Let me count the ways....

We have had a pheasant and one of his purported harem visiting our garden in the last few weeks. He comes, he bashes on our window with his beak and he noisily gobbles up our sunflower hearts. If she's lucky, he shouts to his mate, who then may, just may, also get a look in. She hasn't been around for a couple of days...we wonder if she's 'sitting' somewhere.

I just love the detail of his face - the teeny, tiny red feathers.

Recently I looked out of the window and here he was, thrashing and wallowing in the dirt at the bottom of the garden, looking for all the world as though he was about to expire.....

....only for him to suddenly ruffle up his feathers and flick his wings in the most glorious and energetic dust bath.

This went on for about twenty minutes - near death rolls and twitches and then a sudden series of wonderful, filthy flourishes.

And this little chap is determinedly aerating our lawn early every morning. I've taken these photos through glass and with a 300mm zoom lens, so they're not that sharp, but they'll do for now.

Foxy boxy - Chinese twist boxes

 Well, following our recent class in the village, teaching people how to make Chinese twist boxes and popping them on cards, I thought I would post a few of mine, showing the variety from one simple form.

The box on the first card was made from old music from a charity shop, decorated using a paste paper technique. After folding the diagonals to get the twist in the right place and before I glued it together, I sheared about 1cm off the top of the box with pinking shears, to show the contrast of the back and front of the paper.

The box on the second card was made with scanned Woman's Weekly corset ads from the Sixties. I put ribbons and buttons in the box.

 The three pictures above show a card containing two twist boxes sitting on top of a lower, flatter box (which I didn't manage to get a good photo of). I stencilled the cover using the shape left after I had cut out the petals that I stuck on the twist boxes.

The card immediately below was bit of freehand painting of flowers, using Analinky dye paints and a few 'gems' stuck on. I put some sweet pea seeds in the twist box and it has already gone off into the ether as a birthday card.

The box on the bottom card was made of recycled wrapping paper and I cut bits out of the same paper to create the border. Nothing particularly clever.

These are so simple to do. Thanks again to Ruth Smith, who has done so much work developing the original Chinese thread booklet techniques into something that a mere mortal can manage!