Rocking Your World 2020: Week 25

Hi all. Today I am finally using the new Blogger for my post, having spent this week doing several trial runs (later deleted), to ensure I was inserting photos, videos and links correctly, and also resizing and positioning photos as I want them. It was obviously going to be possible but it took me a while and a few failures, to sort it all out.

I actually like the cleaner view as I am typing, so hopefully I will not have any more problems with it.

I have very few photos this week as I have had a 'computer week', which doesn't make for very exciting photos.  As well as working with Blogger, I have tried to master Open Office as a replacement for Publisher. It is nearly time for me to upgrade my computer as I still work in Windows 7 and it does not recommend upgrading to 10. When I do, Chris would like me to use open source programs but I have not been able to manipulate Adobe templates for scrapbooking in Gimp as we had hoped to, so I will probably end up paying for Photoshop on a monthly contract. (Chris will not have any Apple items in the house, so that is not an option). But it has been good trying all these things.

Having settled on keeping Adobe, I also joined a Design cuts group which offered free Photoshop tutorials all this week, and they have been very helpful. So, a lot of hours have been spent sitting here.

However I have had some time out in the sunshine too. Early this week we had two visitors in the garden. This little mouse was swimming frantically round and round the pool, seemingly unable to climb out. I didn't know mice were such good swimmers. Anyway Chris fished him out with the pool net and set him in a sunny spot in the green zone.

When I went back to see if he had gone, which he had, I spotted this little fellow on a branch of the oleander. I thought at first it was a lizard, but closer inspection, plus advice from my Wildlife Facebook page, I think it was a Moorish gecko. It has a longer tail and slimmer body than the usual geckos, but you can just about see the suckers on its feet that it uses to shoot up vertical walls. Lizards have more claw-like toes.

I have also spent a lot of time watching the birds. Every morning and evening the swifts and house martins have a feeding frenzy over the green zone. It was difficult to capture the real feel of their aerial show on my phone, but I had several attempts. I  spent another morning trying to edit something worthwhile out of one of them. Again Chris was able to find an open source video editor that was free, and after a lot of trial and errors, I got this one, and as I have mastered getting them to Blogger without uploading them to the internet first, I will add it here.

The house next door is a sparrow hotel, with loads of pairs bringing up their young in the tiny ventilation holes under the tiles. So the house martins nest in the eaves of another tall house just up the road from us. You can see the parents constantly flying in with food for their young and going off again for more. I stood and watched them for a while but they are too quick, and the nests are too dark to get really good photos. But these were my best two. You can just see the adult bird with its head in the nest in the first one.

And, of course, I am continuing with my crochet project. It is definitely a challenge but I am persevering with it.

It is a change for me to be working with cotton-based yarns, but I know I will return to my favourite acrylic DK as soon as it is cool enough to handle it. I stick with the same make as it has a wide range of colours, over 50 now I think, and is usually easily available online from UK. They are not posting internationally right now but I am sure they will again soon.

Recently they added five new colours to their range, and as I try to keep one ball of each colour in my stash, I wanted to buy one of each of these, but they sold out very fast. People have been asking for the purple for so long, so I think they all rushed out to buy them. And the orange and yellow are more gentle tones than their other very bright ones. So when I saw a different company had them back in stock I ordered one of each, plus one of the navy that I used up on my previous blanket project, and they came this week.

Chris took the parcel in and handed it to me with a gruff "Feels like more wool!", and of course he was right. But what tickled me most was its wrapping. As is usual, the wool was tightly packed in an organza drawstring bag, and this was inside a tough plastic posting bag. These are often grey but this one was bright yellow, and printed into the design were several of these signs.

How right they are. And it made me smile.

The wool is lovely too of course. I shan't be using it yet so it has joined the rest out in the garage, but I am glad to have brought my stash up to date again.

And now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking your World over at Celtic House.

P.S. Just a quick update on my neck fan which raised some interest when I showed it. It is very good, light-weight and comfortable to wear, and gives a gentle cooling stream of air. The heads can be rotated through 360º, and there are three speeds though I have so far only used the slowest one, plus various coloured lights, and the possibility to add drops of essential oils to them if you want to. I think they were a good buy. There are several makes available in Amazon and other sites I am sure.