Light

One of my favourite photographs from last year for 52 Photos Project week 6: Light in the Dark

            Even after all this time
            the sun never says to the earth, "You  owe me."
            Look what happens with a love like that,  
            It lights up the whole sky.

            ~Hafiz

Pink!

52 Photos Project week 5: Pink  and Ginny's Yarn Along

I took this photo in preparation for my first time joining in with the Yarn Along at Small Things and wouldn't you know, when I checked the 52 Photos Project for this week's prompt, it was 'pink'. That's what I call serendipity. I trust I can include yellow as well, they go so nicely together!

I am reading This I Know, by Susannah Conway. I pre-ordered it months ago, it arrived this week and I read it the same day. I am rereading now. I have taken online courses run by Susannah, and read her blog and this thoughtful and thought-provoking book has her voice running right through it. The subtitle of the book is 'notes on unravelling the heart' and it tells Susannah's own story of how the terrible experience of losing her partner led her to a new way of being, and a better understanding of herself. Her own gorgeous polaroid photos are scattered throughout the book, and there are occasional writing and photography exercises to try. It's a lovely book.

Don't you think the colours in my knitting are exactly the same shades as Battenberg cake? I think I will call it the Battenberg Teacosy. It is half completed. The yarn is taken across the back of your knitting and adds a layer of insulation, and it has been quite slow going, probably because you are changing colour ever few stitches. It's easy though, and I do like things I can knit in front of the television or while chatting. I knitted this whilst watching series 2 of Lark Rise to Candleford on DVD, sadly without any Battenberg cake. I think I might have to celebrate by eating some when it's completed. Or maybe today.

breathing space

52 Photos Project Week 4: Movement

We just got back home last night from a five day break in the countryside.....it was wonderfully refreshing, you know how I love the countryside. Somehow I find it so much easier to breathe there, and the literal space seems to give me space in my head. I took hundreds of photographs while we were away and when I saw this week's prompt, I wasn't sure which to choose on the theme of movement. I have pictures of water rushing over a dam, streams, a cheeky chaffinch on the wing mirror, sparrows and a robin who could scarcely keep still long enough to pinch the crumbs from our picnic table. I will share some of my other photos later, as for now I have settled on this one. Taken from the passenger window of our moving car, a red kite wheeling overhead against a glorious blue sky. 

Where we meet

One from the archives for 52 Photos Project Week 3

Sunshine and Patience

52 Photos Project Week 2: Let the Sunshine in

This is the clematis on my side fence, in a rare sunny moment this week. When I first moved here I planted various things along the fence. The pyracantha was soon doing well, with clusters of tiny flowers and later, masses of berries. The honeysuckle and red jasmine I planted all did quite well right away. This clematis grew and grew and grew, it covered the fence with a bushy mass of leaves, but every Spring I would wait in vain for flowers. It was three years before it bloomed, when I had given up hope that it was ever going to. It is so beautiful with hundreds of small, white, starry blooms that smell faintly of sherbet. I look forward to seeing them every year. 

Third Time Lucky

52 Photos Project, Week 1: Beginning

A year or two ago I had the embarrassing experience of sitting through two whole sessions of a crochet course - I was too mortified to go back for the third and final class - and being the only person there who couldn't seem to understand a thing. We were all complete beginners and one woman brought along to the second class a HAT she had crocheted! In the meantime, the teacher may as well have been speaking Martian to me, as I proceeded to get everything wrong, repeatedly and embarrassingly. No one else in the class seemed to have a problem, which made me feel even more stupid.  It wasn't my first bad experience with crochet either - my Auntie had tried to teach me years before, though to be fair I was very young and gave up quite easily. This time, I Tried Really, Really Hard, and still couldn't do it.


This year, I have seen so many lovely crochet patterns, in particular this gorgeous white blanket with starburst flower squares, which appears in Jane Brocket's lovely book, The Gentle Art of Knitting.  Today at my craft group, one of the ladies very patiently spent two hours teaching me and I think I am starting to get it. One day I'd love to be able to post a photograph of that blanket on the back of my sofa. For now, I am painstakingly practising with some scrap yarn. It's a start.