Not the best of days for photography, but there were some quite etherial effects over the sea.
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| The pier. |
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| The octagonal, cat iron lighthouse - it dates from 1846 and is thought to be the first of its type in England and one of the world's oldest caast iron lighthouses. |
It isn't that I haven't been busy, it's been bonkers - between work and commissions it's been full on this week! As much of my work has been for Christmas pressies I can't post it on here yet - so apologies for lack of posts! Anyway today I did get out for half a day - up to Fellside - good to be out!
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| With the sun behind me looking back home. |
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| Looking up along Dale Beck .. |
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| The mines at Roughton Gill. |
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| Copper and mimetite |
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| Looking towards Binsey as the sun set. |
A straightforward walk from Bowness Knott carpark, up to the end of the lake and then up the shoulder between Silvercove Beck and Deep Gill, to pop out n the ridge just below the summit. Fresh, but not particulalry cold - good to be out, but it is getting dark depressingly early now!
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| The river Liza entering Ennerdale Water. |
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| Looking up between Haystacks and Pillar. |
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| Herdies... |
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| An obliging robin. |
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| General views including looking across to Steeple. |
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| Rocky now only has ten Wainwrights to go.... |
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| Looking across Ennerdale. |
It's not often I get a chance to play, especially at this time of year, so with a poor forecast and a delayed commision gave me a spare afternoon ....time to get the big gelli plate out. I fancied having a go at red squirrels, but was wary as it would be easy to get it very wrong and my style of gelli printing doesn't take any planning - what could possibly go wrong!
Anyway here are some photographs of the prints as they progressed through muliple layers.
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| One layer.... |
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| Two.... |
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| One of my favourites.... |
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| The final choice... |
Mild, dank and wet - and a second lockdown, so it was back to walking the lanes around the house. It was strange taking photogrpahs of flowers to make into collages - so reminiscent of my Lockdown 1 project - doing the same everyday andthen some art work based on the collage. Sadly, no time to do the artwork this time as instead it was time to make the Christmas cake and pudding and to do prep for work. Anyway, it's amazing how many wild flowers are still in bloom!
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| Wild flowers from our walk... |
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| Garden flowers. |
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| Guelder rose berries. |
I still haven't really decided if these are pebbles or bubbles, but I really like them. I now want to try making some coaster size ones, they'll need a full fuse to make sure they are flat!
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| Prior to fusing...and below |
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| Fused and below... |
Despite the rain this morning Tom decided to brave the weather and return to Chobham Common in search of marsh clubmoss (Lycopodiella inundata). This summer we saw marsh clubmoss at one of the few Cumbrian localities near Torver - click here -, where it had full upright shoots but no mature cones (strobili). Tom really wanted to see it this time of year in one of its strongholds, the northern Thames Basin, because there would be mature yellow cones before it dies back to small shoots for winter.
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| Three fertile stems with cones (yellow) which arise from the horizontal vegetative stems (green). |
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| Two cones poking through the water- hence the species name 'inundata' in the scientific name. |
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| Fertile and vegetative stems. |
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| A vegetative stem with other associated plants and lichen. |
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| The general habitat: at this one site the clubmoss was restricted to the edges of deeper pools on firmer terrain. |
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| The wet heathland habitat: left: natural wet runnels and right: a man-made scrape. |
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| Marsh clubmoss cones poking through with water. |
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| Marsh clubmoss fully inundated with water. |
The highlight of Tom's walk yesterday was the abundance of unusual and attractive fungi.
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| An earthstar sp. potentially sessile earthstar (G. fimbriatum). |
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| An earthstar sp. potentially sessile earthstar (G. fimbriatum). |
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| I didn't get many photos of standard 'capped' fungi, despite their abundance- many of them were new to me and given the number of species seen (fast approaching 100) the ID of them would take weeks! |
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| Orange peel fungus (Aleuria aurantia). |
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| Orange peel fungus (Aleuria aurantia). |
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| One of my favourites- upright coral (Ramaria stricta). |
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| Upright coral (Ramaria stricta). |
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| Upright coral (Ramaria stricta). |
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| An earthfan (Thelephora), White saddle (Helvella crispa) and yellow stagshorn (Calocera viscosa). |
