This is random, but not entirely off-topic as I can definitely see quilty (and dye-y) implications from this.

I follow Lyric Kinard's blog, and this morning she posted about an app she'd started playing with, named Waterlogue. I immediately downloaded it and started messing with it myself.

My.

I love this app.

Mind you, I've got several photo-editing apps and most have some sort of watercolor filter effect but I've never seen any of them work as well as this one.

I was posting these images to Twitter and a couple of folks checked out the app and have since downloaded it themselves. Unfortunately, we also discovered it's only available for iPhone/iPad, but not Android*. Sorry about that!

It has 12 different filters with very different effects--my photos here only include three or four of them. It's fascinating to watch how each filter interprets your original photo. You definitely get a lesson in line and color as each filter breaks your photo down into component parts.

Other than just good, clean fun, what are the quilty and hand-dye-y applications? Well, gee, let me count the ways. At the simplest, you could print the resulting image onto fabric and thread-sketch or quilt it up for a nice art quilt. You could use the watercolor image as a guide for an applique version: It breaks complicated colors from a photo down into much simpler color splotches (which is a very technical artistic term) that would make it easier to interpret those colors into fabric. You could use the outlines it creates in some filters as a guide to hand-draw the image onto your fabric. For hand-dyeing/painting, the benefits are pretty obvious: It gives you a clear view of what colors appear in the photo that you could easily use as a guide for creating a project.

*(I stole this photo from one that @sewexcitedquilts tweeted this morning of sunrise on a lake. Thanks, Jackie!)*

The app is $2.99. I'd say I've already had about $3.75 worth of fun and I've only had the app for about four hours. When I start using it as a way to create a quilt design? Priceless.

I'll close this blog out with a gallery of the original photos with their filtered counterparts. I've got it set in autoplay to change images every two seconds, but you have controls on the right and left to move forward and back if you want to see something again. If you can't see the gallery in whatever way you're receiving this blog, just go straight to my website.

*The Waterlogue blog explains that they have no plans to release it on Android. They're a small, independent iOS developer and Android is much harder to program with reliable stability as it's used on such a wide variety of devices. If you want to read the whole blog post, go to their blog. (You may have to scroll down to find the pertinent post.)

(Pardon me while I continue to test out the different methods of placing pictures in my blog. Have to see how well they all work!)

While on vacation in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I spent a morning at the Audobon Aquarium. We got there when it first opened and wasn't at all crowded; by 90 minutes later when we were ready to go, it was pretty full. So fair warning--if you go, go early.

In any case, my favorite part of the aquarium was, interestingly enough, not the aquatic creatures. It was the parakeet house. I grew up with parakeets--my grandmother had those that came to live with us a few months out of the year when she did. I only really remember one of them. His name was Gentleman Jim, or GJ. We'd let him out of his cage and he'd fly around the room, but he mostly liked to be right where we were. I did a lot of homework at the kitchen table with GJ perched on the end of my pencil or trying to sharpen his beak on it while I was writing. He may or may not have been the same parakeet that liked to dive into the fish tank. That was a little more of an adventure. My sister also had birds as pets most of her growing up years, and still does. Me, not a fan of birds in the house myself. Too much seed tossed around, too noisy. But still, I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the parakeets in the parakeet house.

So I'm including two galleries here--one is just photos from our trip that may entice you to go to New Orleans yourself. The other is strictly for the birds.

The galleries are on autoplay, but you can speed up or slow down using the control buttons at either side of the gallery, or you can click on the thumbnails below.

First, general scenes around New Orleans, including random parades that spring up all the time, St. Louis Cathedral, the statue about immigrants (didn't get the actual title), various music ensembles we would stumble across (favorite part of the trip), Audobon Aquarium, New Orleans from the ferry to Algiers Point and one great house in Algiers, and the bayou boat tour (see if you can spot all the critters).