Back at home, I did a little more depth of field tinkering with my babushka dolls.
And I managed to get up close and personal to the beagle to get this scary shot (she’s asleep).
All posts by Sandra Graham
Park Study – Part 4
Guess who’s stalking?
These colourful rhinos were all over the city. They seem a bit more threatening than the colourful cows that were around years back.
Park Study – Part 3
A leaf on the ground means that autumn has arrived.
As you can see, lots of work with depth of field this week.
Park Study – Part 2
This photo by Joan made me wonder about how consumed we’ve become by our phones. This young office worker is a good example. She didn’t seem to notice anyone around her, let alone how nice it was out in the park that lunch time.
Park Study – Part 1
You might not have known it from this blog, but I haven’t been feeling too much love for photography lately. Apart from holidays and day walks, it’s been ages since I took out my camera just for the heck of it. So to rekindle some camera love, I’m taking a short course.
I have taken a basic photography course before, but that must be 10 years ago or so now, and since then I’ve hardly been out of my comfort zone (i.e. scenes, landscapes and the like). So over the next little while, I’ll be posting the photos I’m taking as part of the week’s homework. Forgive me if it’s all a bit random.
To start off with, a study of Hyde Park at lunch time.
Lots of nice highlights and shadows now that it’s March. I really like how everything is so lush after the weekend’s rain.
Quick Knits
After the cardigan, I made a few quick and easy projects, with a few twists, of course.
After my old K-Mart lunch bag gave up the ghost, I had a quick look around Ravelry and found this pattern. For a knitted, and felted lunch bag. I was nervous about felting anything, but in the end it was very easy, even with a front-loading washing machine.
I also knitted up this beanie for my nephew J’s birthday. The original pattern was quite plain so to challenge myself I did a stranded fair isle pattern that I found in one of my knitting books.
That was good practice as I will be knitting up a very big colour strand project next.
Camping Adventure – Part 5
As in all the previous times that we’d camped, the rain eventually caught up with us. It started raining on our last night at Riverwood Downs, and was still going when we woke up the next morning. That meant not much of a breakfast and another wet pack-up. Soon we were on the road back to Sydney. What a contrast from the hot and dry landscape of the previous few days!
One lady who was happy was Bridie. She relishes getting her nose out of the window no matter what the weather.
She really enjoyed having the wind in her hair ears.
Camping Adventure – Part 4
We took a drive to the nearby town of Dungog, about 25km away. To get there we had to navigate the gravel ‘main road’ over the forested Monkerai Nature Reserve.
And then across the pastured valley leading up to the town.
Dungog seemed to be the hub of the district, with the usual amenities, and the local high school too. We were there at 3pm when school ended for the day, and the line of school buses were endless. There was even one to Monkerai, near Riverwood Downs.
Back on the main street, there was the usual cross-road cairn and selection of quaint pubs. This pub was located, as you would expect, opposite the oldest bank in town. Unusually, in this age of bank conversions, it was still a bank.
The arts/crafts/antiques set had also arrived, but hadn’t totally dominated the main street like in other towns.
And there was an assortment of cute cottages about too.
Dungog was perhaps how the Hunter Valley used to be before viticulture took over; laid-back, quiet but still with a good supermarket and a few cosmopolitan cafes (the one we went to for lunch served a good vegetarian selection and was dog-friendly).
Camping Adventure – Part 3
Cattle graze across much of the district, so it wasn’t long until we passed some cattle on the side of the road.
We had to stop and eyeball each other.
It’s fascinating the wide variety of these cows, despite the fact that they are probably all the same breed.
I took the photos from the safety of the car, as some of the cows looked rather mean.
Camping Adventure – Part 2
When the sun went down, the temperature dropped to more comfortable levels, and the wildlife made an appearance. First up were the water birds who had their dinner on the lawn.
Then the almost-full moon appeared, and quickly rose up high.
At bed-time, the moon was very bright indeed.
It wasn’t until about 2 or 3am that the marsupial wildlife made an appearance. There were possums scouring the campsite, looking for food and mischief. One even had the gall to climb on to the fly! We were cleverer though. All our food was locked up tight in the car.
Static and Silence 