A Glass Act

The current SCS photo challenge is glass. I have another photo I want to take - the last time I visited my aunt she gave me a little Coddington lens which had belonged to my grandmother; apparently gardeners used to use them to inspect their plants for little bugs. But the weather this week hasn't been cooperative - we've gone from sunshine to windy, colder days with more grey sky. Great drying weather for clothes, not so great when you want consistent bright light.
These are the photos I did use.

Antique Venetian glass beads - with a little historical interest as they were given to my grandmother by Lady Gregory. My aunt gave me these about twenty-five years ago, and although I don't wear a lot of chunky jewellery, I wear these a lot. The little perfume bottle has been around forever, I have no idea of its origin.

Modern Venetian glass - the little sweets, each one with the artist's name engraved on it, and my sweet little flying pig all the way from NJ to celebrate National Pig Day, and the message that while pigs may not really fly, we can achieve some of our ambitions and dreams.

This glass bowl came from the widow of a teaching colleague of my dad's. She used to have two, a pale blue one and this one, but she'd given the blue one away before she moved into a nursing home, I think. When my mum and were clearing her room out after she died I got a few things, and this is one of them. But in several sessions of trying over a couple of years, I have still to get a good photo that show the detailed engraving in the actual fish and the markings of weeds and bubbles on the bowl, and doesn't have too many background reflections in the silver. This is the not-very-good best of many, many attempts.

Wooden it be Good

A couple of my photos from the wood photo challenge on SCS.

The little fruit dish and fruit come from Greece - Crete, I think, though at this stage I can't be sure. The little dish is about as tall as the first joint of my thumb. I've no recollection at all where the little chalice came from - it lives in one of my thimble racks.

Needles and Pins...

Instead of "wood" photos today,  now that I know my latest knitting arrived safely at its destination I can upload a couple of photos of that...
I haven't bought speciality wool for a long time - I  buy most of my wool mail-order from Scotland - and there was quite an array when I went into This is Knit to look for something really nice.
This is what I found:

 I was disappointed that there wasn't more of the light green in it - a lot showed on the ball of wool, but with space-died yarns you get what you get.

I also had fun with this - the design was from a book of Crewel techniques. My normal scissors fob design is just 2 1/2" square, so I had to reduce the parrot by over half and change some of the stitches to suit the smaller project. The silk was left over from a dragonfly embroidery I did for my sister, and guided me into choosing the blue in the bird instead of the green I was originally going to use.

Happy Birthday, Lorraine :D.

p.s. - the mandarins were still there this morning.

Shades of Grey

I've been a bit remiss in posting some of my photos for the Splitcoast photo challenges.
Last week was Shades of Grey, and of course it was a bright, sunny week. At one stage over the weekend C even broke out the suntan lotion - hard to believe, but true.

I had two grey trees -  holly and birch.

And a gravel path. I remember seeing the black retaining mesh before it was laid down, I had no idea what it was for.

And some silver/grey kegs - taken on one of the greyer days in the week.

I'll be back with some wood photos tomorrow, all being well. We're up and down to the North several times this week, which is great for my current knitting project - a baby shawl - but is making for a slightly hectic-feeling week.

Bathing Bird

These shots are also from Thursday morning. It never ceases to amaze me how birds, who spend so much of their time in the water, still bathe themselves!

After that, I just had to put a gull on a card I made on Friday.

Low Tide = Birds

The tide was exceptionally low in the river yesterday. I was able to get a good bird's eye view of this mallard and her mate on  a bank just below the bridge.

I was nearly at Frank Sherwin bridge, keeping an eye out for the heron (not there!) when I spotted a glimpse of colour across on the far side of the river. I've never seen a Mandarin Duck in the Liffey before. I do believe that once when I was little we saw them in Stephen's Green, and I hear they are there now - I'll have to take a trip southside and have a look. He was with a hen mandarin, but I couldn't get a good photo of her. I really need a longer zoom or a converter...

I was lucky enough to see, but not lucky enough to get a good photo, a swan flying up the river just level with my face.

Triumph of hope over adversity

I was putting some bottles out into the bin yesterday waiting for a trip to the recycling centre, and spotted some daffodils on the patio. These were bulbs that had been in a container last year, and when I emptied the soil out the bulbs got left sitting in a pot. Somewhere along the way they must have been knocked over, and despite the lack of soil (and lack of light too, as they were in a narrow passage between the back of the house and the raised grass area, they still managed to make a brave attempt at blooming.

Happy Spring

Today was somewhat nicer weather than yesterday, so I took a quick walk in Farmleigh, and enjoyed the surprising warmth!

The first violets I've seen

And some more blues in the mix

Even a few tulips

And a busy buzzing bumble bee

Recipe Time

We were going to finish up some leftover lamb curry for dinner last night. Plan A was to make some naan bread to go with it. Plan B was not to bother with the naan bread because I had a stinking headache, and by the time I'd got home from work and done all the housework I didn't feel like making bread. Plan C was to make the bread after all, because after I'd had a lie down I felt somewhat better, and I wanted to make it to use up some yoghurt that was in the fridge. The problem was that there turned out to be less curry than I had thought, so I needed a reasonable vegetable dish to do duty as half the meal - and there wasn't a lot in the fridge. No cauliflower, no green beans and no cabbage, which are my go-to veg for a main dish. There was a courgette, but I didn't feel like that. A quick look in one of my books turned up this recipe which was a success and will be going into my repertoire.

Green Pepper and Potato  (serves 4 as a side dish)
3 tblsp oil
pinch of asafoetida (optional - sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't want the lingering smell)
1/2 teaspoon each mustard and black onion seeds (kalonji)

9 oz potatoes cut into 1" cubes
9 oz green (bell) pepper cut into 1" pieces
1 tsp each ground coriander and ground roasted cumin seeds
1/2 tsp each salt, garam masala. turmeric and cayenne/chilli (I used less of the chilli, mine is a hot one)
1/4 tsp garam masala and 1 tblsp chopped fresh coriander/cilantro for garnish.

Heat the oil and fry the asafoetida, mustard and onion seeds till they start crackling. Add the potato pieces and fry till lightly browned, stirring often. Add the pepper and cook for one minute. Stir in the dry spices, reduce the heat to low and cook for a further ten minutes, or until the vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with the garnish and serve.


I recently turned up this photo which I had mislaid after taking several off a noticeboard. It's an old photo, but I thought I'd share it - it's always made me smile. I still don't know how he got into that pot!
Brambles was one of my parents cats, acquired from a friend of my brother's who was leaving the country. Before that he'd been a much loved and cosseted only cat who had always lived indoors. Moving to a house where there were already two other cats and a dog was a bit of a shock to his system, and for a while he didn't leave two upstairs rooms. Then he gradually started venturing out via my parents bedroom window, and he started mixing with the other animals. When they moved down to Kerry he became a fully-fledged country cat - and happy to be one, as you can see. He was a sweetie - big and good-natured.

Today was almost a day for basking just like Brambles - even now at 9.30 in the evening I still have one of the attic skylights open.

Birds and Flowers

It seemed pretty grey when I got up, but by the time we'd had breakfast there were bluer skies and the worst of my headache had worn off, so we went for a quick walk in Farmleigh.

A friendly, inquisitive robin perched on a gate in the walled garden.

C was focussed on another thrush pecking away in the dirt under a tree, but I spotted this one near it, hunkered down in the grass.

Also fossicking around under a tree was this blackbird. He seemed to be digging quite deep - a bit like that squirrel in the Botanic Gardens recently, his head was well down in the earth. All he seemed to come up with was a little seed!

Magnolias - little and large, white and pink...

A valiant last stand by a few crocuses...

We had bean and vegetable soup for lunch, and decided we didn't need a dinner. So I made jam doughnuts, using some organic unbleached flour I bought recently to try out.  You would want to be a fervent macrobiotic addict to have thought that the raw dough looked at all appetising (and in fact I nearly started again from scratch with bleached flour, only I couldn't bear the waste) but once they had puffed up and taken some colour from the frying, they were just as tasty as usual. However, I am not sure that the unbleached flour will be on my shopping list again. I think I was hoping for something more like an 81% flour we used to get years ago where you could still see the golden flecks of wheat-germ in it.