Embroidery

Cindy's MMTPT challenge this week took us to Provence. I haven't been in Provence for 30 years, so I am very glad of a chance to revisit some of my memories. In fact, just last week I received in the post a large B&W photo of the house I stayed in - sadly it was a letter to say that the daughter of the family had died. I remember her as a sunny, happy young child. (It was evident that Irish postal workers don't understand that "Priez de ne pas plier" means Please do not bend, but luckily I retrieved it from the post box within a few minutes of it having been stuffed in.
I am planning to make a card with an iris on it for the challenge.
This iris embroidery is one I did about ten years ago, buying all the vast  and expensive amount of cotton it needed with a gift-voucher I received after making the bridesmaids' dresses for a friend's wedding.
Normally when I take an embroidery to be framed, the conversation runs along these lines.
Framer - do you want non-reflective glass in that?
Me - I don't want any glass at all.
Framer - but you need glass to protect it.
Me - I don't want glass, I don't like it with embroideries.
Framer - are you really sure you don't want glass?
Me - yes, I am really sure.
This is the only embroidery that does have glass in it, so it was hard to get a really good picture - along with the fact that it's a dull, cold grey day.

These close-ups are from a Tree of Life embroidery which I had framed as a fire-screen. Despite having no glass, and many years of getting up-close and personal attention from small toddlers and older kids, it's only just getting to the point where I feel I need to take it out of the frame and give it a wash.

 

 

Caught Peanut-Pawed

C was out for a motorbike run this morning, but it was so foggy that they called it a day after they'd had a short run to Blessington and stopped for breakfast.  So I went out to open the back gate shortly before I expected him back, and spotted the grey squirrel. I dashed upstairs to get my camera and he was still there when I got back. The first picture is taken through two windows, so it's a bit hazy. I managed to get the back door open without totally startling him, but after a minute sitting on the wall, then he made a dash for it. The other day C saw him running along under the fascia board on the shed, and was worried that he might have a little tunnel into the shed. But I think he just uses it as a safe, sheltered run to get to the back wall and into the trees again.

If it's just one squirrel, I don't mind a few nuts here and there, but if he keeps on stealing the fat-balls, I'll have to start investigating the more expensive so-called squirrel-proof feeders.

Bridge over Liffey Waters

After a week of wet, dark, grey mornings, today was bright and sunny - so I tucked my big camera into my bag before work, as I knew it would be fairly low tide when I was walking along the river. Not a duck, not a heron - not even a seagull! But I liked the colours on these supporting pillars from the different water levels.
If I have time over the weekend I'll try to find a photo of one of the bridges in Paris which has a sculpture carved on it, which is used as a gauge of high water levels...

Flying Visit

And I thought this week was going to be less busy than last! What gave me that impression, I wonder.
These photos do not bear much enlarging, but just for a change from birds on the feeders or the wall...Because of the grey overcast day I had to use a high ISO setting to be able to get any photos at all, and this is my full zoom as far as it will go, so they are a bit grainier than I would like.

Blue Tit

 

 Coal Tit

They are singing so loudly at the moment, it amazes me to stand in the back garden and listen to the volume and variety of sound coming from these tiny birds.
They are perched in  tall trees which grow between the end of our garden and the railway station - I can see the tips of them through my skylight.

After Double Trouble - Two's Company

I was sowing some sweet-pea seeds in pots this morning, camera handy:

 

  

It had been a lovely sunny morning, but by the time I walked down to get some meat and vegetables for the week, it was dark and overcast.

Very atmospheric for capturing this crow perched like a weathercock on  a steeple - or an angel on a Christmas tree!

 

 

Unfortunately not so good for trying to take a picture of some little long-tailed tits I spotted in another tree. They were making such a loud noise for such tiny birds - I was looking for something much bigger. I've only ever seen them once before, in my aunt's garden. But some years back I did an embroidery with long-tailed tits on it, so I have no difficulty recognising them.

We had this lovely warming carrot and cumin soup over the weekend. It's meant to be blended till smooth, but C prefers his soups to have some solid content, so I just pulsed it in the blender till it was only partially liquidised.
Carrot and Cumin Soup - serves 4

3 tblsp butter1 onion,
1 clove garlic
2 large or 3 medium carrots
2 sticks celery
1 medium potato
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tblsp tomato paste
3 bay leaves (I like my bay - you could just use 2)
2 tsp lemon juice
1 1/2 Imperial pints of water or stock - 3 3/4 US cups
1/2 Imperial pint skimmed milk 1 1/4 US cups (I use full fat, as it's all we have in the house)

salt and pepper.

Melt the butter, gently fry the chopped onion and crushed garlic for a couple of minutes.
Add the chopped carrots, celery and potato and fry gently for about 5  minutes.
Stir in the cumin and fry for a minute.
Add the tomato paste, water, bay leaves and lemon juice, and cook for at least half an hour to forty minutes till vegetables are tender.
Blend to suit the texture you like, add the milk, season to taste and heat just to boiling point.
It's meant to be garnished with chopped celery leaves, but the way celery is sold here, there aren't really any leaves worth talking about - so use parsley or chives, or whatever...
If you're going to blend it till smooth, then obviously you don't need to go to much trouble chopping the vegetables too finely in the first place.

Double Trouble

These are heading off in the post tomorrow - I was knitting away madly during any breaks in our training last week, so as to get them finished. It surprises me every time how much knitting there is in a hat, and with this beng a brioche rib, while extra stretchy and extra warm, is also extra slow!

The cards were made back in November for a Limited Supplies Challenge on SCS to make two cards using the same image and colours but different layouts. I knew they would be perfect for Esther and Victoria, who are 7 this week. And goodness I am glad I wasn't rushing to try get two cards made today.

Jack's Drinking Hole

I have a soft spot for jackdaws. We had a pet one, Socrates, for about fifteen years. He fell down the chimney in the school where my dad taught when he was just a chick, and by the time he was fledged, he was too used to people - and cats - to release into the wild. Some of the cats used to drape themselves over the top of his cage. His favourite food was mashed hardboiled egg. For a few weeks one summer we had a young seagull, Gulliver, who was brought to us by one of Dad's students, with a broken wing. He stayed in a large cage in the garden, living happily on a diet of tinned sardines, and never got all that tame, so releasing him back on the beach where he was found was no problem once his wing had healed up.
Today was such a bright, sunny (and frosty) day that when I walked down to get the paper and vegetables in the morning, I took my big camera, and spotted this jackdaw up in the tree. While I watched, he flew down to the bole of the tree, and started drinking away from some water which had gathered in a little hollow.
Then we went to the library - by a lovely coincidence someone who responded to my Freecycle offer of a bag of wool runs a toddler group there on Saturday mornings, and our books were due for returning by today at the latest.

 

 

 

Busy week

We had training in work this week - 8.30 for breakfast, 9 to 5 for two days. I took a lift in the mornings with C - it meant he dropped me off way too early; but the option was to leave the house before him and still only arrive at about quarter to nine, if the experiences of other people living along the same bus routes was anything to go by. The first morning I walked to fill in time. Yesterday there was more of a sunrise (usually I just see these from the bus, and by the time I get into town the glorious colours have faded), so I snapped this picture from the bridge at Heuston Station.

The photo challenge on Splitcoast this week was things beginning with P, which presented me with a plethora of possibilities.
Here's a sampler:

 Post Office on Earlsfort Terrace

Pedestrian Walkway
or Parallel Lines

Pots of Pink Paint

 

Pipes

Canal St Martin

I mentioned a few posts back that the reflections in the Liffey remind me of the Canal St Martin.
Well, this is a busy week, made busier by an unexpected visit to the dentist (a check-up was on my to-do list for February, I would have preferred NOT to have chipped a tooth over the weekend. However I was lucky enough to get a cancellation for 4 this afternoon - ideal for C to pick me up after work).
So I've picked out a few photos showing the canal in Paris. It's hard to believe that just the day before most of these photos were taken, it rained, and rained, and rained. We went to the Music Museum, which was a long ride out on the underground  - perfect for filling in a rainy day. The  museum is located at the Cité des Sciences, by the Bassin de la Villette, getting off the Metro at Stalingrad. The next day we joined the canal  at the point where Le Bassin de La Villette becomes the canal, and had a lovely walk down to the point where it disappears underground for a short while, near the Place de la République. It's the underground part that would put me off taking one of the tourist boat trips down it - it must surely be claustrophobic. These photos were taken in December 2007.

 

 

 

It comes out again at the Place de la Bastille, where it's just a few hundred metres down to the Seine. The photos of that stretch were taken on a later visit, when we accidentally came across the marina, and went back to it later on in the evening.

 

Just beyond this little footbridge is where the canal joins the Seine. It was starting to get a bit dark by this stage, and there was a security guard patrolling with a rather fierce looking Alsatian, but he told us it was fine to walk right down as far as the river. The walls up the side of the path along the river were still radiating warmth from the heat of the day. (More luck with the weather - this was March 2009, but so warm that sandals and a skirt would have been adequate a lot of the time.)

You can read a bit about the canal HERE. It's very different from the hustle and bustle of central Paris, and we'd certainly walk along it again. The canal features in the film Hotel du Nord, and also in Amélie.

Always Curious

The little robin is always the first to investigate when something new goes up.
This is the feeder I got during the snow, to hang the fatballs in. When I hung them directly from the tree, I'd see the little blue and coal tits pecking away - but then an hour later the whole ball would be gone. I was assuming that it was the pigeons or the magpies, extra hungry in the cold - but after we saw the squirrel, he's another candidate. I didn't look carefully enough in the pet shop, and there was a bar across the top which meant the only way of getting a fat ball in was to cut it up. So I've since got another more suitable feeder for the fatballs, and will use this one for peanuts. Yesterday was the first time I put the nuts in, and before I was back in the house, the robin was checking it out.

The other little robin is getting less timid - it will fly down to the patio for worms now, but won't stay and eat them on the ground - it flies straight back up to the wall to eat them.

We had this tomato and onion bake last night - it's been a while since I made it, but it always goes down well. I don't make a lot of bakes, but it's always nice having the preparation done and free time while it cooks.
Tomato and Onion Bake  serves 2
1 large onion, sliced thinly
1 red pepper, cut into thin strips.
3 medium tomatoes, skinned and sliced
breadcrumbs to cover
2 eggs
Melt a bit of butter in a frying pan and cook the pepper and onion over a low heat for at least ten minutes, till soft but not browned. Season to taste with salt, pepper and a pinch of cayenne.
Put into a greased ovenproof dish. Layer the tomatoes over this, seasoning again with salt and pepper. Sometimes I add a bit of fresh basil in with the tomatoes. Cover with breadcrumbs and dot with a bit more butter.
Bake in a medium hot oven - 175C, 350F for 30-40 minutes. Press the back of a large spoon into the top of the crumbs, to make shallow depressions. Crack the eggs in, season and return to the oven. Depending on the oven temperature and size of eggs, it should take 5 - 8 minutes till the whites are set.