Rocking Your World 2016:Week 41

Hi Folks. Here's a bit of nonsense to make you smile while I get my head in order. You may need to be from UK to really understand it. (Sorry about the colours. That's how it was on facebook).

Well this week got off to a good start because Sunday was our Harvest Festival, and that has always been one of my favourite services. I loved it as a child. The church had a very special smell on that day - a mixture of fruits and vegetables and fresh bread. Mum always made Jean and I little boxes of a selection of fruit, vegetables, and tinned goods, and later I did the same for my boys. I usually baked small fruit loaves to add, and did the boxes up so they were a balanced selection ready to be given to a needy couple in the locality. But sadly it is less common now, and until last year, I had not been to a proper Harvest for many years.

There is a team of church helpers who all live over near there, who went in on Saturday and decorated the altar area with fresh produce.

The rest of us were asked to take in dry and tinned goods that could be given to the most needy families in Zurgena, the Town hall which allows us to use our building rent free, so this is a small way in which we can show our thanks.

As we are without a vicar at the minute, we have a series of locum priests visiting us for about six weeks each. Our harvest service was led by the current locum, Rev. Kieth Kimber, who fitted in well and stayed to enjoy lunch with us afterwards.

As we so often do when it is an 'occasion', we followed the service with a Bring-and-Share lunch. There is always more than enough food for everyone, and a wide range to suit everyone's taste. A few folk chose to eat indoors, or under the shade of the porch, but most of us braved the sun, and sat around tables on the patio, though we were grateful for the large umbrellas to provide some shade. 

On Tuesday, the same team of workers went to church and divided the food into bags, offering a balance of items to make several meals for a family. They were able to deliver fourteen large bags to the Town Hall in Zurgena, which will be distributed to needy families.

This week I intend to have a little harvest of my own because I am going down into the green zone behind our house to pick pomegranates. The green zone is not very green at all after the long dry spring and summer, so the tree is looking very thin and not bonny at all, but it is still full of fruit. I took this photo from our back railings.

Zooming in, the fruit look rather like rosy apples. I picked some last year and they were lovely. It is not a fruit I would eat lots of, but it is good for us, and I can use it in my smoothie maker and the pips all just disappear.

Most of this week I have been busy finishing off blankets for my Africa Project final deadline. I think I am all squared out now. A friend is finishing off one blanket, and the rest are now all sewn together. I still have three blankets to crochet around, but I think I will get them done in time. Fortunately the weather has been lovely, still sunny and warm, but not too hot, so I have been able to sit out on the porch each afternoon and knit, sew and crochet in good daylight.

I find working the edging on a blanket puts a lot of tension on my shoulders so I can only do it for a couple of hours. Then I need a break so I come down to my craft room and do something down here, before going back to the blankets. So one thing I managed to do was to make new labels for my kitchen canisters. I had a bit of a change around as I was struggling to continually reach the canisters down from a shelf, so they are now on the counter again. I just have to be a bit tidier and keep the space clear for them. I have had the Portmerion dinner and tea services called Dusk, for many years. Sadly it is discontinued now. When I retired from the nursery in UK, they bought me lots of matching extras, and I still love it. The canisters had been in use for a long time and were looking a bit tired, so I gave them a good clean and removed the old and faded labels. Then I cut new ones from purple vinyl using my Silhouette Cameo machine. It is my newest font called Yana. I am a bit of a fontaholic and have hundreds on my computer, but I chose this one because I knew it would cut well. They look a lot better now.

I have also been working on my computer in Adobe photoshop to design calendars for my Christmas sale coming up next month. They will mostly be sold to people from church so I decided this year to illustrate lines from favourite hymns. It isn't finished yet but here is one page that is ready to print. Of course I had to use one of my sky photos somewhere in the calendar!

Yesterday evening was warm and 'soft' and we sat out in the porch until well after midnight. We have lights out there, but they are not bright enough for me do my crochet, so instead I set myself up with chopping board and knives and prepared two big bowls of vegetables. So maybe you can guess what I did this morning. Yes - I made another twenty jars of piccalilli.  (And yes Di, it is still your recipe which everyone out here loves!). So that is something else ready for my sale table.

I had a happy phone call yesterday from one of our sons, telling us about his wedding plans, so that is something to look forward to next year.

I had a chat to another son who has done some useful shopping for me - just small items that he can bring over to Ireland when we all meet up there later this month.

We have had confirmation of the house we have rented over there for the family week, and also confirmation that our house/dog sitter is booked, so that is all coming together nicely.

Earlier in the week our Home group plus extra friends had a very useful meeting to plan the way ahead. It is lovely that we are so in agreement with each other.

I have three sky photos to close with this week. The first was the sun rise taken on Monday.

The other two are the sun setting yesterday. When I went outside to give the dogs their tea I noticed these lovely rays shining up from behind the hill where the sun had already dropped from view.

By the time they had finished eating, which only takes a few minutes (!) the gold had faded and was replaced with a lovely rosy glow, but the sun rays were still visible..

Now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and I'll see you all next week.