I think the Fly is Dead

Paper beads.  That's my latest endeavour.  Roll up long skinny, tapering, pieces of paper - around a coffee sippy straw.  Glue the end down, varnish it a few times and there you have it.  A bead, or many beads.  You choose depending on your level of insanity.

Apparently I am rather insane as I ordered a box of 1000 coffee, stir-er, sippy straws last night.  If that is an indication of the winter to come, it's going to be a long, wet winter.  And there she is....  twirling paper around sippy straws...

I am really getting old.  The older I get, the younger I get.  I play like a six year old.  If only I could sleep like a child too. 

I'm still into photographing everything I don't see, in hopes of seeing it better. Doesn't help usually, but it does keep me off the streets. (for the most part).  

I found a dead fly on the screen of my backyard screened house.  He didn't fly away which was a dead give-away to his life status. I took his picture, thinking the whole time how I detest pictures of bodies in coffins.  I suppose this might have been different as he was not in a coffin. 

On to spiders.  Not a very good shot.  I was hovering around in an overgrown area of my yard... swatting mosquitoes and dancing away from ants.  It was much easier to focus on the dead fly.  

What can I say?  I promised myself I'd get back to blogging, I didn't promise myself high quality, thought provoking commentary.

New Post!  Yaaay...

Today, my set of four Jeweler's Loupes arrived.  I like.  I wandered around the yard again hunting for pictures.  Bugs, other than mosquitoes, seem to be in short supply in this hot weather.  I found only one wee spider.  

It took several attempts at different times of the day to finally get a semi-decent shot of him.  He lives near the wee pond full of fish.

Then I went around the yard looking for something, anything to photograph.  Found these pretty purple flowers.

Finally as the sun was going down, I was getting desperate for a good photograph.  I turned around and saw the bench by the pond.  On a whim I switched to black and white and snapped a photo. 

 I rather like this one.  

And I think it's time for me to be off to bed.  It shall take awhile to post anything of interest I think.  I have to get back into the swing of living in a 'safe' world.

Long Time No See

Yes, it's been a very, very (very) long time since I posted. A few years.  Suffice it to say that I had some major bumps in the road that took over my complete world. I did not want to blog about it.  It was all encompassing and I had nothing else to write about. The extremely short story is, my brother is a registered child sex offender.

I've had cataract surgery on both eyes with some glitches that left me with poor vision for awhile.  I let it be a lesson unto me to stop taking my eyesight for granted. Now, my vision is really good in one eye, the other eye is not so good, but good enough to function.  So function I will.


I've been taking pictures... cherishing my vision now that I've got it back.  So, since I'm checking out this new (for me) blog layout, writer, editor-thingie, I'll add a picture I took last night.

 I was outside wandering around snapping photos and saw something on top of a flower.  I put a 10X Jeweler's Loupe over my camera lens and snapped.


Figured I didn't get much and went on with my evening - looking for little stuff to photograph.

I downloaded my pictures from my camera and was surprised to see it was a tiny caterpillar. In person it was less than 1/4 inch long.  I had trouble with shaky hands. The focus range using the loupe is very, very narrow.  But, I'm rather pleased with the result.


Not to be outdone, a tiny fly flew into my view.  I had to work quickly with it, so it to was a one shot deal.
Here's my little fly!

Fun evening in the yard!

I must mention Mike Ash here.  He taught me a lot about getting macro shots with an inexpensive (read cheap) camera and very inexpensive magnifying glasses.  He died almost 10 years ago, but not before sharing lots of tips with lots of people.

You can see his 'stuff' here: http://www.macrophotos.com/mike/profile.htm

I'm back to claying after a long hiatus.  I'll be sharing that at a later date.  I'm taking online classes and learning lots of new techniques.  I give away almost everything I make.  I have happy friends!

I like the new blog editor by the way.  Much easier to get pictures where I want them.