This was a doodle I made last year that was inspired by my trip to Poland. 
Inspirations included stained glass, architectural details, food, and folk art. Can you find any of the elements?
Here are a few stages of the doodle.
I’m sad to say that I have hardly doodled this year. (I did, however, manage a couple of big trips, so I have many more photos to share.)
Threads and yarns in Vermont. September, 2019.
Yarn store in Melbourne, Australia. August, 2019
Threads and yarns in Edinburgh and Sterling, Scotland. August, 2015.
As promised (or at least suggested), here are a few more photos from my 2018 visit to Poland. This colorful column was in Poznań.
This past August, I visited Australia. Being in the southern hemisphere, it was winter there. (Or, as I called it, since the weather was still quite temperate, “winter.”) In any case, there perhaps weren’t as many flowers blooming as there might be in other times of year. But we did come across this field of poppies near the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.
These particular poppies were knit and crocheted, many sporting buttons or beads. I’m not sure when these particular poppies were planted. I believe that they are likely part of the 5000 poppies project:
From its association with poppies flowering in the spring of 1915 on the battlefields of Belgium, France and Gallipoli, the poppy has become a symbol of both great loss in war and hope for those left behind
As a crafting community contribution to the Centenary of Anzac Commemorations, the 5000 Poppies project “planted” a field of nearly 300,000 poppies in heart of Melbourne as a stunning visual tribute to Australian servicemen and women for more than a century of service in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations.
From 500 Poppies: https://5000poppies.wordpress.com/media/
Warsaw is a fascinating and beautiful city, with many stories to tell. It is also filled with many spots that look like they were taken right out of a fairytale. Even this construction site I came across the evening I arrived looked like it was from a storybook page.
The next day, I walked the same way, and the scene looked only slightly less storybook-like by day.
There were other places around the city, as well, where it was clear that a lot of maintenance goes on behind the scenes in a fairytale. Someone has to take care of the magical creatures, after all.
(These photos were from my June 2018 trip to Poland. More to come soon. Probably.)
This is a another statue I saw in Poznań, Poland, during my visit there in June of 2018. It was a statue I passed while walking home from dinner, so the light was rather dim. I didn’t get close enough to see whether there was a plaque. I’m not really sure what would have been on such a plaque. There must be a story here. A young child sits on the back of a dolphin (I think) and squeezes a little fish close to his heart. Both the dolphin and the fish are spewing water from their mouths. Additionally, the dolphin appears to have streams of water shooting from ducts near its eyes. Projectile crying? Perhaps there is a fairy tale here. I’m not sure why there is a dolphin in land-locked part of Poland. But perhaps the distance from the ocean might explain the copious tears?
I’ve mentioned that I’m often amused to take photos of public statuary adorned with pigeons. In some places, though, the pigeons are prevented from perching. Take this statue, which appears to be of some sort of large angry goose. In case the scowl isn’t enough to scare off potential perchers, spikes have been added, giving the goose the appearance of bristling in anger.
Then there’s this noble-looking lady. Her hairdo appears to have been given a few hatpins.
I can’t determine whether the netting on this pair was for the purpose of pigeon prevention, or whether there was some other reason they needed to be restrained. (Perhaps they were prone to dropping things on passersby?)
I took these photos while visiting Poznań, Poland in June 2018 for a conference. (Somehow I appear not to have posted any photos from that trip yet.)
This was a bird in New Lanark, Scotland. A bird who stayed perched long enough to host a little spider friend. (I got caught up in the the sticky threads of going through my old photos looking for things to post that relate to the things I’ve been posting. This photo amused me by providing connections to several of my previous posts.)
When I travel, I enjoy admiring public works of art, and have many pictures of statues in my photo library. I am also often amused at the way that pigeons will adorn the statuary, especially in parks. Here are a few photos from our 2017 visit to New York City of a few statues at an entrance to Central Park.
I actually have accumulated a collection of photos over the years of statues with birds on their heads. But putting together a retrospective is beyond my capabilities for tonight.
collecting tokens 