This week's shot is a reflection, rather than a shadow, as there have been two appearances of the sun this week, both very short, but there has been lots of rain! I loved the reflection of the Sainsbury's sign, so looked like an oddball standing in the rain taking a photo of it!
A beautiful girl with sparkly red lips and a rose in her hair, all the way from sunny South Africa. Thank you Anairam!
Beautiful feather (found on the playground yesterday), shimmering in candle light.
A frog Prince's castle is also his crown, with little lights glimmering around and about.
Lastly, a view of the nursery playground today. It has rained steadily all day and this afternoon was too wet even to go out with our hoods up and ride the bikes. So we have to stay under the terribly leaky old shelter and play with the trains, sand and water painting (these children can't get enough of water!) This morning as I was writing post-it observations my pen was smudging with the rain drops. From this, Grace, Brooklyn and I decided to make rain pictures on more post-its. Simple things can be such fun! The rain is included in this post on light as it shines! 
In the tunnel-not a good idea so..
..onto the platform. But nowhere is safe...
Near miss!
Let's take it up a notch and sit on the top of the tunnel!
My friend is such a copycat!
Maybe these signs are here for a reason?
What a day. Time for a nap.
The yarn (I just really can't get used to saying yarn, having called it wool all my life, but if I am trying to be a knitter I should try) is called baby bamboo and is very soft. I have a pair of bamboo pajama trousers which I love-all the great heavy qualities of viscose, which used to be my favourite fabric at one point, and soft too. I went to John Lewis to buy it tonight, as the ones I have just were not right. Yarn is just so expensive! So tempting too. I fear I am a dilettante knitter-as described in the stitch and bitch field guide to knitters-'They only learned to knit last week, but already they have spent more money on luxurious yarn than you did in the last year'. This is mixed with a 'get your freak on knitters' who can't be bothered to try to understand or follow patterns and make it up as they go along. So my next step in knitting would be to actually make something more than a scarf or a dolly dress from my expensive yarn, and do so by following a pattern. If I do so I will be sure to write about it on here!
Below is Cassie being entertaining and cute ( I think!) and keeping herself amused with a marble. The circular thing is not some cleverly designed cat toy, but the turntable part of the giant scrabble board my brother made for us. I put it away but left the circle of fun for Cassie! She was sleeping in it tonight!
Well, off to bed now so am not too tired for the children being in tomorrow. Today started off well, but soon deteriorated under the imposition of yet more ridiculous and virtually impossible edicts from above. Such is the life of a teacher-at times.
It did its best pleading look.
Focus may yet be my word, if I choose a word, but if it is, what to focus on? I am thinking of it in the way of focussing on just one-or maybe two of my normal pursuits. I always rush on to the next project without taking time to explore the possibilities in one area. At the moment I am enjoying sewing and embroidery, but also want to keep up the journal/sketchbook use which I got back into at the end of the year. So those will be my two things at the moment-and like Shell suggested (thanks Shell!) I will review this word in March. As an inspiration in focussing on one thing, I was interested to see this project by artist Cathy Cullis beginning. I once wanted to do enough little heads to fill one of those recycled card trays that supermarkets use for fruit, but I never did-a prime example of my inability to focus! Last year this artist posted a collection a day, which shows a lot of dedication (and a huge amount of stuff-stuff which is obviously well organised-impressive!) and focus.
After a brief walk on the beach, with a few little finds collected and photographed, we came home and had hot chocolate made by just melting real chocolate in slowly heating milk. ( Another Nigella idea!) Quite delicious, and I think much nicer than using cocoa powder. Easy too.
As well as the kindle case the other day I hastily made a cloth doll body-while I had the sewing machine out I thought I would. Today I have been embroidering her face and hair. She looks like a circus dweller to me. She has very long legs and arms which flop around in an acrobatic kind of a way. Maybe she will be a puppet with sticks attached to her arms.
Just one shadow shot this week, and that was by chance. I was wandering around waiting to meet Andy on new year's eve and liked this view. I only noticed the shadow later. This is Blackheath village and is just down the road from Charlton where we live. It is really pretty at Christmas, as they have old fashioned strings of coloured lights rather than anything more modern and gaudy. We had a delicious meal and were home by 8.30 to play scrabble and see in the new year with the cats! They seemed a bit perturbed by our presence as I think they were fully expecting us to abandon them like we usually do. Lucky cats!
