Losing my challenge mojo

I haven't mentioned it in a while, so you'd be forgiven for having forgotten about it. But I am still soldiering on with my 52 Photos in 52 Weeks challenge!

I seem to go through a few weeks where life gets in the way of me taking photos, where I have to scrabble round to find something worth uploading to Flickr to count for the week. Then things flip round, and I find myself doing loads of things that generate awesome photos that I'm happy to share. A couple of times I've had to extend the deadline for the week by a day or two, but I've caught up with myself every time the following week.

I'm now on week 36. I think I'm doing pretty well for having got this far and only falling back on project photos five times. Fidget has only featured three times as well, which is good because a lot of the time he's the only interesting thing in the house to photograph!

I've updated the stand-alone page with all the photos to date, but thought I'd share a couple of them here so I could talk about them a bit.

Week 32 - yellow ladybird

I took this one in my friend's back garden; we'd gone over for a barbecue and almost as soon as we arrived we were left to fend for ourselves while our hosts went to the shop. Fortunately, the sweet peas had gone crazy and were covered in crickets, ladybirds, spiders and other weird and unusual insects, so I was quite happily entertained taking photos of them while my biologist friend identified everything we found. I just love how the pea pod seems to reach out from the screen, almost like it's in 3D.

Week 33 - unknown seeds in my garden

This is the seed pod of a weed in my back garden. I have no idea what the plant is; it has rather tall stems with small purple flowers. Once the flowers are gone, the seed pod opens up all the way down the stem, revealing this fine mesh of hairy seeds, which I presume rely on the wind for dispersal. They are really quite pretty, so I don't mind the fact that they seem to have colonised several flower pots in my yard!

Week 34 - German stamps

These were the stamps on my parcel from Germany, which delivered my wonderful skein of Wollmeise 80/20 Twin sock yarn a few weeks ago. Aren't they pretty?

The next few weeks after that are all cop-outs, I'm afraid. What with the packing and organising before the event, then the LRP event itself, followed by the post-event unpacking, cleaning and recovery, I wasn't really going out and about and taking photos of things. I was incredibly useless at taking photos while at the event as well, so don't even have anything exciting to share from that. Last night I transferred everything I had from my camera and phone onto the computer, and hunted through the pictures to see what I had that fitted the weeks. So you have a photo of Fidget, a close up of my knitting and a rather poor quality iPhone shot of a gorgeous sunset from the camp site we were at last week!

My photo for this week though, it's a good one. I may have a thing about ladybirds, as this is the third photo in the challenge to feature one, but something like the twelfth ladybird photo I've uploaded to Flickr!

Week 36 - unfortunate ladybird

I went Bunkfest in Wallingford with some friends on Saturday, which mainly comprised of hippy market stalls, morris dancing and a small petting zoo. In said zoo were two small goats, two small ponies, a sheep or two, a calf, some ducks, two rabbits and some chickens. While looking at the sheep and calf, my friend spotted this ladybird inside the fence post. On closer inspection, it appeared to have some sort of larva attached to it. Working together, we managed to get a couple of photos! Weird, huh?

There are some more shots of the petting zoo in my Flickr photostream, if you're interested.

I think the main problem I've been having with making sure I'm taking pictures, is the weeks run Saturday to Friday. This means if I don't do anything exciting at the weekend, I only have work days to find something to photograph, and there's only so many things I can take pictures of in and around the office before we all get bored of seeing them! I really ought to make more of an effort. I'm not even considering the Object Challenge at the moment, which is a shame. I should be able to get most of them in and around Reading though, so perhaps all I need to do is make the time one weekend to go for a walk with the list and my camera!