September Favourites / Hot Off the Needles

 Still working on clearing out my aunt's house so creative time and energy is at a minimum, not many cards to share.  I did finally get to use two birthday gifts - thank you Lorraine and Margot. 

Looking at Ravelry  I started this sweater some time in July as a project to use a lot of assorted colours of Irish wool bought on offer. For a while I was able to bring it in to work but once the body got to a certain point it was too bulky. I had to knit in sections to make sure I didn't run out of any colours, so darvon the body, then the two sleeves to match ..

We went to the Botanic Gardens two weeks ago when we woke up on Saturday and it was sunny and mild. I wasn't feeling great and spent the rest of the weekend in bed, so I haven't edited any photos yet but will add a link to the album. I just uploaded the whole shooting gallery to Google photos so that we could look at them on the laptop in bed - normally we look on the big monitor upstairs:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/mj3hMi3VdZWuF3Uh8

The header this month is Warrenpoint up in Northern Ireland, one of the few photos I took last October when C was getting his dental implants.

August Favourites...

 Still thin on the ground as I'm out in my aunt's house on my day off each week. And no other photos,  and still no time to select some French ones. Soon, I hope...

The cat is cut from black velvet paper, so very tactile.

My header is one of the sculptures from the Sculpture in Context exhibition in the Botanic Gardens last year. 

July favourites

 I'll be along soon with photos from France, I promise. But when we got back, my aunt was in hospital and since then it's been a roller-coaster and merry-go-round of hospital, nursing home and then sadly a funeral. So there hasn't been much time for a lot else, and definitely not for uploading photos.

But I do have a few cards that I managed to make or had made ahead of time (C's birthday card: last year he got a saxophone for his birthday). Two pretty quick beach cards are included as a reminder that we did have a break by the sea in June. 

Could it be that I took no photos last August? I couldn't find any - so the sunflower is from the Botanic Gardens in August 2021.

June Favourites

 Thin on the ground, because we were in France for three weeks. But I had a couple made ahead for challenge samples...

France was good!

Although after torrential storms one day in each of our two locations, we need to set the tent up in the garden and re-waterproof it. No damage done...

I like this faux glass technique very much, and it's a brilliant way of using packaging from dies and suchlike, but as it's not very mailable I don't often use it. And normally I make flowers, the butterfly was a change...

The blog header - hmm, I couldn't appear to find any photos from last July, which surprised me. But I guess I could have been pretty busy in work and tired, because someone else was away. The angel's fishing rod photo is from Fota House in Cork, July 21 - a COVID era holiday when we camped in my brother's garden.  

Botanics, the floral side

 

C likes the traditional bright yellow eschscholzia. I quite liked these pale yellow ones, and it was odd that only a handful were dotted so copiously with small flies.

We were lucky to be at the right time to see the handkerchief tree in full bloom.

This was a tall palm-like "tree" in the temeperate zone glass house, with leaves something like banana tree and a bloom amazing like Bird of Paradise, only much larger and less colourful. 

May Favourites

 are very thin on the ground, it was a low-energy month. I'm including one with an April watermark because it wasn't uploaded to Splitcoast till May.

 

The June header is taken from our trip to the Bambouseraie in Anduze last June. I feel so bad that I haven't done anything with last year's holiday photos yet. There never seems to be enough time.

Botanic Birds and Beasts

 I'll split the Botanic Gardens into two posts as I have several mandarin duck photos...

As per the title, this one is (mostly) birds. 

A snatched shot of the squirrel. From the sound in the bushes we had thought it was a bird, but I think it was the squirrel taking a flying leap to grab a berry from the tree. 

I'll be back with May Favourites tomorrow, and then the flowers from the Botanic Gardens.

The full album can be found here. 

Along the coast

 I recently had to go for my annual medical check-up for work, and this time I made an afternoon appointment for after work. Knowing that I would have a little spare time I tucked my camera into my bag, and took a few photos on the way.

First up was the changed decor on this utility box - last year it displayed a Viking cycling along, a sheep looking through a porthole and the Pigeon Chimneys (as blogged here). This year it was totally different.

Shortly after that, you reach yacht club land, so I spotted this sign.

After that I reached Bull Island, a bird reserve and two golf links.  I cycled out to it along the second causeway, so between the two I spotted a couple of egrets and some shelduck.

As it was fairly overcast I didn't great photos on the reserve, but here are a couple. It was certainly lovely to feel sand beneath my feet and smell the tang of salt air. 

On the way back I spotted some more utility box art. I'm afraid the close-up didn't turn out well, and I can't remember if at that stage I was just using my phone because I needed to get home and get dinner cooked before going out again...I'm thinking it was just my phone at this stage. In any case, I also took a long shot to depict the setting, because just beyond the road is St. Anne's Park, and in fact there was a heron in the little pond/lake.

Since Saturday was a beautiful sunny morning with blue skies, and we were both awake early, we took a trip to the Botanic Gardens and I'll be along shortly with a recap of that. We were delighted to see a mandarin duck (they've been gone from the park for several years now) and a little grebe, plus a swan family with very young cygnets.