Taken six years ago with my old Sony DSC-S60.

Like just now.

Odd.

- J.R.R. Tolkien*

One of my favourite sorts of adventures is the kind that you take by simply stepping out the front (or back) door. Today I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and go for a stroll through Torbay, taking paths not yet travelled. After I looked at the photos I brought back with me, the above verse just sprang immediately to mind.

I wandered up the street, to where I startled a flock of Pine Siskins who were grabbing the avian equivalent of coffee and a muffin at the local café.

The breakfast buffet. Pine Siskins enjoy a morning feast. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/350, Aperture: f8)

My presence distracted them momentarily, but it didn’t take long for them to hop right back to business. This one looked particularly chilly….

Fluffed up against the cold. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/1000, Aperture: f6.7)

Then I crossed the street, and spotted a neat birdhouse on Coppertop Place…

Birdhouse. Unoccupied.

Which somehow meant that I was supposed to go down Coppertop Place. So I did. It is a dead-end street, but I hopped the guardrail and mosied down into the woods.

It was just as well that it was winter, as the area off the end of the road was quite boggy (but mostly frozen) and the parts that weren’t bog were threaded with wild rose bushes. I flailed about in those for a time, before hitting the tree line and threaded my way between some astonishingly immense trees (mostly fir) sporting some impressive bolls. The sunlight filtered through quite nicely. I was able to make my way down to the edge of the cliffs and watch the surf pounding from above. (I steered clear of areas that appeared undercut).

Filtered sunlight

It looked like no one had been down there in years. I came across some very, very old longers (longers = Newfoundland-speak for trees, limbed, and used as fence rails) that appeared to give shape to an old fence. It was likely there to stop animals from looking over the edge of the cliff and watching the pounding surf. I took the hint and stayed near the fence-line, figuring that whoever had placed it probably knew where the edges of the cliff face were soft.

Old Man's Beard

At one point I came to an opening in the trees and was able to make this shot, which shows a sea cave in the foreground and a startlingly yellow house (not saturated in post-processing at all – that’s the real colour!) at the rear. In the books of my childhood, it’s precisely the kind of cave that would have had a secret tunnel at the rear leading up into that yellow house. There would have been pirates or smugglers or kidnappers and the tide would have come in and the secret passage would have been the only way of escaping certain death….

My childhood reading was much more interesting than reality.

Secret passage. You can see the Father Troy path cutting over the cave.

There were animal tracks here and there, showing the presence of rabbits and squirrels galore, but this was the most interesting set of tracks for the day:

Caught.

It looks to me like a bird of prey caught something and tried to reposition it while the prey attempted escape. Possibly a mouse? Who knows. There were no other tracks nearby.

I made my way down onto Torbay beach, poked around there for a bit and couldn’t resist snapping a few wave shots. The water was a strangely tropical-looking colour, but cold!

Cresting

Then it was back up over the main trail (because you’re allowed to take roads on the way home from an exploratory ramble) and home.

*This is the version from “The Hobbit”. There are many versions of this verse throughout Tolkien’s works)

Crêpes. The beginnning of quite a pile.

It’s Shrove Tuesday and while no one in this house religiously celebrates either Easter or its antecedent, Lent, we always enjoy an excuse to eat pancakes. In our house while growing up, “Pancake Day” meant a feast of crêpes, those really flat pancake-like creatures that can be rolled up with an assortment of treasures inside and sauces drizzled on top. As a child, I was thoroughly mystified, at first, when my classmates talked about finding buttons or coins baked into their pancakes. Where would you hide one in something so thin??

Contrary to the actual philosophy of Shrove Tuesday, in which one uses up the food eschewed during Lent (sugar, fat, flour and eggs being among those), I actually had to go out and BUY milk, eggs, butter and syrup.

Anyhow, here’s my Recipe for Crêpes. It’s pretty standard and probably the same as many that you’ll find:

Heat small to medium-sized frying pan (non-stick or extremely well-seasoned cast iron) over medium heat.

Dump the following into a bowl:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk (I used skim. You can use whatever kind you have around.)
• 2 tbsp melted butter (and trust me, you want real butter, not margarine or oil)

Mix these up.

Dump in 1/2 tsp salt & 1 cup flour.

Mix well until mostly smooth. It should be about the consistency of tomato soup. Maybe slightly thicker. If it’s like applesauce or even normal pancake mix, it’s way too thick. Thin with a little more milk to get it right.

When the pan is good and hot, drop a tsp of either veggie oil or margarine in and spread it around. Use a ladle and scoop about 1/2 cup of mix into the pan. Tip the pan so that the mixture coats the whole bottom, but not the sides. Work pretty quick. If it doesn’t spread well, it’s not runny enough. This is when I usually turn the burner down a fricken.

Wait until the entire coating of mixture turns from light to dark (you’ll know what I mean when you see it. Then loosen the edges, work the spatula under and flip it. The second side does faster than the first. If you’re making a lot, it helps to have two pans on the go at a time.

The first crêpe is usually a bit of a dud. It’s the one that tells you if your batter is too thick or thin or if your pan is too sticky/cold/big. It’s the proto-pancake and is essential to the whole process. It also keeps the dogs (or kids) happy.

This recipe should make enough for two hungry people, but it depends what you put inside.

Fillings:

• Today we started with a mixture of red onions, red peppers and cubes of ham, sautéed in olive oil. We rolled this inside the crêpes and drizzled maple syrup on top.
• Then there was homemade applesauce (chop up eight apples, stick ‘em in a pot. Add 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 tbsp cinnamon. Bring to a medium boil, turn down heat and simmer for about 15 mins).
• Finally we finished up with ice cream inside and chocolate sauce out.
• In the past I have used lemon juice and sugar.
• The applesauce worked very well with the ice cream.
• Really, your imagination is the limit…

I quadrupled the batch and it was enough for seven very hungry people, with seven crêpes left over.

Taken six years ago with my old Sony DSC-S60.

… I found this in 2006.

Doesn’t look like I’ll get a chance to find any contemporary light today.

It’s a grey old day out there now and I’m tied to a computer anyway.

St. George's Anglican Church, rendered in sepia so as to show off the wooden panelling's richness better than black and white would have done. (Focal length 18mm, Shutter: 1/6, Aperture: f4.8. ISO 200.)

Katherine and I have been having fun with the idea of exploring and going on adventures. Some are just idle meanderings, while others have been bona fide quests, complete with snowshoes, maps, crampons, camp stoves and lunch.

Today we had to stop in at the Craft Council to pick up some papers and chat with a couple of people. AFter that, we headed towards Petty Harbour, because Katherine couldn’t remember ever having been there (she has, repeatedly) and it sounded interesting to her and we simply wanted to get out of town without going too far. To my mind, Petty Harbour isn’t quite an outport. It’s in the same category as Quidi Vidi Village; it *was* an outport, but since the invention of roads, telephones and cars, it has become so connected to St. John’s that it’s more of a “bedroom” outport. That said, it’s wonderful for tourists who come to town and want to see a sliver of what “the bay” can look like and it’s a marvelous little community.

So we cruised through Maddox Cove and Petty Harbour and found St. George’s Anglican Church. In the usual way of outport churches, it was unlocked and empty (it’s Monday morning, so the place really *ought* to be empty, but it was a pleasant surprise to find it unlocked). All the churches we tried to explore on Friday were locked right up, but they were in town (where town = St. John’s). Apparently Petty Harbour is far enough away from the population hub of the capital city to warrant leaving doors unlocked. Memo to self: Check St. Nicholas’ in Torbay.

In any event, we wandered around, looked at the old photos on the walls, took a few pictures and left all as we found it. It was a nice little church. Much wooden paneling and the floors creaked vociferously. It’s obviously well-loved.

Orderly columns at St. Patrick's Church, St. John's, Newfoundland (Canada). Hand-held shot taken six years ago. ISO 80, with a shutter speed of 1/13 of a second (that's slow) with my old Sony DSC-S60.

On days when I haven’t had enough sleep, I tend to try to pare life down to the essentials. That’s not going to be possible today, so the results of last night’s insomnia will simply have to be shoved aside, hopefully without too many consequences of any severity.

Today I am hoping for order amid chaos, systematic progression amid a deluge of work, physical exhaustion through exercise so that my body and min are in sync, and oblivion at the end.

(50mm prime lens, Shutter: 1/30, Aperture: f1.8. ISO 400.)

We went over to my parents’ for dinner and I snapped this candid shot of my sister and her son. It’s a little bit unfocussed, as I was shooting erratically-moving subjects at 1/30 of a second, but I think the feeling conveyed overrides any technical aberrations. Having a lens that works in low light with no flash can be a real joy.

The mom was looking on The Internet for ideas one day when she hear a voice. Now, since the mom knows that hearing voices when you’re alone in the house with no tv or radio on is a bad sign, she did the logical thing and turned on CBC. “If you’re going to hear voices,” she thought, “they should be identifiable.” She certainly had no intention of answering the voice.

But it didn’t go away. And CBC started playing music, so that wasn’t helping anymore.

So she did what people alone in houses should never do. She answered it, but pretended that she was talking to the cat*.

And the cat (who sounded an awful lot like a sheep) said, “Make a green cake with sprinkles. Don’t worry about the sheep. We’ve got it covered.”

So the mother, who was really out of options by this point (and wondering who “we” was and how many cats she did in fact have), made a marble cake, covered it with green, green, green icing and greener sprinkles. And crossed her fingers.

The day of the party came.

There was green cake.

There were candles.

And….

There were sheep.

But there were only six sheep and the little girl was nine.

Forswearing her earlier vow not to talk to cats-who-sound-like-sheep, she muttered, “Hey! I thought you had it figured out!”

The cat turned his head, stared haughtily at her and said, “You sound foolish when you talk to yourself. You need a dog.”

Then the sheep stared at each other (and the mom) with trepidation (I imagine that they do that a lot).

"Six isn't nine?"

Then there was a conference, in which an appalling sort of math involving systems other than base ten were attempted in order that six might be more, but they always made it out to be at least ten and that’s not for another year. There were other unsuccessful ideas ventured:

We need three of us to be pregnant. Who's it going to be?

Finally they admitted that they needed some help. Or rather, “help” overheard and snuck in. Slowly.

"I am camouflaged." Seven...

Eight....

Nine was finishing supper, so we waited….

"I thought the tortoise WON that race with the hare..."

And waited…

"Are you sure none of us are pregnant?"

Finally the last turtle showed up, there was much creation of flame and the nice little girl had a very sheepish green, green, green birthday cake. With turtles.

Nine.

*talking to the cat is the first step on the path to Madness. Talking to dogs is fine, because dogs listen and respond. Cats don’t give flying fig what you say, so talking to one is akin to talking to yourself.

For more of the Sheep & Turtle Saga, check out these Sheep & Turtle Posts…..

All taken with the prime 50mm lens, most at f1.8. No flash. ISO 800. Worked brilliantly in the low-light situation. And I remembered to change the ISO back after!

Yesterday evening was Katherine’s ninth birthday party and we celebrated at the Devon House Clay Studio, operated by the Craft Council of Newfoundland & Labrador. I wasn’t about to post all the photos here, so I made a collage. If you follow this link, you will see the full collection in greater detail.

A few years ago, I decided that sending out invitations to twenty or thirty kids for a party that involved food, games, prizes, some form of activity (i.e. swimming, bowling, etc.) was really not working for me. Sometimes 25 would show up, sometimes it was 10. Meanwhile you have 30 loot-bags, food for a small army (and it’s crappy party food, like nuggets and fries or cheap pizza, so it’s not the kind of thing I’d keep in the freezer and use anyway) and have gone through a lot of work and expense. So I figured that there had to be a better way of doing this for our family.

That’s when I discovered the brilliant idea of having the party at the Clay Studio, with selectively picked invitees and fewer of them.  You can have up to twelve, I think. Possibly fifteen (which would be a lot), but we’ve kept it to under ten and it works beautifully. For two hours, the kids get to work with clay and an instructor who helps them to make something that they paint with coloured slip (mud) and is later fired. They get to make something (our crew made mugs, last year we made pots with lids) that is entirely theirs, will hold together pretty well, that they can use after and they get to have a fabulous time doing it.

Note: if they don’t look like they’re having fun in the pictures, it’s because they’re concentrating very intently. This group of kids took their pottery very seriously.

Since there’s no kitchen facility, I simply advise parents on the invite that there will be lots of cake, but no supper. So I don’t have four pounds of fries left after, which suits me to a tee. In a few weeks, I’ll swing back and pick up the kids’ creations and return them to their creators. To boot, I help a not-for-profit creative group stay active, which give that pleasant, warm, fuzzy feeling.

Reduced stress, happy and creative kids, less crappy food and promoting art in the community…. What more could you ask for?

P.S. Thanks to Lauren for a stellar job on helping them with their projects and keeping things moving according to schedule. You were awesome!

Sisters. (Focal length 82mm, Shutter: 1/180, Aperture: f4.8)

There are four houses in St. John’s called the Temperance Street Houses (or Samuel Garrett Houses, depending on whom you ask) that were built by Garrett as wedding gifts for his four daughters. They were lovely structures, built of stone left over from the construction of Cabot Tower and a local hospital that had been obliterated by flame.

I drive, run or walk by these houses pretty often, since they’re right next to Devon House (wherein resides the Craft Council of Newfoundland & Labrador) and they’re also just at the foot of Signal Hill, which is a either lovely walk or a challenging run, depending on the speed at which you approach it. Due to my habitual routes, I more often look at the backs of them (as depicted in this photo) than the fronts.

The houses are in horribly sad states now. Windows are bashed out and have been covered in with cardboard. Doors are boarded over. The stonework is beginning to crumble and there are gaping holes in the sides of the houses, some with things growing in them.

Holes. Some parging required!

Despite all of this, these elegant old ladies have retained their dignity. I just hope that someone who loves what they were and can be, someone who doesn’t want to change them into some slick and modern condo monstrosity, comes into their lives soon. They could use the modern equivalent of a “gentleman suitor” (be that person male or female).

Decanted. It looks as thought the window is being poured into the decanter. This lens works so very well in low light situations. (50mm prime lens, Shutter: 1/750, Aperture: f1.8. ISO 200.)

Katherine and I were looking for places to explore yesterday and one of the more interesting that we found was the Old Church Antique Shop in Portugal Cove. We’ve often driven past it and wanted to drop in, but never have. It used to be the old Anglican Church in Portugal Cove, but has since been converted into a shop and (I think) home. The entire main floor of the church/shop is crammed with stuff of all sorts, shapes, sizes and antiquity. They have installed a floor so that there are two stories to the building now, allowing for the top floor to be used as some sort of living accommodations.

It is a very, very odd place. There was a big sign in the window that said “OPEN,” so we parked the car and went on in.

There was nobody there.

As I walked through, I kept expecting someone to pop out from behind a pile of old records or that I would turn a corner and find a wizened old man staring at me from behind a rack of fur coats, revealing that he had been sitting there, watching me the entire time. But no. We couldn’t find a soul in the area and it was freezing cold. Possibly colder than it was outside.And so quiet in there that you could hear the creak of every floorboard like a gunshot.

We *did* hear voices upstairs and the thumping of feet, but were unwilling to wander up into someone’s apartment and scare the daylights out of them. Besides, there was something a little pleasant about having the place to ourselves.

Stained glasses window. (50mm prime lens, Shutter: 1/180, Aperture: f1.8. ISO 200.)

We didn’t buy anything, but decided that it would be nice to come back again in summer, when it was warmer, to have another look around.

Tempting. (50mm prime lens, Shutter: 1/1000, Aperture: f1.8. ISO 200.)

Filed under: Antique, Newfoundland & Labrador, nikon D70, photo, photography, photos ]]> http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/02/18/the-weirdest-little-big-shop/feed/ 3 vickyth Decantation Glass Window Tempting http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/02/17/bibliophile-in-the-making/ http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/02/17/bibliophile-in-the-making/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:27:32 +0000 VickyTH http://seastrandsstudio.com/?p=2215 ]]>

The irony of the juxtaposition of title and binding appealed to me. ISO 800, but I *meant to* this time and switched it right back after. (50mm prime lens, Shutter: 1/15, Aperture: f1.8)

Katherine had today off school and while I had a tonne of work to do, it had always been my intention that we should get out and explore a bit today. (She has Monday off, too, but I’m trying not to think about that.) So I plugged away at things for the morning, but when the afternoon came, I chucked it in and we got out of the house.

We went to several places, but surprisingly few places of interest that do not involve spending money are open on a Friday afternoon in February. The Cathedral, the Basilica, Cabot Tower, St. Thomas’ church… all closed and locked up tighter than drums.

So we thought a bit and decided to go to the university library, which has enough books to satisfy both an eight-year-old and a thirty-six-year-old. My favourite (well, second-favourite*) part of the library is the Folio section, where the over-sized books of all sorts are housed. Really big books are ten times more likely to have awesome pictures and fabulous maps, so we pored over Atlases, massive tomes about “antient Ægypt” and Katherine was delighted to find a few humongous books about Van Gogh and Dürer, which were duly hauled out and minutely examined.

As we were leaving, she asked about who used the library and I explained again about the university, what it meant and who it was. We descended the staircase and she looked thoughtfully at the door through which we had passed, saying, “Right. The Folio section is on the Fifth Floor, near the elevator. Just want to remember for in nine years’ time.”

*my first-favourite part is the top-secret archival section with the medieval manuscripts, one of which was written by a woman. Must find a good reason to go there soon….

ISO 800. Which explains so much. Arg. Discovered that the way in which I switch certain settings (while working quickly and without watching what I'm doing) is unfortunately similar to the way in which the ISO can be changed, so I accidentally flicked a wrong switch. Developing a new habit, pronto. Check ISO before shooting. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/1000, Aperture: f5.6)

When I went a-wandering the other day, I took my new 55-200mm lens with me, hoping to see some nice birds. Like eagles. Or hawks. Or even acrobatic seagulls. I had not counted on the way in which the lens would let me take perfectly ordinary photos without having to stand up to my knees in the frigid Atlantic. I was able to snap the above mussels and barnacles without getting wet. Well, without standing in water. There’s no such thing as staying dry when you take a bouncy dog to the beach.

Imminent departure. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/750, Aperture: f13)

But anyway, I was able to snap the mussels and barnacles with a minimum amount of liquid contact and no danger (which is nice, because I’m not fond of danger). And I was able to stalk this crow, who decided that I was too slow in changing lenses and was about to take off when I finally shot.

And Rowan gave me a hand with this squirrel. She took off like a bat out of Hades across the landscape and then I heard this banshee-screeching shriek as the squirrel flung himself up into a tree and proceeded to spew forth a string of vindictive foulness that would have made a jailer blush.

Watching me watching you. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/180, Aperture: f13)

He’s just lucky she doesn’t speak squirrel, because she CAN climb trees.

(Focal length 70mm, Shutter: 1/3000, Aperture: f5.6)

Filed under: animals, birds, dogs, hiking, nikon D70, photo, photography, photos ]]> http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/02/17/critters/feed/ 2 vickyth Clustered Imminent Watcher Rowan Reflects http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/02/17/whirling/ http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/02/17/whirling/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:41:13 +0000 VickyTH http://vickyth.wordpress.com/?p=2210 ]]>

Wind turbines in Fermeuse, taken last fall, from the Ferryland Downs, with a Sony DSC-HX5V.

It’s a head-in-a-blender-and-did-you-remember-to-unplug-it sort of Friday, leading me straight into a weekend of chaos. Some people like Fridays. I still am not sure I understand why. I have heard that some people have relaxing weekends. I really must find out what those are like.

Saturday is far more work than Friday, even without a kid’s birthday party to launch*.

Perhaps it all works on the “change is as good as a rest” theory?

* I do not know who first decided that birthday parties for children had to be something more than a cake and supper with family. I cannot fathom who thought that having a gargle of kids ricocheting off walls together in celebration was a good idea. I suspect it was a father. Or a woman with a large staff of servants. No sane woman of ordinary means would have started a tradition this labour-intensive and potentially expensive.

(Focal length: 50mm, Shutter Speed: 1/180, Aperture: f2)

It seems like on these dreary old mid-winter days (the ones with freezing rain, wind and no sun), a splash of colour is most needed. When that colour comes with a natural whiff of floral fragrance, it’s even nicer. This Hoya plant was a cutting taken from the Devon House Clay Studio‘s Hoya and has been happily strangling co-existing with my orchids for several years. The first time it bloomed, the blossom was hidden by foliage so I was mystified by the powerful and strangely musky-sweet smell that only occurred at night in the kitchen. The culprit was located after I thoroughly cleaned everything and checked all the household nooks and crannies for rotting fruit.