Thought I’d get a little whittling in this morning before breakfast but, in a careless moment (among many careless moments), I managed to ram a gouge into my index finger.

Pretty annoying to be honest. There was quite a lot of blood but it isn’t all that sore. It’s made playing the guitar a bit challenging, though, especially C, Am and D. I tried to resume the whittling but it started bleeding again so I thought maybe I’d better do something else.

So, I stuck these pistachio shell ladybirds onto their background. Should have done this ages ago but I didn’t and so every time I moved the piece, the ladybirds would slide around and fall on the floor.

Then I hung these maps up. I love old maps and I have a few. Three are of the Dublin area in the 19th Century and the other one is a small map of Ireland dating from the late 18th Century.

Christine bought me this one in a lovely map shop in Hay on Wye last summer …

And I treated myself to this one from the same shop …

And I’ve started tidying up this lot. This is my desk where I do most of the things that appear in this blog. I’ve never been the tidiest and when I get it in my mind to do something creative, I’m not really one to put away the stuff from the last thing I was working on. I just want to get on with it.

By the way, look what I found on a recent visit to the seaside. Lovely weatherworn sticks.

I’m travelling tomorrow, to Tulsk. I don’t know where it is either. (I do, actually. It’s in Roscommon.) I’m going to try a timelapse video of some of the drive if I can.