I don't think I have mentioned yet, but in December, this little sweetheart came into our lives. You may recall that we haven't had a good run with our fur-babies lately, with my Siamese cat Gryffin leaving us in 2009 after 11 years of being my living hot water bottle, then a very short run with our adorable little Cornish boy, Milo, who died of Feline Peritonitis at only 8 months old. Milo's breeder promised us a new baby, and so we welcomed Lotta, just before Christmas. She is a black smoke/tortie Cornish Rex, who is a little vocal and stubborn, but loves to play all the same, and we are finding lots of room for her in our hearts. She does love to snuggle, and is very smoochy, but so far it seems I am her favourite cuddle toy!
That brings me to Project 52! Since I now have a DSLR in my hot little hands, I have decided to join in on this, which will see me publish a Project photograph for each week of the year that follows my selected theme "The Natural World". When I selected this theme I was trying not to limit myself too much but also try to challenge myself a little to expand my photography beyond photos of my children. That said, I do love taking photos of their gorgeous chubby, smiley faces, so they will pop up from time to time, but hopefully not every week. Since I am a tad late in starting, I will end up with 50 photos at the end of the year, that while technically may be far from perfect, should show my skills developing and me learning exactly what my camera can do!
I have started the project with this shot: Frolic. Lotta was rolling around enjoying the warmth of the sun (despite the hot summer day!). It was my first photo in manual mode after I worked out how to change the aperture and shutter speed. You can tell from the thin slits in her eyes that the sun was quite harsh, so it was a challenge to get the right exposure.
I have since played a little more, testing out how shallow my depth of field will go with the 50mm lens. That's pretty shallow!
And this one, just because it shows her playful nature. Little Lotta is slowly learning to tolerate the children wanting to pat her and cart her around all the time. I miss the bond that Milo had with Madelyn, but hope that the bond with Lotta and all of us will blossom as the weeks go by. We all hope that Lotta is our family pet for a very long time!
On the home front, now my baby girl has caught the dreaded virus that Austy and I had last week. For her it has been a little worse as the fever is causing her to throw up (hence the singlet and nappy!) Luckily she is a very easy going little girl, and easily distracted with some home-made playdough. Pink, of course!
Craft wise, I will soon have some SHOPPING to show off, as the quilt bug has hit again, and I hope to churn out some beauitiful quilts in 2011 and finally brave free motion quilting. With us being sick the last week or so, I realised that I have nothing to snuggle with on the lounge, and even though we are in the midst of summer here, when you have a fever like that, you still want something to snuggle under. This year there will DEFINITELY be a couch quilt for me!
