Tag Archives: macro

Weekend Whittering

We have been having a busy wee weekend here at the Evilrooster’s Nest, after Friday’s high-energy activities.

On Saturday, the kids and I went out for a brief expedition to the local shopping centre and (more importantly) the play park right nearby. It was a frosty morning.

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Taken 18 February 2006

But the crocus was just beginning to bloom in the park.

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Both taken 18 February 2006

Fiona decided to take a route through the play structure that required her to cross a wobbly bridge. She was brave, but cautious.

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Both taken 18 February 2006

We walked home, past the dry hedges in the suburban front gardens.

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Taken 18 February 2006

My in-laws then came over and took the kids for a long expedition to a soft play area, while Martin got some quiet time and I took a nap (sleep can be hard to come by in a busy household). M and I then went out to dinner and a film, leaving the kids in Ian and Sheila’s very capable hands.

This morning, after sundry shopping expeditions, we all ended up at the Cuddy Brae (pub with grub) for the classic family lunch. The children were beautifully behaved, the conversation pleasant, and the food good if excessive. Ideal. Even the car park plants were looking pretty good.

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Taken 19 February 2006

Who says you have to do exotic things to have a good time?

No Rest for the Silly

Another Friday, another adventure.

Fiona had a birthday party to go to quite late today (4:30 – 6), so I had half-intended to spend the morning quietly so as to leave her with energy for the afternoon. But the day was so sunny, and the kids so chirpy, that I decided we all needed a trip out. There’s been a geocache near us, unfound, for some time: Craigmillar’s One of Four. Off we went.

Alex pointed the way.

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Taken 17 February 2006

Fiona checked our heading with a compass.

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Taken 17 February 2006

We lucked out. We found the cache really quickly, got good loot, left our trades, and thought, “now what?”

So we walked on round the castle, whcih was magnificent in the glorious sun.

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Taken 17 February 2006

Fiona took her own path, at her own pace.

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Taken 17 February 2006

We saw lots of trees.

From far away.

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Taken 17 February 2006

From up close.

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Taken 17 February 2006

And all wrinkly.

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Taken 17 February 2006

Ones that look like dragons.

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Taken 17 February 2006

And ones that look like island chains! (Cropped, I confess.)

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Taken 17 February 2006

Then we rolled back down the hill (no, really, Alex wanted to barrel roll. Fiona tried to join him, but needed a bit of help.) After a brief visit home to lunch, nap and change clothes, we went to Lauren’s party. The kids were perky as they waited for the bus.

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Taken 17 February 2006

Fiona loved the party, particularly when painted as a puppy. (Yes, I know it’s out of focus, but she was dancing.)

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Taken 17 February 2006

It was a magnificent day. Alex impressed me with his maturity at the party (I asked him to sit out the party games after he won the first one, to give the smaller kids a chance. He not only did so, but he made the effort to smile about it as well. Wow.) Fiona was funny and beautiful. Then they had a delightful bath and went to bed.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today was my birthday, and a very good one it was, too. From the flowers the kids gave me first thing, to the cards and the presents that started my day so well, to the very good day with my colleagues at work, it was both ordinary and magical. Even got my usual walk through the Botanics, taking the odd picture along the way, seemed a little special, though I don’t know if that shows in these phiotos.

Something sprouting through the rocks

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Taken 15 February 2006

Something about this drystane wall spoke to me too.

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Taken 15 February 2006

Then, on the walk home, I was struck by the beauty of these balustrades in the raking sunlight.

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Taken 15 February 2006

But that was nothing to the sky over Calton Hill! (Photo cropped to remove a crane)

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Taken 15 February 2006

The best moments came at the end of the day – playing tag with the kids on the walk home in the last of the sunlight. Noticing that Alex has finally figured out how to moderate his pace so Fiona can catch him. Chocolate cake. Silly kids in their bubble bath. A chance to talk to Martiin in the evening (and to thank him – I am aware that the flowers, the presents, and the cake only seemed to appear magically at the right moments!)

In some ways, having such an ordinary working-day birthday was better than having an all special day, because it made me look at my everyday life afresh and see it sparkle. I hope I can hold onto that for a while yet!

Valentine’s Day

If you’re lucky enough to get a Valentine’s card today, well, good. Somebody loves you. Remember that.

If you aren’t, then one of the hearts in this picture is especially for you.

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Update, 16th February: A number of people have asked me how I did this, whether it’s wicker, how long it took me to make, etc. Let me explain. I was trimming pages of a few books with my Christmas bookbinding present, the beautiful vertical plough that Martin got me. The bin was full of little strips of paper in cream and white. So I curled a few of them into a half-heart shape and photographed the result, then cut the picture, mirrored the appropriate bit, and pasted. The intricacy of the final result astonishes even me, and I did it.

Sorry to rob you of some of the magic, dear readers, but I can’t let you think I did something I didn’t.

Cinnamon Rolls

Yesterday, I felt the restless desire to make something. Usually, that means bookbinding, but yesterday, it had to be food. So I finally got round to beginning something I’ve been meaning to do for some time: learning to make really good cinnamon rolls. For convenience, I want to be able to make part-baked frozen cinnamon rolls.

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I blame Robin McKinley, one of my favourite authors. One of her recent books, Sunshine, is about a magician and vampire slayer who also bakes in a cafe. Or, more properly, it’s about a baker in a cafe who discovers she can also do magic and slay vampires, though she’d prefer to just bake. And McKinley expresses her passion for baking so well that when I read the book, I want to do so too.

Now, when I was a child, I had free run of the kitchen as long as I would clean up after myself. I spent a good deal of time perfecting chocolate cake recipe. I haven’t done that kind of evolutionary cookery since, but I firmly believe that no recipe I find in a book is perfect. So I have chosen a very basic cinnamon roll recipe from a book I trust, and I intend to refine it until it’s perfect. My family are just going to have to put up with the collateral effects of this experimentation, namely having cinnamon rolls around from time to time. They’re very brave. They will cope.

The base recipe is from Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook (1961), which was my maternal grandmother’s reference cookbook. I don’t have her copy, having long since damaged it beyond repair with my cake-making, but my mother kindly gave me another copy a few years ago. It’s very good on cakes, cookies and yeast breads, but tastes have changed since 1961, so it does occasionally need a little refining.

The basic recipe, with initial changes. I will convert it to metric/weight-based cookery at a later stage. Additions and changes in bold.

Dough

  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 1 pkg yeast
  • 3/4 cup lukewarm milk (scalded and cooled to reduce dough stickiness)
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • approximately 4 cups flour (I never measure flour for bread. You add it till it’s dough, then knead into more flour till it’s kneaded.)

Topping

  • 2 Tbsp soft butter
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup raisins

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add milk, sugar, salt, egg, oil and 2 cups flour. Mix until smooth. Add enough flour to turn it into dough, then turn onto a lightly floured board and knead till smooth and elastic (about 5 min).

Round up in a greased bowl, then turn to bring greased side up. Leave to rise in a wam place until double, about 1 1/2 hour.

Punch down, and leave to rise again until almost doubled, about 30 min.

Roll out into an oblong, 15 x 9″. Spread with softened butter. Mix cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over the surface. Sprinkle raisins on top.

Roll up tightly, beginning at the wide side. Seal well by pinching edges of roll together.

Cut roll into 1″ slices. Place on greased trays to rise for another 35 to 40 minutes, until doubled.

Heat oven to 375 F (195 C). Bake 15 – 20 min for part baked rolls, 25 – 30 min for done rolls.

Freeze part baked rolls in plastic bags. When you want a fresh cinnamon roll, heat the oven and bake for 10 – 15 minutes from frozen.


So how did it come out?

  1. The dough could use to be sweeter. Next time, I think I will use 1/3 cup sugar.
  2. The raisins would work better spread throughout the rolls rather than simply in the spirals. I will knead them in before rolling the dough out.
  3. Martin suggests rolling the dough into a thinner layer, making more turns of cinnamon per roll. I think this is a good idea, though it may increase the butter, sugar and cinnamon required for spreading on the rolled-out layer.

Further updates after the dozen cinnamon rolls in the freezer are disposed of.

A Walk in the Woods

A mouse took a walk in the deep dark wood…

Actually, it was a whole family out searching for the Butterdean Wood geocache, but two keen little children found the idea that a Gruffalo might be lurking among the trees pretty exciting. Martin, clever bunny, proposed a caching expedition to get us out in the beautiful (if chilly) sunshine, and this was a good cache to look for. It was about half an hour’s drive from home, taking us over flat paths that were just wild enough to seem adventurous. They were also perhaps a little muddy.

I brought my phone camera, of course, and stopped from time to time to take pictures.

Fungus on a fallen log.

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Taken 4 February 2006

Alex took the GPS and went ahead, following the arrow and talking of treasure. Playing Zelda has sharpened his taste for quests and adventures. He waited patiently whenever I would stop to take a shot.

The twisted stem of some vine – I don’t know what kind. (This picture has been cropped.)

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Taken 4 February 2006

Two leaves on a twisting vine.

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Taken 4 February 2006

Fiona strode along the path, first with one parent, then with the other. At two, she is rock-steady on her feet and entirely unafraid of any mystery the woods might hold. She has been a strong walker for some time, and I think she enjoyed the challenge. When we were walking together and I would step aside to take a picture, she would venture onward without a backward glance.

Fir cone among the leaves.

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Taken 4 February 2006

Eventually, Alex relinquished the GPS in favour of a stick sword, and Fionaberry took over as navigator. (We pretty much followed the path.) She thought my eTrex was a camera, and every now and then would stop, hold it to her face, bend very close to the ground, and say, “I take a picture. Cheese!” before going on. Not a landscape photographer, I guess…

Tangle of sticks, a pattern shot.

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Taken 4 February 2006

Lichen on a branch. It’s almost blue!

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Taken 4 February 2006

Alex was soon wrapped up in Zelda-esque adventures, which reminded me vividly of my own childhood games. The forest around our cabin was always Lothlorien and Mirkwood, Stephen R Donaldson’s The Land and Sherwood Forest. For him, East Lothian became Link’s country, and he crept and ran through it like the hero of his favourite Game Boy game. I’m happy that our mostly urban life has opportunities for that kind of imaginative play.

He has not yet developed the love of the woods and trees for their own sake that I have. But I learned that a bit older than four. Maybe one day he’ll see it.

The pattern of decay on the limb of a fallen tree reveals so much of its underlying structure.

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Taken 4 February 2006

Concentric rings on tree bark. I don’t know why this occurs.

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Taken 4 February 2006

Alex used his stick to open “gates”, mostly by keying his name into the trees. This one, in particular, required a number of passwords to be entered. We touched certain parts of the branches and said certain letters, spelling out our names to pass onward along the path.

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Taken 4 February 2006

By the time we found the cache, a good half mile from the car park, the kids were running out of adventurous spirit. They weren’t crabby, or unhappy, or even tired, but they were more focused on getting the “treasure” than on telling themselves (and us) stories on the way.

We found the box easily enough – it’s both well hidden from the casual passer by and easy to find if you know where to look – and there were toys enough for both of them. Alex chose a deck of cards, and Fiona took a mini pencil set. I left some stone animals and an amethyst in trade, and we turned back to the car.

Although she wanted to be carried early on for the return journey, Fiona soon regained her energy and did a good deal of walking on the way back to the car. We covered over a mile as a family, and she managed about two thirds of that. Alex walked the whole distance, and wasn’t worn out at the end.

We left the wood as the sun began to head for the horizon.

Late sunshine on brown leaves. The shot looks warmer than it was!

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Taken 4 February 2006

Ice balls

It was a cold day after a cold night. I still needed to get out and get some light at lunchtime, even though the wind nipped at my hands and the tips of my ears. And it was worth it – look what I found!

I first noticed, walking by the Water of Leith near Stockbridge, that the edges of the water sparkled with little bright circles. Looking closer, I realised that they were balls of ice, hovering above the water level.

How did they come to be there? The water must have frozen overnight, along the edge of the burn, then thawed in the morning. As the sheets of ice broke up, the weight of the balls lightened until the leaves could spring back a little, pulling the last spheres up out of the water.

Or the fairies left them behind when they were playing marbles.

Ice balls.

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Taken 31 January 2006

Frosty Day

Today was astonishingly cold. It was one of those days where I step outside the door in the morning, then duck back in to get my gloves on properly before venturing out for real. The sky was clear as crystal, and I watched a flock of fourteen blackbirds fly above me as I walked to the bus. The breath from my open-mouthed smile clouded in front of my eyes.

Things didn’t thaw as the morning progressed, either. I took a brief walk at lunchtime (after spending most of the hour indoors, with companions who object to frostbite and nicknames like Nine-Fingers and No-Ears), and the world was still frozen. Wow.

This is not an aerial shot of the antarctic desert from a high-flying airplaine, but part of the pattern of ice on a windscreen. The driver will have had an interesting time this evening.

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Taken 30 January 2006

Frost-rimmed leaves, a pattern shot.

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Taken 30 January 2006

This evening the fog descended like cotton wool. It was as dramatic as the ice, but a lot less photogenic.

The good part of a bad day

I was on a course on Tuesday and Wednesday, on leadership and the bank’s culture. And things did not go well – one of my colleagues did not demonstrate the skills or values around which the workshop was built. (Actually, he did not demonstrate the basic manners that we expect from adults, nor the courage and grace to apologise when he sobered up. But I digress.)

While I was outside in the hotel’s extremely sparse grounds, cooling off, I took a few pictures. Most came out badly, but these two are the best of the lot.

These trees with the dangling seed heads are pretty common, but it takes a lot of luck to catch one not waving in the wind.

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Taken 25 January 2006

The spiral growth of seed heads on an ornamental shrub. This photo has been cropped.

Taken 25 January 2006

Actually, the best part of the day was the way that my other colleagues supported me in that difficult situation. I found one jerk, yes, but eight or ten trustworthy people. They even joked about taking him out into the car park, with sundry West Side Story references, but I didn’t want to damage the plants. 😉

January Walk Shots

It’s been a while since I’ve posted photos, mostly because I’ve been too ill to take many. The flu this year has been dreadful, and it made its mark as it swept through our household. Alex was ill week before last, Martin got it last week (and still coughing now), I fell ill last Thursday and didn’t really resurface until Sunday, and now Fiona is just coming out of a bad bout.

I have taken a few pictures over the past week or so, as I have walked my way back to health. But the muse hasn’t really been there. Here are the ones that made the cut.

The first crocus leaves, peeping up from the soil at the foot of my road. I think they are in for some difficult times.

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Taken 12 January 2006

Gate hardware, Drum Street. One of the few manmade items I’ve been drawn to photograph, mostly because it looks so human!.

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Taken 12 January 2006

Wrinkled rose hep, on a back path through Gilmerton.

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Taken 12 January 2006

Grass underwater in the Water of Leith. (This photograph has been cropped and its colour altered to reduce the reflections off of the water.)

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Taken 18 January 2006

View through the fence, Powderhall.

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Taken 18 January 2006

Reddening ivy 1, Powderhall.

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Taken 18 January 2006

Reddening ivy 2, Powderhall.

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Taken 18 January 2006