Alien Nest

....well I hate to shatter the illusion but this is not a structure built for the offspring of extraterrestrial life forms. There wasn't much scope for a local photographic safari today due to this being another day of awful weather - leaden skies interspersed with massive downpours - so I just had to be a bit more creative. 
This is actually a felt mobile that hangs in our kitchen window covered in one of those string bags that you get oranges in illuminated, along with added raindrops, by literally the only shaft of sunlight we had all day. That would be a bit of a long winded title so I just used my overactive imagination and went for Alien Nest!

I spent most of today indoors so had time to catch up on some reading. This included a fascinating article in The Guardian about a disabled artist called Sarah Biffin, who's art is being showcased in a first exhibition for a century.
She spent 20 years travelling the country as a fairground attraction, billed as the "Celebrated Miss Biffin, the Greatest Wonder of the World". She was born in 1784 without arms and hands and raised in a poor family but became an accomplished painter of miniatures (using her mouth and one shoulder) patronised by royalty and nobility, and a 19th Century household name referenced in four Charles Dickens novels.
The first exhibition of her work for 100 years opens on London soon, celebrating her as an artist who broke down the barriers she faced as a disabled woman.
Her work had faded into obscurity until an unexpected success at auction in 2019, where a self portrait by her sold for £137,000 - it had only been expected to fetch up to £1800 - which in turn led to the exhibition being mounted.
The contemporary artist Alison Lapper, who was born with same condition (phocomelia) has described her work as "quite phenomenal" - a completely fitting description based on just some of the examples of her utterly exquisite work shown in the article.