New Listings!

 Yes, yet more crocodile wrist warmers! These always seem to sell so well for me in the run up to Christmas so I try to make up some stock in the rest of the year...

 I've decided to try listing some sea shells as well as my sea glass pieces - I'm always meaning to buy one of those tiny drills so that I can drill them myself and use them on keyrings or for jewellery making, but in the meantime I thought I'd try listing them on Etsy as 'supplies' and hopefully some of them will sell for me :)

Update...

I've been so caught up on just updating with the 'photo a day' posts so I'm a bit behind in other stuff on here...

It's been quite a strange month for me -- normally I'm back at work on the car ferry by now (we were due to start just before Easter this year, on the 4th April) but they have had technical problems so here it is, the 29th of the month, and I'm still unemployed. Hopefully that will soon be put right - we should be back in the water very soon and will hopefully have a good season ahead of us.

The weather has been absolutely glorious for most of the month so I've made full use of the good days and have been beach combing (beaches 1 and 2 are now all clean AGAIN!), crochet, taking photos (I now have a new 'new camera') and getting lots of walking done when I have the time, energy and inclination!

My favourite of all the local walks I've done was going from Baslickane (just outside the village) to Caherdaniel - it's part of the Kerry Way and is such a great walk - quite easy (even for someone like me!) with just a couple of hills to climb.

 You walk along part of the old road, so there are ruined houses, like this one.

I really want to do this walk again before I go back to work!

April - photo a day, part five

 Day 21 - bottle

Day 22 -the last thing you bought (the catnip!)

 Day 23 -vegetable

Day 24 - something you are grateful for

Day 25 - looking down

April - Photo a Day Challenge - part four

Day 16 - flower

Day 17 - something I don't like

Day 18 - hair

 Day 19 - orange

Day 20 - something that you drew

Photo a Day Challenge - April - part 3

Well my camera conked out at the end of day 9 and I was having problems getting my mobile phone to communicate with the compute so I had to cheat for a few days and use old photos that I had on the computer.


Day 10 - cold

Day 11 - where you ate breakfast

Day 12 - stairs

 Day 13 - something you found

Day 14 - how you feel today

Day 15 - sunset

 My new camera is still waiting to be taken up to Dublin so that I can get a refund -- we were going to get a replacement but we reckoned it would take Sony forever to organise this (they STILL haven't even collected the 'new' camera yet and we phoned them about it on Thursday afternoon) so we've opted for a total refund and we've gone and bought the exact same camera from another seller on Amazon. At this rate the replacement one will have come before Sony arrange a courier to collect the old one. Sigh.

Anyway, not to get down about it, I have finally been able to suss out how to transfer photos from my phone to the computer - so I can still take photos!

All the photos in this post are taken by my phone - they aren't really brilliant but they are good enough really in the meantime. I'm just happy I can still take photos and share them.

 I've been working down on the beaches the last couple of days - the rubbish coming in on the tide is never-ending but it really makes a difference to have 'cleaned' the beaches of the really bad rubbish and then just have to do 'maintenance' clean-ups every few weeks.

This piqued my interest the day before yesterday - it's an escape vent from an America lobster trap (so that the under-sized lobsters and other species can get out of the trap ok) but I thought that the name branded on it looked familiar. So when I got home, I checked on facebook and I'm already facebook friends with Bobby Ingalls - and it comes from one of his traps. He could tell for sure because of his licence number underneath his name. What a small world - this has come all the way from Maine to here and I'm already facebook friends with its owner!

 I found this bottle cap yesterday - the little baby looked cute so it caught my eye - it turns out that it's from a Japanese brand of mayonnaise (sold globally as far as I can make out) -- I think everything you find on the beach has a story as to how it ended up there ~~~ some things I can trace backwards but others just remain a mystery, like this bottle cap.

 So anyway, this is the result of my beach cleaning yesterday - four bags of rubbish! Since doing my initial cleaning down there, I've noticed that it's more rope coming in on the tide than anything else - then I think it's plastic bottles and tops and then probably 'miscellaneous' non-identifiable plastic pieces.




Peter's working all day today so I haven't been able to drive to the beach - so instead it's been a yoga/housework/washing/cooking kind of day - to relax in the afternoon I headed out into the garden for an hour or so with all of this :)

 Yes, this is my big 2kg cone of 'studio Donegal' wool for Barbara's hats! I've made the first one already!


And this is our Dinah in all her glory!

Out and About

 We've been so fortunate with the weather just lately - several gloriously warm and sunny days - I should be back at work on the car ferry by now but that's all still on-hold so I've made a conscious decision to enjoy my extra time that I have this Spring before I have to return to the daily grind!

 On a whim last week I thought it would be great for us to go on a proper picnic - we have the most lovely vintage picnic hamper and it doesn't get used often enough (and even when it does, we usually end up having to eat in the car as the weather has made a turn for the worst while we've been driving to a picnic spot)

But last week the weather was just perfect - so I chose Cloghvoola as a nice spot :) I hadn't been along this tiny road in the last twenty or so years I guess but it always was one of my favourite cycling routes when I was younger.

 Sadly the road has REALLY deteriorated in that time but Peter bravely drove along the bumps and hollows with only minimal muttering under his breath!

 But it was all worth it for a view like this ...

While we were driving along the road I kept seeing the 'Kerry Way' sign-posts, so a couple of days later my friend Liz and myself decided to trek from Cloghvoola towards Tarmons, following the Kerry Way trail over the hill to the other side of the lake.

It just about finished me off but I am so keen to do it again!

This was the view from near the top of the hill, looking down towards the other side of the lake.

If we had kept on the Kerry Way we would have gone through Cahersivane and on to Mastergeehy - I'm kind of keen now to walk that section of the trail too sometime...I'll wait til I get my camera back though (or hopefully a new replacement), so watch this space...