Category: Spiders

Still didn’t get that painting done – 13 April 2021

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Scamp went out for a walk with Veronica and it should have been a golden opportunity for an hour’s painting, but other stuff came first.

I wanted to have a deeper dig into some of the secrets of these two new software packages. Today it was Capture One’s turn. It’s very powerful and with great power comes great confusion. There seems to be ten different ways to do the simplest thing. Unfortunately, all the ten different ways produce slightly different results and none of them exactly what I’d intended. I’ve been using Lightroom since version 1 back in 2007. Over the intervening years I’d worked through five other versions and built up a library of tweaks and plug-ins. Capture One is like starting again. Nothing seems familiar. Maybe it’s too big a step.

The other thing I’d to do was to remove our coloured lights from the rowan tree in the garden. They hadn’t worked properly since the snow earlier in the year and although I’ve replaced the NiMh battery, there hasn’t been a light from it in about a month. It was time to call it quits and take it to the skip. Actually it didn’t take long to take it down and remove all the staples that were holding the wiring. By that time Scamp had returned .

After lunch we walked down to the shops to get a flower pot for an Astilbe plant Scamp was donating to Isobel. I’d intended walking part of the way back and then going for a jaunt in St Mo’s, because it was a lovely day with quite a few spells of decent sunshine, but I’d left my phone at home. Isn’t it strange how controlled we are by these slabs of glass and silicon? Well, for under 50s it’s just part of life, but for those of us who grew up using call boxes to make phone calls. The mobile phone is a help and a hindrance. I walked back with Scamp to get the phone.

I was hoping against hope for just one damselfly in St Mo’s. I’d seen a hoverfly last week, but today I had to make do with the skittish spiders, Wolf Spiders. They seem to live under the boardwalk, but on warm day, especially sunny days they come up to bask in the rays. I managed to catch one who was watching me as I was watching it. Later in the year they are easier to photograph with their bundle of eggs carried on their back. Apparently the warmth of the sun helps the eggs to hatch. Too early for that today, these ones were hunting, but dismissed me as too big and stringy to make a decent meal!

Back home it was time to put up the new lights under the careful instruction of Scamp. Then it was time for dinner which was potatoes, beans and either veggie sausages (Scamp) or beef burger (me).

Watched the final of Landscape Artist of the Year (Canada) and sure enough, the worst painting of the lot won the prize. If you’d given one of those wolf spiders a brush and some paint it could have made a better job of it.

There was great news announced today. From Friday we will be able to travel the length and breadth of Scotland. The Scottish world is once again our oyster!! Non-essential shops are still shut. Restaurants are not allowed to open. Pubs too are still closed, but at least we can travel to discover if the sea is still there. We will have to take a flask of coffee and pieces. We’ve effectively been locked down for the last five months. What will the world look like? Will we still remember it?

Tomorrow we may go for a walk.

Off to the Capital City – 15 March 2021

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Today we were off to the capital city of North Lanarkshire. Motherwell.

Another bright morning encouraged us to get up and go. This time we were going to see where the ‘Supercentre’ for vaccination in North Lanarkshire was and how long it would take to get there. I used to work near where this giant sports centre is now. Then it was a massive steelworks, the biggest steel mill in Europe. On cold mornings in winter, in a cold bus and latterly on my motorbike travelling up Newarthill Road I could look over to ‘The Craig” and see the wagons tipping red hot slag into the slag heaps. It looked like lava coming from a volcano and actually lit up the sky. I wish I’d taken the time to grab some photos of that, but never did. Now it’s been razed to the ground and houses are being built on it. I wonder if the house owners know what chemicals lie under their new homes. This is where NHS Lanarkshire have sited their ‘Supercentre’. It is the strangest looking building. From outside it looks exactly like a stack of partly tumbled dominoes. We just drove past today, but lots of people were there and the car park looked pretty full. We just turned at the end of the road and drove home. Fifty minute round trip with sourdough toast and beans as lunch when we got home.

I was expecting a delivery from Amazon on Wednesday, but after lunch that little spoiler, Alexa reported that a delivery was arriving today. No idea when. Also we had a Tesco delivery scheduled for today, but no notification from them about a delivery time. Unusual for Tesco – par for the course with Amazon. To give me something to do, I used my blower brush to remove the last little bit of dust from the camera’s sensor. Yes, I know it won’t be the last, but I felt better for getting rid of it.

The postman dropped a blue box through the letterbox. My latest Baking Club kit. This one is for Cheese & Garlic Tear and Share. Sounds good and a bit less complicated than the last one. Thanks again JIC & Sim.

The Tesco delivery arrived about halfway through their promised delivery window, immediately followed by the Amazon man. He was delivering patches to repair my Goretex jackets, both of which have a few rips now. Looks simple enough to fix, but we’ll see how long they last. That left just enough sunlight to get half an hour in St Mo’s for some photos before it got too dark.

Today’s PoD came from that visit to St Mo’s. A little spider with his dinner wrapped up neatly, ready for the larder. I had gone looking for Larch Pineapples which are actually called Larch Roses. I thought I’d seen some yesterday, but what I’d seen were the male flowers, the Pollen Cones. Must go back next week to see if any of the female flowers, which will hopefully turn into pine cones, have appeared.

Watched another in the series of Drawers Off. For some reason they have at least four artists who know which end of the paintbrush to use. Not like the last lot. They were only interested in getting their faces seen on the telly. This is only the first of the week, there’s plenty of time for them to screw up.

Felt sorry for Strathclyde Uni just not quite good enough to get through to the semifinals of University Challenge. Maybe next year.

Tomorrow looks like a decent day, so we may go for a longer walk somewhere.

An improving day – 27 February 2021

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It started off dull and foggy, but it ended up much better.

We hadn’t anywhere to go today and no real reason to go there anyway. However we drove over to Kilsyth on the pretext of going shopping in Lidl. I wanted a bottle of their excellent Hortus gin and Scamp wanted ‘messages’. We achieved our aim and got both. I was very good and didn’t open the gin right away when we got home. Instead, I went out for a walk in St Mo’s but that’s not where today’s PoD came from. I got that much earlier.

The light was beautifully soft for a while after the fog had lifted and so had the heaviest of the clouds. The freesias on the windowsill were looking great and I grabbed a few shots, but I knew they would look better on a dark background. I hung Scamp’s black cardigan on the handle of the window and banged off another half dozen shots, one of which Scamp chose as PoD. No cardigans were harmed making this picture.

The trip to St Mo’s was just because the light was improving and I did find some more subjects. A tiny little spider for one. The first spider I’ve seen this year. Another was a little branch from a weed with lots of water droplets, probably from the morning’s fog, shining brightly. It seemed to be one of those days when you couldn’t put a foot wrong. Except I did put both feet wrong and came home with wet sox again!

Scamp suggested we do a Golden Bowl (best Chinese food in Cumbersheugh) and I readily agreed. Chicken Chop Suey with Fried Rice for Scamp and Special Chow Mein for me. Washed down with a glass of Red.

In the evening we practised the waltz routine and it is looking good. Much more ‘together’ than it’s been all week. Partly due to S&J’s video, but more to do with Scamp breaking things down and working out whose foot goes where, when. We also found the real name of a song Stewart uses for the rumba routine. Tried Shazzam, but it’s rubbish now. Used Sound Hound and it worked first time. It’s now in the dance music folder in Spotify.

Today’s topic was “Chess”. I dug out my old wooden chess men and set them up to fight. Black lost. That’s what happens when you paint yourself into a corner.

If the weather is decent tomorrow we may go for a walk somewhere.

Out to Brunch – 22 October 2020

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Another day to get out and about fairly early.

We were picking up Isobel at 10.15 and then we were all heading off to Calders for either a late breakfast or an early lunch, it was unclear which. I’d been warned beforehand not to order coffee because I’d be disappointed with the quality and the quantity of actual coffee in my cup. The other two had scrambled eggs and a latté each while I went for poached eggs on sourdough bread with a pot of tea. Even the tea was a bit thin and to be even more critical, the eggs were a bit underdone and tepid. Maybe a bit harsh, but I am one half of the Foodie pair. As usual, Isobel regaled us with stories about her family.

We dropped her off and drove home for a cup of real coffee each. Then I went upstairs to check out a bag full of old hard disks that had been torn from ancient computers over the years. Two went in the ‘skip bag’ and two were given a reprieve until I get a chance to download the useful stuff, then they will probably be ‘skipped’ too. In the process I discovered that one of my old removable drives was also destined for the ‘skip bag’. It had had a question mark hanging over it for a while and now it wasn’t booting up, so it is with regret that it goes in the ‘skip bag’ too. However, as Scamp keeps reminding me, that’s what’s wrong with our house. Holding on to too many things that have outlived their usefulness. That’s why I make the breakfast every second day and do my fair share of the cooking too. Otherwise I might find myself in that big blue Ikea bag with the hard disks one of these days.

While I was doing the technology thing, Scamp was shopping for dinner stuff. The dinner turned out to be Trout en Croûte. They looked a bit like sausage rolls, but tasted so much better. They were so good I was almost won over to be a pescatarian!

Before dinner I risked another soaking by going for a walk in St Mo’s. Got a few shots in among the trees. Some nice looking toadstools (not good enough to eat though) and the PoD which is a spider living life in the upside down. Managed to get my feet soaked trying to get the mud off them by paddling in the shallows of the pond. Merrel is not the company it once was. Quality has really gone downhill in the last few years.

I had found some gems in my search of the hard disks. We spent an hour tonight watching a video we’d made in Amsterdam away back in 2007. Half an hour of seeing life in a different world. Crowds of people not obeying the two metre rule and none of them wearing a mask!

You will notice the lack of a sketch today. This is due to a technical problem (I didn’t have time … or inclination.). Hopefully normal service will be resumed tomorrow. I Lied!

On the subject of tomorrow, we have no plans as yet. Apart from two sketches!!

A cold day – 9 October 2020

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We didn’t go far as a result, but we did walk to the shops to get tonight’s dinner, M&S curry.

Today was Saturday, well it was for us. For some reason, both of us were convinced it was Saturday when in reality it was Friday. The start of the mid-term holiday here and the start of what is being called Lockdown 2. While we are not exactly locked down firmly like we were in March, we are constantly being reminded that we SHOULDN’T be going outside our own region. There’s not a lot of interesting places to go in North Lanarkshire and with restaurants and bars closed, yes, it is Lockdown 2. We did, however go virtually outside our region today.

Scamp went to Skye over the phone to speak to her sister and after some consultation they agreed that it would probably be best if our proposed trip to Inverness was postponed for a variety of reasons. That’s a pity because I was looking forward to the photo opportunities of the drive up north. Maybe things will change, but I fear not.

I travelled virtually to Glasgow to see if I could get a decent price for that camera I had for a weekend last week. One shop I phoned said they had one in stock. I asked if it was a display model. The woman said “No it’s not, it’s just been in the window, but we don’t let people play with it.” Obviously she didn’t really understand the meaning of the word “Display”. It used to be a good shop when it was simply called “Quiggs”. Since it’s changed its name to “Merchant City Cameras”, it’s got delusions of grandeur. It’s not even in the Merchant City! I said I’d think about it. Which means “I think I won’t buy it.”

After lunch and our phone calls ‘outside our own region’, we walked down to the shops. When we left the house it felt fairly mild, but as soon as we turned our back on the sun and felt the cold blast of the wind the mildness disappeared. I carried the messages back and then went for a walk where I got today’s PoD which is a hover fly called a Footballer, because it looks as if it’s wearing a football strip. That and two spiders that look as if they are fighting over today’s lunch. When I tried to upload them Flickr started one of its hissy fits, All the typing and clicking I’d done was lost and gone forever. Sometimes I praise Flickr to the highest, more often though I am more truthful.

Topic today was “Throw”. More soul searching to find something thrown or something to throw. I did consider Flickr going out a window, but that might have been hard to draw. I finally chose a dart being thrown. Fairly happy with it after resolving some of Scamps honest crits.

Tomorrow WILL be Saturday and we may go for a drive Outside Our Own Region. I hope you read this Nic.

Coffee with Val – 28 September 2020

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Queueing for Costa coffee.

You’d have to be desperate to queue for coffee in Costa, but that’s what we had to do today. Costa didn’t open until 11am because today was a bank holiday. Nobody had mentioned it was a bank holiday. Even the banks didn’t know about it, because the bank across the concourse was open when I passed. Maybe it’s a secret bank holiday, one that only some people were told about. After we’d all queued until after 11, some wee ’jobsworth’ was in your face with his iPad taking your particulars for Track & Trace. We just told him we’d already signed in and he went away to bother someone else. Finally got sorted out with coffee and a bite to eat then got down to the serious business of discussing the technology we’d both been buying and playing with in the last month. Really enjoyed the natter, but soon it was time to go. Bid goodbye to Val as he headed to Asda and I drove home in the rain.

After lunch I did a bit of tidying up of the back bedroom. I did manage to chuck some stuff out, or at least bag it for chucking out. Undid a Gordian Knot of USB cables and sorted them by type into two lots. I’m going to test them next on the most exacting bits of tech to see if they are working perfectly or not. Pass the test and you can stay. Fail and you go in the bin. Marie Kondo eat your heart out.

The sun was coming out after I’d sorted the wiring and performed a cursory chuck out, so I took the Oly for a walk in St Mo’s. Lots of photogenic spider webs holding beads of water. Unfortunately there was a bit of a breeze which made photographing them difficult. One particular web was loaded with raindrops, it makes you wonder what weight is on these fragile strands and how the spider knows to construct using triangles. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed on the screen that those particular shots had captured the spider as well as the web. A lucky! One of them made PoD. Of the 26 shots I took, only 6 survived the first cull. That’s not a good average.

It was pesto spaghetti tonight and I think I was too heavy on the garlic. Believe me when I tell you that although it tasted fine about 6pm, at 9.20pm it’s not quite so tasty!

Tomorrow we might be going looking for a small bookcase to assist in the further cleanup of the back bedroom. I don’t suppose that would fit with the ethos of Marie Kondo’s method, but I won’t tell her if you won’t.

Dining out – 23 September 2020

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Just an opportunity to go for lunch and put aside Covid fears for an hour or so.

Scamp had bought the original Itison (Scottish version of Groupon) voucher back in February with the intention that it would be a useful lunch treat in the spring or summer, then Covid arrived and we tumbled into lockdown. Recently, when restaurants opened again, the vouchers came back to life. Today’s was for “21”, an Italian restaurant in Hamilton.  We even got free parking in the town because all the meters were covered, presumably to avoid folk having to risk catching the disease when emptying the meters. A little bonus. We walked down to the restaurant in the sunshine and arrived right on time. Scamp had Cream of Veg soup to start, followed by Veg Risotto. I had Salami Bruschetta followed by Balmoral Chicken. Both were perfectly satisfactory, but I wished later I’d stuck with my original choice of Lasagne. Because we’d had a cheap starter and main we felt it would only be fair to had a dessert too. Scamp had Coppa Amarena (ice cream with cherries) and I had Tiramisu. The Coppa looked great and the one cherry I had was beautiful. The Tiramisu was dry and looked as if it had come from a wholesaler. Not great. All in all it was fine. Next time if we go back, I’ll be more sensible in my choices. What impressed me most was that the staff spoke Italian to each other. That’s the way it should be.

Back home and back to reality, Scamp cut the front grass and I volunteered to do the same to the back grass. Maybe that will be the last cut of the year. The light was still good when we were done, so while Scamp relaxed, I took the Oly over to St Mo’s and went for a walk in the woods. It was a bit cold out of the sun, but the low light created opportunities for some decent photos. PoD was a backlit shot of a spider wrapping up its dinner. It’s a Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus).

Tonight about 8pm I was taking the recycling out for collection tomorrow morning. A group of folk were standing outside the house next door. Their father and mother, whose house it is, were inside with their grandchildren, but the parents were outside talking. Some were standing, some were sitting in garden chairs. It was dark and the temperature was a chilly 9ºc. What they were doing was perfectly legal and in line with the new rules for Scotland, but why would anyone go to those lengths? Will they do the same in a couple of months when it’s snowing? Who knows.

Tomorrow we may drive in to Glasgow.

Back in the old routine – 8 September 2020

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Going for the messages in Blue.

I drove to Stirling today with Scamp. We were heading for Waitrose ‘for the messages’. The sky was dull with occasional attempts at rain, but nothing that you could really call precipitation. Parked at Waitrose and walked in to Stirling town (it’s not a real city, even if Mrs McQueen says it is). I went to M&S and Scamp went to Debenhams both for different reasons. Met up again in the Thistle Centre and decided Nero was too busy and Costa was too dark and gloomy, so we went to HSBC to get some English money. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used a ‘hole in the wall’ machine. Some time in early March I think. Thankfully I remembered my pin.

On the walk back we stopped as we usually do to look in the picture gallery.  This shop usually has some good and some not so good artistic works.  However, we’ve neither of us seen anything to match the clumsy painting of a girl and a dog.  I think it’s downright dangerous to give a toddler oil paints to play with.  This ‘painting’ was priced at £450.  Unless, of course the decimal point wasn’t working on the computer used to print the price tag!

I think we did actually buy Waitrose this time. It was really just a test to see how much we could cram into the Micra boot. The answer was quite a lot, or maybe even Too Much! However, at least we got to walk round a fairly quiet shop pushing a trolley. Won’t need a Tesco delivery this week or next.

Came home and I tried to install the supposedly brilliant Nissan Connect Services which is a phone app that can do all sorts of wonderful things. I’d tried and failed to get the last one to work on the Juke. This one was no better. Got as far as creating an account, then things went belly up. You can scan in the VIN from the plate on the windscreen, but the app says it’s wrong. You can scan the VIN from the door upright, but the app says it’s wrong. You can type it in, but … Nothing I did worked, then I read the comments on this 1.2 star app. Almost everyone had the same problem, apart from the obvious ‘ringers’ who said it worked perfectly. With so many people having the same problem, you’d think a warning light would come on for the developers, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Another lost opportunity, Nissan.

Took my frustrations out on St Mo’s with a couple of circuits of the pond. Not a lot of light at all by 4.30pm. My PoD was a sideways look at a spider on its web, getting bounced about in the breeze.

Beef burger for dinner. What Scamp had dubbed an Artisan Burger. I’d made it myself, with my own fair hands and a pound of mince. It needed salt, but otherwise it was fine. Scamp had a piece of salmon and we both had some of those Home Grown and Artisan Charlotte potatoes. So, a hand-made dinner.

Thought I’d have to de-coke the coffee maker. Orange steam light flashing away apparently means de-scale. I managed to get the light to go out by resetting the water softness setting. Hope that keeps the orange light at bay.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet John at Chatelherault outside Hamilton for a walk and a chat about photography and cameras. ‘Hoping’ because it’s torrential rain and high winds here just now.

A hot day after a fiery night – 12 August 2020

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Wild night last night with thunder and lightning around 3am.

As well as the Donner and Blitzen, torrential rain fell for most of the night I’m led to believe. “I didn’t see that, I only heard, but just to be sociable I took their word” (Today’s lyrical poetry comes from Ned Washington & Oliver Wallace). I heard the thunder and saw the lightning but was only vaguely aware of the rain thumping down. That rain though, did a lot of damage all over Central Scotland and even worse in the north east. Train derailed outside Stonehaven with three dead. The weather has not been blamed, but it hasn’t been completely ruled out.

Once the clouds had cleared here it was a lovely sunny day. Humidity was still a bit high, but nothing as bad as yesterday. I met Val up at Costa only to find that there were no seats. All the Yummy Mummies were there with their screaming weans. We decided to walk down to the other Costa, but it was just as bad, but like a dungeon because they thing using the lights will spoil the ambience. Ambience? It’s a coffee shop in Cumbersheugh. Nowhere in Cumbersheugh has ambience. Saving on electricity more like! Walked back towards the first Costa, but actually thinking about going to Calders new restaurant instead. The coffee can only be better than Costa. Surprisingly, there were plenty of seats. Most of the mummies and their weans had disappeared. Val solved the problem of the biz in the coffee shops. “Eat Out to Help Out” applies Mondays to Wednesdays and you get 50% off a meal. We found a seat and ordered £5 for two coffees and two toasted tea cakes. Bargain. Talked about everything from miniature computers to old cameras. Nearly everything we talked about was tech based, as usual. Walked back down the mall then Val said he was going for a walk to waste some time because his wife had girlfriends in and he wanted some peace and quiet. I said we’d meet up later, hopefully all four of us this time.

Back home and after lunch I took myself out to get some photos in St Mo’s. PoD was a picture of a spider I’d taken in the garden in the morning. Liked the pink/red background. Nearly PoD was a shot of a dragonfly resting in St Mo’s. I’d watched it return again and again to this perch, but simply couldn’t get the TZ90 to see it. Finally gave up and used the nuclear option (4K video Post Focus). When I got home I isolated the frame from the video that was as sharp as I was going to get, and here it is! Is this the future of photography?

We watched a couple of slide shows from Hvar last year at this time. It’s amazing the things you forget and then remember when you get the stimulus of a picture or a short video. Hvar is a lovely place. We’d love to go back there some time.

Tomorrow I may have to go and see what damage Ben has done to Shona’s bathroom door. I don’t know what else I can do to reinforce the door. Possibly a manacle round his ankle and fixed to a bolt in the living room floor would do the trick. Other than that, no plans.

A Visitor – 23 July 2020

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A busy morning in the house.

Visitor coming today, so the house had to be made to look like a house and not a jumble sale. Tables to clear, floors to hoover and work to be done elsewhere. Scamp’s aunt/cousin (It’s complicated as most families are) was coming to visit and Scamp wanted everything looking nice. I did my best. I cleared the table. It took three armfuls and three journeys up and down the stairs to put most of the stuff away in the back room. Now I can’t find anything in the back room, but that’s ok, because I’m the only one who goes in there. Scamp just opens the door, looks in and sighs.
Isobel had been complaining to Scamp the last time they were on the phone that her daughter had bought her a mask, but it was really uncomfortable, so I suggested I make her one as a belated birthday present. That seemed to pass muster as a good idea. So that was my job thing morning after the table clearance. I got it finished just before lunch.

After lunch, Scamp went out to get Isobel. She had a new knee fitted earlier in the year and has some mobility issues as a result, so we’d agreed that Scamp would pick her up and I would drop her back at the house later. While she was out, I grabbed my camera and went out to see if I could get any photos. Found a tiny little orange spider in the middle of its web on a gypsophila plant. Got a few photos of it, but of course it was that first one that got PoD. The raindrops looked like star trails coming out of the web.

When they arrived Scamp gave Isobel the Royal Tour of the front garden. Then it was coffee time and a wee natter before we reviewed the back garden. She seemed quite impressed and the garden did look good in the sunshine. After a while Isobel announced it was time for her to go back home and I was chauffeur. Got her settled and had a walk round her garden, amazed as always at her memory for all the plants names.

Took my leave and drove home via Tesco to fill up the thirsty Juke. I was chef tonight and it was an old favourite, paella. Not real paella, because I can’t eat mussels, but it’s a fair compromise that looks and tastes like a real paella.

No sketch tonight, at least, not one posted. I did sketch half a pepper, but it’s not worth posting. Lockdown Library may be closed, but I still intend to post any decent sketches on Instagram and Facebook. Just not every day.

Tomorrow we may go somewhere nice for a walk.