Tuesday 25 May 2010

Off on my holidays

I'm off to Crete today for a week's yoga so no posts for a while, but hopefully I'll come back with a nice batch of photos which will be popping up here very soon!

Here's an old 35mm photo from Santorini in 1992 to set the mood.

Saturday 15 May 2010

Thinking of the seaside.

It seems like such a long time since I've been to the sea.  I don't mean nice warm foreign sea where you can drink chilled white wine and eat octopus while moaning about the small size of the sunshades, I mean the English seaside, with warm cold drinks, rock, pebbles poking you in the back and bad toilets.

While feeling romantically nostalgic for something I don't like at all I have rediscovered some photos of beach huts I took on the Isle of Wight a few years ago and after hours and hours of trying to make them look beautiful, I think I have finally succeeded!

Here's my first one, a beautiful red and white example of the Great British Beach Hut, the place where you recover from the beach!  Click here for more beach huts.


Wednesday 12 May 2010

I'm the Featured Etsy Artist on Handmade Spark today!

I'm not known for my early start to the day with my radio alarm going off at 8.00 to the dulcet tones of Radio 4, when my eyes can focus the first thing I do is check my email and as regular as clockwork my Handmade Spark Today email with bing into view and I have a scroll through and usually find a couple of articles which hold my interest as my brain creaks into gear for the day.  This morning I had a lovely surprise to find my very own name in the titles at the top as my Etsy shop had been chosen and I was the Featured Etsy Seller of the day!  Here's how it looks:


The images which have been chosen are an interesting mixture, not the ones that I would have picked if I had been asked which is interesting.  So thanks to Tim and anyone else who picked me!

Saturday 1 May 2010

Lunch at Love 2 Eat on Burton Road

As the weather was unexpectedly delightful this afternoon with warm sunshine instead of the forecast rain that we popped out for lunch to sit in the sun and watch the world go by.

Silver Apples hadn't quite opened when we got there, so we went a few doors down to the lastest cafe on Burton Road, called Love 2 Eat where we've been meaning to go since it opened, but it's always been full.  It's a tiny little place with four tiny little tables outside and we were lucky enough to find one empty.



The menu is pretty small and on blackboards on the walls inside (there's a proper menu on the website) with sandwiches, soups, pies and the odd casserole.  There's a glass fronted deli counter with cakes and pies all looking tasty.  There's a great collection of cookery books dotted around (even in the tiny, very clean loo out at the back), I could have a jolly good browse through them and have my eye on Moro East for next time.

I went for a hot apple juice cured ham sandwich which came in a nice thin brown baguette and I narrowly avoided the horror of industirally produced coleslaw as I'd spotted it come out to the ladies next to us who also had baguettes.  Our kind waitress instead gave me a portion of really delicious tiny new potatoes drenched in butter with fresh herbs, much nicer than oniony coleslaw smothered in cheap mayo.  There were very nice salad leaves which were almost all manky which was a shame, but for some reason, I did eat them.  The ham was in nice big chunks like it had just been hacked from a propper piece of meat which was a pleasant surprise and was nicely appley but not too sweet.  Some rather odd orange chutney came in a wee espresso cup which once inside the bread with the sad leaves and tasty ham was good.



Being greedy we shared some 'bounty cake' which was a lovely light sponge with little coconutty bits and a rich chocolate icing on the top and in the middle, it was a bit dry but still enjoyable.  The tea somewhat bizarrely, came with little jugs of frothed warm milk, not exactly ideal for tea, but it was okay and we were running a bit late and didn't have time to ask for some more.


Love 2 Eat
190a Burton Road
West Didsbury
0161 434 7077

Three Treasuries This Morning.....

I woke up to three Treasuries today and to sunshine which was a very pleasant surprise as all the recent weather forecasts have been spreading doom and gloom about May Day rain.  For now it's fine.

Blue Flames 

I'm actually an 'alternate' in the Treasury but it has been thoughtfully posted as a new Treasury East so that all of the selections can be seen.  As far as I'm concerned, that's the only use for this superfluous new style of Treasury.  I tend to post my Poster Sketch in my blog so that my alternates can see what I've chosen.  This is a nice and public way to make that clear.  Thanks!



House of Blues

There's obviously a blue thing in the air at the moment.  I adore those little ceramic houses and was browsing through The Little Door's shop yesterday after seeing one on the Front Page/




Classical

You really can't go wrong with a good collection of black and white photos from the splendid Photographers of Etsy Team, they do seem to hit the spot pretty much every time.