I love my SLR and taking pictures with it. However sometimes the effort of uploading photos to my PC, saving them to a sensible size for the Internets, sorting out any weird colour imbalances etc. means that I don’t get round to processing them… and thus many tiny moments that I mean to share online end up going into a giant, never-ending black hole of “TO SORT” photos.

Perhaps this explains my current obsession with the Instagram app on my smartphone, which I love in spite of the recent controversy surrounding users’ content and copyright. What I like about Instagram is that I can create pleasing little vignettes and share them as I go along, and that I can see other folks’ photos of the same while I’m at it. Glancing at Instagram during a tea-break sometimes proves to be educational as well as providing little glimpses into the lives of friends and buddies who are far away.

One of my favourite people to follow is Tom whose mending work turns up in the feed with inspiring regularity.

Tom put several photos of his Christmas darning up on Instagram a wee while back, provoking a spree of exchange between us re: the nature of the mending technique he’d used, etc. Based on our little discussion I fudged some version of something I found in Mary Thomas’s book of Embroidery:

…to repair a worn-out shoulder on a cardigan:

I’d learnt in our exchange that the technique Tom had used in his darn had in fact come from Mary Thomas’s Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches – a book I didn’t own, but then found yesterday in the Oxfam book shop for £2.49!

This lucky find marked the beginning of a lovely weekend, spent alternately out stomping around in the cool January air with Mark and curling up on the sofa in the evenings with a 100% WOOL sewing project, my new embroidery tome, and the lovely Joey – surely the finest feline companion with which any two humans could wish to share their lives (and their sofa):

I didn’t take any photos outside; it’s been so cold we have been walking too fast for photos! Yesterday we went to the market and loaded up with vegetables, then along the canal out of town to Morrisons to pick up the bits we couldn’t find at the butcher’s or at the market. Today we went to Dinton pastures and walked all the way around the lake talking about the adventures and work planned for 2013, then we came home and made a warming pan of minestrone.

I love this kind of weekend; we’ve watched movies, eaten feasts, walked in the brief hours of daylight and played with our daft cat.

Our favourite sound of the weekend was heard whilst watching David Attenborough’s incredible series about the Galapagos islands. We love Albatrosses and the way they dance, clicking beaks, and then calling to each other. How wonderful that the sound was recorded during the making of the show so that we can hear it now and sit in cold, January-grey England, learning about these fabulous birds! Another sound I really enjoyed was Patrick McGinley’s amazing recording of yeasts fermenting, in the introduction to this framework radio show.

But apart from these sounds on the telly and online, it’s been dead quiet – the sort of quietness that is another type of favourite domestic sound.

…in case anyone reading this is a big Instagram fan, I am felixbadanimal on there!