and that was taking all my time and energy and days off.

The hummingbird is a ruby-topaz, from the book of kirigami paper birds I bought in France a few years ago. The head and breast are base layers covered with tiny punched circles - but it went faster than I thought it might. 

This is cold off the needles, and very unseasonable. I used up a lot of the leftovers from various socks to knit a scarf for C. It was something like 500 or 600 stitches on the needle, as it's knit sideways. Nice to get a lot of scraps used up, although I had a bright red that wasn't suitable to incorporate. You break the wool at the end of each row and leave enough to tie the fringe, so there was practically no darning in of loose ends - a big bonus. Currently finishing off a pair of socks and I've just started a winter cardigan. 

June Favourites

 I have more cards than I expected - I think because we only went on holidays for two weeks instead of our normal three.

It was also our laziest holiday in a LONG time, we stayed in one location just beside a beach. So most of my photos are sunsets, and they need some serious culling but I hope to get a few uploaded soon.

What I couldn't find was a single photo from last year to use as a blog header. I was starting to wonder if I had accidentally deleted a folder, but then I remembered that we came straight back from holidays to my aunt being in hospital, and July was a pretty hectic and exhausting month. Instead I used an older photo taken in Farmleigh.

Anniversary time...

 I didn't post this card last Friday, as I thought I'd keep it to mark today. It's the first time since COVID that we've been home on our anniversary. Last year we planned to have our celebration dinner in the campsite restaurant the day we arrived - but it turned out to be closed on Mondays during the off-peak season.  I bought a bottle of wine and three eggs in the shop when we checked in and discovered this, and we had an omelette after setting up camp.  So we then planned to have our celebration meal on the last night before we moved on - but they had decided not to open on Tuesday either that week. We'd been out all afternoon after taking the big tent down, and had a long drive in heavy rain on very windy roads  and didn't really feel like driving back into the nearby town to buy anything, so we made do with whatever was easy to find  - I think it was crisps (chips), fruit and some biscuits.  I was a bit annoyed because when I was paying for our stay, I asked did I need to book for the restaurant (we had needed to the previous year) and specifically mentioned that we wanted to eat there that evening as we would have packed everything up.  And nothing was mentioned. There was still a chalkboard outside saying "open Tuesday to Sunday" - although when we went down to try to eat, there was a very small sign in the reception window - and we weren't the only people who had missed seeing it.  At the time of writing this, I'm not sure that we'll be having a fancy meal this year either, as I have to work that day, and I'm also trying to run the fridge and perishables down before our holiday, but I did get this light-up card made for C.

May Favourites

 Despite working several extra days, May has been a better month than most recent ones. Perhaps with the brighter evenings I've felt more like making something in the evening after dinner.

The header photo is from the Bambouseraie in the Cevennes last June. I was finding it hard to choose between that photo and one of a frog on a lily leaf, so perhaps I'll add the frog one at the end here. Choosing the dragonfly was dictated by my last card, where the dragonfly was created with fantasy film. The lizard and the card underneath it were both attempts at stencil rubbing with crayons. 

April Favourites

 My bad - here we are the 4th of May already and I've only just realised that I didn't update my header (now a mandarin duck from the Botanic Gardens last April) or share my favourite cards from April.

I had a blitz at using up bits and pieces from my desk, so several of the cards are using up "fragments that remain". The first herringbone card uses all sorts of mixed media backgrounds, gel prints, stencilling etc. I can throw scraps of patterned paper out without a backward glance, but tend to save all the offcuts from my own backgrounds. So when it came to the second herringbone card (a rainbow without a bow), I did actually have to cut all the strips I needed. 

We took another trip to Farmleigh last Sunday, but it was a busy week and I haven't yet had time to do anything with the photos. Today, after a quick visit to my aunt's house, we went on the the bird reserve not too far from her. It was of course the wrong time of year to see much, but the sunshine and the sound of birdsong was so peaceful and relaxing. I'll try to get along with a few photos from there too.