Saturday 28 May 2011

May Photo Scavenger Hunt

                                                                    Feel free to join in ...

I found some of these quite difficult, but here are my offerings for May:




A butterfly



A bicycle
This is from an exhibition by Johnny White and is called 'Lifecycle of a mosquito'.  If you press the lever on the floor, the mosquito actually pedals the bike.




A red door



A cartoon character
A Smurf




An emergency vehicle
I took this photo last year, but I couldn't resist using it because this Police car looks so cute having to carry that great big sign on top!




Think vintage
This teddy belonged to my eldest brother so must be getting on for 60 years old and the patchwork is one I started about 30 years ago but haven't finished (yet).




Something blue



A street light



Texture
A bird's nest that had blown out of the trees




A sign of the Zodiac
A sign of Taurus the bull!




An interesting local building
I live in an area called the Isle of Axholme which in the early 17th Century was drained by Cornelius Vermuyden.  There are several buildings of Dutch influence and this house was built in 1689.




A portrait in black and white
Octavia




The monthly list of things to find and other people's interpretations can be found on Postcards from the P.P.

Monday 23 May 2011

And sew to bed



I had a bit of luck at the charity shops the other day and picked up two lovely double duvet covers to use for sewing.  As I lay in bed that night wondering how I could utilise the popper closures on them, I had a Eureka moment!   
It's probably been done before but I've never seen it anywhere, so I'm pretty pleased with my idea; which is to make a bag incorporating one of the poppers at the top.   
I know, it's ground breaking isn't it?


I've made one out of each duvet cover



The blue one is white on the other side because that's how the cover is


Notice the delicate green lining which matches the pattern on the fabric? 
My original idea was to do a white lining so I bought a white sheet at the car boot yesterday just for the job.  I also bought a pair of bright green barkcloth curtains......no prizes for guessing what happened.   Who'd have thought 50-odd year old fabric which must have been washed umpteen times, would run?  Well obviously I didn't!


It's nice fabric though and if I decide to make something with it that needs a lining, I've got just the thing!

Friday 20 May 2011

The birds and the bees



We've got quite a lot of chives in our garden and the bees love the flowers. This bee was such a little cute one






The Blue Tits nesting in the tractor must have hatched their eggs now as there's lots of toing and froing with juicy grubs and caterpillars. I tried to put a video on but Blogger wasn't having it, so here's a photo instead







This photo amused me as it looks like the bird has flown into the windscreen and smashed it, but it was actually just flying past the already broken glass!
And they say the camera never lies...

You will notice that my husband has adapted an empty drinks can to make an exhaust cover but I he's got a long way to go before he can compete with my offerings.


For years I've yearned for white irises in my garden but have never seen any in the garden centres, then last year someone offered some on Freecycle and I was lucky enough to get them! A couple of them have flowered but I'm hoping there will be a lot more next year. This is one of them





I've managed to get the video on now

Saturday 14 May 2011

The Versatile Blogger Award

I've received the Versatile Blogger Award from Penelope from L is for Love, thanks very much Penelope!


                                                              

I now need to reveal seven facts about myself and pass the award on to seven other bloggers.




Seven things you may (or may not) be interested to know about me:

 1.    I can't wink or close one eye at a time, so before I got a digital camera I had to cover one eye with my hand so that I could see through the viewfinder. 


2.     I never fry anything.  Not because I'm health conscious, I'm just lazy and don't want to have to clean grease off the hob.  The only exception to this is if the kids remember it's Pancake Day.


3.     My favourite colours are blue and purple.


4.     When I was about 10 I won a competition in the kid's section of the local paper for an animal Troll.  It was a giraffe to which I gave the very unimaginative name of Mr Giraffe!  I knitted him a green and white scarf to keep his long neck warm and looked around for a football team who played in those colours for him to support.  I've still got him but not the scarf and here he is pictured with a Celtic badge which I bought for him.


Looking at him now I don't know why I called him Mr Giraffe because he definitely looks like a girl.


5.     I have a very ticklish neck and laugh hysterically if anyone should touch it.


6.     I often question the truth about notices.  For instance if I see 'Wet Paint' I have to touch the paint just to check.  I have always had my doubts about the signs in some supermarket car parks that say trolley wheels will lock at the perimeter, so one day when I was at an Asda with my daughter which had a small car park with easy to reach perimeters I had to put it to the test.  
For anyone else who also has doubts about this, I can tell you that they really do lock!  So much so that we had to half drag and half carry the trolley back to the bay to get my £1 back and we couldn't get it in the trolley in front so had leave it sideways on, probably much to the annoyance of the trolley collector. 


7.     I'm very vocal when watching TV.  I shout the answers out on quizzes and if someone is in peril I have to shout helpful comments, "Don't go in there!", "Look out, look out!".  The one that really gets me going is if someone is being followed so they back away.  Then I'm "Don't walk backwards, turn round, turn round!"  If they still keep doing it I get to "Haven't you ever seen a horror movie?  They'll be behind you, turn round!  Look where you're going!".




I'd like to pass this award on to the following great blogs, be sure to check them out:


Amanda Makes

Life After Money

Little Cottage Comforts

Little Tiny Stitches

Molly Golver

OCD: Obsessive Crafting Disorder

Sarah-Jane Down The Lane



Monday 9 May 2011

Update





Just thought I'd show you a proper photo of the blue tit from yesterday, which I managed to get today





And a short video which in my excitement I forgot how to turn off!






While I was watching it I saw a couple of bees (well I think they were bees) going in the hole as well so it may get a bit crowded in there.  Unless the bees are going to one side and the bird the other! 

Sunday 8 May 2011

On the mend



Everyone's slowly recovering after the fox attack three weeks ago.  
Lotto and the hens hardly moved for a couple of weeks but they've started going outside now.  Bree is pretty much back to normal apart from having no feathers on her back but she looks OK because her wings cover it.
Here she is scratting about in the grass



Octavia is a bit unsteady so she's not as active as Bree and Lotto still has a long way to go.  He's a lot better than he was and has moments of lifting his head right up and looking quite normal apart from the lack of feathers, but then it slowly goes back down but remains a couple of inches off the floor.  At least now he's eating and drinking by himself.


I took a chair out into the field to keep an eye on them today.  It's been incredibly windy but with lovely sunshine and fluffy white clouds in the sky.
I noticed a bird fly into a hole in the tractor and tried to get a photo but kept missing it.  This photo is to show the sky but you can just see a round hole in the bend of the bucket arm




Here's a close up




And a very blurred one of the bird emerging from the hole





It was flying about so quickly I couldn't see what it was, but from my brilliant photo I think it might be a blue tit!  I'll have to have another go.


I'll leave you with a photo of a sat nav bag I made yesterday with a yellow and blue spotted car.