Rocking Your World 2016; Week 46

Well here we are at the end of a week that has been nondescript for me. I managed to pick up a very heavy cold coming back from my holiday, and have spent most of this week, sleeping! However, there have been some real positives to drag from that. But first here is my smile for this week.

The weather has got much cooler, especially in the evenings, and Tango was looking for somewhere warmer to curl up for a snooze. The bag I take my work to my Wednesday group in, was his final choice. He looked so cosy I just left him there.

Now a huge thank you to everyone who ploughed through my long post last week. I did appreciate your comments. I promise this one will be shorter, but there are more photos that I will group together with minimal captions. So I hope you will stay with me as the last group are well worth waiting for.

So first a few more photos from Ireland, starting with some of the beaches we visited. 

Inchydoney was a wide expanse of sand that was deeply rippled by the constant waves, and to the side was a bank of heather and fern showing off its best Autumnal colours.

Simon's Cove was much smaller with gravel instead of sand. There were lots of rocks for the boys to climb on and a cave with a light hole at the back. The sides were rich in weedy colours. The weather turned while we were there and the sea became quite choppy and angry looking.

This rock pool was high up on the cliff so it must have been filled by spray and rain. The water was so clear.

The last in this section was taken at Ring Harbour just near our house. It was so peaceful there.

You may remember I had a new camera that arrived the day before I went away, so I took myself out on Sunday morning to a quiet spot along the sea wall, to watch the sea birds feeding on the sand bars, and to test out the zoom on my camera. I love trying to catch pictures of birds in flight so I was pleased with the one of the heron. A couple are a bit out of focus, because on full zoom I really needed a tripod to keep the camera still.

And before we leave this section on birds, here is a cheeky little fellow that sat on some dead thistles right next to where we were standing by the rail overlooking the sea at Inchydoney. He almost posed for us!

I liked this photo so I decided to use it to make some Christmas cards. The addition of some glitter glue gave it a more wintery feel, and I used papers and elements from digital scrapbook kits and some die cut frames and sentiments to design these two cards.

I then went on to make a set of twelve cards, six of each design so that is one positive that came because I felt I needed to stay home this week. If you are interested in how the cards were made there is a post about them on my craft blog which you can find by clicking HERE

My last set of photos from Ireland are just some oddments that caught my eye. A tree in the supermarket carpark with so many lovely colours in its leaves, a brave daisy that flowered on a windswept ledge and some lichen on the wall.

We had a three hour delay on our flight back, which had a knock-on effect on reclaiming our car,  so instead of arriving home mid-afternoon, it was 8.00 at night when we got in. But the plus side of that is we landed to a beautiful sunset. So here is one photo of it, taken through a somewhat grubby car window! 

There are some more skies to come, but first another couple of little happy notes from this week.

A week ago today we had a table-top sale/coffee morning at a friend's house, to raise money for our church funds. I had a table there but it was agreed that any money I took would go to Greenfields Africa, the charity my friends and I have been knitting for. There were fewer people there than usual as many have succumbed to the seasonal colds, or were still away on holidays etc, so I was very pleased when I got home and counted up my takings, to find I had raised 84€. A lot of this had come from the sale of my calendars which have proved very popular. Last night I made a further twelve to fulfil orders, making around forty that I have sold.

I was grateful for a week away from the usual routine, with much more time spent sitting indoors, and the opportunity to catch up on a few TV series that I missed while I was away. I actually watch very little TV, but when I get into a good story, I don't like missing an episode, but Chris had managed to download some for me, so I have had a good catch up.

I have also spent more time in my craft room than I can usually spare. I managed to get all my Christmas cards for UK friends and family, made and written in time to take them over with me, and they are now at my son's house, addressed and stamped ready for him to pop them in a postbox in a few weeks time. But that left me none for my local friends so I need to make another fifty or so in a hurry. So apart from the dozen robin ones, I have also made a set of fourteen using my cutting machine, and another six from oddments I had around, and now I am busy colouring digi images for the last big run. So that is another positive from this week.

And one more positive is that the very windy and somewhat cloudy weather we have had this week, has meant that there have been some very interesting skies around tea-time, which brings us to my final set of photos.

 One night we had a stack of smooth pink discs.

Another night we had this unusual formation

Looking closer into the heart of it.

Wednesday night started off with this innocent scene of puffy clouds ....

.. which soon darkened into this ...

... and then this.

But a short while later they had all joined together to form this!

I am not sure whether it is scary or just beautiful. I'll leave you to decide. Meanwhile I am off to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking your world. Thanks for staying with me.