Sunday 29 November 2009

Bright!

One of my many hobbies is painting.

I don’t paint very often as it’s really hard to find time for it - once I sit down I usually spend at least a few hours. So I try to leave it till I simply can’t think of doing anything else.

This time for about a week I kept thinking of creating a still life with lemons in it. (I guess it’s because the weather is so miserable and I needed some bright colours.) I invited one of my friends, who shares the same interest and we spent the whole evening and half of the night painting! Well, before we started on our creations we had a lovely supper and even baked some biscuits, no wonder we finished at 2 am.

Some fruit in a bowl and two different interpretations! Really enjoyed the evening and hope to feel the urge to paint some time soon again...

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Dog's 4th

On Sunday (November 22nd) our dog was celebrating her 4th Birthday - you could say it's serious age, no longer a puppy, but sometimes she's still as daft as only a husky can be!

We took her out for a long walk by the sea, where she went for a paddle (she won't go any deeper as she is scared of water) and wanted to make friends with every human or dog she could see!

Not everyone would enjoy such friendship, as the dog looks like a fierce wolf and we saw a few people, who were keeping safe distance. Admit it, looking at her you wouldn't think she is not dangerous - but she really isn't. She is very gentle. Well, we are talking here about a dog who lets our cat sleep in her basket and drink water from her bowl!

We saw quite a few, you might think, "crazy people", who were in the water despite the terrible weather. Can you guess what they are doing? They aren't fishing, by the way.

I'm sure these men weren't very warm (it's nearly December! and we are talking about the Baltic sea), but they were using their nets to gather amber. Yes, amber - Lithuanian gold. We had some strong winds the day before and whenever we have a storm the sea gives us back some of the prehistoric goods.

It was very sad to see that the storm had done some damage - lots of flat fish were thrown on the shore with waves and didn't manage to go back... I've never seen anything like that before. Poor fish.

It looked like the seagulls were also talking about the storm - they kept close to each other and were constantly looking around, I guess they were also secretly observing the men with nets, probably hoping for some fresh catch. They must have been disappointed in the end...

Friday 20 November 2009

Colours of the “Sleeping” Garden

Once again I’ve been taught a lesson – I need to carry my camera everywhere! If I don’t have it, no doubt I will see something worth documenting!

You could ask “so what did you miss this time?” and I would tell you a story about a crow that panicked loudly and a young black cat, that was very ambitious and brave…

First I heard a crow, I could tell the bird was worried, but couldn’t figure out why. It was sitting at the top of a tree with its friend, both swinging on the week branches… One more glance and I realized it wasn’t another bird! It was a black cat, slowly moving towards its prey. Everything looked so terrifying, just because the branches were very week indeed…

Anyway, the crow wasn’t stupid – it flew off and the cat, being a very agile creature, happily reached the ground. So the story has its happy ending, but I just wish I had some photos to illustrate all this.

No cat and no crow, just some photos I took in the garden. We actually saw some sun today! And I managed to find bright colours in our “sleeping” garden, where the plants are slowly dying off for winter.








Thursday 12 November 2009

Making Presents

I’m keeping an eye on quite a few blogs and it seems that more and more bloggers are getting into Christmas spirit. Just like me!

First snowflakes and dark evenings are signs that the magic holiday is getting closer and closer…
I love this period and the whole anticipation – I have so many ideas for decorations, presents and treats… I hope I won’t run out of time!

I knew I wasn’t the only one with Christmas on my mind when a few days ago my friends started talking about swapping Christmas presents. It was decided that this year we should swap presents that we have made ourselves (don’t know if this decision was triggered by the economical crises or the fact that handmade things are getting more and more popular, but I said “yes, let’s do it!”). We haven’t agreed on a budget for the materials that we’d need, I think that someone even suggested that: “the present has to be made of something you already have at home”, so I guess it will have to be something not expensive, but original…

I could make lots of things (blowing my own trumpet or what???), but whatever idea I had, I realized that for most of them I’d need to go shopping – need yarn for a scarf, need a wooden box or a frame if I want to decorate them using decoupage technique, need canvas for a painting…

Anyway, after several days of thinking and looking through my crafts box I decided that I’ll make an effort to create a bracelet from small beads! I’ve never done that before, but… always wanted to.

It turns out it’s not that hard, but you need to be patient. I’m using a lid from a shoe box – made small carvings at each end where the threads go and then just work with a needle.


At the moment my only concern is what to do with the threads on the ends once the bracelet is done. I guess I will have to look into it…