Autumnal Belton

Earlier this week we took heed of the weather forecast which was casting doom and gloom about the temperatures for the next few days and took advantage of the beautiful sunshine to visit our local National Trust property Belton House.  We thought the children would have been back at school after half-term but evidently they had an inset day so it was pretty busy but the beauty of Belton is that it's large enough for everyone.

The colours in the gardens were wonderful so I'll let the photos do the talking.

 The lake with a party of swans looked wonderful and was very peaceful without its usual company of geese.  Presumably they are still on their way.

 The walls of the Orangery were covered in ladybirds, or more accurately ladybeetles that originated in Asia.  Apparently these bugs are becoming a nuisance in America so it seems it might be our turn now.

 One of the offending lady beetles.

 These are the fruits on a Spindle Tree.  I thought they looked a bit like butterflies.  You would think that they were flowers but, no, they are the fruits.

 This fungus was on a trees tump down by the lake.  The fungus ran in a line along the track of the roots too.

Colour Spinning

Today I've been along to a monthly meeting of South Lincolnshire Spinners and Weavers and am for once happy with what I've managed to achieve.  One of the members put a lot of work into giving us an introduction to colour mixing and blending of fibres.  

We started by choosing an image to work with and then selected 5 main colours from the image that summed the scene up for us.  The task was then to make colour patches with water media that would guide us towards blending our fibres.  We were advised to choose a light, medium and dark tone from the image and make sure we had these in our final choices.  M had made worksheets to enable us to work in a controlled way and to keep a good record of how we had arrived at our blends.  



I chose a postcard of a work by artist Peter Graham.  I haven't got on well using hand carders before but M, the tutor, loaned me a set and with her help I got some good mixes.  I have struggled previously with using carders as they've hurt my hands but M's method was much less stressful.   I've done a lot of colour theory work when I was painting so the colour mixing wasn't too difficult, although using wool does make it a little harder.   I didn't card a lot of each colour and chose to spin them as one long length rather than separate the colours out.  Hopefully you can see the colours I achieved.  As usual it's a bit over-spun and corkscrewy but I'm hoping that will even out when I wash it to finish it.

These are a few of the other efforts from the group.



We all started with identical sets of the primary colours plus black and white.  M had no confidence in her colour mixing ability but perfectly reflected the colours from her image.



Isn't this blend based on irises beautiful?



Wendy echoed the beautiful colours in her sunset and you can see the original colours we all started with on her worksheet.



We had quite a table full of colour and inspiration by the end of the afternoon.

Best of all were the exuberant blends made by two young children who had come along with their Mum's.  They were both less than 10 years of age and were so busy we didn't even know they were there.






Aren't they wonderful?  Artists in the making.

Unexpected strolling

Some days turn out differently from how you expect.  My plans for today were to go and fetch Mum from her care home so that she could have Sunday dinner with us and enjoy some time with my brother and his wife.  With the unpredictability that always attend dementia, when I went to fetch Mum she was very sleepy and even the thought of the company of her lovely son and 'lovely sunshine' was not enough to rouse her sufficiently.  Her spirit was willing but the flesh was never going to be strong enough today.  I left her to her roast turkey at the home, assuming they could wake her up enough, and came home disappointed.

However, disappointment turned into a gift as we decided to go for a walk at our local National Trust property.  It has been a glorious day, less cold than recently, and we were really glad we made the effort.

 There was a definite Harry Potter vibe to this lovely larch tree, above.

 "I never knew I could walk on water!  What do you think to all this cold stuff then?" 

 I had a little play with in-camera functions and dabbled with a little black and white.

The boathouse had a lovely shadow across it and the children were enjoying themselves breaking off chunks of ice and winging them across the lake.  I hope the trout under the ice weren't being too upset by the vibrations.  Have you heard the noise the ice makes as it slides across itself?  It's a very delicate sound.

Plenty of inspiration for stitch.

Beautiful shapes and contrasts in the Italian garden.  The lavender is a silvery grey, not quite the lilac colour it appears here and has yet to be cut back.

Our walk was rounded off with hot chocolate and cake, (well, you have to don't you?) and this beautiful beast and his friend seemed oblivious to our approaches in the car park.  A lovely end to a wonderful late winter day.  Hopefully Mum will feel a little more lively next week.  She is getting more frail but considering she is going to be 90 this year she is one amazing lady.

Autumn

I thought you might like to see a few of the photos I took today on a very cold but enjoyable walk round the parkland at Belton House.   I think it must be the amount of rain we had earlier in the year that is giving us such a glorious Autumn this year.  With the sun shining beautifully today the colours were stunning!

It's coming to something when you have to apologise for nature!

Experimenting with angles.

Not a clue what these pretty toadstools are but I don't think I'd eat them.

You'd think from that rucksack he was stalking someone but, no, it's just a photo opportunity.

I'm not sure whether this is a handkerchief or a tulip tree but it looked stunning today.

Thanks to some advice from Mark Highton-Ridley I have been experimenting with taking photos on 'Aperture Priority' and I'm liking the results.  Thank you Mark!