A Year Of Colour - Blue

After being a total slacker and not participating in last week's colour which was Plum, I was a bit more excited about this week's Flickr A Year Of Colour as it's Blue. I love blue.


Meshell handed me her tube of crystals and suggested I photograph that. I took photos in all sorts of light and this one is my favourite, I love the way the sunlight is shining through it. Isn't it a funny thing - it's the end result of a kids' science kit that Meshell was given many years ago. You make up this jelly stuff in the test tube and pour some other stuff in and it grows these cool crystals.


This photo was taken back in 2004 when we had a family holiday in Exmouth, in the north of Western Australia. We spent the day at Sandy Beach with perfect weather, perfect water and perfect sand.

A Year Of Colour - Scarlet

This week's colour for the Flickr Year of Colour group is scarlet. Bright red but with a hint of orange is the go.

As we have been blessed with an abundance of tomatoes from Steve's vegetable patch they had to have a look-in. This particular variety are called Grape Tomatoes, tiny little ones that are slightly enlongated. Sweet tasting and very firm and just perfect for salads.


Next is a plant from mum's garden. It's a type of succulent I think, called Red Hot Poker. It has quite a striking effect don't you think.


And finally, this is a shot taken in King's Park at the annual Wildflower Festival. It was a photographer's feast, so many gorgeous colours. I rather like the layers of colour in this photo and also liked the bright and cheery benches!

A Year Of Colour - Olive Green

This week's colour is Olive Green in the Flickr Year of Colour group.

This photo was taken in The Chinese Gardens, a green and gorgeous sanctuary in the heart of Sydney. It's quiet and peaceful and very very beautiful with loads of trees and water courses.


A friend of Steves grew this pumpkin and gave it to us. I think it's very pretty, I love the patterning on the stem. I shall admire it for a few more days, then it's into the pot!

A Year Of Colour - Carnation Pink

Only a couple of photos this week, I am not a pink girl. I was not inspired at all, however, one only has to walk into Meshell's room, and, ta-da, PINK. Everywhere! The china cupcake is hers. Isn't it funny, this is the girl that didn't like her pink bedroom walls when I painted them about 10 years ago. She covered them up with posters. Contrary creature. :-)

And this photo is of everlastings.

A Year Of Colour - midnight blue. And all about a marron..

These are the three photos I submitted to the Flickr group A Year of Color. The colour for this week is Midnight Blue.


If you are a reader of this Blog, you will have heard about Mr Blue. He is the blue marron that lives in our back yard fish pond. He is at least 6 years old, which is very old for a marron I believe. He keeps to himself and is fairly amiable amongst his fishy friends, unless they get too close, at which point he waves his claws about menacingly and will nip the Koi unless they get outta his way! And you may remember that I mentioned about some nocturnal wanderings before Christmas? How I found him tapping on the back door after he went for a walk one night?

Well, the reason for his unrest has been revealed.
I found this, upside down in the pond a couple of days ago.

You may well be horrified as I was, that our dear Mr Blue has gone to that big pond in the sky. Well relax dear reader, I too thought the worst as I was removing this beautiful blue object from the pond. As I was inspecting it, I squashed one of the claws and it cracked. At that point I realised that it was EMPTY! Yes, it is an empty shell, Mr Blue has moulted!!

Can you imagine how much work that must be, to bust out of a hard exoskeleton like that? It seems that the shell splits from underneath somewhere. Isn't it incredible that he can extract every little bitty part of himself from all those little nooks and crannies. But he has, and he is alive and well. And feeling a bit scared as his new shell will be soft for a bit so I guess it's a marrons most vulnerable time. I must admit that when I realised this was his discarded shell that maybe he'd crawled out of the water and the dogs has found and eaten him. But I saw him with my own eyes just a few minutes ago. But now he goes by the name of Captain Hook Blue, as he has lost one of his claws. He is a one-clawed boy for now (they grow back), well actually, he could be a one-armed girl - I have no idea really. :-)

I just think this is the most amazing thing!!

A Year of Colour - Tumbleweed

Gosh I had trouble interpreting this colour, I initially thought the ground in front of the cottage was correct, but it's too pink. Maybe the cottage itself is 'tumbleweed'! I really like the leaves photo, I took that a couple of years ago, grovelling on the ground with the camera in macro mode :-)

A Year Of Color - Tangerine

This week it's Tangerine for The Year of Color/Colour.
I borrowed this cool fluffy scarf from Meshell and draped Asta in it, who obligingly snuggled down - I wanted to call the photo Tangerine Dream so she was a very good girl to go back to sleep. Then I got a bit trigger happy and grabbed Daisy the stuffed cow and posed her like a film star. :-)

I love Rasant thread to machine sew with, and I was a very lucky girl to receive 8 more reels for Christmas. This photo is my Rasant stash. Next we have some beautiful banksias that were for sale as cut flowers at the Kings Park wildflower festival in 2005. They looked so gorgeous in a great big bunch. And finally we have a relic from the past, peace sign candles, complete with dust.

A Year of Colour Mosaic - Cerulean

A Year of Colour Mosaic - Cerulean, originally uploaded by dytay.

Cerulean, a tricky colour I think. I'm not sure if I've got it but I like all these photos so they'll do!

The sails were taken as an overhead shot when we had a half day trip on a big catamaran during a holiday to Monkey Mia in the north of Western Australia. It's the place that's famous for the dolphins that come to shore to say hello.

The cornflower was growing in my back garden a few years ago. If you look carefully you'll see a teeny weeny white spider sitting on it.

The bottom photo was taken at the Sydney aquarium. I like the illusion this gives of a cut off ocean. The sky and background water are a mural which is behind real rocks which are positioned along the back wall of the large sea water aquarium.

A Year Of Color Mosaic - Gray

This week's contribution to the Flickr A Year Of Color group. Lucky for me we have grey pets otherwise I would have been struggling for inspiration. Why can grey/gray be spelt two different ways I wonder - I should Google and find out. I love those kangaroo sculptures, particularly the one appearing to drink. And bad Asta the upside-down cat. And Maxie and Pepper the newly clipped and looking spiffy Mini Schnauzers. I have no emotion for the Education building at Curtin University however, I just happened to walk past it today and thought "Wow, grey!"

PS - I Googled. Grey is British/Australian spelling, Gray is US spelling. Now I know.

A Year Of Color Mosaic - Violet Red

Violet-red is this week's focus in The Year Of Color. Variations allowed, which is good as I found it hard not to creep towards purple. Here we have sections from a couple of my quilts, and a very beautiful dianthus (specifically Cottage Pinks) which grew happily in a pot in my back garden for 5 years. Sadly it turned up its toes and died last year, note to self - go and buy some more.

A Year Of Color Mosaic - Periwinkle

I enjoyed this week's A Year Of Color - periwinkle, one of my very favourite colours. It pushed me to grab Meshell's Hippie Quilt that I made for her 4 or 5 years ago, and re-photograph it. When the quilt was newly finished I remember Steve borrowed a digital camera from work, back when they were new to the home market. It has a huge 0.3 megapixels and at the time we thought the photos were fabulous, but by today's standards they are all grainy and yuck. I currently use a Panasonic 2 megapixel camera which takes a pretty good photo even though it's getting a bit archaic.

A Year Of Color Mosaic - Red

I discovered that red is not a colour I tend to surround myself with and thus found this week's "A Year Of Color" mission a little more challenging. I try and choose things that are a little different, or at least photograph them in a slightly different way. My favourite photo of these four is the collection of DMC threads - I'm pleased with the focus of the close-up shot plus all those colours look really pretty together.

Spring and Stray Threads

This week's colour for Flickr A Year Of Color is green-yellow.

Those green-yellow jelly beans were yummy - apple flavour. :-)

I had another potter around the garden with my camera yesterday, spring is such a lovely time of year with things flowering and seeding and growing. I was going to say growing like weeds but that would sound silly :-)

Normally I manage to point the finger of death at gardenias but this one has stayed alive for 2 years and is growing well. AND it's flowering again, dripping with flowers in fact. It went all weird on me a few months back though, the leaves started turning very pale with very dark veins, and after Googling it appeared that the problem was with the pH of the soil - too alkaline. A bit of remedying with some trace elements and acidifying stuff and the leaves are slowly recovering.


This is my English lavender. It's been growing merrily for 15 years and seems to thrive on neglect. Bees love it. And it smells divine, although my kids would tell you that it's an old lady smell. Don't listen to them.

This is one of a dozen or so globe artichokes that Steve has grown in the vegie patch this year. They are delicious boiled and then the leaves pulled off one at a time and dipped in a mixture of melted butter, a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon juice. Yummy...




What with the fact that I actually did some sewing last week, brings me to stray threads. I have a thing about stray threads, can't stand 'em. I always get peeved when they end up all over the place and stuck all over my clothes, you know, you're out shopping and look down to see little pink threads all over your black top - and you didn't even notice and then you wonder how many other people have seen this and thought you are a weirdo.

I digress.... anyway, I discovered this great tip. I can't remember where I read it so I can't give credit where credit's due, but what you do is this - grab a scrap piece of quilter's wadding or batting and sit it next to your sewing machine. Then pop the scrap threads on that - they STICK to it and it's wonderful!



Then the next tip I read was to from time to time shove the scrap threads into a pretty glass bottle and gradually over time it builds up into a colourful display. I like it, and sometimes when my brain has moved into trivial mode, I stare at it and try and remember what I made that had used that particular colour.

A Year of Color

I've been watching the Flickr group A Year Of Color with interest for some time. The concept of photographing something that contains that colour has grabbed me, so I took the plunge yesterday and joined. This week's colour is "Dandelion".