Free shipping weekend includes new designs

Another Free Shipping weekend on Cally Creates products* including these new fishing net iphone cases and skins when you use this link - offer expires January 12, 2014 at Midnight Pacific Time. *Offer excludes Framed Art Prints, Stretched Canvases and Throw Pillows with insert.

I was yearning for a beach visit but in lieu of that I started looking through old photos and thought these would make nice cards, prints and phone skins. Sadly they aren't large enough to make bigger items but they satisfied my beachy cravings.

Blues & Greens

Green weed in Blue window

I needed a bit of blue so these are random shots from my old photo's, and the frozen one is Mr P's.


Blue sky and Rowan from the window


Blue door where I used to walk the dog


Frozen flood water in local fields (thanks to MrP for this one)

This time on white

Flower arranging

I thought it looked like a butterfly wing so I did some playing...

Or maybe a moth...

Grey thoughts clouding my mind

Old Dairy (as seen last week)

Have you noticed all the grey on my blog recently? Partly it's all the rain we're having (but interspersed with sun so the gardens are very happy). Partly it's my glum feelings after the family visit. 5 days of trying to fake being well. I don't know why I bother, in all the time I've been ill (15 months for this recent bout of M.E.) my family has never once asked how I am. I think that's pretty weird and I'm finding it more upsetting than usual this month. I'm not sure why. More on this in the comments for this post.


Lucy by a farm door

Old blue dairy window 1

This is my idea of perfection. I could spend (I DO spend) hours photographing flaky blue paint.

Loosening up

Net experiments 1990-92

I worked out some yoga adaptations to suit my health and my dodgy bones. So far so good. Aching all over from a year of tightening up, but I can feel, under the ache, a loosening up of the muscles (reason for tangled picture above) and a deepening of the breath (reason for picture below, which I've shown before but seems so appropriate just now).


Breath: ceramic tablet (intentionally broken) 1993

I've finally accepted that I simply can't bend and twist in ways that I used to, and it's ok. Even if I only manage 5% of a session it's still beneficial, and at the very least it amuses the cat. He likes it when I'm on the floor, and he can sit above me. Yes Your Feline Highness, you King of all you survey and I prostrate myself at your handsome feet.

Pale blue & white

So many lovely blues in the LA light.

The Golden State

California! Well done to Deedeen and Janet for guessing the correct State. Isn't my brother amazing to pay for this trip... Thanks Bro!

But where in California? Not San Francisco, though I was really wishing we'd had an extra week so I could have gone to visit Lisa and all the other amazing bloggers who live in the Bay area. We were based in one place and were always back there to sleep, so never more than half a day from the images I've been showing recently. Of course, they are images that drew my attention, not necessarily the ones that would catch the eye of other visitors. I reckon it'll take most of you 3 seconds to guess :)

Faded yellows and blues (tiny clue)

I forgot to say, some of you are getting close with the guesses as to where I was. I'll start doing more obvious clues soon. These photo's show a popular colour combination in the place I visited.
Think of the kind of places that so often have these colours, it's another clue.

In the garden

Hydrangea

We're having a lot of blustery weather here, severe winds knocked both fences down the other day so the garden suddenly feels really exposed. In the brief calm, dry moments I'm making more effort to use my camera again.

My work: Pic 'n' Mix 1990/94

Seed pods, Edinburgh Botanic Gardens 1992


'Quality' 1992, word based layered image
cartridge paper, tissue, tape, acetate, charcoal, ink, dictionary photocopies

I found some old plastic sleeves with photo's in them. I only took very quick snaps so you can see the reflections of light and my red top. You can click to see them larger, though they are very fuzzy.


Various Pieces from the early 90's

As well as these pics from an old file, I also found some contact sheets of other work including the following two, the 1st is a very large recycled copper pod, the second is phase one of a perpetual calendar which got left in a locker at college along with a whole ton of other work because I forgot the combination on the lock!


Copper Pod and Perpetual Calendar, 1993/94

I was so stressed after the Ceramics Dept. broke my degree show pieces that I gave up on the ceramics aspect and forgot about the locker entirely. When I returned the next year they had been emptied, so it was quite a treat to find I had a photo of this half made. I still have the little carved wax animals that were going to be cast as part of this piece, it was all tied in to animals on a medicine wheel.

I was researching moon lore and mythology which related to a lot of my work. In doing so I found out my animal totem was a Wolf and, given my love of wolves, I got a bit side-tracked by the book Earth Medicine. Reading the description of 'wolves' (Birth date Feb 19 -March 20) was the clearest most accurate description of myself I have ever read, both the good and the bad aspects of my personality. I must look it out again and see if I've changed since then.

Poolside grille

From a grill at the outdoor pool in Gourock last month.

Huge blue door

3 blue-green doors

There were 5 doors but 2 were out of focus, and I like 3's anyway.
Managed not to faint during my blood test (I'm a wimp about needles).

Brown down the back track

Blue tractor

Huge cones

If you go down to the woods today...







The hedge is gone :0(
But the new fence is pretty good compared to what was originally proposed. It's a good height and there is enough soil to get some nice thing growing up it over time. Till then, we shall just have to appreciate the birds further afield in places with huge cones and lovely grasses.