Bambi invasion

Well, I've never seen anything like this in all my time in Sweden. At 10am I was drinking my morning coffee and got a glimse of what I thought was a huge dog in my vegetable patch. Except it wasn't a dog, it was a deer! And there were 3 of them!

They don't usually come into residential areas like this unless its a really hard winter and the ground is frozen. Like last winter I saw deer tracks in the road. But they came at night then. We've only had snow for a couple of days and the weather is pretty mild, so it would seem strange that it would be hunger that drove them here in the middle of the day.....

I am hoping for a huge moose next time.

What a difference a day makes....

......just 24 little hours. Monday I took a walk in our beech forest to capture the golden carpet of fallen leaves. The very next day, winter had arrived.

Virtual framing

Frosty berries, taken in December 2009 and framed in Photoshop

New Year, Fresh snow.......

I really do live in a winter wonderland. Views from my veranda and front garden taken at 7.30am this January morning.

A seed of an idea....

Mmmmm. I have the idea for a little project involving vintage fabrics. We'll see how that develops.

I still have to get my camera fixed. It's actually the flash unit that's bust, and as I rarely shoot with flash, the camera is still usuable - although I'm ashamed to be seen in public as it's cracked with wires sticking out in all directions! So I have been getting on with editing some on the many hundreds of pictures I have already taken.

Here's one which was taken on a frosty misty morning in January in Stoke, my hometown while on a visit over Christmas. It's a homage to Stoke's industrial past, showing the top of one of Stoke's hundreds of disused bottle ovens (where pottery was fired). I had set off with my trusty camera and was wrapped up to the nines in woolly items, telling my mother I would be gone an hour. Arrived back after about three hours, with my mother on the verge of ringing the police ("this is not Sweden you know Dawn!"). Sorry Mum. I tend to lose track of time and space when I'm out snapping.

Out and about again!

With the half term break upon us, a scattering of fresh snow and A kitted out with her new skis (thanks Arne!) off we set for an afternoon of cross-country skiing. This kind of skiing is lovely - the stillness of the forest has a great calming effect on me and it's easy to control the speed (i.e. slow!).

I am such a baby about downhill, as I hate falling and have an aversion to ski lifts. But cross-country is pretty non-scary. It was about minus five that afternoon - a strange combination of being all sweaty but yet freezing at the same time - so we took a flask of hot choc with us. The final score I may add was 2 - 2 (-we both fell twice!)