Category: Beasties

A Stitch in time – 4 July 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today was dull. No sunshine. A very short sprinkle of rain. Nothing for it but to get the needles and pins out.

After breakfast I took the scissors and cut out the front of the waistcoat complete with all those strange wee triangles that stick out of cut out patterns. After consulting with Scamp and also after watching a few YouTube videos I was prepared to mark the darts with needle and thread. I’d also seen a video that recommended using a chinagraph pencil to mark out the lines. What it failed to mention was that when you iron the darts flat, the heat melts the marks made by the chinagraph pencil and they disappear. Numpty. I forgot the three rules of watching YouTube videos:

  1. Don’t believe anything you see here.
  2. Don’t try this at home.
  3. If you must ignore Rule 1 and Rule 2, test it on a scrap piece first.

Luckily the iron wasn’t quite hot enough and I could see the marks faintly glowing on the dark material. Then I used tailor’s chalk to complete the marking.
Later in the morning, I fired up the sewing machine and after a bit of jiggery pokery with Thread Tension, Stitch Width and Sweary Words, I’d stitched the darts to my satisfaction. Later I made a Welt (No, I don’t know what it is either). Exhausted, that’s where I left it today.

The DPD man came to deliver my new batteries for the new toy. Hopefully they’ll be more successful than the other lot and I set them to charge while I took the old Oly 5 for a walk around the pond. Not many beasties about, but I did get a moody shot of an old apple tree growing all by itself in the park. After a bit of work in ON1, that became PoD.

Dinner tonight was a delicious piece of smoked haddock with chips. Watched the tennis, well it was on everywhere by the look of things, and eventually managed to get the TV to respond to the Red Button to allow us to watch Andy Murray and his partner win their doubles match. Doubles is so much more interesting than singles. No long tedious grunt punctuated rallies. Much faster and good fun wondering what they were whispering to each other between shots of banging the ball over the net. Probably just deciding who’s round it is in the bar after the game.

Hoping against hope for a nice sunny day tomorrow to brighten up the end of the week and for a chance to take the OM D E-M1 (Now renamed Oly 1) out for a few shots of somewhere nice.

24ºc in Scotland – 27 June 2019

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Out early to see a consultant at Monklands Hospital, then the day was our own.

Consultant took less than five minutes to sign me off as clear of any serious problems. That was a great start to the day.

From Airdrie we drove to Livingston because I was looking for a pair of decent trainers at the discount outlets there. Didn’t get any. What I did see were a pair of black shoes, the exact same model as the ones I was wearing. The shoes in the shop were black, like I said. Mine were a medium grey. Have they been bleached in the sun or washed in the rain. Probably a bit of both. Although I didn’t get trainers, Scamp got a new dress and we bought a new general purpose knife for the kitchen.

Drove home and the temperature from the car thermometer went up to 24ºc. Now that’s definitely “Taps Aff” weather, but I restrained myself an turned up the air con.

Back home Scamp got her sun cream on and then started cutting the front grass. I put my shorts on and drove down to Auchinstarry and walked along the canal, crossed over and back along the old railway. Got a host of photos of damselflies and hoverflies. The PoD was a shot of a damselfly having its lunch, a smaller fly caught in flight. The actual damselfly is about 40mm head to tail.

The temperature we noted in the car continued well into the afternoon and I regretted not putting some of Scamp’s sun cream on my exposed skin. It was a beautiful day and if the weather fairies are to be believed, we should have a similar, if not hotter day tomorrow. We even had our dinner tonight outside in the garden such a treat eating in the great outdoors … in Scotland … without our coats on!

Tomorrow we are hoping to get the bus in to Glasgow and go for a walk, somewhere scenic.

Nostalgia – 25 June 2019

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Coffee at midday. Nostalgia at night.

Finished packing up June’s Birthday prezzy and let Scamp carry it off to deliver to her today, because tomorrow we’re dancing and on Thursday (her actual birthday) I’m going to the hospital in the morning and the rest of June’s day is taken up with family stuff. Anyway, it’s finished and now delivered.

Coffee with Colin and Fred at midday. Usual topics:

  1. “How useless is Boris Johnston? Let me count the ways.”
  2. “How useless is NLC? Let …”.
  3. Why I hate tourists wearing Celtic / Rangers tops on holiday abroad. (I have to agree on that one!)

We discussed these topics at length, had a quick look at my paintings discussed some books and basically that was it. Just a relaxing coffee, if you can call Costa burnt water, coffee! In the course of the conversation, Colin told me that today is the official last walk round the school for anyone who has an interest.

I decided not to go, although in my heart of hearts, I did want one last chance to say goodbye to thirty years of Blood (yes, there was a lot of that spilt). Sweat (Oh yes, that too). And Tears (Tears of sadness and also tears of joy). I’m guessing deep down I knew I had to go, so I relented and am glad I did. I met lots of pupils who knew me although at times I was hard put to remember them. In my imagination, I had to remove the makeup and change the hair colour for some of the girls. Then shave the beards off and then add hair to the heads of some of the boys. That’s when their younger selves shone through. I was amazed at the number of ex-pupils came up to me with a questioning “Mr Campbell?” It was a really emotional night. Best bit was that my old room, T5, was locked, but I noticed a back door was open a crack, so I walked through a cupboard and opened the back door into the room. It hadn’t changed a lot, in fact, as someone said of a different room, “All the graffiti is still there!” I took some photos, but they don’t work because there’s no life left in the room. It’s a true saying that “It’s people who breathe life into a building.” Spoke to some of the teachers, but spent most of my time speaking to ex-pupils. Nostalgia – it is what it’s cracked up to be.

Today’s PoD was taken on a walk down the Luggie Water after Costa and before Nostalgia. It’s a patch-up rather than a focus stack, but it works. Just a little ladybird adding a bit of colour to a grass flower. Strange to think of grasses flowering, but they do.

Dancing in the afternoon tomorrow, hopefully, but don’t think we’ll be able to make Salsa at night. Pity.

It Rained – 24 June 2019

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It didn’t rain all day, but when it did, you knew about it!

Didn’t do much this morning. It was just one of those days. I ordered another camera strap from the Cordweaver bloke. He makes such a neat job of them, it’s simply not worth your time learning to weave the paracord.

In the afternoon I dragged myself out for a walk with the E-M1 to see if there were any beasties out looking for a photog to take their foties. They found me. Spiders were the prey today and some scary ones too. The yellow and black striped one was looking decidedly scary, but then black and yellow are the warning colours in nature aren’t they? Wasted lots of shots today trying things that would never work, but it’s just part of the learning curve with a new camera. I really need to catalog what the four storage areas are holding in terms of camera settings. I know what they do, but I need to use a spreadsheet to save the details of HOW they do it.

Drove in to Glasgow to Salsa through some really torrential rain. It didn’t last long, but it certainly was heavy. Even with the wipers on double speed they were struggling to clear the deluge. Salsa with the beginners class was interesting and fairly easy, but the advanced class were few in number and unlike last Wednesday, especially few in men. Jamie actually cajoled Megan and Andrew to join in as leaders. Last week’s twisty turny move got a new name: Boda. And of course there was a new, new one which hasn’t got a name yet. The advanced class is becoming a bit stale. New moves that very few people will dance at socials and too many new moves for my poor wee brain to retain. Maybe we just need a holiday in the sun. Yes, that would be nice.

Lightroom is being a bugger again. Forgetting where to put photos and forgetting which are its default settings. Tonight I reset the .plist and that helped a bit, but didn’t fix all the problems. It actually caused a few more problems! Most are fixed now, but since the main reason I use Lightroom is to catalog my photos, if it doesn’t do the cataloguing, then it’s not really much use. I’ll go search the InterWeb for a solution tomorrow. That’s what I did last time and I fixed it, so a solution is out there, I just have to fix it.

Tomorrow I have to sort June’s birthday prezzy and then it’s coffee with the boys.

Broadwood Walk

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Round a different pond today

The day started with a run in to Glasgow to get some cloth, or should I say ‘Fabric’ to make a mock-up, or should that be a prototype of the waistcoat whose pattern I carefully cut out on Friday. We decided that it would be foolish to charge in and use the expensive fabric I bought over a year ago. Much more sensible to make the mock-up (I never could decide whether it was a mock-up or a prototype. There is a subtle difference between the two in design terminology) using less expensive materials. JL was the place to go, because the air felt heavy and the weather fairies had pronounced today as a day of torrential rain, so we didn’t want to go wandering around looking for Remnant Kings or Mandors only to find they were closed on a Sunday and the rain was just starting. It didn’t start, as it turned out, but best to be safe rather than sorry.

Back home with the material and after lunch the sky had lightened considerably, so I suggested we go for a walk round Broadwood. It’s a long time since we’d been there and I know Scamp isn’t all that keen on St Mo’s. Anyway, it’s boring just walking round the paths at St Mo’s and I’m not allowed to go anywhere near the long grass for fear of the little ticks that so love my sweet blood. Broadwood it was then. We walked steadily round the pond, a much bigger pond than St Mo’s, but not nearly as interesting. However, when we stopped for a seat about three quarters the way round, a little Common Blue damselfly settled right in front of us and asked for its photo to be taken. This I promptly did, and that’s what you see here. The PoD was taken.

With a shot in the bag, we walked home where I had a beer and Scamp had a Pimms before dinner. Dinner for me was a Leg Steak from a Hogget (Older than a lamb, but younger than a sheep) and for Scamp it was ‘Rats’. Another beer washed the dinner down. It’s thirsty work this walking.

Watched a fairly boring F1 GP from France tonight. For once I was thankful it was just the highlights. I’d have hated to waste an afternoon watching the full race.

Later tonight, or earlier tomorrow morning we are due some very heavy rain with the possibility of thunder thrown in to the mix. Hopefully I’ll be sleeping. I’m off to practise that sleeping now. G’night.

A good day – 18 June 2019

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Sometimes the phone rings and it’s good news.

This was one of those days. PSA was normal and no infection found ‘down south’. No need for a biopsy and no need to go to the hospital tomorrow, just a routine visit to the clinic next week. I breathed a sigh of relief and the sun started shining brighter.

Postman brought me a Father’s Day present. Two books. One by the man who completely changed the way I looked at trees, Peter Wohlleben. If you’ve never heard of him, search out The Hidden Life of Trees. It’s an eye opener, at least it was for me. The other book was a novel on the same theme. Thanks Hazy.

Earlier, I’d found a wee spider in the kitchen sink and encouraged it to go for a walk on the wild side, or at least in the garden. It paid for its freedom by posing for a few photos. Managed to grab a few 19 frame focus stacks – hand held. Dropped them in to ON1 and it made a decent job of the processing.

Just before lunch I saved Scamp the backache of cutting the grass by strimming the back garden. It’s not the best cut its ever had, but it got the worst of the grass reduced down and if we get a few dry days, perhaps we can get it cut properly. Re-potted the Lupin that wasn’t happy where it was. Hopefully it will recover in a pot of nearly new compost.

In the afternoon I went out for a walk around St Mo’s for a breath of fresh air and just to get out of the house. Managed a PoD of one of the millions of Wolf Spiders that live under the boardwalk. Apparently they come up onto the wood to soak up the heat from the sun because the warmth encourages the spiderlings they carry in the sac under their spinnerets to mature quicker. Scary looking beasts these arachnids with their eight eyes!

Dinner was Sunday’s chicken made into a chicken curry with lovely flat bread to go with it.

I had a wee dram tonight to celebrate my good luck phone call.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go dancing.

Another walk for everyone – 13 June 2019

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Today the forecast wasn’t too clear, so we went for a shorter walk, closer to home, then yet another for the hardy.

Before we left, Jaime showed us his amazing darts prowess.  He’d managed to get two darts in the outer ring of the bull and the final one in  the bull itself.  Quite astounding from a man who couldn’t get all three darts in the board yesterday!  Some would doubt him and say he’d set it up, but who could be so mean hearted?

JIC and Sim were the nominated drivers and they took all seven of us, eight if you include Vixen a couple of miles along the road to a forest walk along the river. It was a pleasant enough walk without any hills, but with some boggy bits. Vixen seemed to enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate her swimming skills in the river, although the water was fairly rushing down and quite brown. I got a second chance at photographing the red and black insect we’d seen earlier in the week. It turned out to be a froghopper (Cercopis vulnerata). We also came across a little lizard which Scamp got some good photos of and so did I. PoD went to the long lazy drip sliding off a fern frond. I’m thinking it might have been a slug or snail trail that had attracted the rain water. Looked quite remarkable anyway.

Back home for lunch and then JIC, Sim, Sophie and us were off again. This time to investigate the old railway line halfway down the road from the house. It’s a steep decline to the bridge over the railway and I wasn’t looking forward to the climb back up! We walked part of the way along, but as we were cooking tonight, we decided not to go the full stretch of the path and came back early. I was right. The climb back up the road to the house was hard work, but we made it without stopping.

Dinner tonight was Fish and Egg Curry. An unlikely combination that actually works very well.

Seven went for a walk – 9 June 2019

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Seven became five, then five became two and a dog called Vixen.

We started out as seven, but then two dropped out and five soldiered on. After that the rain came on and showed no signs of going off, so another three walked back to the house while JIC and Sim tried to walk some of the energy out of Vixen.

We waited and waited and waited some more, but the rain didn’t want to leave us alone. Finally it dried up and I went out for a walk to take some pictures. That’s where today’s PoD came from. JIC and Jaime went to light the BBQ. I pitched in and eventually we got it going. Three grown men staring at a fire and occasionally throwing some more combustable material in and watching it burn. What’s not to like? Then the rain came back. It didn’t last long but kept going and coming until JIC decided he’d had enough and suggested that we finish off the cooking of the meat in the oven. Everyone agreed agreed.

Dinner was good. Lovely pork with spicy sausages. Scamp, of course, had salmon. Bottle of wine and more chat before we went to watch some crap TV.

I went out to try to get some star shots, and wished I’d brought the Nikon rather than the Olys. The Panasonic lenses don’t have manual focusing rings and that makes life difficult at 11pm, outside with midges and also, I think, bats flying around. Got some shots, but nothing spectacular.

Tomorrow, no real plans. Looks dry in the morning and wet after that.

New Boots and Panties! – 7 June 2019

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It was one of those days when I couldn’t settle.  Eventually Scamp talked me down.

What I did do was to solve today’s Fiendish level Sudoku with the new method which I got from YouTube of all places.1 I’m really impressed with this method.

With that out of the way we wandered in to Glasgow to look for a pair of boots for me. Ostensibly to replace both the leaking pairs I have. Probably I’ll keep the Clarks pair which don’t leak quite as badly and ditch the Lafuma ones. They look good, they just leak like a sieve now. Rather than throwing them out, I’ll probably put them in the next Salvation Army bag that arrives. They may not be good for walking through puddles, but they will keep someone’s feet warm in the winter. Tiso was the first, and only stop. I tried on a pair of boots that were the right size and lo and behold, not only were they a fit, they were also a comfortable fit. I’ve been wearing them all night just to make sure they are the ones for me and I’m comfortably sure they are.

Sat down for a while and painted A Stone.  Well, actually it’s a dry stane dyke, but it does contain at least one stone.

Back home via Robroyston for a coffee in Costa and a chance to stock up on messages at Asda. Next stop was Tesco for a bottle of rum – well, it is Friday. Then home, where I decided to wash the car and rinse it off with water from Bobby Flavell’s outside tap. Such a great idea, having an outside tap. So much easier than carrying buckets of water and getting soaked trying to wash off the roof or the Juke. Also allowed me to hose out the depressions where the wipers sit. The hose makes short work of all the fermenting flower heads and general gunge from the trees overhead. Thank you Bobby.

With the car dripping, it was time to go for a walk in St Mo’s to get some photos. Not a lot to see and the light was quite low. Managed a better view of the scary fly from yesterday. Maybe not that exact fly, but certainly one of that genus. Hopefully someone on Flickr will be able to ID it for me. PoD went to the close up shot of the daisies. Both Scamp and I agreed on that.

That was about it for the day. We shared a fish supper tonight and for the second time “Well, it is Friday.” Suffering a bit for it now, but it was delicious at the time.

Tomorrow? I think it’s going to be up fairly early and out.

  1. This is really a marker for me so that some time hence I can remember where I found this time saving tip. ↩

Is that deer? – 6 June 2019

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Yes it is!

Off early to the blood letters this morning to give a tiny little amount of blood to the lab in Monklands. For some reason they wanted some of my pee too. Strange people in Monklands.

Back home for a cup of coffee and a chance to solve today’s medium strength Sudoku. Still sticking to my new method. It may not be faster and it may not do away entirely with the need for full pencil marks, but it makes the solving of the harder puzzles a bit more interesting and after all, that’s part of the reason for doing them.

With that done I tried switching on the new six year old camera and as soon as I half pressed the shutter, I knew that something was wrong. I hate cameras that beep to tell you they have found something to focus on. It’s the first thing I change on a camera – set it to silent. This one beeped. When I checked, everything was back to its out-of-the -box state. Oh dear. Reprogrammed it, removed the battery, counted to ten and replaced it. Sure enough. It’s short term memory was gone! Phoned the company MPB who I’ve never had any complaints with before and the lady there said I could spend it back for a refund or a replacement, except when we both looked on the website, there were no other E-M1s available. After a flood of emails between us in the next few hours, we finally agreed that I would try the camera for another week and if there was no improvement, I’d return it for a refund.

After lunch we went to Muirhead to the butchers to get some venison. I’d already ordered the meat earlier in the week. As she was weighing the meat I asked the woman behind the counter how much it would be. When she told me, she must have thought it was a bit expensive because she asked me “Is that dear?” (Scots for “Is that expensive”). I said “Yes! It is deer.” She just said “Oh!” Two or three minutes later she burst out laughing. The penny had finally dropped. I don’t think she’ll ever forget that conversation.

I took the camera out for a walk when we came back and it worked perfectly. Everything I’d programmed into it were retained. Hopefully it will stay that way now. There wasn’t much worth photographing in St Mo’s and PoD went to the little scary looking fly.

I didn’t manage a decent sketch of something “Shiny and Metallic”, so as a replacement, I give you a shot of a little prezzy Scamp gave me on Monday. Just so Scottish! Thank you Scamp. May need a little explanation for those of an English disposition!

Tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow to get me a new pair of walking boots.