fridays, feathers, babies.

Magpie Feathers

Happy Friday all.  And it does feel like a happy Friday.  During the week my days are fairly indistinguishable from one another but come Friday I know that James is heading back and we get a whole weekend together.  Fairylights arrived in the post this morning, the sofa is covered in blankets and, listening to the rain outside, I feel pretty snugly!  A good start to the weekend.
In other news, we found out that the first of the couples from our NCT group have had their baby.  It is the start of the strangest countdown of my life; which couple will be next?  And is it wrong to place bets?  I have a feeling as more babies appear, this waiting malarkey will get harder!

Buzzard Feather

Woodpecker Feather

An unidentifiable feather (any ideas)?

Anyhoo, these photos are of the feathers currently residing in a wine glass on the dresser.  I am trying to figure out how best to display them in the house; maybe a narrow top vase or a box frame?  Either way, how wonderful are those woodpecker feathers?  Polka dot feathers have to be the neatest thing ever.

Collections: she sees snail shells on the sea shore.

Another collection to add to my personal museum of curiosities.  Where James and I had our picnic, there were hundreds and hundreds of these empty shells, half buried in the sand.  Most of them were paper thin and crumbled in my fingers the minute I picked them up but the ones that made it as far as my palm were beautiful.

The spherical ones are 'Flat Top' Shells and the conical ones are Colus Gracilis.  Disappointingly there is absolutely nothing interesting to be read about the critters that used to inhabit these shells.  My coastal wildlife book (the font of all seaside wisdom) simply tells me on which coasts you are most likely to spot them (less useful when I have already spotted them) and even the Wikipedia entry on Colus Gracilis is blank.  

However, in general snaily terms, did you know that as they grow they just keep adding to the entrance of their shell (known as the 'outer lip') which is how they never outgrow their shells.  And, my favourite fact of the day, 90% of snails coil to the right and only 10% to the left!  I mean that is basically like people - the right-handed-folks outnumbering the left-handed-folks.  So if you do find a snail that coils to the left, the individuals from the shell-collectors-club (oh yes, it really does exist) would love to hear from you!

Sea Collections: tube worm rocks and treasures.

James lives and dreams by the sea and it is highly contagious.  Every moment he has spare (and the many more moments he cannot really spare) the surf boards are strapped to the roof of the car and I am being chivied out the house and bundled into the passenger seat.  I love it, as he disappears behind the walls of white water into the green out-back, I am left to forage and hunt till my soul and bag are full.

Whilst photographing these beautiful treasures I got a bit preoccupied with the trails on this stone, they are strangely labyrinthine like a stone marble maze.  After much searching (key words such as - what are the squiggly white things on my pebble - didn't help much) I discovered that they belonged to tube worms.  These fellows knit themselves hard calcified tubes all along their length and glue themselves onto a stone or the shell of another critter, then they live in isolation in their tube.  That beautiful fan splayed out in the picture below is all that is left from a tentacle that used to poke out and grab tasty snacks from the water overhead.  Isn't that neat?  There are so many on this rock I think it must have been quite the tube-worm-party.

And on another note, one day I hope I will be able to wear a smart bag for more than five minutes without filling my bag with treasures; 'interesting' twigs, strange feathers and tube worm shells.  It truly is a mess.  I will never be able to do a 'what's in my bag' style post.

The joy of a word: Quiddity.

I love to collect words.  The funnier they sound, the more antiquated or the more sesquipedalian (having many syllables!!) the better.  Did you know, for example, the collective noun for a group of weasels is a Boogle?  I mean, firstly, what an amazing word?!  But, secondly, who the heck even came up with that word and got it set in stone?

I found a really special word this weekend, Quiddity; the essential nature or quality of something (or someone) that makes it different from other things.  The sea has a different quiddity from the woods and my quiddity is as different from all of yours as yours are different from the rest of the world.

Isn't that a nice thought for a dreary Saturday?

And to those lovely three people (Renee, Louise and Oleah) who nominated me for one of those Liebster Award things, thank you.  I apologise for being the Scrooge at the party - I always mean to answer these questions and join in the linking but then I get as far as coming up with two interesting facts about myself and then get stuck and grouchy and write about something else instead.
Hence this post on Quiddity.  

A continuation of my best collection.

As part of my degree I spend a considerable amount of time out on placement; I get sent to hospitals all around Wales to work with phenomenal, and sometimes challenging, patients during often traumatic and defining times of their lives.  The days are long, rewarding and exhausting.  I find that walking in from the train station each day I am filled with a mix of anticipation and tension, which is not aided by the fact that the hospital I am currently based at is located next to a steel works - the skies are grey and heavy and it always fills me with foreboding.  (In general my moods tend to directly reflect the weather).

But if I take the bleak skies to be an omen, I cannot pretend to understand what the clouds were saying this Friday.  The sky danced and shifted as the sun rose, with strange tunnels, pathways and hurricane shapes appearing and migrating.  I sat on a low wall in a dingy car park for the longest time I could.

Doesn't the last picture look like an abstract painting?  The top pictures are Cirrocumulus clouds (radiatus variety) and the bottom is Cirrus (Spissatus species).

September's Collection.

The collection I wish to share this month is one that has kinda crept up on me, I mean until James pointed it out I didn't really consider it collecting, more hoarding I guess.  Basically, since discovering the Photobooth at the Arcade, everytime we visit (which is more than most children could ever dream of) we take a photobooth strip.

Weird looking though these might be, I love having these pinned up on my notice board. I am pretty lucky to have the friends I do.  Plus, when is a date to the Penny Arcade a bad idea?!

August's Collection.

I think this counts as a collection, I mean I did collect them, right?  I spied one of these little critters on the banks of the canal whilst taking the dog for a evening ponder and picked it up to go and show James' little brother.  As I knelt down I realised there was another, then another then a hundred more spanning into the distance, like someone had dropped a string of fairylights.  I felt like I was in James and the Giant Peach, chasing the little golden lights as they wriggle and dance away.  After an hour of stalking them up and down the path, I gathered about ten and bought them back to the boat to light up our evening, but the little blighters kept climbing out they were released back to the wild after about five minutes.  They are such surreal little animals, it is hard to believe that I didn't just dream them into existance.

Time to enjoy a sunset (and collecting a rainbow).

Last night, as we were sat at our little table drinking red wine and chatting, I happened to look out the window and see the most incredible rainbow superimposed on the grey clouds.  Quick as a flash I grabbed the camera and we sprinted barefoot down onto the street outside.  It was such a dramatic moment, the houses were golden in the sunset and the rainbow looked a little like it might be pouring out from our roof.  I'd like to think it was.  All the doors along the street were open and people carrying cameras and mobiles phones were leaning out to take photographs.  It felt like a special rainbow appreciation society gathering.  I wish there was such a thing.

Anyway, that gives me a nice 15 points for my cloud collection.

Once everyone had grown tired of the rainbow and headed back in for their suppers, we took some pictures against the sunset.   Although our little flat is perfect, the street we are on usually looks pretty grotty, so I felt I had to make the most of the illusion that we live in a nice area!  It really did look a little magical.

Adventuring with waterfalls.

This weekend we went on a mini adventure.  You might almost be fooled into thinking we were somewhere jungly, exotic and exciting, not just the Welsh Valleys.  Despite fairly epic collective hangover as a result of the 'Birthday Olympics' (soon to be making an appearance) it was a wonderful walk with wonderful friends.  I actually felt quite romantic about how perfect life could be, until the boys spent an hour climbing trees then the rest of the walk complaining about the mud/moss on their jeans. 

The walk follows the river through a valley and uncovers four waterfalls, the final one you can actually walk behind (although I do not have photographic evidence to prove this as it really is quite wet back there).  Everyone in Britain should make the pilgrimage to the Brecon Beacons.

Something for the Weekend: June's Collection.

This collection is by far my favourite as it has been built for me by those I love.

The fifteen charms that I have been bought have come from both friends and family and each one has its own story.  Some of the stories are silly, like the flip flop I was bought instead of actual footwear and consequently spent the entire weekend barefoot. Others are beautiful memories in metal form, like the elephant that reminds me of the elephants we befriended in Nepal.  And others remind me of people; the hare is my mother who once hoped her daemon would be a hare and none of us could imagine anything more fitting.
Everyday I wear it I am reminded of the people I love and the memories we share.  

The start of my most beautiful collection yet.

 

After sitting in my Amazon Wishlist for about 6 months, I felt revision was finally reason enough to treat myself.  The Cloud Collectors Handbook (by Gavin Pretor-Pinney) is a publication from the Cloud Appreciation Society.  I mean who doesn't appreciate clouds, right?  The concept of this little book is simple, go out, pay attention and collect clouds to earn points (kind of like low maintenance pokemon).  I may have also bought a copy for James.  We may or may not be getting a little competitive about out respective collections.

Here is the start of my collection, I hope you start your own.

Mostly though, I love knowing what I am looking at; the descriptions of how they form, what classifies them and even on occasion what weather they predict, is fascinating.  It is a good way of making the time in the library pass a little quicker!

The Burning House

If you haven't already seen this you really should stop reading here, quickly, and go and visit The Burning House blog.  The concept of the site is simple; what would you rescue if your house was on fire?  Okay, in practical terms, we all know you cannot really save your piano/antique furniture/best saucepans from the blaze.  Years of school fire drills mean upon hearing a fire alarm I have an overwhelming desire to queue quietly near an exit, not even dreaming of picking up the pencilcase readily available in front of me in order to avoid the lecture on how irresponsible it is to save material possessions.  But imagine you could, imagine you had time to dig out those old photos and grab the pets from their cages, what would you take?  I would love to know what you would save.

(If you're interested you can see my full submission here)

April's Collection

I love looking at people's collections.  Flickr is filled with beach combing collections; soft glass and shells, or mirrors, or Pyrex tupperware or vintage match boxes.  I find it facinating the different kinds of things that people feel inspired to hoard.  So I thought I would give my meagre collections a small chance to shine.  Some of the things I collect are for a weeks long whim, others have been curated lovingly over many years.  My buttons are one of those collections.  When I was about 10 or 11 we visited the Mulberry Outlet near my home.  I was not happy to be dragged along, once again, to look at fabric samples.  But under the heavy rolls of floral tapestries was a ripped cardboard box scrawled on with black marker saying 'damaged buttons'.

These are beautiful buttons, pearl grey with fault lines down their face.  I fit five across the length of my palm and convinced my mother to buy them for me, 20p each.  I still have two of the five in my tub of buttons and ever since my collection has continued to grow.