Three postcards for a Swap-bot group swap. Ready to hit the mailbox today.

All the same. I had wanted to do three different ones but life got in the way and I was in danger of running past the send date.

We had a day on mainland Orkney this week – we had to do some shopping and take the pup to the vet’s. It left us sufficient time to visit Stromness for the first time. We visited the Pier Arts Centre and an artists collective.

There were photographs.

This is one of them

I wrote the visit up at Woolgathering, perhaps it should have been here. Anyway, if you’d like to call in at the woolly place, there are a couple of postcards on offer in that post.

She’s getting on a bit and it is starting to show at times.

But not always!

I find it very difficult to get a decent shot of Suzie, my camera does not cope well with her dark face – so I am pleased with today’s shot of her on the sofa. Sometimes when I look at her I think that maybe I don’t have all that many photo opportunities left. Then again, when she is tearing around the garden, I think maybe she will be with us forever.

I have been trying to photograph starlings. I regard this shot as the one that got away and can only begin to imagine how good it would have been if I had got the shutter speed right!

I stopped at Black Rock jetty on my way to spinning group.

Love this texture shot!

(bigger at Flickr)

Completed the digital collage postcards this morning and have five ready to mail out once my swap partners are assigned. I had much fun with this, although I have to be honest and say that it was a very quick and dirty collage and I might have done better.

My inspiration came from the PS3 Earth assignment and my own feelings about my island, expressed through elements of some of my favourite photographs.

The image was constructed in Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, the slogan comes via the Sanday Tourism Association. The postcard itself, including the words on the back, was done in MS Publisher.

I included images for the Air Mail sticker and the new Orkney Community Flag and the wording, stipulated in the swap, explains why I chose this image.

I used five or six of my own photographs for this collage, and concentrated on browns, greens, sand/sea/sky, and kelp – and the wee selkie. The rationale is all to do with the kelp, which is the reason for the sandy nature of the island and also for the existence of the important seal populations here, and was once a source of income for the islanders.

I like the collage sufficiently well to work on it further and the pure image will, I hope, appear here later – once I have refined it to a level at which I might want to print it out and display it on my wall.

I was cooking lunch today (plain risotto with chargrilled Mediterranean veg) when I noticed the view from the window. I dashed out with the pocket camera to grab some reference shots from the garden. I was struck by the colours – the soft green of the sea beneath the flat grey sky[1] and the faded yellows of the marram grass.

I used the Photo Schemer tool in Colour Schemer Studio to generate a few random colour schemes from the photo. I’ll play with them later.

Click the nasty GIFs to see a nice HTML colour chart page

If you want the schemes, here they are:

• Colour Schemer file Snow Day 1
• Colour Schemer file Snow Day 2
• Colour Schemer file Snow Day 3
• Colour Schemer file Snow Day 4

There’s a free online version of Colour Schemer here, for those who don’t have the application installed. No Photo Schemer there, of course. But why do you not have it? It is an essential tool! Go buy it! Now!

[1] Not so flat, as the Photo Schemer revealed – there were many shades of grey

I don’t see why Woolgathering should have all the PS3 fun. Here’s some fiery goodness to be looking at until something non-fibrous comes along.

This is my new drop spindle with some soy silk fibre. Not to mention my first efforts at drop spindling!

Towards the end of March I’ll produce some kind of photo collection summary of the theme to post here. In the meantime, my Flickr stream is looking very different to usual, due entirely to PS3 participation.

Some of the work that I did at Craft Group on Monday night might just fit in the theme. I want to do some finishing off and then I’ll assess the work and see what I think. I made another sheet of silk paper and three greetings cards using the papers made at the previous meeting. I seemed to be developing an Oriental flavour, with just a dash of seaweed savoury on the side

Spinning, Knitting, and The Sanday Spinners are all contriving to keep me busy and out of the workroom – but I shall be back.

Work on the new photo blog is going to take forever. I’ve been working at it like a Trojan but only have 89 posts made thus far. That’s but a wee drop in the ocean. I should be more discriminating about my selections, I know. But if I were discriminating, I’d only be able to call on 3 or 4 images!

I am building an index page of images while I progress. Linked only to the file, not to the page, so navigation via the index loses any pertinent comments made (though I’m not making much.)

You may count me as Officially Bored right now.

Since I cancelled my paid Flickr account I haven’t yet settled on a home for my photographs. I installed Gallery but didn’t get around to customising it or uploading any of my photographs (as opposed to “snapshots”).

I was testing Dreamhost’s new easy install for WordPress tonight and I ended up with a new sub-domain as well as a new blog.

It isn’t a perfect solution, as the choice is between thumbnails or compressed full size images – with some barbaric compression results – but clicking through to the full file results in a passable image.

I may stick with it. Over the next little while I shall trawl my hard disk and see how many of my Flickr images I can find to upload to my new showcase. At some point I should get myself out and about with the camera again.