Short Changed

For months now, Jonathan has been scanning my height to see how he stacks up. At family dinner, our eyes almost met on the same level. I, maybe, still have a meagre inch on him. 

I was surprised that our heights were so close and asked him how tall he was. He didn't know. 

We did a quick, crude measurement. He seems to be 5'10".

"Wait a minute! I am 6'1+" and he is almost at eye level with me. People do shrink as they age. I wonder if I have lost an inch."

No, I haven't lost an inch. I have lost 2" inches. Actually 2+ inches.

That's right! Once upon a time I was 6'1" plus a bit. Now I measured at 5'11".

I was shocked. Everyone was shocked.

I have been short-changed as it were.

Trying to measure how tall short Buppa is.

A Cold Brisk Walk

It was near the old zero yesterday. By old zero, I mean means Fahrenheit. Zero, for Celsius is just the freezing point. 0C is like 32F, and it's not that cold. But I remember from days of yore that 0F is cold, Baby: not Saskatchewan or Minnesota cold, but cold enough.

We still went for our daily walk, and without wind, it was actually quite pleasant. You may not believe that, but it's the wind that is the killer. Mind you, we  were well bundled and not exactly in shorts and tees.

For whatever reason, I decided that yesterday was the day to video our expedition, largely because I knew that the snow would be very crunchy underfoot in the cold, and I thought that some of you would like to hear that.

Videoing meant hands out of mitts, so I kept the clips really short before I would get the mitts back on. Of course, my hands got downright cold anyway, and then the batteries in my heated mitts failed. Sue leant me one-half of one of her own handwarmers, but I was still happy enough to get my frozen digits back to the car.

The video is about 1 minute and 40 seconds. The clips are unedited, other than being strung together. There was a time when I wouldn't do a vertical video, but it is now cool, thanks to Instagram and other social media platforms. In this case, it seemed to suit going along the trail.

I hope you'll walk with us.

I hope this posted okay. It’s not quite 4 o’clock, and I am huddled in my chair under a blanket. I’ve had my first coffee. The house was 15C before I turned the heat up 

Hope

Way back in October I posted about Sue and her afghans in the Happy Crafter. She had begun her Winter White project.

She had to set it aside after Christmas because her hand is so painful, but with only two rows to go she gritted her teeth and got on with it, and it is quite gorgeous.

She would love to try to do another. When I read Boud's blog, she talked of knitting a lap afghan. Well who, other than Boud, has heard of lap afghans?

Google to the rescue. 

A lap afghan is a smaller version of an afghan blanket that is typically used to cover the lap. Lap afghans can be made from yarn and crocheted or knitted.

Lap afghans are often square and range from 36 in x 36 in to 45 in x 45 in

A common rectangular size is 36 in x 42 in, which can cover a wheelchair user from chest to feet

Lap Afghans are indeed a real thing, and there are how to video tutorials. link

It remains to be seen if Sue can find a tutorial to her liking and also whether her affliction can deal with even a reduced project. But she does really want to do something.

Update: Sue has found a scarf pattern by her favourite YT creator, and she has decided to give it a go.

I Feel a Draft

It's funny: not as in haha but as in odd.

Fairly recently had nothing to post for two days. It is not as though I have ever intended to be a daily blogger (although I almost am), so it didn't bother me. I was uninspired.

Then the snow came, and that eventuated into 4 posts, I think it was.

Other things popped into my head, such as presenting a bit of Nick's photography, or mentioning my memory card incident, or posting about Sue's afghan. (I've yet to post the memory card blog.)

As thoughts came to me, I would draft a little post. I do mean draft. It was to sit there in the queue until I decided to publish it.

When I thought of making this post, there were already 5 posts sitting in draft mode.

Truth be told there are actually at least two more that I have already targetted for next Christmastime, believe it or not. I wrote them during Christmas season just past, but they needed to be published pre-Christmas, and I was already past that date. So, they are potentially saved until next Christmas. Whether or not they actually get posted then remains to be seen.

The queue is getting so long that I have decided to make this my second post of the day, which is not generally how I play this little blogging game. That doesn't mean that I won't again run out of topics in a few days.

Nick in Red

The Three Photo Amigos Club met for coffee this week sans amigo Bob, who was under the dratted weather. For some reason, I pulled out the phone and took a few snaps of Nick with his coffee. I liked this one well enough to play with and post.

Aside from the conversion to b&w with selective colour — good old Canadian red — I chose to use the texture slider, specifically on Nick's face to bring out the lines. The gritty look is often used for men, and as a senior, he deserves to be proud of his creases. I processed to my taste of the moment, but when he saw it, he wished for a more subtle hand. Taste is variable although we did both like the taste of the coffee.

Nick is a very accomplished photographer. He takes much more care of his subjects, composition and exposure than either Bob or I. While I just walk around town and lift my camera every now and then, Nick goes farther afield and really takes his time. Many of his photos are artistic and taken in a way to suit his vision. I would say that they are often fine art. 

He gave me permission to post a few. This is a snowy path through the woods. I love the mood that he created. I don't know how he does some of the things that he does, and he does them in camera more than in edit. When you see these, you may understand why he would be very picky and critical of my very candid phone shot of him.

Nick often attaches his macro lens and looks down as he walks and investigates. Not many of us would have found this little composition, and, by the way, he doesn't place and manipulate objects. While I don't mind if people do that, Nick has his standards.

Although he did give me permission, I won't go on, and this shall be the last one I will post. It would take a long time to find a web like this in the location that he did and then capture it in the way that he did. It's quite marvellous.

Unlike me, he will only post a photo once he has developed it exactly the way that he wants it. As I mentioned in a recent post, I consider online posting to be part of the process, and I often adjust a photo afterward. I guess making an actual print would be the end result for me although none of us do that much anymore, which is kind of sad, really.

On Frozen Pond

It's the way that it goes for me. On Wednesday, I saw what I thought were interesting lines and shapes in the ice of the nearby pond. Sue took some pictures with her phone, but I did not have my camera, and I wasn't in a phone-photo sort of mood.

Next day, Thursday, I brought the beast with the beastie long lens. But, of course, snow had covered the lines and shapes.

I did what I could and looked for alternatives. This is the little peninsula (sounds grand but isn't) that juts into the pond. With clean snow in front and a sudden line of vegetation, I thought it worth a shot. I think I was right; I like it. The grasses at the back were farther from the subject than it appears; zoom lenses can compress distances.

Speaking of compression, from some distance I took a photo of the bit of open water amidst the frozen pond. It looks very narrow in the photo (telephoto effect again) in which you see abstract reflections. I almost never put borders on my images, but I did this time . . . and also once again on the final photo in this post. Sometimes you have to shake things up a little, but I won't do this much because I can't say that I like it.

I managed to isolate a couple of 'grasses' at the edge of the pond against the snow for a minimalistic look.

We made it past the pond to the river. There wasn't much to see, but I decided to take an image of four little agglomerations of ice that had formed around branches sticking out of the fast-flowing water. Call them ice skirts if you will. I fiddled a lot with this one too, including adding a narrow, white border that hardly shows up here against the blog background.

I like the first two photos quite a bit but the pond reflection one is doubtless better without the border. When I post a photo in my blog, it is not necessarily my forever final version but something that I did in the moment.

Showing the Flag

When the snow fell, I decided that I should get to town hall if ever I were to make a dent in my project for the year. With snow on the roof and hardly anywhere else on the building, I was definitely looking upward through the camera. In post edit, I converted all of the photos to a non-contrasty monochrome to suit the snowy day, but I left the flag colourized.

I like 1, 3 and 5 best and it that order.

My resolve is to return with my telephoto lens after another snowfall to try to pick out details on the roof. We shall see what we shall see.