Rocking your world 2014: Week 37

Here we go again. It is Friday and another week has flown passed. I hope it has been a good one for you. Here it has been a hot one, too hot in fact for me to sit outside early afternoons, so instead I have been resting in the sitting room with my chair set between the open door and the open window, in the hope of catching a breath of wind, but most days, needing the fan on full blast to move the air. Here I am doing a bit more of my cross stitch picture, and little Tango decided he needed to sit on my lap so he could feel the fan too! Not only is he like having a wool rug on your legs, but he also found my moving thread a source of great entertainment, and he did his best to catch it between every stitch, so I could have done without him that afternoon. But he has been with us for three months now, and is only just beginning to come out of hiding and approach us, rather than us finding him, so I wasn't going to turn him off. Chris caught him on his phone camera, with such a look of innocence on his face. You have to love him really!

We were looking forward to seeing the last of the three super moons early in the week. Chris said I should try to photograph it before dark so there was something else in the picture as a point of reference, so I took this one at sundown.

Later in the evening I took this one. It is not so good of the moon, but it's a more interesting photo.

Later again I took this one which I am also showing you, because to me it looks like an animal having fun playing with a ball of light. OK. So that's just me being fanciful, but I like it anyway.

And while we are on sky photos, here is one I just managed to catch on camera. It had been a very hot day but a bit overcast, and towards tea-time, the storm clouds were gathering over the Cabrera mountains. I just happened to catch it as the clouds parted a little and there was a small patch of rainbow colours. I got my camera just in time, because a few minutes later the clouds had covered it over again. It is not a good quality photo. I had to point and shoot quickly, but worth a try, I thought.

While it has been so hot, I haven't been able to do any knitting but I did have a small crochet project on the go, and on Tuesday I finished it off. So here is Patchwork Puppy - the latest member of the Perry zoo? As one of my friends pointed out, at least I won't have to feed this one!

I wonder if you know what these are. You may remember a photo from a few weeks ago showing a palm tree overladen with stems of dates. Well these are some of those dates. They are now sold in our markets like this, but I will keep them for a week or two, and gradually they will turn brown and squishy, and then they taste wonderful!

Chris and I are both continuing to lose a little weight. I am wary of losing too much too quickly, because then it tends not to stay off, but we are being careful what we eat, and it seems to be working. I am just waiting for it to cool down a bit now, so I can try to do a little exercise as well. Part of our healthy diet is to have one of my fruit or vegetable blends three or four times a week. Last night's smoothy was made from an orange, a banana, a whole raw carrot, about an inch of root ginger, and a little of my home-made yoghurt. This time it did taste as good as it looks. That picture makes it look as though my old coca-cola glass has a face on it. It hasn't really, but I have a reputation for seeing faces everywhere!

Two things made me very happy this week. 

I have been collecting donations from friends at church, towards the shipping costs of my Knitting for Africa project, (My courier friend takes the knitting to UK for free, but we try to include a donation with each consignment towards the shipping cost to Africa). My friends collect their small copper coins in jam jars for me, and it had all been sitting in my cupboard over the summer, just waiting for me to sort it out. In UK you can put coins of the same denomination, into plastic bags which the bank then weighs, but here they have to be carefully counted and fitted into fiddly little plastic sleeves supplied by the bank, which then fasten with popper-like studs. They are an absolute pain to do, but the bank won't accept them any other way, so I made myself get on with the job. Nineteen rolls of one cent coins later, eighteen of two cent coins, another eighteen of five cents, and so on, in the end added up to a wonderful 100€ which I have passed on to the charity. They weighed an absolute ton but fortunately I managed to get a rare parking space right outside the bank, so I didn't have to carry them far. I am always overwhelmed by the kindness people show, and the support they give for my project.

Another nice surprise came with the postman. We rarely get personal mail here except on our birthdays and at Christmas, so to come home from the shops and find two envelopes addressed to me was big happy surprise. In one there were a set of number puzzles. My sister Jean buys a puzzle magazine each month because she likes doing all the crossword, etc, but she doesn't usually attempt the number ones. I, on the other hand, soon get bored of crosswords, but I am fascinated by numbers, so each month she tears the number puzzles out of her magazine and stores them up for me, and when she has enough to make it worth while, she sends them to me. So this week I have something new to keep the old grey cells ticking over. They make a nice change from the Killer Sudoku that I usually do.

The second envelope came from my grand-daughter, and she sent two ATCs she had made especially for me. This was a lovely surprise as it is a long time since we last exchanged these little pieces of art work. She used to come to my house a lot in UK, and liked to look through my folders of ATCs, and she did make a few, so of course I also made a few for her. But I thought she had left that behind as she moved into her teenage years, so I was really pleased to get these.

And now, before I leave you to link this up with Virginia's blog for Rocking your World, and Annie's Friday Smiles, week 84,  I'll just give you this week sunset. It's not as colourful as some, but still bursting with light and beauty. 

Have a beautiful week everyone, and I'll see you next time.