Well, something like that anyway.
The lions were off being lions and were distinctly not cooperating for the camera. Bloody celebrities.
The bears were cute as all hell and I’d like to take one home.

Yes, technically the is a bear. A red panda bear!
The tigers, much like the lions, were off sleeping and being far less pose-y than is necessary for blogginess. Durn cats.
The day at the zoo was fab. It’s so much removed from the last trip I made there when I was 12 - it was really like a different place. Huge open areas for animals, and plenty of places for them to hide from the bad weather when it arrives. Or cameras, in our case. We had a picnic lunch with a rather fabulous guest

…and naturally had to stop off at the city farm, where the pigs were sleepy

but the sheep were more than helpful.

Yes, I realise that this makes me a massive knitting nerd, because I went to the zoo and saw sheep. Personally I found it more than a little disturbing that a “city farm” has become part of the zoo because some people have never seen a sheep up close. Or a cow. Or a pig.
I am a firm believer in knowing where your food comes from, especially if that food has a face. I die a little inside when stories about kids thinking that hamburgers come from McDonalds or Tesco and are shocked when it has to be explained to them that actually, it’s a bit of a cow (though given the meat content of a lot of sausages and burgers, not that much. Urgh.)
But I digress.
My “welcome to the umemployed club” paperwork arrived this week, which was strange. Even though I knew it was coming, it made things all the more real. This reality was added to in bright technicolour when I spent most of Thursday in the social welfare office, sitting around and waiting to be seen by someone who would tell me that I didn’t need to fill out an AB form, but an aB form and could I go back to the end of the queue. After three hours of sitting around feeling like I was in the waiting room from BeetleJuice, I was starting to despair in humanity and the Irish Government. Surely if these offices are that understaffed in every major town in the country, they could, oh, I don’t know……hire some of the huuuuuuge numbers of people who are standing around twiddling their thumbs to do some of the work?
The upcoming elections here are going to be epic. Absolutely epic.
Other things I’ve been doing over the last week or two (other than blogging…..no biscuit): cleaning. Lots of cleaning. Huge amounts of decluttering. Quite a bit of knitting.

It’s another One Skein Wonder, in my own organic merino. ‘Cos I may as well get some squishy for myself!
I’ve also taken up the Tangled Yoke again, and it’s going fabulously well. I didn’t manage to get the photo off the camera before the battery died though, so that will have to wait til my next post.
I’ve been doing some dyeing as well, both custom orders and some new skeins for the store, which will be going up this evening. Here’s a sneeky preview

A strange, up-and-down sort of fortnight, overall. I’m not sure if things like “getting all (yes, all!) of the neverending laundry finished” and “going dust bunny hunting under the bed” count as being blogworthy though. While I’m feeling rather accomplished about tackling these tasks that I’ve been putting off for an embarassingly long amount of time, they hardly rank as exciting.
Well, maybe just a little…