The Arctic's near-record sea ice low – big picture | Environment | guardian.co.uk

The Arctic's near-record sea ice low – big picture | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

A stunningly beautiful photograph - heightened by it's awesome import

'via Blog this'

Product development - and psychedelic guinea pigs!

With a mind to the Winter season, and our ever present quest for new designs, we spent a happy day today creating new products - from fibre felt. 
The workshops have been such a success this summer, and a happy spin off is all the creative ideas generated.


Here's a pictorial snapshot of one development including the vital "psychedelic guinea pig"


Making Felt Purses

the layers of loose fibre wrapped around the former
- does resemble a guinea pig no?

We want to make the purse 'in the round' so the first stage is to wrap the fibres - in colours of your choice around a former (bubble wrap in this case)

the many careful stages of agitation in more bubble wrap - with plenty of soapy water

more like a drowned rat now!
but you can see the fibres moving together

once it is pretty firmed up we made a cut across for the opening

after a good deal more working it is ready for finishing off

a few more 

in the pipeline

 Once we've perfected the process, and added the zips, look out for them at a craft fair near you!

Cambridge

We're back from Cambridge now, a great trip all round.


We're settling in to the changed landscape of our lives as just the two of us again. This is what we wanted, but with having Eleanor and Kate around us for almost a year, through thick and thin, challenges, adventures and achievements, it's going to take some getting used to.

Leaving Dublin - to clearer skies!

farewell to the storm!

Cambridge in all it's glory - a quiet street behind Clare College

a glimpse to the inner sanctum - Clare College

rebellion - Cambridge style!

punting on the Cam on a hot September day

Jesus Green

Eleanor exploring

what a wonderful thing exercise is!

heading home - to blue skies over Dublin (not for long though!)

To Cambridge

A Big Day: Elaine Kate & Eleanor are off to Cambridge today for Kate to start her new life at Lucy Cavendish College - fantastic, much hard work, plotting and planning has gone into this - it will be a brilliant, life changing experience for them both - very well deserved and a real credit to Kate. Good Luck!


Charlie and I are off over tomorrow by boat- with all the stuff!

Furby and Charlie relaxing  yesterday - aren't they just a delight?

An early start today - but the sun on Spellack was reward enough

a perfect morning (now that the school holidays are over) 

The delphiniums still have a lot more to show 

Now to pack the car - "It's OK like this" says Charlie

"But where am I going to go?" (in the front!)

The Mourne Wall

Early evening sunlight highlights the Mourne Wall as it strides over the High Mournes:


Slieve Donard; Slieve Commedagh; Slieve Corragh; Slievenaglogh

There's an interesting article in Wikipedia; here's the first paragraph:

The Mourne Wall is a wall which was constructed to enclose a reservoir's catchment area in the Mourne Mountains, Northern Ireland. It was built between 1904 and 1922 by the Belfast Water Commissioners to enclose the water catchment in the Mournes.
The wall was crafted from natural granite stone using traditional dry stone walling techniques. On average the wall is about 1.5 metres high and 0.8 to 0.9  metres thick. It is 22 miles (35 km) long and passes over fifteen mountains 

Lost and Found

It's now nearly the end of August, and the front garden - formerly an oasis of cottage flowers, has given up many of it's secrets to us.


We cleared much of the tree like structures (most of it still to be cut into manageable sizes!) and left the cleared ground to see what came up. We've not been disappointed! 

the magnificent Lupin - dormant for over 30 years?

A sunflower - probably dropped by a bird!

close up

close up

looks like this sunflower was selected for abundance of seed rather than size of flower

www.Castlewellan.org Your resource for history, lore, and people of Castlewellan.

Whilst browsing Google for information around home I found this site:
www. Castlewellan.org 

"Your resource for history, lore, and people of Castlewellan."

the front page

A fantastic authoritative lyrical journey into the recent and distant history of Castlewellan, all presented in over 30 pages of stories anecdotes pictures and poems.


Not to be missed - and this treasure can be downloaded as a PDF document from the site.


Thank You Patsy Mullen!

Weather Data for July

Better late than never I guess! 
You can get the data for July recorded by our weather station here at the Turnip House in Excel format by clicking the link here or to the right of this page.

Edited 'highlights (!) of July's Met Éireann summary:

Dublin Airport reported its coolest July in 46 years with a mean air
temperature of 13.8°C

Grass minimum temperatures recorded in the south were unusually low for July, with Valentia Observatory and Cork Airport recording grass minimums of 1.6°C and 1.5°C, their lowest grass minimum temperatures since 1940 and 1980, respectively

Click here for the full Met Éireann report

Autumn Sunset over The Mournes

A beautiful August Day ends perfectly

Butterflies

The sun and the surprising  profusion of flowers has done wonders for our butterfly population!

Peacock on the buddleja "the butterfly bush"

the butterfly trap

Red Admiral

Red Admiral

Peacock

Tortoiseshell

tortoiseshell

Felting Workshops

Two more successful Felt workshops this week.


Thanks to Harriet, Jennifer, Eileen & Sheila for some great craic and fantastic creative energy!