Animals and flowers...

So as promised, or threatened, whichever your viewpoint, I have a whole host of animal pictures from our great trip to London Zoo last week.

The weather wasn't as good as we hoped, but it was good enough.

We started round the reptile room

and round to Gorilla kingdom, where this big boy ambled towards us, 

and we saw smaller breeds of monkeys in their groups, relaxing, grooming, running and jumping.

We went to see the Tiger, but he was fast asleep with his back to us, so went on to the Llamas and Alpacas who were adorable

These Giants were amazing slowly making their way to their greens

BEWARE if sqeamish!! We were brave, very brave. We were in the Bugs section, which coincided with the Spider talk, and a man came out with quite a frisky tarantular on his hand, to give details and answer questions. But then we ventured into 'the' room, where the spiders are loose, just hanging about on their webs, dangling from the ceiling! I cant say it was a pleasant experience, quite frankly we just clung on to each other, where the young amused guide stated "dont worry they dont move"!

A much more pleasant experience was the Butterfly pavilion. Where amongst the greenery and flowers flitted flashes of bright colours, they were fascinating to watch

Then it was off to Penguin beach to watch their fun and frolics, in and out of the water

One of the best experiences was being surrounded by Squirrel monkeys. We went into the enclosure, and walked round the pathways, seeing all the ropes up high, but seeing no signs of life. But as we got to the end we stood still and then heard the bushes rustle, then spotted a couple of tiny faces peering through, and before we knew it the place came to life. Tiny bodies leaping around us, around the bushes, up in the trees and adeptly across the ropes. They were adorable, and we didn't want to stop watching!

Meercats are always a favourite with their cute little inquisitive faces

Another great experience was to be in with the Lemurs. Alongside this black and white fluffball were a group of ring-tailed lemurs with their infamous long black and white tails hanging below the branches. They love the sun, and they'd sit in the sunniest spots, head up, leaning back and basking.

The last section we went round was Into Africa.

Before leaving, we checked back in with Mr Tiger. He was still fast asleep, but had moved to a ledge where he was in full view. And he did eventually open his eyes and sleepily look around!

I would thoroughly recommend a trip there. I went many many years ago, when animals just had small little cages. Now its great that so many areas are walk through, to be at such close encounters with the creatures.

We were exhausted after a full day of walking round, and it started to rain, so rather than face the rush hour, we opted to stop at a little Italian cafe in Camden for dinner

On the crafting front, I have been working on my latest flowers

Starting with a whole rainbow of circular centres

Before starting to add the petals

Each flower has a beginning, middle, and ends...

A whole bunch of flowers just waiting to be joined

And yes, I have finally figured how to do an all in one join. It took a lot of doing, undoing and redoing. And even after I figured out how to do it, I managed to make a mistake, and I'm back to the beginning. Now I have drawn myself a very simplistic graph, so hopefully I'll be all set.