Rocking Your World 2015; Week 44

Another week has flown past, and whenever I have had a spare minute, I have been busy making items for a couple of charity stalls coming up over the next few weeks. So here is my first make which I hope will make you smile. I think they are really cute.

Each one is made from the foot of an adult-sized white cotton sock, and the top and foot of a coloured sock.

My silhouette cameo cutting machine has also been put to good use to make three of these stables, which have a gold vellum backdrop with a battery-operated tea-light behind it.

Something else that features lights is this star with little cut-out angels and stars on the front half of it. It has a plain star on the back, and a small string of Led lights inside it.

I have shown these here as some of my family follow this blog but not my craft one. But if you are interested to know more about how each of these was made, you can read about them by clicking HERE.

As I have not been in my craft room much over the last month, being busy with my visitors, Arwen has got used to the peace and quiet. She really resents me getting out my silhouette because she has to move from her favourite spot in front of the window, to make space for it. With all the activity down here this week, she has taken up residence on a brick wrapped in brown paper, that I used to use to raise my computer monitor up. It now lives behind the door, and she sulked on it all evening on Monday through 'til yesterday. If looks could kill.....!

I rarely get to sit down in front of the television in the evenings, but when I do, I like to have some knitting or crochet to occupy my hands, so I have had a go at an amigurumi elephant. (This is a type of crochet done with thin wool and a fine hook, all in tightly woven double crochet stitches - single crochet if you are American!).

He is about six inches long from the tip of his trunk to his tail, which is quite big for an amigurumi animal, but he was fiddly to do and I don't think I would have the patience to do one any smaller. The yarn I used is Danish sock wool, bought from a little shop under my son's flat in Aarhus, when we visited him this summer. It is an interesting mix of colours, very randomly spaced, but because he is so small, they still came out as stripes. He is quite cute, but I don't think I'll be rushing to make another one.

We actually had our first Christmas Fair last Saturday, but we had a joint table from our church, to raise awareness of us in the community, so I only contributed jam and pickles to that one. My church is half an hour's drive away from here, so it was not really my community, and I knew nothing about it until I was asked to donate some jams, but I went over in the afternoon and found it was quite a big affair. The sun came out for us, and I had a really enjoyable time.Here are some folk setting up their stalls in the morning.

We had chosen to be inside with our table as the weather forecast was unsettled. It was in an old railway station and the big hall was lined with stalls all around, and there were many more in the space outside. This was our stall, with my friends Jasmine and Sylvia doing a stint to man it.

Also outside, there were lots of tables and chairs with some food and drink stalls, and a small stage where several musicians took turns to entertain the crowd. 

On the far side there was a large marquee with art and handcrafted items that had been entered in various competitions. There was a display from a local quilting group, and they had done some beautiful work.

One of our ladies, Sylvia, came second in the art competition with a lovely watercolour painting of elephants. This photo doesn't do it justice.

Also in the outside area they had a dog show and I sat and watched some of it. Most of the dogs out here are rescued animals, so they are a mixture of breeds, and come in all shapes and colours, but there were a few true breeds as well. There was a lovely pair of grey and black Great Danes, but I don't know how anyone copes with two such huge animals in their house. I fell for a little brown fluffy dog - I always go for the longer-haired animals -called Lily, and was so pleased when she was awarded the best dog in show. Here she is on the right. She has such a sweet face, and a nice nature to go with it.

Those who read my post last week may remember that it was my birthday, and my husband's too. I had some lovely cards but my post was too long to include them then, so here are some of them now. These are the ones that either Chris or I had, that are hand-made.

Some were made using cut and decoupaged elements.

Others were stamped, and used die-cuts etc as well. The lovely row of owls and the pretty butterfly below, were both made for us by my sister Jean. Her work is beautiful.

And these last ones involve sewing, crochet and tatting. The crocheted heart was made by another of my sisters, and she is 84 now (I think!), so she does amazingly well doesn't she?

Other things to be happy about this week;

We had a really good choir practice on Wednesday night. We are nearly ready for some sing-outs of Christmas music at the end of November, and a longer programme of Christmas music plus songs from the shows in December.

I had long chats with some of my boys on Skype this week. I always love hearing about what they are doing.

We have had some lovely sunny days, so we have been able to eat our lunch out on the porch again most days. I don't mind the cooler evenings when we have nice days.

We have also had some rain this week, but it is doing the ground good, and suddenly everywhere is looking quite green. We are so used to the brown, bare earth that the green really strikes us, and everyone mentions it when we are chatting. There is even some real grass growing on the campo and not just weeds. We don't see much of that around here usually.

The clouds in the early evening have given us a few nice sunsets too. I had my eye on one as I drove to choir on Wednesday. I thought it might have gone right down by the time I got there, but when I arrived there was still some colour in the sky and I took this photo of it.

Such a lovely end to a lovely day. and with that I will go over and link up to Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World at Celtic House, and I'll see you all again next week.