I do love Flickr and spend far more time than is probably good for me, browsing and getting all fired up at the amazing photographs that people post. So many times I've admired the Flickr mosaics that people put together and post on there, and today I decided to have a go at putting one together from my contacts 'favourite' list. The theme was by colours only, and I chose anything that popped at me in blue, green and pink. What fun!

I went to the Howard Gardens summer show yesterday and found my favourite work from a ceramicist called Lauren Butcher:

She kept all the post-it notes and messages sent to her by her parents whilst she's been at college, and used them to inform and inspire her degree show piece.

I love text when it's used naturally in this way, and the fine paper-like quality of the ceramic is so lovely. A really personal work that caught my eye and made me smile.

I always look forward to the painting department but was generally uninspired by the work this year. Someone had used paint suspended in a gel substance within a glass box that was quite innovative, but as ever, the fine artists on this degree don't attend to marketing and networking very well, so no card to take with me. I couldn't remember the artist's name when I got home, so can't blog him as I wouldn't be able to credit the work.

Finished!

I decided to bead the border, and it now has fabulous drape, and sits on the shoulders without the need to tie or pin.

Some progress with my knitting project, but first a little more on the Hafod estate which is on the doorstep of Ty Cariad.

I found a painting on Wikipedia of the old Hafod Mansion in it's glory days, though the original Tudor mansion was rebuilt in the Gothic style by the romantic English man Thomas Johnes, who inherited the estate.

If you take away the house, the picture below is pretty much how the landscape  looks today, though there are less broad leaf trees and more taller pine.

I

also found this article which is a brief summary of the history of the gardens, the wooded walks and grottos  of which are said to have inspired Coleridge's lines 'In  Xanadu did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.'

Today the only remaining part of the mansion is the stable block, which is now used as the estate office.

The rest is a pile of rubble that is slowly being reclaimed by nature, and a few glimpses of it's former grandeur.

So, onto my Orchid Thief shawl that I started at Ty Cariad a couple of weeks ago.

It was a bitch to knit and the instructions weren't at all clear. I stumbled at row 86, but asked for advice from the designer (Ysolda Teague) who gave fast and helpful responses and a link to Ravelry where others had stumbled and found good solutions.

The air turned blue at times, but it was worth the effort. I can feel some crystal beads coming on for the points around the border!