Christmas Knit

 This was originally meant to be a September birthday gift - but the initial leaves and ivy took so long that I re-scheduled it as a Christmas gift instead rather than rush.Also, it took a while to find several different shades of green and brown. Actually, after those two initial leafy sessions, everything else went pretty quickly.

The pattern comes from Ravelry ~ Woodland Wreath, by Frankie Brown.
Since I took the photos with different cameras in wildly varying lighting conditions over two months as I added each new item, I'm afraid the colours vary a bit from photo to photo. C'est la vie. A couple were taken with the wrong colour balance - and typicially, when I had RAW disabled so I can't correct them.

The foam wreath I used was just under 14" diameter, 35 cm. Since I got two, I am planning to make another one of these for myself. I had it hanging on the wall for about a week before I wrapped it up and posted it off, which gave me time to make a few adjustments in positioning, and add a few more white dots to some of the toadstools. I missed it when it was gone!

Bare wreath

plain leaf garland

Oak leaves and acorns

Ivy garland

Holly leaves and berries

Mistletoe

Pine cones

Toadstools

Hedgehogs

Owls

Bluebells and flowers

January Favourites

I was sick all over Christmas and well into the New Year, and since I got back to work the mornings have either been dark or dismal, if not both - so the opportunities for photography are not jumping out at me!
I'd been planning to share a knitting project over Christmas, but several photos need editing, so it didn't happen over the holidays ~ no editing package on the laptop which is increasingly geriatric and best used for emergencies only.

But...here are my favourite cards from January.

Christmas on the Canal

We went for a walk on Christmas Day morning, to help give us an appetite for dinner after our Pavés à la Canelle for breakfast (Cinnamon Cobbles, I'll try to figure out the recipe well enough to post soon. It's transcribed a long, long time ago from a French magazine, probably Paris-Match, so the measurements are all over the place, some imperial, some metric... ).
 We brought some old stale bread and saw plenty of birds who enjoyed it - apart from the heron who flew off into a tree. It was a surprise to see a wood duck and a pair of mandarins - maybe they had come from the park.

Season's Greetings

On the way to work

Today was one of those mornings I went to the post office in the centre of town and walked back out to work...some quick snaps along the way.
I missed the first and best skein of geese due to not yet having my camera out.

On the way to work...

It turned into another dull, cold, grey damp day. But as I was going to work there was a lovely sunrise glow, so I took a few photos.
The one of the flying swans is nothing as a photo, but it's always a magical feeling to see them fly overhead and hear them honking away.

Just for fun, because I accidentally hit the "posterize" button when I was editing one if the brewery silhouette photos:

And after I left the supermarket, I was rather surprised to see this:

November Favourites

Quite a few favourites for November, as life circumstances settled down a little bit...

Fog

We've had a lot of fog recently.
The first two photos were taken with my phone on my day off last week, when I walked to the library and didn't bring my camera because it was so foggy I didn't think it would be worth it.

The second two were taken this morning on the way to work.

Count the birds

Not a great photo or anything like it - but I was fascinated (on one of the few dry mornings last week) to see so many different species of bird that could be captured in one photo. There were also crows and a magpie on the mudflats, but I could't fit them in too. Unusual to see the heron in so much company.
We have - the heron, swans, a pair of cormorants, some mallards, a moorhen (swimming) and merging into the background, a pigeon - along with the usual seagulls. Only black-headed gulls in this shot.

I should have said one of the drier mornings - there was enough of a shower to produce this rainbow. I was walking up the hill and could see someone standing in the tram tracks looking at something. I was trying to work out what she was looking at, and wondered it if was a bluetit  I could see flying across the road. Then I turned round and saw the rainbow.

By the time I left work it was pouring; part of the footpath was like a running stream, so I had to walk on the water-logged grass. Just as well I'd taken time that morning to re-waterproof my shoes.