This lovely rainbow appeared as we were driving into Greystones.
I loved this painted motor scooter and the business name -"The Crepe Crusader".
Bray Harbour - I've never seen so many white (mute) swans at once. In New Zealand, they are quite rare, and we usually see the black Australian swans.
Many of the houses are in rows.
Dun Laoghaire from the harbour.
This little pub had a gorgeous exterior.
Although many of the the buildings are built in rows, they don't always look the same - as well as different coloured doors, sometimes each building in the row is a different colour.
The statue of Molly Malone is very famous - she has a fine pair of copper breasts on display.
The Natural History Museum has a large and impressive collection of stuffed animals from all around the world - here are a few. 
These Giant Deer have been extinct for 7700 years -in Ireland, specimens have been found in peat bogs. These skeletons are huge - the deer were nearly 3 metres tall (10 feet) and the spread of their antlers was up to 3.5 metres (12 feet).
Double decker buses in the main street
Beautiful stained glass canopy in Temple Bar, the cultural area
Ivy covered facade
Brightly-painted doors
Imposing buildings everywhere.
Laxey is a lovely village on a hill, and very hard to photograph from the bus or tram.
In summer, you can take a horse-drawn tram for a ride along the Promenade. We went home in the electric tram behind.
Old London buses are used on the island, winding up and down narrow village streets along the coast. I could have touched some of the buildings from upstairs.
Not quite Hollywood, but Douglas has its own sign on the hill.
This is one of (slightly stuffed) rare Manx sheep. Apparently, this one doesn't have especially large horns. Some even have six horns.
This is on the Promenade, looking back at the lighthouse and where the ferries moor.
This is the lovely little room I'm staying in, complete with a gorgeous batik quilt made by Loulee. The computer won't let me rotate or move this photo, so it's out of order.
Some of the lovely old buildings on the Promenade.
The buildings opposite where Loulee and Tony live. That's a Cabbage Tree front right.
I've had a camera malfunction and lost some photos, so I only have these photos from Newport. When I mentioned to Liz that I had a thing for teapots, she took me to a great little exhibition of them at the Newport Museum. 
I liked the rows of terraced houses, particularly running up the hills.
I'm now in the Isle of Man recovering from the bad cold I picked up on the plane. It's lovely here, and I'm staying with Loulee and her Kiwi husband. More photos as they come to hand.
Here's a random handful of photos from the past 3 days. Above is Changi Airport in Singapore- a lovely place, beautifully planted.
Me on the Thames Embankment. It was pretty cold in London.
Me posing with a long-suffering Household Guard - he has to stand there impassively while cheeky tourists take liberties like this. Note my dyed green pants - that's Prochem's Avocado for the dyers amongst you.
The Great Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. That's a dinosaur skeleton down below in the middle of the photo.
I have a large plant of this, but it's not in the sun so it isn't flowering as well as these cuttings. It's such a pleasure to have flowers around where I work. 
This is also a cutting, just a small plant that's flowering for the first time. I have a soft spot for Zygocactus which are also known as Orchid Cactus because of their lovely intricate flowers. See the little bit under the pollen (that's a technical term, people)- it's an amzingly bright fuchsia colour.
It's the middle of April. We've already had a couple of mild frosts. But because NZ had the coldest spring for over 60 years, the tomatoes are actually cropping their best now, though they are small to medium sized at best. 
Firstly, I've been doing lots of knitting, and yesterday I handpainted some wool. This red skein is for a scarf for my friend Bronwen's birthday, as she loves scarves.
And for me...something quite and subdued and neutral.......just kidding! This is a crappy photo, but it's a mixture of Hot Pink and National Blue, and I will make it into a scarf that I can wear with the 2 overtops I have in those colours. 
I also found a pattern for making fingerless gloves on 2 needles - great for knitters like me who don't like using double pointeds. The colours are a bit washed out in the bright sun, but they are green, orange and purple, with some added black in the ribbing. Much nicer in real life than in the photo.
No danger of extinction here - there is still plenty more upstairs.
And here is the earlier 5 colour piece. Now this, I hasten to assure you, was not done to be used in the piece. Indeed, it's quite ugly when you see it this way. However, it will look a lot better when I've dissected it and stitched it up again.
What does a woman think about at 6am on a Sunday morning? Why, 5 colour dyeing, of course. Here's 2 metres of fabric, soaked in soda ash and laid out across 5 trays.
Turkey red, marine violet, brilliant blue, emerald green and mustard.
The green and blue end....
..yellow in the middle, then red and purple.
"The paparazzi are such a bore" says Frodo. Cressy pays no attention.
It's atumn, and the garden has flush of flowers before the cold weather sets in. 
The roses are looking good. So are the weeds, but I carefully didn't photograph them.
Yesterday I bought this hand spun mix of suri alpaca (the rare kind), tencel and merino with a nylon binder. These were quite pricey, considering there are only 4 skeins of 50 grams each. I wanted to make something special with it, so settled on a cowl.
As half the skeins have the red and half don't, I alternated rows with one skein if each. This is the cowl at the ned of 2 skeins - the yarn has gone further than I thought. This is done in garter stitch (1 row plain, 1 row purl)and the cowl is currently 16cm wide (just over 6 inches).
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! The critters chez Shirley don't know it yet, but I'm planning to run away. For a while, anyway. Seven won't mind too much - she's an odd cat....
...but the twins will, so I'm trying to find them a congenial housesitter. Plans are afoot...
Meanwhile, here's an early autumn sunrise that started some dodgy weather. 
