Sculpted Yarns: Summertime

I know, as usual, it has been a while since I've posted. Sorry, we've been busy bees of late. Weekend trips and parties. (Tony Awards) and seeing old/new Friends.

But first, I must give a shout out to my SP7 who sent me these lovely goodies:

THe tea is delightful, and the chocolate is too. Manos is one of my favorite wool yarns and she sent me two lovely skiens of it. THANKS Secret Pal!! I must also mention my Cheap Pal as well, since she sent me postcards, some lovely notecards and an orange peeler with some hot coacoa mix in my favorte brand which I don't have pictured. Thanks to you too!!! I'm sending out some fun stuff to my pals as well, but I can't tell you what here or it will spoil the surprise for them.

Since I haven't poseted any pottery lately, here are some recent pieces. I've been haveing some problems with some of the glazes, so a couple of the pieces are not looking as good as they should, even though my bowls are getting a lot better. This is a recent bowl, and my first attempt at a plate.

Robert and I went to the beach to see his old roommate and his family this past weekend, here is a photo of us on the beach at dusk. We had a fun weekend, and so did the family. It was only the second time the kids had been to the beach since they live in Kansas.

We like to visit zoos and aquariums in our travels and so we visited one of the NC Aquariums while we were at the beach, this was the one at Fort Fisher, there are three in NC apparently. Since we are members of the zoo in my hometown, and they are AZA affiliated, we thought we might get a discount at this aquarium, not only did we get a discount, but it was FREE for us to get in, which was a pleasent surprise. The first area you go into is a arboritum area with plant and animal life, lots of turtles and frogs and yes, alligators, I'm not posting any of those photos, but I did get some fun pictures of them. Here are some of the more interesting shots I got in the rest of the aquarium though

This fish actually posted for the photo, it swam up against the glass and stayed there for me to take a couple of shots, this one came out the best, but it was quite funny. It was in the same tank as the photo after it...

Nemo and Dori!!!

The outside of the aquarium had a kind of botanical garden surrounding some ponds as well, with an area to attract local birds, and of course there were turtles and seagulls around the ponds. I even got some photos of some dragonflies, but not up close enough to make them worth posting. If only my new lenses had arrived in time for the trip. I had ordered some new lenses for my digital camera. I was finding the focal length not to my liking as much as I had hoped when I first bought it, and additional lenses was a lot cheaper than a new camera that still might not have all of what I wanted. So, I bought a wide angle lens, and a telephoto lens. The telephoto lens would have come in handy at the beach, since there were some shots that could have been better of the kids, since they were running off down the beach. But I have it for next time. In the meantime, here is a photo using my new Telephoto lens, I know you can't really tell anything without a comparason photo, but maybe I'll post that later. In the meantime, enjoy some of the back garden.

and the herb garden..it isn't all lemon mint, but it sure seems like it in the photo. The urn actually contains basil, the tomato cage has a tomato plant in it and there is cilantro, and oregano nearby, there are some lanbs ear plants here and there, and not pictured is thyme, rosemary and about 4 different kinds of lavendar, a rosebush and some nasturshums. I think that may be it for the herbs in that area of the yard.