Black Swan

  Read on a local FB page that there was a black swan at our local reservoir, so had to go.

  Hubby took me on Saturday 11th as it was our wedding anniversary , and wow , definitely one ticked off the bucket list.

It was quite a bit smaller than its white contemporaries but it is absolutely stunning.

 Back soon with more stitching stuff.

Cath x

Not quite total

Eclipse that is .

 Friday morning was eagerly awaited in this house as it had been marked on he calendar since last year when the boy had asked about eclipses. We went on line and searched for images and for when the next eclipse would occur, so it was with great delight that we got up to a clear morning .

 We did end up with some cloud cover

 but to be honest , it made for a better view

 and I think ; for better pictures.

 A shame that more wasn't made of it at school as most of the kids were interested and one year have been studying space, but we enjoyed it.

  Back soon with stitchy news.
 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

2nd post in a day

I must be bored ,lol. Mind you , not sure the previous one can be counted as a proper post .
 The kids are fed up , and I'm fed up of them bickering. Roll on next week when they are back at school and kept busy with Halloween discos and craft clubs and other such exciting things .

 Typically, with it being half term week, the weather has been fairly dreadful . Grey and foggy pretty much every day, so they haven't been able to go anywhere or even play out on the garden. We were going to go to the local indoor play centre , but it appears to be closed , not good.

 Sunday wasn't too bad , so we went for a walk along the trail to MILs' and took a packed lunch so we could stay for a while. I love autumn , so took the opportunity to take some colourful pics along the way .

I know these plants are weeds , but the leaves are turning such beautiful colours , I got lots of pics of different ones.

 We did manage to spy a few bedraggled flowers along the way too .

 The trail is an old disused railway track , and there are bat boxes on the side of one of the bridges . Not sure if they house any bats or not though .

 Well ,that's about it for my autumn walk , but I will be back soon with either more views or some crafty updates ,depends which takes my fancy ,lol .
 Thanks for dropping by ,
 Cath

Squirrel and a quaker tree

This weekend has been one of the nicest in a long while.

Saturday we decided to go on a tramp around the local(ish) woods in the morning and really enjoyed it . It was cold and frosty but really nice to be out in the fresh air , just relaxing and chatting about stuff. This little fella didn't look too impressed though.

We decided to make a bit of a day of it , and went to the Golden Arches for lunch (McD's) as a special treat for me and the kids. My husband has had far too many whilst on the road for him to consider it a treat lol. Then we went over to a friends in the afternoon , so most of the day saw us away from home.

Yesterday we went to town as my Daughter has outgrown her car seat ,and we really wanted to get a new one. Ended up getting two as they had a special deal , BOGOF , so my Son is set up for his next one in a few months too.

Then we took the kids to Toys R us to spend their Christmas money , so they have had a very good weekend.

Last night while re-watching Survivors (my husband missed this weeks episode so we put it on iplayer) , I managed to finish my Quaker tree. I really love this, I'm thinking of making it into a cushion, but not totally decided yet.

I think I might end up doing more like this . In fact I fancy making a cushion front with just this pattern , but that will be in the quite distant future, I have so many things I want to do. I need to make a list of the things I'd like to get done this year really , but there is so much it's hard to narrow it down , and I've found I don't really like sticking to lists and deadlines too much. I prefer to stitch what and when I like . but , I think a few easy goals could be ok.

Thanks for dropping by ,

Cath

Scary monster and progress report

Look what we found wandering across the pavement on the way home from school :

This is a larva of an Elephant Hawkmoth , isn't it amazing ? This one is about 3 inches long and the fatness of my ring finger , so quite small actually . It cannot be called a caterpillar as it's moth offspring rather than butterfly

My husband discovered one in our garden a couple of weeks ago that was at least twice the size . It scared the bejeebers out of him as it was scared and had drawn it's head up like this

Because it was so big , he thought he'd stumbled across a snake as he met it face on lol. The one we found in the garden had disappeared by the time I thought to take a picture of it , so I was quite pleased to spot this one . Not that you could really miss it. The kids are fascinated by bugs and things , so we brought it home to look at it for a while . It is now outside in the rough location the other one was ,so should be ok.

Anyway , I've had some more stitching time on "Christmas Recipe" as I've decided to call it . did some last night and today .This is where I'm at now

I think it will take longer than 45 hours to be honest , but I am enjoying at the moment . I've decided to do the back stitch as I go along , the thought of doing it all in one go makes me go cold. I'm also going to stretch it a bit and put some boxes in for our names to make it a bit more personal.

That's all for now.