True Colours Thursday - BLUE & WHITE!

My digital camera's Memory Card may need replacing as it seems to have developed intermittent amnesia - a bit like me :), as the images taken for today re Delftware were amongst photo's missing when I downloaded them into my lap-top, so it was into Archives - fortunately, I did find @ least one BLUE & WHITE not previously shown or written about.

Last year, whilst staying in Derbyshire with friends, we visited Cromford Mill, where the Arkwright Spinners group regularly give displays of their skill & sell their wares.

This lady dressed in BLUE & WHITE, is spinning dogs hair - in this instant, hair brushed from a Samoyed...

The spun yarn, she then cleans & from it, creates Chan Brown's 'Pet Hair Bears' - traditionally jointed teddy bears ...

A small bear that sits approx @ 7" needs 2.25oz of hair, a big boy ie 13" needs 9.5oz.

That is an awful lot of grooming!

Now the Spinners attire, reminded me of Alice, as in "Alice in Wonderland" in her BLUE dress & WHITE pinny, as seen here looking through the glass...

And flying off with WHITE Rabbit to the Mad Hatters Tea party...The above photo's, both previously posted, come from the now defunct 'Oxford Story' that featured her & her creator - Christ Church College academic & author Charles Dobson aka Lewis Carroll in animated detail - it was an entertaining tourist attraction, now replaced by a Sportswear Shop!!!

My cake from the Celebration Cake Shop is destined to be a repeat too, there was no other choice but this one...

To join True Colours Thursday, all you need, is to post a photo/photographs & text, or better still both, on the specified colour of the week.
If you simply want to use the idea as a 'prompt' for a post, as I do now, with many memes, that is fine with me.
But, if, you'd like others including me, to visit you, please leave a comment below, so we know you are 'IN'!
Next weeks colour is PUCE, a cross between red & purple - suggested ages ago by Rinkly Rhymes, who plays TCT & again by Jeannie who doesn't but maybe should next week!
And, please remember ideas for forth coming colours would be very welcome!

Camera Critters Sunday - Wanted a Dodo!

I forgot to include this, my final 'Alice' snippet, on a earlier post.
To illustrate it, I really needed a photo of a Dodo, that extinct, 'mythical' bird instead of Geese by the River Isis, but...On a 'Alice' walking tour around Dreamingspires, I learnt that author Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, had a problematic stammer.
With children, it amazingly disappeared.
But, in adult conversation, he struggled when renouncing his surname.
So, it's thought he is 'taking the micky' out of him-self in the 'Alice in Wonderland' with his character the Dodo!

Camera Critters is Misty Dawn's creation, the blog is HERE!

'Alice Through the Looking Glass' as Theatre!

Alice week on my blog is drawing to a close!
Today, I'm remembering a theatre review of mine from my first blog 'If only, if only... I'd'.
Before money became tighter, I was a very, very, very regular 'Dreamingspires Playhouse' goer.
Eighteen months ago, I went to see the student company 'Plantlife Productions' version of ...Lewis Carroll's second Alice story is a tough one to retell, let alone transfer to the stage.
The book opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night.
Alice wonders what the world is like in the reflection of her home, she can see in the mirror.
To her surprise, she finds she's able to pass through it to the other side & finds an alternate world, full of opposites and where, time runs backwards.
The main characters, Alice meets are chess pieces on the landscape's giant chessboard that's divided into squares by natures fields & streams.
Alice becomes a 'Pawn' in the game for the White Queen & while trying to cross the crazy chess board, encounters nursery rhyme characters Teedledum & Tweedledee, who recite the long poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter."
'The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things:
of shoes - and ships - and cabbages - and kings -
and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings'
Then, she meets Humpty Dumpty, followed by the Lion & the Unicorn, before being rescued from the Red Knight by the White Knight, and progressing to capture the Red Queen.
With the Red King check-mated & the chess game over, Alice wakes up & blames her black cat for strangeness of her dream!!!
The bizarre imagination of Mathematics academic, Dodgson [aka Lewis Carroll], never ceases to amaze me!

Now, from this cryptic 'resume', even those familiar with the book, will realise his Alice - Through the Looking Glass' story is weird - big time!
Personally, I'm more an ''Alice in Wonderland' fan.
And, the new theatrical adaptation by young play-write, Emily Lim, I went to watch, was so imaginative, it bordered on bizarre @ times - only in hindsight, I see it was spot on!
The set was minimalist - a building site with scaffolding, which acted a hill, a tree & Humpty- Dumpty's wall.
Props were an armchair, blue plastic sheeting tied together to represent the streams that divide the chess board, wheel-barrows for boats, and buckets of water poured from one bucket to another for Alice's tears & the streams sound effects.
No fancy costumes at all.
The entire cast apart from Alice were dressed in white work-mens boiler suits, that were swapped for red ones when portraying the red chess pieces, & green ones when the forest.
Sometimes it cleverly worked, other times it didn't.
The garden scene did exceptionally well, with just the addition of coloured hard-hats representing each talking flower - yellow for the Daisy chorus, pink for the Rose & orange for the Tiger Lily.
Of the characters portrayed - Humpty Dumpty was the best - he wrung every bit of humour out of his lines before falling of his wall to strobe lighting effects; Alice was childlike & full of amazement, and the all dancing, all singing chorus were 100% enthusiastic.
But, it was off beat entertainment & often very hard going, even with a good imagination!
The audience was small.
The company, to my knowledge has not staged another production!
And, I'm pretty much Alice'd out now!

Wordless Wednesday - Alice, as 'photographed' by Dodgson!

Monochrome & Odd Shot Monday - The Mad Hatter's Table!

Am staying with the 'Alice' theme from the week-end!
Earlier this year, along with friends, I visited Carsington Water in Derbyshire, England's ninth largest reservoir.
Walking around it's perimeter, as the Winter sun began to set, we came across this unusual carving!
I guess, we were just too late in the day to see The Mad Hatter, Alice & the other tea party guests!
The B&W version is for Aileni's Monochrome Maniacs meme...

In colour, for Katney's Odd Shots...

Camera Critters Sunday - "I'm Late!", cried the Rabbit!

Continuing on from Alice's Day yesterday, one of the characters I remember best from the story 'Alice in Wonderland' is the White Rabbit - this fine fellow I've personally encountered...He's just one of many released domestic Bunnies 'gone wild', that live contentedly in Minoru Park, in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. I, affectionately re-named it 'Bunny Park', as sit quietly there for a few moments & out pops another rabbit.I wrote about this peaceful, green oasis & their story, with more bunny shots in a previous Camera Critters post.

From the Walt Disney's 1951 film "Alice In Wonderland", which I remember being taken to see as a child.
Alice was sitting on the riverbank, with her cat, when all of a sudden, a funny little rabbit in a waistcoat came rushing by...

Camera Critters is Misty Dawn's creation!

Color Carnival - Alice's Day!

Whilst in town today & earlier this week, the Celebration Cake Shop's window reminded me of a bit of local literary history.
This colourful cake showing Alice @ the Mad Hatters Tea Party is the clue... The story goes like this...
One golden afternoon, 147 years ago today, the Reverend Charles Lugwidge Dodgson, a don @ Christ Church, who wrote mathematical & philosophical books and had an interest in photography, which is how he initially met the family of the Dean, took Alice Liddell & her sisters Lorina & Edith on a boat trip on the river Isis from Folly Bridge to Godstow lock.
It seems the girls were were frequent companions of Dodgson on such expeditions along Dreamingspires waterways - do, wonder what would be made of such a friendship now!!!
Anyway, on that particular outing on 4th July 1862, Dodgson to amuse the children, related a story about a little girl sitting bored by a riverbank, who finds her-self tumbling down a rabbit hole into the topsy-turvy world called 'Wonderland'.
The tale so delighted the 10 year old Alice, she begged him to write it down.
It wasn't til some months later, that he delivered the completed hand written & illustrated story, then called 'Alice's Adventures Underground' to her.
Friends, who saw the little book, urged him to publish it, which he did under the pseudom Lewis Carroll, which I learnt recently, comes from reversing & adapting his real name - Carroll from the Latin for Charles & Lewis from Ludwidge his mothers maiden name!
The story, renamed 'Alice in Wonderland' broke all previous publication records & has never ever, ever been out of print - the sequel 'Through the Looking Glass', followed.
Both, marked a turning point in children's books and Alice & Lewis Carroll became part of Dreamingspires literary history.

Re Alice herself...
She went on to do the 'Grand Tour' with her sisters.
But, did not marry til she was 28, so, would have been by then, viewed as an old maid.
And, re her original copy of 'Alices Adventures Underground', she finally sold it after becoming a widow.
She died in 1934!

Color Carnival just requires a colourful photo.
Martha is the creator & host.