Paris in brief

 A few Paris photos. There is a full album available here.

Unfortunately I came down with a cold the day after we arrived, so I was not feeling the best. And the weather is probably the worst we have ever experienced in April. Friday afternoon was beautifully warm and sunny, we enjoyed sitting by the pond in the centre of the Luxembourg Gardens. Saturday morning was so wet in the Jardin des Plantes that I never took my camera out - and we realised that even for a short visit, two pairs of jeans would have been a good idea!

Mostly we walked and wandered, so here I'm just going to post no more than a dozen of my favourite photos. 

It was raining on Sunday morning when we went up to the Arc de Triomphe. (In the album, you will see a couple of architectural models from when it was first proposed. There is a model of the first suggestion, and then a reproduction of the final version which is much less fussy. We spent the last afternoon, after we had checked out, visiting an exhibition on the restoration of Notre-Dame in the architecture and heritage museum (https://www.citedelarchitecture.fr/en). There were some really interesting videos interviewing some of the different craftspeople involved in the restoration. 

Montmartre

The rooster from the cathedral spire

Near le Gare du Nord

the city, seen from Montmartre

façade of the Dior building on the Champs Elysees
 

I loved this octopus on the oceanographic institute, but it was hard to get a good photo

along the Seine

Notre-Dame

April Favourites

 I should be along in a few days with photos from our trip to Paris.

In the meantime, here are my favourite cards from April, along with a wistaria header photo taken in Farmleigh last May.

Farmleigh - photo heavy

 After a dearth of photos all year, I finally have some. We were awake fairly early on Saturday, and while the weather wasn't as beautiful as Friday, it was still quite sunny and we decided to head to Farmleigh. The biggest treat was seeing some little grebes - we couldn't work out if there were two or three because they swim underwater for such distances. Hard to get a good photo because of their smallness and speed, but I did manage a couple. There were plenty of tufted ducks and coots, a couple of moorhens and of course mallards. The photo of the mallard was a fun one, because the water was so still and clear that we could see his feet paddling away as he moved along.

Apart from that, the photos are Spring flowers, a ladybird C spotted on a dead leaf on an echium, and my new jumper, hot off the needles. I used a voucher from my brother to buy a new book of Aran patterns, and a gift cert from work to (mostly) buy the wool, which is merino with 5% silk and 5% cashmere, and has a lovely feel. It's not actually Aran (worsted/sport) weight, it's double knitting so it's not as heavy and I'll probably get more use out of it. 

Cowslip

The early thrush catching the worms - and maybe a caterpillar

March Favourites

 March was a good month for cards! Yes, this is my favourites, and not everything I made. The thank you card has a February watermark because that's when I created it, but it wasn't shared online till into March. 

This month's blog header is a photo from our visit to Kilmacrurragh Gardens in Co. Wicklow last April. 

Greening up

 On warm sunny days (rare), you can smell Spring in the air, but most of the deciduous trees in the park are still resolutely bare. So this one, a horse chestnut I think, has been standing out for the last couple of weeks. When Wednesday morning was bright and sunny and for once this month I didn't need to leave the house kitted out in rain gear, I left home a few minutes early and stopped to take a couple of photos while it's still ahead of all the rest. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 I didn't get even one St. Patrick's Day card made and mailed this year, a couple of e-cards is as good as it got. But this is close enough...

We've had very mixed weather so far - a couple of days when it was mild enough to wear fingerless gloves, a couple of dustings of snow and sleet, and a lot of wind and rain.  I spotted this tree on the way home from work on Tuesday, and I think it must have fallen in the course of the morning, be ause I'm fairly sure I'd have noticed it in the way in - I'm usually looking over at that side because that's where the deer are.