Fun

Taking my picture of the day I stumbled across this site shortly afterwards

53 words

Touch Typing

A fun challenge!

In the pink

Mark suggested we get ourselves out today and spend a morning pottering about Cribbs Causeway, our local shopping centre. I had a couple of things to return to M & S and I agreed, a browse around now the sales are over might give us the diversion we need.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror as we were about to leave and noticed the grey sweater, the grey trousers and grey check jacket...so quickly grabbed my fuchsia pink scarf and tied it hastily around my neck. (I'm not sure it's quite that shade of fuchsia btw).

In the last couple of weeks, my knitting mojo has disappeared. Hardly surprising really, though also due to the fact that the current project is a pair of black "Dashing" mitts for Edward. These are awful to work on in anything but the brightest of daylight, and that's been in pretty short supply of late. I'd bought (not quite enough) yarn in Paris to knit "My So-called Scarf" and mooched over to the yarn dept in John Lewis to see if there could be anything suitable. Not only was there something which caught my eye, but when I took it over to pay for it, I felt there must have been some mistake. This was Debbie Bliss yarn, when all is said and done. Four balls for £7.80? Sure enough, it had been reduced in the sale. What a bargain!

It's pink.

I completed the morning by making one more pink purchase. The morning might have started out grey but turned out rosy in the end!

Whilst in the garden to take a photo for my 365 blog, I spotted my favourite feature of the large phormiums - nature's own pleating. One plant in particular seems to do this from time to time and I'm fascinated by how regular the pleats are and how they switch from side to side.

Further to my last post

How ironic that immediately after my last post about the photo a day, life dealt a blow which means that we are in Hull. Whilst not totally unexpected, it's taking time and clearly my priorities lie elsewhere.

I have taken a photo each day, as much for my own record of the year as any other and will post in due course. In the meantime, your kind thoughts and prayers for my dear, dying Mummy would be greatly appreciated. Up to date news is on our family blog, link on this page somewhere.

Photo a Day

I referred a few days ago to my new "Elegant Suficiency 365" blog, strangely titled bearing in mind this is a leap year - but never mind, eh?

So far, I've found no problem at all taking and uploading a photo each day and thought how the project is encouraging me to look at things differently. I drove to Abingdon today, to a meeting at Denman College, along a road I drive farily frequently. Twice in the first part of the journey I spotted things which almost had me screech to a halt to turn around and take a photo, though fortunately good road sense prevented me doing anything of the kind and by the time I made the homeward journey, it was dark.

That's not to say these things would have passed by unnoticed, but somehow I appreciated them all the more than before. I would have loved to have a record of the half dozen or so polystyrene sheets, caught at odd angles in the bare trees having been blown off building site or truck - clean white rectangles in all of that dark twiggyness. And it was such a pity that I couldn't capture the surprisingly bright red of the cleanly cut branches of hedgerow hawthorn, recently laid in the traditional hedging style and so sharply contrasted in the wet, muddy grass of the verge.

I did, however, stop by the roadside between Lechlade and Buscot to take a photograph of the fast running water of the Thames - which of course is difficult to capture in a still photo. So, I uploaded trollies outside Millets Farm Shop instead - the others will stay in my mind and your imagination I'm afraid.

The photo a day is made all the more interesting because I'm juggling cameras. I have the old, familiar Sony Cybershot which has never failed me on several long trips, the bright new Sony Cybershot I had for Christmas which has the fancy touchscreen controls, 8.1 megapixels and a 5x optical zoom and the shiny new Sony Cybershot in the photograph above, which I'm using for work right now (hence the labels I daren't take off!) Love them all!

An appropriate city to visit today

Well, if we'd jumped in here, we couldn't have been wetter and at least we'd have been warm!

Yes, today we decided to visit the city of Bath, to do a little shopping, have a wander around and go somewhere nice for lunch. As you will gather, it rained.

And rained.

And then rained some more.

And when it had finished raining it snowed.

But more about that later.

It never really got light all day. I looked through this fuchsia pink window around 10.30am - yes, the street lights were still on.

At least there were no pesky tourists to get underfoot. In fact, there were very few people about at all. Sensible folks stayed home today. By lunchtime, we were soaked to the skin even though we were wearing wet weather gear, strong shoes and had darted in and out of shops all morning.

Even the Pump Rooms were practically deserted at lunchtime, though the musicians played on.

and the water continued to flow, inside and out.

Whenever I'm there I like to go and look at the panel of English Kings and Queens, embroidered by Audrey Walker in 1973 because it was one of the pieces which inspired me when I very first began to stitch creatively. Sad to say, one or two rust spots are beginning to appear, but the colours and the overall design never fail to win me over.

We braved the wind and rain and headed back to the car and drove home through sleet. Once back home, the sleet turned to snow and within an hour, the garden was covered in a thin white blanket.

I came to upload photographs and read email around 6pm, but shortly after I did, the lights went out and we were without power for two and a half hours - a major overhead power cable had failed in the area and all the surrounding villages were affected. As usual in a local crisis, we turned on the BBC local radio to hear that once more, Gloucestershire is hit by floods, though thankfully, not so badly as in July. Several roads are closed due to snow or lying water and we are thankful that we are at home and do not have to venture far tomorrow.

41degrees in Australia, so Sue tells me. Hmmm.....right now, that sounds pretty nice.