Happy New Year !!!!!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you are all well and that Christmas was happy and not too exhausting?? Ours was very nice but VERY quiet this year! I got a slightly early Christmas "prezzie" in the form of surprise hand surgery on 20 December !!!! I THOUGHT I was seeing the surgeon for him to "shoot" my hand again but I guess he decided the time had come, so I am DONE! Cooking Christmas dinner was .... interesting! I am recovering MUCH quicker that I did the first time :-) I am making great progress with therapy - working hard on getting scar tissue whipped into shape and getting better flexibility. Once that is good, we'll do a bit of strengthening and I should be a LOT better than I have been!!! Yay!

I have been Zentangling again as a form of therapy. It is GREAT! You REALLY have to concentrate and have good control to do nice Zentangles. I AM making progress! Again, YAY!! I have posted some old ones on Flickr but will soon post a few new ones too!!

I HAVE actually sewn- just not quilts! I made a chef's apron for my darling Oliver! He LOVES to help in the kitchen and his Mummy's pinny was just a TAD ;-) too big. Can't wait to give it to him. I need to get a proper picture of it . It is a great, easy little online pattern . All I have at the moment is iPad pics and they are the pits!

I HAVE spent a LOT of time with the camera. A little Flickr group called Macro Mondays has kept me sane and happy and BUSY. I have sorted a few pics for your dining pleasure. Many are MM submissions , or at least ones from the set I did for a week. I need to get my camera cleaned now so I can get out and shoot outdoors. I can carry all of my stuff again now so all I need is some decent weather- or at least INTERESTING weather! Anyway, here are a few photos.

This week's submission for MM! The prompt was "Just White Paper" .This was NOT an easy job. Making the little "porcupine " was a snap. When we were first married, and "po folks" I made zillions to decorate our first tree. Getting decent contrast and a good White Balance was HARD!!

Not MY pic. It came from DD from her iPhone of her two happy little boys! They are into LOVE with each other! SOOO sweet! O was "teaching" M how to use his tablet!

Come on Spring! I am pretty tired of the gloomy non winter we're having so I bought myself a bunch of tulips :-) Not generally a fan of doubles, but these are stunners!

I DO love to get up close and personal with my subjects! Yay, Macro!

Tulip viewed from the wrong end!

New Year's Eve Day in the park. Look- NO REAL WINTER! It is all gone now and the grass is still GREEN!!!

Two favourite oak trees in the Park on New Year's Eve Day!

MM prompt for this one was "Inspired by a Song". I chose Glenn Miller's version of "String of Pearls".

Fell in love with this particular Royal Gala Apple today- just one from the shopping we did yesterday. LOVE the striped skin!

And some delicious but inedible Glass pears- just for "PRETTY"!!! It took me a while to put these away  downstairs with the rest of Christmas this year. They are so pretty and not TOO Christmassy!

Well, I guess that's it for the moment. The BIG news ( to me , anyway) is that my creative mojo seems to be returning! I'm VERY excited. I am not saying I will necessarily be quilting with quite the same zeal as before . I have a lot of extra responsibility currently as my dear Mum is really not very perky and I have been doing a lot of business etc to help out. NOT a happy time really! However, I DO hope to get back to some quilt work soon. Just don't want to overdo and set this silly hand back.

I see that TNTN is up and running for this week so I guess I'll try to post this and see what happens. Check it out on the  needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com. Go there for a visit! ALWAYS fun stuff to see!