Not such a little horse now

Inara's been growing really fast lately, she's starting to look much more like an elegant young horse, rather than a gangly baby foal.

She's not turning grey yet, although the vet seems pretty sure that she will eventually. Her mane and tail have a peppering of white hairs, but I haven't seen any through her chestnut colouring on her body. I'm hoping that she'll go through a stage where she has a pale mane and tail and a dark body. One of the things I like about grey horses, is that it's as though you get several colours for the price of one as they go through different stages before they reach their final colouring.

While I was out in the field taking Inara pics, I also caught some nice shots of cobwebs and other autumny things...

I love how the light's been split into rainbow colours over this one:

Brr..., it's making me chilly just to look! Autumn's definitely begun around here. Time to return to some cosy knitting...

Lately I've started work on a top-down sweater for myself, from Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits book. I'm knitting Ingenue, which is a top-down funnel neck sweater, only I've adapted the neckline so it'll be an off-the shoulder version instead. Here's how far I'd got with it few days ago:

It was really sunny the day I took the photo, and the colour wouldn't capture correctly, it's a much darker burgundy in real life. The yarn's Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora, which is lovely to knit with, very soft. Since the photo was taken, I've knitted down to the part where the sleeves are separated off, and started the body. It's all plain stocking stitch, which is mindless knitting - excellent for doing while I watch all the great new TV series that have started up again. Like Heroes Season 3, only half an hour now before it begins! :)

Spring things

Since it was such beautiful weather today, I took myself off at lunchtime to take some photos of spring things. I love the light at this time of year, which is soft and muted, and I love the fact that I can walk about in the fields without being togged up in a huge winter coat. I've been playing around with the metering on my camera lately, the spot meter is fast becoming a favourite, especially for white flowers and those pesky white sheep.

Some of the resulting pictures will probably become new colourways for some painted rovings. This blackthorn, for example, looks very pretty against the pale blue of the sky behind.



And this little violet has enough shades in the flower alone to inspire a new colourway.



Speaking of dyed rovings, the Wildcraft shop is progressing well. I've finally got a holding page set up at www.wildcraft.co.uk and the shop itself will be following soon.

Finally, this hairy monster is also a spring thing.



That's Sam, my homebred gelding. He's trotting towards me in the photo as he thinks I've arrived to do some clicker training with him (which he loves, it involves treats!). When he discovered that the thing in my hand was not the treat bag but a camera, he gracefully decided that a good tummy scratch from me was a reasonable substitute. Which left me covered in horse hair, as another sign of warmer weather is the start of moulting season!

Two fine fish

A few people have mentioned to me that it's not possible to tell the scale of the goldfish in the pic at the top of my blog. I suppose if you didn't know that they're actually verging on whale-sized, they might be mistaken from that photo as little tiddlers. Today I put the record straight!

Or rather I try to... I took some photos of Vic and Bob the goldfish earlier today, but I'm not sure that my efforts have paid off. Most of the pics are a bit blurry because they wouldn't stay still. At first I tried holding my hand against the aquarium to show their size...



You can tell they were interested...

Then I tried holding a ruler held alongside. I wanted to get a lengthways shot of them, but again they wouldn't hold still, they were far more interested in peering at the ruler suspiciously, and Bob, the timid (red) one took an instant dislike to it and hid. You can see him leaving in the photo below.



This was not going well.

Eventually I managed to get a shot that sort of shows their heights.



Vic is about 1-2cm behind the glass, so not quite the 9-10cm high that the ruler shows, but still flippin' big (sorry, bad pun).

Eventually I gave up with the measuring, and was rewarded with a lovely portrait of Vic who finally decided to stay still for a bit.



The only thing that spoils that pic is the algae on the glass. I gave their tank a spring clean yesterday, but forgot to scrape the algae spots off. I keep pondering over getting some water snails to graze the algae, although past experience tells me that they tend to breed very quickly. On the plus side, Vic and Bob are very greedy, so they'd probably gobble up any snail eggs they find. And snails would at least stay still for their portraits!