Red Squirrel
Well, it’s only been about three weeks since my brother moved to Scotland, and he’s already managed to get a beautiful picture of a red squirrel. So unfair!
2 comments May 20th, 2008
A nice long weekend of nothingness
Once again, we failed to do any gardening this weekend. It’s a total mess out there, due to the sudden onset of warmer weather. It’s not even that warm - just warm enough to make the weeds and grass go crazy. I’m not the gardening type. I was kind of hoping that Mike would just offer to take care of everything, but it seems that he is as reluctant to get started as I am. We told ourselves that we would definitely get started on the next sunny day. Who knows when that will be!
I spent a fairly decent chunk of the weekend working on a little illustration, using my Wacom tablet. I originally wanted to just draw something out in pencil, scan it in and then colour it digitally, because I find it difficult to draw things precisely using my tablet. Anyway, I couldn’t get the scanner to work with my Mac, so ended up just winging it and making the whole image using my tablet - and I think it turned out okay. It could look a little more polished, but overall I’m pleased with it, and I’m looking forward to starting on my next one. It’s nice to be doing something creative that isn’t involved with knitting. (And I wouldn’t even call knitting being creative since all I do is obey whichever pattern I’m using…)
Anyway, I found a few photos from a couple of weeks ago which I never posted - the first one was taken on Ness Bridge in Inverness, on a beautiful day. It’s such a lovely little city. The second one is just another sheep with its lamb, as if you couldn’t tell! It was just standing there on the side of the road, so we stopped and I managed to dig my camera out of my bag and take a picture before they both wandered off. Luckily, sheep seem to be quite curious animals and had a nice long stare at us before walking off. I got a few good pictures, but I liked this one the best because it looks like the sheep was smiling. Aww, smiling sheep.
Add comment May 18th, 2008
Sunny days, and one realistic-looking elephant!
It’s been a while since I last wrote - the main reason being that a couple of weeks ago, a rather bad thunderstorm took out our phoneline at home, and the phone people didn’t fix it until about a week and a half later. And once we got it fixed, we had to wait for a new router to be sent to us, since it got fried during the storm. Fun times!
Anyway, it’s so nice to have everything working again. I love the internet.
We’ve had some wonderful weather up here in Scotland over the last week or so - and finally, yes - *finally*, all the trees have leaves on them. For the longest time, the trees on the other side of the river refused to get leafy. But it all happened in the second week of May! It’s significantly later than in most other places in the UK, but at least it really feels like summer is on the way now. And it’s incredibly beautiful out there. I had to take a picture.
The photo doesn’t really do the view justice - that’s how nice it is out there. I hope the weather stays like this!
I finished knitting Elijah a few weeks ago, but only just got round to taking a few photos. Pretty pleased with how it turned out, although I think I should have perhaps chosen a slightly more interesting colour. I don’t know… for some reason I got it into my head that the colour needed to be as realistic as possible, lol.
2 comments May 14th, 2008
A few little things.
Mike sold his first Etsy print last night! It’s so exciting. It’s not like this first sale yields us a lot of money - barely any, at all - but it’s so exciting that he’s sold one! His first ever photographic sale. I hope it won’t be the last!
Over the last couple of nights, Mike’s been working hard on a wooden ring that he made for me. He finished it last night, and I love it! Like the pendant, it’s made out of black walnut, and feels so smooth. Plus, I’ve always liked big ol’ chunky rings, and this definitely fits into that category. I think Mike’s definitely interested in starting up another little Etsy shop, just for wooden rings, or whatever. We were trying to think of a name for the shop - something not too dissimilar from ‘Ridingthewind’, so that he people will still be able to figure out who he is (since he’s been spending a lot of time chatting to people in the chat room and the forums) - so we came up with ‘Ridingthewood’. It’s a perfect name in every way - except that it sounds slightly… questionable.
We’re not sure if we’re going to go with it, even though it would work really well with the other shop being Ridingthewind - it might just sound a little bit too rude for people, even though otherwise it would be a perfect name! We’ll see. Anyway, Mike hasn’t taken any proper Etsy pictures yet (he’s going to list it and then make them to order), but here’s one he took last night.
I’m really proud of him for spending so much time lately doing creative things. I don’t know what’s happened, but he’s really messed up his sleep schedule again. He tried to fix it, but it all went wrong and he’s been asleep all day so far,
In a way, it’s been good. I took the advantage of having a bit of time to myself (which is so rare, these days), and got my paints out. I painted the background colour, and then got impatient because I wanted it to dry quicker. So I got my hairdryer and plugged it in - but unfortunately, it blew the fuse - and even more unfortunately, the thing I was using to power the hairdryer was also the thing I use to power my imac. And the fuse isn’t just an ordinary fuse, it’s a 3.15A tiny glass fuse, and of course I didn’t have any of those laying around, so I’ve had to order them from Ebay. Hopefully they’ll come early next week. But anyway, the moral of the story is: BE PATIENT NEXT TIME!
*slaps self*
Can’t believe I can’t use my imac. 
This room feels so dead now!
Add comment April 25th, 2008
Little update.
Not too much has been going on lately. I’m nearly finished with Elijah, he just has another leg and a bit to go, and then he’ll be all done! He’s coming along pretty nicely.
Been spending too much time in the Etsy chat room, lately. It’s just nice to find a chat room full of mostly sane people, who are all very creative and interesting. I’m really desperate to set up my own Etsy shop, I just don’t know what I would try to sell.
I could try making jewellery again, and if I did, Mike said he would make some little wooden rings which I could list on there, too. You know, those cool funky wooden rings that look really awesome. He even bought a ring mandrel which came today, so now he’s set to be able to make any size ring on request. He made a pendant the other day, which came out very nicely - I think it’s made with black walnut. (We didn’t have anything else to use with it, so excuse the black yarn, lol).
I just feel desperate to get past my creative block and just MAKE something. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes. I just feel like I can go into chat and try to talk to people, but I won’t really feel like I’m part of it until I’ve got my own little shop.
Anyway, we’re off to the supermarket.
2 comments April 23rd, 2008
