If you have nothing better to do

- if, for example, you are waiting for paint to dry - you could try this - which I found here:

http://embers.typepad.com/e/2008/07/mosaic-me-and-mosaic-him.html

First answer these questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favourite food?

3. Which high school did you attend?

4. What is your favorite colour?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favourite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favourite dessert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10.What do you love most in life?

11. One word to describe you.

12. Your Flickr name.

Put the answer to each question in turn into Flickr's search engine and choose your favourite of the pictures that come up. [Only look at the first page, to preserve your sanity.]

Then post the URL for each page into Mosaic Maker:

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php

[Set it for 3 columns and 4 rows.]

This is mine - although due to user error the pictures are not in the same order as the questions ...

You can also make mosaics in Picassa: to prove it, here is one. In theory I have been taking on-line classes with Sharon Boggon and Sue Bleiweiss since before we went away, but like other things they were victims of the departure of my muse. I have begun to play round with some of the ideas: one of the things Sharon suggested was taking photos of geometric shapes in the environment.

I usually take any photos I need for courses in the garden but it is a bit lacking in mathematical regularity. However I did find a selection in the house.

I like the pattern this lot make [I like pattern anyway!]- but the exercise also made me look more closely at some very mundane things- the staining in the two plant pots on the left of the middle row, for example. Not sure how I would convert it into embroidery, apart from the obvious applique, but an enjoyable exercise all the same.