Weather

While the weather here is rather confusing, there was no confusion about winter in the NE United States, where they had copious quantities of snow.
These pictures are taken from the before and after by the Washington Post, Washington Post who had the presence of mind to send photographer Linda Davidson out to do this!

I snipped them together.

Night Feeding Swans

Sorry about the photo quality, however, hope this gives you an idea of the numbers, all from either the Russian Arctic or Iceland.

They will return to their cold lands in a couple of months to breed.

Hoar Frost

Yesterday we had a hoar frost. The temperature was just below freezing and some atmospheric 'something' cause this fabulous cold crisp winter morning with every little twig, blade of grass and leaf covered in a delicate tracery of white frost.
I went out and took photos.

Which is your favourite?

Beads

I think I mentioned that I am doing embroidery, or textiles or something like that!
An adult version of fun, well, FUN in my book!
My thought process is 'what do I have to loose?' I know nothing so am bound to learn something!

Today I learned about beads.
Little tiny beads that can fit on sewing threads.

I know that you are supposed to have a 'beading needle' it is very, very thin so it can fit through the holes in the beads. 
I do not have one but found a fairly thin needle that worked on more beads than not, so every third or fourth bead got stuck as I threaded it and had to come off, however, I had enough that did slide down the needle and over the eye bump, which is wider than the rest of the needle, to make a strand about 5 inches long.
It was most impressive and I was thrilled.
This took a mere 2+ hours!

I took the strand of sparkling beads and folded it in half then tried wrapping it round some fabric, to make a pretty twist with little twinkles from the beads. 
I was quite pleased with how it was going, when....

disaster...


the thread snapped!!!!!

Hundreds of tiny beads created a very real replica of Stephen Hawking's 'Brief History of Time, Big Bang Theory' and spiralled, and twisted and spun into the vast space that was 'the void'.

However, as it was only the sitting room gravity took hold quite quickly and they descended in amongst the sofa cushions, onto the floor, on the table where they bounced and ricochet in yet more directions.

It only took about another hour to locate and collect up all the beads from the explosion.

The lesson learned from this is, there is apparently special 'beading' thread!  Should I attempt beading again, I shall have acquired 'beading thread' before I bead!


On a side note, in my experience, when things 'explode' the go in all directions, I assume there is some amazing and totally incomprehensible mathematical paragraph that gives a reason why the cosmos is 'flat' like a plate rather than spherical in shape which would be what I would expect.

Sunrise

The sunrise this morning was quite pretty in the east, however, the colour mixture over towards the west as the sun caught the mist was quite beautiful, such gentle colours.

Snowdrops

Picked some snowdrops yesterday, they look wonderful, and had a drink from my snowdrop mug.

Ah, it's the little things.

Snowman and Sheepdogs

While it was cold enough for snow in London and at least one snowman was built, and had his own plinth!

We had fresh cold sunshine and went to watch young sheep dogs learning how to herd sheep.
The dogs seemed to love it and the sheep were a wiley old bunch of Scottish black faced sheep and seemed to know they had trainees and led them a merry dance.  

Just look how many there are altogether.

At the end all the sheep had to be driven back down, one experienced sheep dog took the lot all on his own, it was marvellous!