07 - An unwilling model

So, I finished the jumper I was knitting for Lily.
First, I had to try and convince her to try it on. Once she had it on, I then had to convince her to take it back off so I could weave in the ends. She then wanted it back on, but didn't want to pose for photos. I believe the words she used were 'No Mummy, don't take photos of me' and then she made it as hard as possible for me to get a good shot of her:




It's a Weasley Sweater adjusted slightly to knit in the round. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic in Soft Plum. We originally used the colour in Lily's Circle of Friends blanket (check out how fat she was :D) and Graeme's Nana (so, Lily's Great-Nana) loved it so much she ordered enough to knit herself a jumper. She gave me the leftovers, just under 2 (200g) balls, and I also have leftovers.

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August 31

Today is the last day of my task to take a photo every day for a month. One more thing to cross off my 101 things list (I really should update that, shouldn't I? Someone remind me if it gets to Monday and I haven't, OK?)

My current work in progress
you'll see what it is when I finish (which was supposed to be today, but that's clearly not the case)

A reminder of all my previous photos, just because I can...

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August 22

Another reason (on top of still being sick - ugh) why going outside is much less appealing than curling up on the couch and watching movies...

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August 21

I'm still not 100%, so you get another "oh crap, it's getting late and I haven't taken a photo because I've barely left the couch, let alone the room or the house" shot.

Apologies to all those people to whom I owe return emails and whatnot - I will get around to it...

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August 19

the flag in our hallway
taken from the floor

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August 10

Two photos today, partly because I couldn't make up my mind which to show you, partly because they were the only 2 worth uploading. I only had my little point-and-shoot with me and while it has the ability to capture great shots, I sometimes struggle to readjust my mindset from the dSLR. I guess I could've got fancy and combined the two photos into one and all that, but the purpose of this project is purely to get me taking photos more often.

Taken in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens respectively. I went out for the day, mainly just to get out of the house and into the sun, and spent some time in the park on the way to shopping and again later to eat my lunch. I amazed myself by buying a dress and a skirt - I haven't even found clothes I like lately, let alone buying them. The dress alone was £135... of course I didn't actually pay that much, they were both on sale :D

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August 09

reminders of home

I didn't set this up for the photo - this is on one of the shelves in our living room. There are also more photos, a couple of soft toys and some random other stuff. Click on the photo to go to its flickr page and see what everything is.

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August 08

laundry day
just thought you'd all like to see our undies

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August 07 & Project ??

Yeah, I still haven't got around to counting up my projects, but here's another one - a custom dress form that I finished today partly so I had something to photograph for my daily photo. It started as two old t-shirts, a couple rolls of tape, a wire coat-hanger from the dry cleaner and a cardboard tube that I can't remember acquiring and is now a near exact replica of my torso that I can use to drape fabric and make patterns and stuff - I am hoping to make a couple of dresses, hopefully ones I can wear to the upcoming weddings, because I can't find anything in the shops. It is stuffed with two things I was glad to get rid of/put to a more positive use - our big pile of plastic shopping bags and a bunch of shredded documents from last year at that craptacular job. Its kind of weird being able to look at your body shape without looking in the mirror.

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August 06

sorting out photos

posts with actual sentences coming tomorrow...

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August 03, 04 and 05

Totally buggered from our packed weekend, but am slowly working my way through the things I need to do to catch up. There are heaps more photos to come, especially from the 3rd which, on top of all the things I would've photographed anyway, I did as a "my day in photos" for an online community I'm part of.

me and graeme


scottish parliament building


fair rides at the innocent village fete

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August 02

My collection of Harry Potter books - click on the photo to see where they come from.

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whipsnade photos are up...

... as well as a few from monkey world.

We are still trying to decide what we're doing with our website gallery, so the new photos are only my best ones and are on my flickr. Still got a tonne to sort through from easter weekend...

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10000 photos

My camera's photo numbering system uses the date and a 4 digit sequential number to name the photos. On Wednesday night, the 4 digits had to start back at 0001, meaning we have taken over 10000 photos with our Olympus D-SLR, which we bought in July 2005. The 10000th photo wasn't very interesting though, because we were experimenting with the new lens add-ons we just bought so nothing was in focus. This is the 10001st photo, still not anything spectacular, just playing with the macro lens in our living room, but I thought I'd share it.

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self-portrait

so, i didn't actually end up doing the day in the life thing. i started to, but my day was even more boring than usual, so there is no exciting results to share. i did, however, take a self-portrait (since we are up to k on the alphabet shoot challenge and i had no better idea than k=kate...)

i set up my tripod in the living room, used the rug as my background and took a bunch of photos. then i made graeme choose the best :)
notice i have a fringe at the moment? i got frustrated with the length and just chopped it - it ended up shorter than i'd planned, but i kinda like it (once i got over the fact that i haven't had a fringe like this since the early 90s)

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more flickr fun

If you click here you will get to a map of the world. On that map, will be the location of many of the photos on my flickr account (I don't put the ones I took at home on there for fairly obvious reasons). I plan to upload my best photo or two from all the places we've been so that my map will be covered in pink dots. At the moment, its not too exciting. Although if you do go play with it, I offer 2 pieces of advice:
1. zoom right in there - i've tried to place the photos as close as possible to exactly where they were taken.
2. be warned that it sometimes has a meltdown and can take a little while to load...

have fun.

eta (thats edited to add, not estimated time of arrival): to preserve people's privacy, I am choosing choice spots nearby to place photos. for example, the photos i took at sharon's over christmas have been placed at the intersection of the M4 and the Nepean River. if you think this is still too revealing, let me know and i'll take them off the map

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flickr

You may notice over on my sidebar I have added a flickr badge. I finally joined flickr!

You can click on any of the little photos to see them big, or go to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/purple8/
to see all my pictures. Thats about all you need to know. You need to have an account to comment on the photos, but its free to sign up and virtually painless (except the whole choosing a username - you'll notice mine is actually "k8 purple8" - because as things on the internet get older it gets harder and harder to get decent usernames). And if you sign up, we can be friends and see each other's photos :)

So far the only photos there are my favourites from our USA trip (a grand total of 30 - and at least 4 of them are of squirrels) but I will mainly be using it for my personal photos, rather than our travel photos - they'll still be on our website. And I've just tonight worked out how to get photos up on our website MUCH faster, but its late and I should be in bed, so I'll do some tomorrow.

And for those of you wondering how I managed to do all this when I already said I have a bunch of other things to do - shuddup. I have a perfectionist streak that meant once I started uploading and labelling photos, I couldn't stop til the job was done. Meh, just go see my flickr. And if you already have an account, be my friend :)

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Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that...

I know, I know, I'm a bit late. We went home for Christmas (and by home, I of course mean Sydney, Australia) and I was basically only online to check email. But I hope you all had a great time with the people you love.

So we got to spend a grand total of like 9 days back in Oz - kinda annoys me because we planned that based on the school holidays, assuming I would need to be back for the start of term, but anyway, Graeme couldn't have taken too much more time off since we want to do some serious holidaying this year and besides, we will be back in September for a couple of weddings. It was a great holiday actually - we just hung out, played my brother's wii, went shopping, caught up with most of our favourite people. Aside from the jetlag, it was the most relaxing holiday I've had in ages.

I won't bore you with the details, I'll just put up some photos.

me and my sister elizabeth - taken by her
this is NOT the funniest photo of her, but i resisted posting the others because they were pretty embarrassing
just a future warning to everyone reading this: if you strike stupid poses when i point my camera at you, don't be surprised if they end up on the internet

scully on the trampoline
...and just to prove how alike they are...
josh on the trampoline

(to outside observers - the two above boys are not related - scully is part of one of my favourite families that is not related by blood and josh is my brother)

callum and finn
(scully's brothers)
looking great in their matching shirts :)

and finally...
my growing family
me, one husband, two parents, three siblings and a (soon-to-be) sister-in-law

this was the first time in forever that we'd all been together, so mum insisted on a family photo. i set it up and then handed it to my brother's best friend to take them. he took about 20 and this is the one where the percentage of goodness is highest - in almost every other one, someone looks odd...

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Not about work

Because I don't want this whole blog to become about how much my job sucks...

We went out and about on Saturday afternoon to try and get some Christmas presents sorted and while we were out we vistied Hyde Park. Unfortunately we got there a bit late (read: 3.30pm) and the light was already getting sucky and I'm not super impressed by my photos, but here are a couple so you can see Hyde Park in Autumn.

Fallen Leaves and Autumn Trees

Across the Serpentine

So you can see how much the sun has set before its even 4pm.

(click on the pictures to see them bigger)

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One advantage to being sick...

...is I can actually take some photos during daylight hours. I have a killer sore throat, a bad cough and have lost my voice, so I didn't go to work yesterday or today. This morning we went to get ourselves sorted with the doctors so I could hopefully see someone, but they have a half-day today and only one doctor, so they couldn't fit me in. See, you have to register with a local doctor here in order to get treated under the NHS (national health service, i think). We knew this already, but since we both work during the hours the local surgery (about 100m down the road) is open, we hadn't sorted it out yet. So before Graeme went to work, we went and registered. As I walked back, I noticed the squirrels were out in the park across the road, scavenging in the early morning sun (OK, so it was like 8.30, but the sun was still rising), so I went inside, grabbed my camera and went to take some photos.

Unlike the squirrels in Hyde Park, who will come right up to you looking for food, these guys usually run away at the sight of a human, dog or even bird that comes too close. But this one was up in the tree, scavenging the seeds or something and was totally happy for me to be close(ish - i did use my biggest lense).

And I just wanted to show you how great my husband is. He went and found a London-based Australian grocery shop so he could get me some Butter Menthols and Eucalyptus drops in his lunch time yesterday. He's so awesome. He also brought home a couple of Freddos and a bag of Clinkers.
Please excuse the dodgy photo - I had planned on cropping it, but I'm too lazy.

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