Annette and I watched Ponyo this morning, thanks to some free tickets from Energy Australia that we got a while ago. We both loved it! It's a very endearing story I thought. Annette is still finding cinema-going a novel experience (this is only her second time), so she had lots of fun.

The story has similarities to The Little Mermaid, it's about a goldfish (Ponyo) who wants to be a human girl so she can be with Sosuke, a five-year-old boy who rescued her when she was stuck in a cast-off jar. There's an environmental message in there too. Such a charming movie, I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.

After the movie we pottered around at the EQ Markets and had some yummy lunch. The flowers were looking stunning too, such a feast of colours!

At the Fox Studios / EQ Village market.

I am so glad that this year Annette's dance classes happen to be on the same day that this farmers market is on, right next to the dance school. So each week after her dancing we pop by to the market to have our lunch and grab some fresh fruits or veggies for dinner. There's a number of good food stalls (Annette and I love the Turkish gozleme, pancakes and crepes), lots of fresh flowers, fruits and veggies, cheese, baked goods, and a few craft stalls. Not bad!

As expected I didn't get to post every day of the month, and I didn't end up with 30 macro photos, but I'm very happy with what I managed to do. I first joined in the challenge just for fun, but as it progressed I started to get more and more into it. I started bringing my camera with me everywhere I go, and started to pay attention to things that I didn't even notice before. Like how fallen leaves can look rather pretty, or how knitting needles can look like artwork, or how some things look even better in black and white.

It seems that I'm drawn towards nature shots. I guess the good thing with nature shots is that I don't have to pose them, I just have to find a good angle :) Plus it tied in quite well with Project Spectrum's "earth" theme.

The other day I was digging up some of my bookmarked photography links, and I thought I'd put them up here.

• Product photo tips — A good bunch of tips on good photo taking, like lighting, background, etc. This tutorial is aimed at making product shots for selling on etsy/ebay, but I think they're very relevant as well for us who take photos of our knitting/craft projects for our blogs.
• 21 ways to shoot better photos — Some good tips on how to make your photos more interesting, something I'm still learning!
• Pink Chalk Studio's Photography 101 — Great description on how to process your photos after you shoot them, like adjusting colours and contrast. Kathy's way of doing it is pretty much the same as how I process my photos, except that she explains it much better than I could. I use Photoshop Elements (sort of a "lite" version of Photoshop) to process my photos, which is more than enough for what I need. Another one that I've had the pleasure of trying out recently is Picnik, which is an online photo editor, does cool things and can be linked to your flickr account as well.

Well I hope some of you find these useful!

Happy Mothers Day to all the mums, hope you have a lovely weekend!

Following Sadieandlance's advice I stepped away from the computer for a few minutes this afternoon and whipped this up. Yummy! Recipe is here.

Then started knitting in the round. I just picked up a ball, worked on that until it ran out, then picked up another, joined, knitted again, and so on. And tada! A crazy hat :)

Tangled Yoke has been growing quite fast. (Amazing what being at home sick for almost a week can do! I'm feeling much better now, thankfully. Annette is back at preschool too this week, and things are starting to feel normal again around here. Thanks again for all the get well wishes!) I've finished the body up to just before the yoke, and now am working on the first sleeve. The sleeves are worked in the round, so I won't have to seam that up either. Yay!

And for my macro photo of the day, some wildflowers I found on my walk to the preschool yesterday. I have no idea what these are called, anybody knows? They're very tiny, probably the size of my finger nails.

Edited to add: The flowers are called Pink Knotweed, as Taryn said in the comments. Thanks Taryn!

Thank you so much for the get well wishes in the last post. The germs are still here unfortunately, I can't wait to kick them out!

In the mean time, lets look at some knitting. Thank goodness for knitting, it's just about the only thing I feel like doing at the moment.

Been working on Tangled Yoke, which is going quite well. It's a bit difficult to photograph the whole thing, as it's quite wide (you knit the body — the back and two fronts — all in one piece from the bottom up, so it's supposed to be almost seamless in the end). I have just finished the seemingly interminable ribbing, and starting on the miles and miles of stocking stitch ahead. Hehe. But it's all good. Good tv knitting.