Quilting and other Things

I went to the Toronto zoo the other weekend to play with the new lens and see what it will do. I hadn't been to the Toronto zoo for several years -- apparently at least 7. The keeper said its been at least that long that people have been able to walk through the Kangaroo exhibit. I don't remember doing that before ... Alice Walking through the Kangroo pen In addition to playing with the new lens, I wanted to go to Stingray bay which was a special exhibit with stingrays -- you needed to wash your arms on entry, but once in, there was the opportunity to pat the stingrays. They are beautiful creatures and feel very soft. Some of them would come up and butt my hand. Lots stayed in the middle of the pool away from visitors. After visiting Stingray Bay, I went through the new (to me) Great Barrier Reef display. I found that I didn't do well with the new lens in there -- its minimum focal distance is too long so it was difficult to clear shots of the tank. I had the walking

The zygocactus top is now all together -- it required some ripping including one of the setting triangles that I sewed on where a corner triangle belonged. I don't like ripping out bias but it seems to have survived OK. This was a mystery quilt class at Hobby Horse in September 2004.

I treated myself to a pot of mums for this fall. One of the trees in my yard is growing a second lot of fungus this year. This is the biggest of three.

I've been wanting a new lens for my camera and finally got what I wanted the other week. These are some of the photos I've taken while playing with it. I've discovered that I've developed some bad holding and standing habits lately for picture taking. The new lens is forcing me to correct those. Its lighter than the old lens but more off balance at full zoom. This is Chippie. I'm not sure he really approves of Mom & Dad's new deck as he lost a bolt hole when we put in a support post. He has discovered a new way under the deck for the time being but I suspect he'll lose that before Dad is finished. This is the iris bed at the bottom of my yard. A few days earlier I'd cut off the dead flower stocks. Came back to find the snail in the hole. The spiders and chipmunks at Mom & Dad's have been busy. This is one of the sunflowers that the chipmunk planted in the herb box. The spider got a start on a web. They've built lots of

Last month I found that a tree near the back parking lot at work had mushrooms growing under it. So one Friday I took my camera to work and spent some time taking photos of the mushrooms at the end of the day. When I first saw them they were mostly the small balls like the little on in these photos: But by Friday most of them had opened up in to big flat tops This was my favorite I expected to see the mushrooms start dancing like in the Disney movie Fantasia.