So That’s What He’s Been Up To…

Explorer Beastie Reappears!

At last! After nearly a month of waiting by the phone/computer/letterbox, I have finally had word from Explorer Beastie! It seems he has taken himself off for a bit of a holiday, and I was worrying over nothing. It would have been nice if he had invited me too, but I suppose it’s a lot easier (and cheaper) for Beasties to travel alone. He made it to the airport without incident…
Airport Beastie

… and hit the Duty Free, where he made some stripey friends.
Explorer Beastie With Tigers

He must have slept for the entire flight, because the next photo I have shows him enjoying a coffee in a distinctly un-Irish location…
Beastie Coffee Break

… then he checked into his hotel…
Explorer Beastie at the Hotel

… hit the beach for a while…
Catching some rays, Beastie-style

… and then worked up an appetite before dinner.
Cactus Climbing

Apparently Beasties get a real kick out of climbing cacti! You learn something new every day…

The only thing is, I still haven’t been able to figure out exactly where Explorer Beastie is. He’s promised some more photos over the next couple of days, which should help, but are these surroundings looking familiar to anybody yet? Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas!

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

St Patrick's Day Parade

I woke up this morning to find my street closed to traffic and overrun with people in leprechaun costumes.  Must be St Patrick’s Day, then!  My building is actually on the parade route, so the Beasties and I had front-row seats for the whole show.  Since Explorer Beastie still isn’t back, I thought I’d let Green Sweetheart Beastie take the lead on this one… Enjoy!Viking Float

"The Wheels of Time" Float

LSU Marching Band

"Celtic Tiger" Float

"History of Love" Float

Beastie Close-Up

Thanks for dropping by… have a great St Patrick’s Day, wherever you are!

A Marvellous Day Out… with Victorian Explorer Beastie

Top of Bray Head

Okay, I don’t want to alarm anybody, but the other day I went into the living room to find a note on the floor…
Explorer Beastie Note

I’m sure he’s totally fine. He’s big enough to look after himself, and he did set out with a fresh sandwich in his backpack. That said, if anyone sees Explorer Beastie in the next couple of days, could you please ask him to call home?

Meanwhile, a new member of the family has dropped in to say hello. A throwback to the heyday of gentleman explorers, Victorian Explorer Beastie never goes anywhere without his pith helmet and a hipflask of good-quality gin (it’s hidden in his knapsack). Since the sun was out yesterday, I asked him to accompany me on a day trip to Bray – a seaside town just south of Dublin, in Co. Wicklow. It was a popular holiday destination back in the day, and I figured he’d feel right at home there.

The best way to get to Bray is to take the train. The DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) gets you out there from the city centre in about 45 minutes, and the journey is an event in itself. Just make sure you’re sitting on the left-hand side of the train, or you’ll miss all the good stuff!

Victorian Explorer Beastie on the train
For the first few minutes, the train passes through regular cityscape scenery – office buildings, houses, apartment blocks. Then, suddenly, you break out into this:
Sandymount Strand

Sandymount Strand is a long, flat beach which is featured in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. My quick snap from the grafitti-scratched train window doesn’t really convey the scale and the peacefulness of this stretch of coastline, but it makes it hard to believe that the city is just a few seconds back up the line! However, the star of the show is the section of the line between Dun Laoghaire and Killiney. Here, the track hugs the cliffs, allowing you to enjoy a head-spinning view of the small, sandy coves below (impossible to photograph, at least for someone with my current level of expertise) or a more tranquil vista of the Irish Sea.
Bray Head from the train
Once we arrived in Bray, we headed for the beach…
Victorian Explorer Beastie on the Beach

…walked along the promenade…
Victorian Explorer Beastie on the Promenade
… and then decided it would be a great day to climb Bray Head!

Bray Head

It was a pretty steep climb…
Climbing Bray Head

… but the view from the top was totally worth it!
View View from the top of Bray Head

And so was running all the way back down again!
Tree roots on Bray Head

Look out for more adventures with Victorian Explorer Beastie in the next while… at least until Explorer Beastie makes it home!

 

Liebster Award – it’s like Oscars Night all over again! (Sort of)

Well, a little exaggeration never hurt anyone… Many thanks to lovely Roma at Cottage on the Green, who has nominated me for one of these:

Liebster Award logo

If you have a minute, check out her blog – it always makes me smile!

Anyway, it seems that I have some work to do before I can swan off down the red carpet and start swigging champagne like it’s going out of fashion. Let’s start with some rules… the first rule of Liebster Awards is that you do not talk ab… no, that’s not right. The rules are:

*Thank the person who has nominated you and link back to their blog (by posting a link on yours).

*Copy and display the award in your blog post available from here

*Answer the 11 questions about yourself, which are given to you by the person who nominated you.

*Write 11 random facts about yourself.

*Nominate 5 – 11 blogs/bloggers that you feel deserve the award. They need to have less than 1000 followers.

*Think of 11 new questions for the bloggers you have nominated and write them in your post.

So, it looks like you’ll be finding out more about me this week. Here goes…
1) Where would you most like to visit?
I’d love to travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Not really a destination, but never mind.
2) What item do you treasure most?
It’s a tie between my spiffy fabric scissors, the bookshelves my Dad made for me and the toy monkey I got on my first Christmas.
3) What craft do you admire most?
All of them. Seeing a skilled craftsperson at work is the most fascinating thing, whatever they’re doing.
4) What is your favourite meal?
Pie or sushi. But not together.
5) What is your favourite TV program?
Murder, She Wrote.
6) What makes you laugh?
My boyfriend.
7) What is the best time of day?
MEALTIMES.
8) Who is your favourite author?
Truman Capote.
9) What is your favourite flower?
Cactus flowers.
10) What must you do before leaving the house?
About six entirely unnecessary things.
11) Do you wear a watch?
Yes.

11 Random Facts About Me
1) I can sleep anywhere, apart from on long-haul flights.
2) I hate getting up early, especially when alarm clocks are involved.
3) I brew my own beer.
4) I once worked on a commercial pig farm for a week, to learn where sausages come from.
5) I have flown a plane, but can’t drive a car.
6) I am unbelievably, hilariously bad at singing.
7) I need at least 2 cups of tea a day to function.
8) I still listen to cassette tapes.
9) I would never go to the cinema alone.
10) I don’t really understand the appeal of Twitter.
11) I find it incredibly difficult to compile lists of information about myself.

I’d like to nominate:
Monster Maven

Make + Do

Strey Creative

Manon’s Maze

CultureGeek

A Wandering Teacup

…And my 11 questions are:
1) Where would you most like to revisit?
2) What’s the most useful thing you own?
3) What’s your guilty pleasure?
4) Do you tend to arrive late, early or on time?
5) What’s your hot drink of choice?
6) Where is the scariest place you’ve been?
7) What makes you nostalgic?
8) What annoys you?
9) What was your favourite childhood TV show?
10) What item of clothing do you most regret wearing?
11) Yippee! You have an unexpected day off! How do you spend it?

Thanks for reading! To wrap up, I’ll include a picture of some Beasties with the giant box of tea (“Knitting Fuel”) I was forced to buy yesterday… it was either monster-sized Lyons or any other tea, so that decision pretty much made itself.
Beastie Tea Party

A Day Out in Dublin

Windowsill, Ely Place

When you live in a city for a long time, it’s easy to get caught up in your daily routine and forget about all the interesting things you promised yourself you’d do when you first moved there. With this in mind, Boyfriend, Explorer Beastie and I stepped outside and set off for pastures new… a stone’s throw from where we live.

Our main purpose was to check out The Enclave by Richard Mosse, which is on show in the Royal Hibernian Academy gallery. I’d never been here before, and I was amazed to find this beautiful spacious gallery tucked away in a side street, just around a corner from regular tourist magnets like the National Gallery, Grafton Street and St Stephen’s Green park. And the street itself is Dublin in a nutshell. The buildings are Georgian, and these tall, simple but elegant houses are the signature style of old central Dublin. Around half of the houses have been converted to office buildings, while the rest, like the one in the main picture, are being left to quietly crumble away.

I have a real thing for derelict buildings, so I took a few photos…

Ely PlaceEly Place Basement

 

… And it was only when I went around the corner that I realised that this building had a history of its own.

Front Door, Ely PlaceRichard Griffith Plaque

By this point, though, Boyfriend and Beastie had but one thing on their minds… FOOD. So I put my camera away and we went to try out Alfie Byrne’s, a new craft beer pub which recently opened up on the other side of St Stephen’s Green.

Beastie with StewExplorer Beastie's Dinner

A tasty end to a great day out! See you next week!

Exploring Out West

Explorer Beastie with Mountain

This weekend, Explorer Beastie took his first trip westwards, to Co. Roscommon.
Um, where?
Don’t worry, I didn’t know it existed myself until I met someone from there during my first week in college. Roscommon sits in the western midlands of Ireland, which means that it’s pretty far removed from any of the main tourist trails. It has no coastline, and is distant enough from Dublin that it was left relatively untroubled by the embarrassing “build just about anything just about anywhere” phase this country went through a few years back. It boasts the second lowest population density in Ireland, and 74% of the people live in rural areas (factoids courtesy of the 2011 Census report). It also happens to be where my boyfriend is from, and I consider myself pretty lucky to have an excuse to visit somewhere as beautiful as this!

Anyway, we got a brief spell of sunny weather on Sunday, so I made a beeline for the bog with Explorer Beastie, Boyfriend and Cooper the dog in tow. The main picture shows Explorer Beastie enjoying his first visit to a genuine Irish peat bog! It looks empty, but this bog has a lot going on. Local people still cut peat here on a small scale and use it to heat their homes, and in the late 1940’s a man discovered a hoard of Bronze Age gold jewellery while cutting turf! The pieces – a gold lunula (a crescent-shaped collar) and two gold discs – are now on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

Unfortunately, we didn’t come across any gold. But Explorer Beastie did find some vibrant neon-orange lichen:
Explorer Beastie with Lichen

In fact, the bog is surprisingly colourful at this time of year. We also found some deep crimson moss…
Beastie with Moss

…And some fresh new gorse growing up between the charred stumps left by a fire last year.
New Gorse For Old

We also found some cool bracket fungus on a fallen tree stump:
Explorer Beastie with Fungus

And there were opportunities to climb trees…
Beastie in a Tree

… Hack through the undergrowth…
Beastie in the Bracken

…And stop for a sandwich in a soft mossy hollow.
Sandwich Break

But let’s not forget that this is Ireland, and it wasn’t long before the weather took a turn for the worse!
Raincloud

We had to dash for home and spend the rest of the afternoon toasting our toes by the range. Life’s tough…
Have a great week!

Beasties in Berlin

Explorer Beastie

At last! Explorer Beastie has finally had a chance to venture off this windblown, rain-soaked island on the edge of Europe and see the wider world for the first time! As you can see, I didn’t let him go unprepared – he got a handy guidebook to help him find his way around.

Top of the TV Tower

First stop – a look at the city from the top of the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) in Alexanderplatz!

Fernsehturm

We also had a photo opportunity once we got back on the ground… and then Explorer Beastie made friends with Ampelmann, the “pedestrian crossing guy” unique to eastern Germany.

Ampelmann

And that was just on our first day. Unfortunately, these are the only photos from the trip that survived. I’m not sure whether to lay the blame at the feet of a temperamental memory card or a faulty reader, but somewhere between camera and computer everything was lost and it’s only thanks to my hard-working, tech-savvy boyfriend that I have any pictures at all! Oh well, I suppose we’ll just have to go back…

New Beasties in New Places…

Sweetheart Beasties

Meet some more of my new arrivals!

I’ve been making these Sweetheart Beasties with a view to reviving my long-dormant Etsy shop in time for Valentine’s Day! If you have a second, why not drop in and pay them a visit?
Beasties on Etsy

Sharing Beasties in more places meant heading out for another photo shoot – this time I chose Iveagh Gardens, one of my favourite Dublin parks. Even though it’s right in the city centre, it’s a little tricky to find, and with its crumbling statues and high walls, it feels like you’ve stumbled into the Secret Garden…

Red Valentine Beastie Red Rose Beastie met a stony-faced lady…

Sweetheart Beastie … While Pink Sweetheart Beastie battled through the miniature maze to reach the sundial at the centre.

I’ve also been busy this week making my own selection of Valentine’s cards. I have to admit that I’ve never been the biggest fan of Valentine’s Day, so I decided to make the kind of cards I’d like to see. Was this a good idea? I’ll let you decide…

Valentine Cards 2

Have a great weekend!

Goth Beastie

Goth Beastie

Meet the first of my new Beasties – Goth Beastie!

Black hair, black dress, black makeup – and just to add a little colour, a bunch of black roses.  I also had a heap of fun putting an appropriate amount of metalwork in her ears… you can just about see the earrings in this closeup!

Goth Beastie Closeup

My local area provided me with the perfect backdrop for these photos – St Kevin’s Park, which was originally the site of St Kevin’s Church.  The church’s graveyard was cleared in the 1960s, and many of the headstones were moved and propped up against the walls.  The ruined shell of the old church still stands in the middle of the park, making it an incredibly sinister place to enjoy an alfresco lunch, but an ideal hangout for Goth Beastie.