| SATURDAY • MAY 26TH, 2012 - BY KIA |
| At Last! Some Sunshine! |
Some part of Scotland had
snowfalls just a couple of weeks ago. Now the weather is
finally gorgeous and the mercury reached 24°C (75°F, for our
American friends) in our corner of the wood. The snow is
"shrinking" fast, however in
Cairngorms some skiing has still been possible. Weather
forecasters have said the sunshine is due to continue till
Monday. This morning I was woken up at 5 by the light coming
through my bedroom window (right not the sun rises at 4:47
AM and sets at 9:43 PM). Not a cloud in the sky, a gentle
breeze and lots of chirping birds. Just perfect! Can you see
me doing a silly happy dance?! LOL!
I really like these
Shabby Princess' scrapbook-elements.
A couple of friends have noticed that hubby and I haven't
post anything for our
Beyond Layers eCourse in a while. I guess we both
imagined the class to be a bit different, thus we lost our
mojo for a while. Luckily the last lesson was really
appealing, so here are my experiments for the *Fun With
Type* assignment. Kim shared a great tutorial on how to use
text and a clipping mask to create some fun photos. We don't
have RadLab (it has cool photo-effects, but we don't have an
extra $149 to spend on it), so I used Kim's texture Stay
instead.
I started with a photo of the Molo Audace in Trieste
(Italy), taken in July 2007. It is said that all the lovers
that walk on this wharf will have good luck in their future
story if they are really in love with each other. True or
not, the wharf is really romantic, especially at twilight. I
really like the warmth that this image is conveying to me.
You can view it bigger and on a white background at
Flickr. In the past, to
have a similar effect, I used the magic wand tool, but Kim's
approach is much easier and also quicker. What a fun little
technique to add to my bag of tricks, thanks to Kim.
This photo was taken at the Botanic Garden in Glasgow
(Scotland) two weeks ago. I applied a purple-ish solid color
overlay to give the image a vintage look. It seemed perfect
for Virgil A. Kraft's quote.
I have created many more images with Kim's technique, but
for today I better stop here and go soaking up the sun. Have
a fabulous weekend!
Listening to:
Summer days by Sheryl Crow. |
COMMENTS
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| WEDNESDAY • MAY 23RD, 2012 - BY ZENO |
| A Light In The Darkness |
So glad you have enjoyed our
coverage of the Duck Race. It was such a fun event to
capture on camera. This week's theme for
Texture Tuesday is
Light and, in honor of the Duck Race, Kia and I have played
with long exposures in the dark.
Place your mouse over the photo for before/after view. We
used Kim's textures Magic Scratches and Serious Magic.
I am afraid I have to make this a short post; I have a few
more things to do before I hit the hay and I haven't even
started packing for my work trip yet. Have a lovely rest of
the week!
Listening to:
När jag blunder by Pernilla Karlsson
&
Mundu
Eftir Mér by Gréta Salóme & Jónsi. |
COMMENTS
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| MONDAY • MAY 21ST, 2012 - BY KIA & ZENO |
| Quacking Time |
We have started writing a post
many times during the past few days, but have always been
side-tracked by something more urgent, which was of course
less fun. After the sad news over the weekend, we wanted
something cheerful and colorful.
For the last few years, Paisley & District Scouts have been
running the annual Duck Race down the river to help raise
funds for local charities.
Racing rubber ducks is a popular way of raising money for
charity here in the UK. Ducks are sold and then numbered.
The ducks are then dumped into the river and floated down a
race course. The first one to float past the finish line is
the winner.
The wind was blowing the wrong way up the river and the
ducks were in danger of heading away from the finishing
line, so they have been "helped" on their way and hundreds
of people were on hand to cheer them all the way to the
finish line.
A few of the ducks have grown up and have been in a race of
their own this year: the corporate race.
All of the money raised from the race this year will be
split equally between Paisley & District Scouts, Accord
Hospice and St. Vincent Hospice. Both of these hospices
provide palliative care for people living with cancer and
other life limiting illnesses, and rely on donations to
carry out their day to day work and care.
The winning ducks rewarded their owners with children bikes,
music lessons, ski lessons, driving lessons, various
vouchers for different stores and restaurants. Lots of
people and kids attended this event this year, and they all
seemed to enjoy it. It's nice to see that a charity event
can also be a fun and enjoyable moment. This year the kids
were also provided with a giant inflatable duck and a bouncy
castle.
We have lived both in the USA and in the UK and we have
noticed that in these countries rubber ducks are quite
common objects. We have to admit we have never played in the
bath with a yellow rubber duck when we were little children
(and we do not remember our youngest cousins doing so
either), but it's nice to learn the different traditions
that make the world such a nice and variegated place.
As you might have noticed, we have been experimenting with
depth of field using gaussian blur to defocus the background
in our shots. We still have to master it, LOL!
Tomorrow morning we will finally meet the manager of our
letting agency; wish us luck, pretty please!
UPDATE: The meeting with the manager of our letting agency
went more or less well. She was clearly a bit annoyed, but
very polite. We reminded her that we discussed the same
unpleasant situation (them entering our flat with a spare
key without prior notice) already in 2009, and that the
spare copy of the key to our flat is not a pass-key, but it
is meant to be used only in case of proven emergency (i.e.
major gas leak, fire, etc.). We agreed (exactly like back in
2009) that any visit to our flat will occur in our presence
after we receive written notification. Hope they will play
fair from now on.
Listening to:
Wind Of Change by Scorpions. |
COMMENTS
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| TUESDAY • MAY 15TH, 2012 - BY KIA |
| Multicolor Flag Banners On A Lovely Blue Sky |
One of my favorite buildings
in Paisley is the Anchor Mill, a remnant of Paisley's
Victorian industrial heritage. On the bank of the White Cart
Water, it was built in 1886 by John Clark. Originally it was
a cotton spinning mill. The mill complex employed many
hundreds of local people. Closed in the 1980s, it has now
been restored and converted into luxury flats.
I applied the texture Now by
Kim Klassen and texture 62 by
Lenabem-Anna to give a wee crayon effect to this image,
taken last Saturday afternoon during the annual Duck Race.
I hope your week is off to a great start. I’m feeling much
better now, thank you all so much for your sweet get-well
wishes! Not sure what caused my headaches. Maybe it was
caused by tension, just too many things to worry about at
one time. Or maybe it was eye-related, or even just
hormonal. Hopefully I will get back to my old self soon.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a wonderful
week!
Listening to:
Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye. |
COMMENTS
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| SATURDAY • MAY 12TH, 2012 - BY ZENO |
| The Stone Circle At Strichen |
Aberdeenshire, in the North
East of Scotland, has the densest concentration of
prehistoric standing and recumbent stone circles in the
British Isles. Astronomical Observatories? Maps of the
heavens? Sacrificial altars? Their mystery almost equals
their beauty.
Recumbent stone circles are a particular style of stone
circles which is endemic to the North East of Scotland. They
date back to approximately 3000 BC.
What makes this circle unique is the large stone (often many
tonnes in weight) which lies horizontally and was put in
position to be dead level. This is the recumbent. To either
side was placed vertically a large stone, called the
flanker. Typically the stones which made up the circle
portion were graded so that they decreased in size away from
the recumbent.
The one at Strichen is a small Megalithic period recumbent
stone circle standing on a hill-top, in rolling open country
with gazing animals all around, and despite the history of
destruction and re-erection retains the atmosphere of an
ancient stone circle.
Above you can see a general view of Strichen stone circle
showing the interior faces of the recumbent stone and
flankers.
The circles were erected in good farmland by an entire
village and it is amazing how those people could bring and
position stones of many tonnes. What is also remarkable,
it's their survival into our days, considering modern
intensive farming methods, a former lack of understanding of
the importance of our heritage and the sometimes deliberate
destruction by early religious groups.
In fact, much damage is done accidentally by people who mean
no harm. We should all think twice, and don't do anything
which would cause degradation to the monument such as
climbing on it or lighting fires nearby.
Listening to:
New Age by Marlon Roudette. |
COMMENTS
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| THURSDAY • MAY 10TH, 2012 - BY ZENO |
| Thank God It Is Not A Bank Holiday! |
The weather has turned bad
again and rain is battering against the windowpanes. We are
experiencing spells of persistent and heavy rain accompanied
by strong to gale force winds and snow on the hills. Is it
really May?! Kia and
I were amused to see
Prince Charles presenting a special weather forecast.
The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall were visiting the BBC
Scotland studios in Glasgow, which is celebrating 60 years
of television broadcasting.
Even though Kia's headache has been getting a little bit
better, she will try to stay away from the computer for a
couple more days. She is still pretty nervous for the
problem with our letting agency
and all the excuses we have heard so far. Hopefully she will
finally relax after meeting the manager next week. TTFN!
Listening to:
Shattered Dreams by Johnny Hates Jazz. |
COMMENTS
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| WEDNESDAY • MAY 9TH, 2012 - BY KIA |
| Dogged By Misfortune? |
Life has been a bit
complicated lately. What a bummer! As if that was not
enough, I have spent the last week with a headache coming
and going which also required daily painkillers that blew me
up like a hot-air balloon. On top of everything, yesterday
evening I got a fright when the gas check engineer (sent by
our letting agency) tried to enter our flat with neither
notice nor permission. Obviously, I thought he was a
burglar. How unnerving! What saddens me the most is that we
already discussed the same identical problem two years ago,
and I sure hoped that our letting agency would never again
misuse/abuse the copy of our keys that they supposedly have
just in case of emergency. I am still shaken and really
tempted to call the police and report them! It's so unfair
that now my poor hubby will have to take some time off work
just to go to the letting agency and complain in person with
their manager. But more about it in a future post.
Regular rumbling blogging will (hopefully) be resumed
shortly. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what is the most
effective stress-relief technique you use, pretty please.
~ Textures with thanks to
Kim Klassen (Stay and Chase),
scrapbook-elements courtesy of
Shabby Princess. |
COMMENTS
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| FRIDAY • MAY 4TH, 2012 - BY KIA |
| We Live In A Rain-Soaked Island |
A myth? Oh no, not at all if
you live in our area. We have about
265 days with rain a year. In fact, we are back home
from a wet, windy, cold trip to
Aberdeenshire. We did have a
good time, despite Scotland keeps trying to win the
worst-weather award.
I know I am not handling the weather very gracefully, but no
one around us (Scots included!) was happy, everyone was
complaining that the weather has not been very kind
recently.
Sure, we were on holidays and we were happy, but there is
not much you can do when the sky is filled with
thick, brooding clouds, and the rain seems to be coming from
every angle! Staying indoors all the time is not my ideal
kind of holiday, just like being all drookit (drenched) or
winding through the dubs (puddles) are not. Also, it kept
raining on our camera lenses, preventing us from capturing a
few beautiful scenes. Rant over? No, not yet, LOL!
Apart from a single sunny day, the whole holiday was
characterized by permanent annoying down-pouring rain,
strong gusts of wind, grey skies, humidity dripping from the
stones on all building façades and entering in our poor ol'
bones. As if the weather wasn't mocking us enough, it has
been sunny and much warmer since we got home!
My friends back in Italy pointed out that I am talking much
more about the weather since I moved to Scotland. Keep in
mind that here in the UK the weather is probably the only
acceptable
conversation you can have with someone that you have met
less than one-hundred times, LOL! They also tried to remind
me that I used to love the rain. Yep, true. Before moving
here! I admit that the more I live here and the more the
weather miffs me off. I am trying to accept it, but I will
never ever love it. I blame the cloudy weather for my bad
moods and all the rain for my lack of exercise and my gain
of weight. I crave the sunshine more and more every day that
goes by.
There are many brilliant Scots words for describing the wet
weather. Dreich is probably my favourite, because it
combines rain and wetness with cold, overcast sky and
dismal. The weather is often blashie (wet and windy). In a
wet day you can experience: smirr (very light rain), dribble
or dreip (drizzling rain), lauchin' rain (a long shower from
an apparently clear sky), pish-oot (a downpour),
gandiegow
(a heavy shower), thunder plump (a sudden thunder shower),
plype (a sudden dash of water). If you are on the coast you
might experience
haar (cold mist or fog coming from the sea)
and bluffart or fudder (blast of wind).
There are many more Scottish words to describe weather, but
none comes to my mind right now. On the other hand, hubby
and I bumped into an interesting page about the
weather
terminology on the Orkney Islands (northern Scotland), that
we recommend reading if you like talking about the weather
as much as we do.
Have a lovely first weekend of May. I can't believe we are
one-third of the way through the year already. |
COMMENTS
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|
RightColumn
A bit of This and a pinch of That
in the life of Kia & Zeno, hopeless day-dreamers.
Everyday happiness
♥
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