Buster enjoying a drink in Lough Graney, County Clare, Ireland.Art Books
Oh I'm such a lucky girl. A parcel arrived yesterday and in it was a fabulous book from my bloggy friend Bea, in Wisconsin, USA. Bea, you are so generous. Bea has a wonderful blog, full of lovely arty things and ideas and discussions and even 'temporal tapping'. Do go and give her a visit.
The book is called 'Intuitive Color & Design' and is written by Jean Wells. It promises me 'Adventures in Art Quilting'. Just what I need. Here are some examples of the contents:

Aren't the colours just fabulous?:
And I just love this design.Bea has enrolled for a course to learn more about Photoshop and manipulating images therein. I tried to do the same but was too late but Bea mentioned a book she has - so I ordered it from Amazon and that has arrived too. This one is called 'Artistic photo quilts' and promises to help me to 'Create Stunning Quilts With Your Camera, Computer Cloth'. Well, what more could anyone want? This is by Charlotte Ziebarth.

Drool, drool!
So how on earth am I going to find time to do all this? I will just have to make time, won't I?Jim and I still have much work to do inside the cottage. Today Jim has bought a wooden loft ladder to make some storage for my 'overspill' materials in the place that used to be his office in the eaves. Jim has moved his office to our old bedroom, right at the other end of the house. He can now stand up in it and walk around. The kitchen/diner desperately needs decorating and re-vamping as does the snug. Oh woe.
Lough Graney Walk
I took Buster for a walk to the lake while Jim went off shopping yesterday. It was a bit misty on top of Flagmount, the village on the other side of the Lough. The water has receded from the edges enabling us to walk alongside for quite a way, which we did. It was a bit soggy but I wore my new Christmas wellington boots:

Buster was rather cross that these ducks were too far away for him to chase.
Look at that cloud on top of Flagmount! Thank goodness we were dry.
There was a line of dead grasses where the level of the lake had receded, rather like on a beach when the tide goes out and leaves behind bits of seaweed and string.
I turned round and took this shot of the Fishing Stand, where I access the lake via Kevin the farmer's house and garden.
Turning again to Flagmount, the mist was descending.It didn't seem too bad on our side, so we continued until we reached this tree:
You can see the mist encroaching across the lake. All of a sudden, I seemed to be getting rather wet, so Buster and I headed back home but it's hard to walk along the edge of the lake too quickly:
Oh oh, we didn't move fast enough!You'll love this last shot of Flagmount:
Well, that's the island in front of it! No wonder we were getting soaked!I'm off to bed now. I've taken some photos of the new settee and curtain material for my next post.

