Just a quickie!

Well, thanks to the (mainly) lovely weather yesterday we managed an outdoor product shoot. Now I have hours and hours and hours of photo editing, listing and listing editing to do so I'm not going to be blogging for the next few days!!

I will be back when it's all done but till I blog again I'll entertain you with some shots we took yesterday of Stanzi up her favourite tree, an ash that when it was younger we mistakenly thought was a rowan and wondered why it never bore berries...duh!


And also some lovely shots of our lime tree, destined to play a part in my new shop banners (yes, banners in the plural, some of the pieces we photographed yesterday will end up on Etsy, not on Folksy; I've finally decided to take the plunge!)

Cat and wind induced insomnia...and the craft cupboard.

Well, this is what we should have been doing at five o'clock this morning and it's also what Stanzi does best, I sometimes think she's trying for the Guinness Book of Records for sleeping!

However we weren't, due to the fact that aforesaid puss was ballooning around the bedroom and up and down the corridor like a creature possessed. It was extremely windy here last night and wind is guaranteed to get Stanzi into hyper mode within seconds. She just wants to tell us all about it, in every possible permutation and at great length, bless!

It's also guaranteed to get me into paranoid mode as I lie there wondering just how much tossing around the huge lime tree in the corner of our garden can withstand (yes, that's why LindenTree!) Colleagues in our Parks Department, which is in the same building as the one I work in for one of my jobs, have reassured me that "lime trees are very supple". I so hope they are right... And Roger keeps telling me that it's been there a lot longer than he has (which is forty odd years at the last count).

So I'm pretty bleary eyed right now and my early morning resolve to photograph our Little Shop Of Horrors of a craft cabinet to post (inspired by a blog post from Julia of East of the Sun which was in response to the challenge by Nic of Nic's Knots to blog about craft spaces) has dissolved as I am somewhere near to the left of exhausted. Tomorrow, all being well - prepare to be horrified! (It's not that bad, really...)

More pics of the early morning madness cat, in awake yet relaxed mode!

Stanzi's Sunday!

Just wanted to post this adorable photo of our Stanzi - the way she likes to spend every Sunday, fast asleep on our bed. She's aiming for the Guinness Book of Records for sleeping, that's for sure.

A quick question for any cat lovers out there - how many names does your cat have? Stanzi (full name Constanze, we'd been watching Amadeus when we named her!) also gets called Shming Shmong, Stansist Wansist, Stansley Cat, Winzip and Zoony! Are we alone in being totally barmy or do other cat people do this, I wonder?!

Slow, slow, snow, snow, slow...

Well, I'm probably one of thousands in the UK blogging about snow today - but I'm going to do it anyway, so there!

According to our local paper, it's been the worst for 18 years. It's certainly the first really heavy snow that we have seen since we got married, nearly 10 years ago now. I do remember a Monday afternoon in January 1995 and sometime latish on in 1991 but - well, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then...

We both had a day's annual leave on Monday and spent it periodically gazing out of the window of our upstairs office/craft-room in total disbelief. "It's nearly horizontal!" was the cry in the later part of the day.

One of the things I've always loved about snow is the eerie quality of the reflected light that's cast - it's so cold, and yet somehow calming when combined with the deadening of sound.

We have two cats, one too elderly to even consider going outside except in a heatwave but one middle aged lady who certainly does still desire to go out to answer the call of nature. So husband bravely battles the icy blast to clear a path for her across the lawn - now that's true cat love. Not that I don't love her equally, of course I do, but I have a post mastectomy/full axial clearance excuse for not doing excessive digging as it makes my left arm swell. (I make up for it in other ways, though! I am an ace weeder, as well as being an avid sower and planter-out of seedlings.)

Snow can bring worries, of course, not only about the complications of travel but about family members and friends. In our case especially my Dad, who is 83, but a couple of phone calls back and forth assure us that he is fine.

The photographic opportunities afforded by excessive snow are many and I'm just off now to choose some of the best before posting.

Goodnight and keep safe in the snow!