It’s been a little while since I wrote a Fraggle report, not since Christmas I think, but apart from my ongoing 366 project I’m still taking shots of the cat and the sunsets :). Work has been busy with lots of places to drive to and lots of clients to see, but no chance to stop and take photo’s, and I don’t like getting out of the car in the rain and the wind! Had a bit of a respite from the weather, and its been cold but no rain for a few days, it’ll be back towards the end of the week apparently.
Onto the pics!
First up has to be the weather, this was the view out of my bedroom window when I woke up last week.
Here are a couple of Skye. This is she trying to decide if she can jump on me while I’m at the computer.
luckily she got distracted.
She still likes to sleep the afternoon away on our bed
and sit on Phil’s knee when he’s trying to do his modelling.
he’s not always impressed with her devotion 🙂
When he’s had enough she comes next door and curls up under my desk on the envelope store!
Caught her sitting on a stool catching some rays on a sunny day
She is so boss of us.
We had a couple of nice sunsets
and I made a diptych of the flowers I’m using in my still life month for the Sunday Challenge group.
I’m really having fun with my still life month, I think I’m improving along the way, certainly I like the pictures I’ve been doing this week better than the ones I did in the first few days, so feel I’m getting the hang of it. So here is Day 17.
Back to work tomorrow, am just about ready with sorting out clothes and equipment, & charging the programmers and laptop. Have had a bit of an upset tum today so have been taking it easy. Phil’s off to work his week of nights so I’m off to watch a bit of TV with Skye. 🙂
I didn’t pick up my camera until Wednesday night this week, when I was treated to a magnificent sunset over the houses.
That was from my front bedroom, and from the back of the house we also got the moon mixed up in it all.
I took some more shots of my christmas tree,
possibly went over the top there :). Managed to get a better picture of the birds on The Happy Eater tree..these are long tailed tits.
Today all Phil’s kids and grandkids came for a visit, and I got a happy shot of the newest one, Liddy
this was the best of the bunch, she was flapping her arms and wiggling around a lot so most were blurry.
I took Phil to hospital on Tuesday to have his laser eye surgery, the procedure was over and done with really quickly and a heck of a lot quicker than the time it took to get a prescription from the pharmacy there! Anyway he’s OK with no bad after effects so that all went well.
It’s been a strange week without Storm chucking up everywhere and wanting cuddles. There’s a big hole in my life where she used to be. Skye is our next concern as over the past couple of days she’s not been eating. Of course she’s a chunky girl so might be on a diet, but she’s having a strange week too. She’s managed something today though so fingers crossed there isn’t anything to worry about.
I’ve been trying some creative still life photography and might get into it a bit more, I quite like the faffing about.
So back to work tomorrow for 3 days, then 5 off over Christmas, yay!
It’s just about the end of September, and apart from days out, as always I’ve been taking pictures of daily life. We went up to Edinburgh at the beginning of the month, as a new scale model show has started up there called Scale Scotland, and Phil was asked to do a demonstration of figure detailing and composition. The show was held at The Airport Hilton, which is a nice enough hotel, and it was cool to be staying in the same place as where the show was held, as we didn’t have to get up too early :). I got to try haggis for the first (& last!) time too. Packing to go wasn’t all that straightforward..
can I come too?
But we got there cat free 🙂
Arrival!
One of the organisers works for Lambourgini..so he had one parked outside the hotel
Lambo posing
Our hotel room was nice enough..
mirror image
Phil’s demo went well
demonstration man
and he also won some medals in the competition
silver hoard
I asked the organiser of the show if I could be allowed into the competition room during judging to take photo’s for the Tyneside Model Club web page which I run, and they said yes, so I got loads of pictures of all the models, unencumbered by the hoipoloi 🙂 these are a couple that won gold, great painting skills.
OddballCooler King
Phil’s Volksgrenadier won a silver which he was well chuffed with. We called him the mushroom man due to the ground work Phil did, he made mushrooms from plasticard, they’re really tiny. For scale, the chap is 12cm in height.
Phil’s mushroom man
After the show the organisers and demonstrators all had dinner together and we sat with our good friends Hermann and Kristoff who were over from Belgium,
Fraggle, Phil,Kristoff Brian & Hermann
and the next day we went home.
Ah… home, or now The Menagerie. Phil’s son Carl and his family have had to move out of their house for 6 weeks while the council goes in and does a big renovation job. His temporary house is too small for his pets, so we are looking after Penelope & Rango…
Penelope, (top) & Rango
They are bearded dragons, and have to be fed live crickets. I can’t watch, Phil has to do it, and though he didn’t like it, he’s got quite good at it.
We’ve had Cal & Liddy over last weekend..
GrandadLiddy
Cal loves Storm..
best pals
We had a really odd sunset..
sunset over the housesa pinkbow
I watched Bryan Adams on the TV doing The Hyde Park Festival in London, he was great, I really like him.
TV iphone shots 🙂 Bryan Adams
I had some of family photo’s printed, they hang up on our staircase walls, so we can see them grow up as we go up
Phil had an old magazine shot of one of his favourite ever singers Paul Rogers and it was all scratched and creased and faded, so he asked me to do my faffographic techniques and get it up on a canvas..
this is the original ( wish I could find out the photographer to give him credit, but this was in Phil’s scrapbook from 1970’s so that’s not happening)
and this is it cleaned up and on our wall
hanging..
Found some mushrooms hiding in the front garden when Phil was mowing the lawn..
I collected some acorns in my adventure hat..
and today I strung them together and hung them around our defunct bird feeder in the back garden as a weathervane.. apparently they open their spines in warm weather and close up in cold, though I have no corroborating proof of that and anyway I can just look up at the sky! But it was fun to do.
weather is warm 🙂
Phil is on the go with another tank..
Went into South Shields to go to the bank for work…
smartgull
another sunset..
soft sunset
I discovered that Phil’s socks mysteriously clone themselves, he wears 7 pairs a week, and I do the washing on the same day each week but find between 10 &14 pairs come out of the washing machine..
cloned socks
I did some faffography for the Sunday Challenge group on Ipernity..
Escaping the Apocalypse
and yesterday had a go at an upside down shot, using the inverse glass of water technique!
set up shot….
inverse glasses
The upside down finished article..
Upside down
I hadn’t thought it through properly….removing the glasses afterwards wasn’t pretty.
And then there are the cute cat shots :).
But first have to say Storm’s trip to the vet did not go as planned. We went as she chucks up more than we consider normal, most days, (regular readers know this drives us mad!) and we thought she probably had an ulcer or some malabsorption thing and need medicine. So they sedated her, took blood and did X-rays, and found a renal lymphoma, maybe one on each kidney but definitely one big one. So that’s a death sentence really. Even with chemo and radiotherapy the prognosis is poor, and we won’t put her through that. The vet said not to leave it too long before we take her in for ‘the injection’, but I can’t do it yet. We found this out last weekend, and are quite in shock and devastated, she is only 6yrs old and we’ve only had her 6 months. She isn’t acting ill and is carrying on oblivious to her state, isn’t distressed or in pain, still eating and doing the other end well, so not yet. Not yet Mr.Vet. She is my special friend and this is breaking my little heart.
My special friend.waiting for cuddlesFavourite place to sleep
Skye is fine and just loves Phil to bits, won’t leave him alone when he’s playing his guitar/on the computer/having his brekkie/dinner or tea 🙂
Phil’s special friendin Phil’s modelling bagPeeping sleeping
I love it when they cuddle up, Storm always puts her paw over Skye..
Sisterly love
cuddling
Caught Skye on the speaker in the conservatory with a fetching piece of grass attached to her pink bell 🙂
Fashion Icon Skye
and caught Storm looking regal..
and roaring..
roar!!!
I should think there will be lots of Storm photo’s to come, while I can still have her.
So that’s September just about finished. Next month have got a day out with Sophie coming up but not sure where we are going, and also a trip to Holland for another model show, and we’re going on a ferry to Calais, that should be interesting as Calais is having refugee issues. Back to work tomorrow, it comes round too quick!
Already a week in September has gone by and I’ve not yet got round to finishing August photographs. I have been away to a military model show in Scotland this weekend, and of course have photo’s from that!
But I still want to post the photo’s of my little family down south from last weekend. It was great to see my son Ben and my grandson Lewis, who just gets cuter every time I see him 🙂
We had a day out at Milton Keynes, the shopping centre to start.
Lewis with the plastic cows, & a plastic gun.The frog clock in the shopping centreReflecting in Burger Kingat Burger KingMr.Blue Eyes
Then we went off to Wirral Lake to the playground..
Wirral LakeSwans at the laketicklesDad helpingBalancing act
Then onto a giant slide thing..
giant slide thingsmileyflying
A great day out. In the evening I went north to stay with Helen and caught this fab sunset on the way
Sunset at Stanford
it was amazingly beautiful to watch.
Helen and I went off to Shillington the next day to do The Scarecrow Festival (click to visit that post). But I took a few different bits and pieces of Shillington while hunting down the scarecrows. There were some gorgeous quintessential English homes….
a flowering roadsign
One of the scarecrow houses had a train station in the back garden.
Garden feature
A house with a gargoyle 🙂
at Moorhen farm we saw haymaking going on..
and we loved the sunflowers
but you can see it was clouding over so that was the end of the day.
In home life we had a visit from our newest grand child Liddy..
Liddy
and I saw another lovely sunset from my bedroom window..
Sunset 1sunset 2
and that’s some loose ends tied up. Still more to do, I might be taking too many photographs, quantity not quality!! Hope that’s not true!!! Anyway back to work tomorrow and would you believe it back up to Scotland, then Tuesday back to Cumbria, lots of long journeys. Will try not to take any photo’s haha.
Which it is here at the moment, and quite sunny, but cold now autumn is passing and winter is looming. I’ve had a week off work which is great, but also not so great as it’s the last day and am back to work tomorrow. 😦 I do like not being at work, a lot. The weather has not been so kind though and I have not got out much which is a shame as I’d fancied a few walks with my camera, but I did read a lot, I finished the series of Jack Reacher novels, and am into book 4 of C.J.Sansome’s Shardlake series, set in Henry the 8th days and as we are currently watching the HBO series The Tudors ties in nicely with that.
My visit with Helen last week inspired a trip to ASDA where I purchased a slow cooker, and last Monday cooked pulled chicken which was lush, forgot to take pics of the end result but here it is in action!
Slow cooking
Helen also gave me a cutting from her bamboo plant, and I spent yesterday potting it and also moved all my herb pots indoors to protect them from frost.
Bamboo
Have also been doing stuff around the house, sorted out my spice shelf which was in a bit of disarray!
spicey
Phil is quite shocked at my domestication! Not sure how long it will last.:D
On Wednesday night we had a spectacular sunset over Wardley, so I hung out of bedroom windows to get some photos of it, it was glorious.
Friday I had a meeting with Rory from our head office to get some new equipment for work, and to learn some new test procedures, it was a long day and my head was at exploding point by the end of it, but worth giving my day up to get the training.
On Friday night Phil and I always have ‘music night’ where we play loads of discs, get quite merry, and sometimes I get a live performance!
Phil playing the ThunderbirdThunderbirds are GO!
So today it’s sunny as I said, and I would love to go out with the Nikon, but I have to learn all the stuff I did on Friday, ready for tomorrow. Practice makes perfect and all that. But I took a couple of pics in the garden for my fix.
Waiting in the wingsSpidey still going strong, somewhere.
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