March Favourites

March was a month with not a lot of creativity due to work  being very busy - but I really liked a lot of what I did make. So here they are. Lorraine, you gave me the forsythia die. It's one that really needs to be hand-delivered or go in a parcel, but I always enjoy pulling it out and using it.

And with C working from home, I made jam doughnuts for morning coffee on one of my days off last week, since I had just put fresh oil in the deep fat fryer.  I am ashamed to say we ate six of them with our coffee. I was tempted to try them with marmalade, having just made the nicest marmalade I've produced in several years the day before, but I stuck with raspberry jam.

Along the canal

We took a walk this morning down to the chemist to stock up on basics, and came back along the canal. It was much more sheltered walking back, but unfortunately just as I was trying to take photos of the buds in trees the wind picked up even there, and they are blurred. No such problems with one of the houseboats tied up along the bank. It was the painted bit on the roof that caught my eye - I thought maybe it was a chimney and even as we walked I wondered how the decorative paint could withstand the heat; looking at the photo I see it's not a chimney at all. Recently when I was in the off-licence I got chatting to the guy serving me - he was telling me that he and his partner lived in a houseboat moored at the next lock upstream from our one. Like me, he was a reader, but with very limited space he had transferred a large part of his library to Kindle.

I really enjoyed the felted penguins I made at Christmas (thanks, Di), so when ALDI had some kits on offer a couple of months ago, C and I drove over to the nearest store and I bought most of them.  I think I passed on the flamingos, the legs were very peculiar looking. The kits are harder than the penguins in that there's no polystyrene form to base them round, they're entirely felt. And the instructions are minimalist, to say the least. I had started the koala at the time, and got no further than the body. It's been on my bedside table ever since, and I decided it was time to finish it off before I lost not only the instructions but anything else.  I'm quite pleased with him, though I think he could do with claws. 

He's sitting on one of a pair of socks I'm currently knitting. I've just finished a tunic which I also need to take a photo of - but I think I might have to model it to show it off properly as the photo I took flat on the ground doesn't look great...

Adding a card I finished off last night, using one of the images I stamped with milk for the technique challenge on SCS. It took a bit of experimenting, in the end I had the iron turned up as high as I could, and ironed it for longer than I thought I should. It was fascinating watching the images develop from being invisible. It brought back memories of standing in the darkroom beside my dad, watching him develop and print photos. Let's dream of a better tomorrow while we go through this time. 

A Miscellany

Inspired by Lorraine, I finally tried a paint pour.  I'd had the shot glasses on my desk since before Christmas, but never made the time to go any further. When I unexpectedly had Monday off work, it seemed like a good time to try - although I hadn't registered her inclusion of popsicle sticks in the list of helpful items. I took a quick outing on Sunday morning to buy some.  I'd bought some Deco Art pouring medium on the Saturday earlier in March when I visited my sister.

Since I did this downstairs, I just picked three colours of paint plus white to bring down,  and restricted myself to those. The first attempt was on a small (ACT size, pretty much) canvas - the one on the left-  and the paint was definitely too thick, So I thinned it down and tried again, using another canvas and some Grafix white craft plastic, since a magazine article I had read called for using Yupo. These pieces (6" square) took about twice as long to dry as the canvases. Now I need to figure out how to use them...

 On Thursday when I left for work I took my camera, and as the buses are positively flying in town these days, barely stopping at all, I had time to walk down the river to Heuston railway station where I snapped this cormorant in full breeding plumage, sitting on the wall opposite the station.

The following morning I didn't bring my camera as I knew I would be doing some shopping on the way home. It was so still, so I snapped this reflection in the river as I walked down. I saw a cormorant flying along - from the white markings, it could well have been the male in the above photograph. And I stopped to enjoy the froth of cherry blossom running along the tram platform and thought that even with all that is going on right now, it was good to be alive.

Spring Signs

Just as well we have never been much into celebrating St. Patrick's Day - it looks as if everything is off everywhere due to the corona virus.

This cancellation was for a different reason, though...the Liffey cruise.

For my St. Patrick's Day photo this year, I have the Civic Offices on Wood Quay, with the green, white and orange flags which are up all along the river.  Towards the centre you can see the sculpture outside it, which reperesents the prow of a Viking ship. When I was still in school, they were just starting work on the civic offices, and had discovered an important Viking site. Work was delayed, and I was one of the many who went in on a school trip to be shown around the dig. 

Some Spring colour - and texture. I always love the unexpected surprise of cowslips in an urban setting.  Further along the road the daffodils were interspersed with tulips, crocuses and a little blue flower which looks like an anemone, but I'm not sure what it's called. 

Stay safe, everyone. 

February Favourites

February was not just a short month, it was a busy and not very productive one - so I didn't find very many favourite cards. I did enjoying playing with alcohol inks on the Ranger brushed silver card, though...and the centre stage tutorial on Splitcoast was perfect for Mr. Toad.

This month's header photo is from Farmleigh, last March. Not sure what I will have from February for next year. I took my camera when we went for a walk along the canal this morning, but it was so muddy that it required pretty full attention on the path for much of the walk. Still, it was lovely to be out with a blue sky and sunshine before Storm Jorge blew in. 

January Favourites

A slow month, it felt like, but I was able to pick a few favourite cards. I really enjoyed making the kitchen bench card for my sister, to accompany her birthday gift of a recipe book. I included a note about tucking the flap through the slot - not taking anything for granted since C missed out on carefully letter flaps and slots A & B the year he took his unopened birthday card to Portugal. She laughed and said that when she saw the gingerbread men hanging on the wall, she knew that they must end up on a counter...
The little rat might be my favourite of them all. The stamp is from Katzelkraft and I love the different expressions they all have - but it's hard to know who to give a card with a rat on it to! So I asked C to give me the stamps for my birthday - that way, they don't need to earn their keep, I can just enjoy them.

In my November favourites I shared a card inspired by the window display in a florist near work. Here are two of their more recent windows. The P& T on the letter box is the old Irish script, coming from The Department of Posts & Telegraphs - the original government communications department, prior to becoming "An Post" in 1984, at which stage the "telegraph" part became Telecom Eireann. 

This gown, unlike the pine bough one, doesn't inspire me to make a card, but the combination of the soft feathery wings and very crisp metallic tissue-like fabrics was nice.

The blog header this month is a photograph of reflections in the Liffey, taken on the way to work one morning last February.

Around Town

I walked into town after work last Friday to leave my flute in a for a service - and since the shop is closed for lunch, it was a slow walk. Luckily it was a lovely day, and I got to see the more cultural end of Temple Bar, which isn't normally somewhere I pass through...

The first one isn't actually part of that walk at all, it's the Christmas window display in the local bakery near work.

Then we have some utility box art celebrating Handel's Messiah, just outside Christchurch. Love the hat the fiddle player is wearing!

The back entrance to Dollard & Co , this is the staircase...

Window boxes in the Clarence Hotel

I've often walked past Christchurch and have never gone into the grounds to see what this is - it's a memorial to the Armenian Genocide.

And this last one, I couldn't find any information about. It's beside the back entrance to the Smock Alley Theatre, and is obviously an interpretation of the stars and constellations, but I'm not sure what the boat represents.

December Favourites...

Happy New Year!

This month's header is from the knitted wreath which I finished just in time to hang for the holidays in 2018. I can see that, thanks to my sore shoulder, I'm going to be short of real photos for headers this year.

I can't believe that I, a knitter, stamped the needles the wrong way in this sheep's hands - I ascribe it to tiredness. But I liked the meadow background.

This next one is a canvas, about 9 inches by 6. I added a hanging loop before gifting it, but I like it and will probably make it again for myself.

The butterfly is vellum. I love adding Stickles - it cockles the vellum and adds both shape and strength.

A new illustrator for Purple Onion Stamps, I couldn't resist a couple of these little animals from Julian Charlton. They reminded me a lot of the black and white illustrations in the Moomin books - a childhood favourite which I am slowly collecting again in the special editions.

We were expecting a friend of C's for the day on Boxing Day - but like so many, he was sick and unable to travel. I scaled down the dinner menu - ditching the starter which was going to be a green bean salad from The French Laundry, and substituting Thai rice for the dauphine potatoes (which I had really been looking forward to), but having already taken the duck out of the freezer I was committed to it. And having spare real, homemade, custard in the fridge from an ice-cream making session, I was also semi-committed to the Chocolate Fondant desserts - I can't remember the last time I made those. I halved the recipe, to make four, and we had them oven-fresh two days in a row - as you can keep them in the fridge quite well for a day before cooking. 

The duck  with Asian-style plums recipe was a new one from Diana Henry's From the Oven to the Table. So far everything I've tried from it has been a success, though C says he thinks the sausages baked with apples, blackberry (and maple syrup if I remember correctly) would be nicer with couscous than the suggested potato.