Rocking Your World 2021: Week 32

Another week and we don't seem to have done a lot in it, as we try to have one or other of us free to 'dog-sit' Kim, to make sure he doesn't chew any of his stitches. He is not doing too badly but we do have to keep an eye on him at all times. He wears the collar at night, but he hates it and cowers in a corner if he sees us approaching with it, so while it is so hot, we are trying not to use it much during the day. He hopefully will have his stitches removed on Monday.

Of course we did have to put the collar back on him the first day because we had our appointment in Almeria City to collect our TIE cards, but fortunately the pain killers and antibiotics I gave him with his breakfast, just about knocked him out for the day! We made it to Almeria but the queues were long and took a while to get moving, but our turn came eventually so we now have our cards which puts us one step nearer to being able to travel away from Spain - not that we intend to just yet.

We did venture out on Monday night to support a local initiative called Noche Blanco, or white night. It is held each year to promote businesses within the village. It had been a hot day and although the temperature did not drop significantly, the clouds gathered at nightfall, giving us this rather nice view of the Cabreras from our gate.

They cleared  again a bit as you can see from this picture I took when we rounded the corner and had a wider view of the hills. The white house belongs to a big family of bakers, and it is at the head of the green zone. It  is hiding our house which is behind and to the left of it, on the far side of the zone.

Shops within the village that wanted to take part in Noche Blanco had white balloons on display so you knew which they were. Many of our shops are really just the front room or garage of a private house, reused as a shop, and if they didn't have a sign up (some don't), you wouldn't know they were there.

This one is our favourite baker's shop, where we buy freshly baked, usually still hot, bread and pastries.

At the start of the evening we were given a card with the names of all the shops involved, and if you visited them, they stamped your card. If you bought something from them, they stapled your receipt to the card, and if you managed to get a stamp from every shop, plus at least three receipts, you could enter your card in a raffle. We went to quite a few and did make two purchases so we did our little bit to help the local economy, but we didn't complete our card. As the prize this year was an electric scooter, I don't think we really wanted to win anyway!

Several shops moved a stand of their goods out onto the street with brightly coloured toys, and sweets on display to attract folk to them.

Gonzales is the only shop in the village where I sometimes buy fruit and vegetables between market days. It is the tiniest shop, but they have a better selection than anywhere else, and they put on a good display for the evening.

There is usually some form of entertainment and this year they had hired a percussion band who did some impressive drumming. Our local police kept them moving in the right direction and they paraded around the streets where any of the shops are. There is a little shoe shop right at the lower end of our street, quite a distance from the other shops, but the band still went down to them.

They were led by a man who himself played a drum and gave instructions to his band using a yellow plastic whistle!

They stopped on the plaza and did a routine of moves and different rhythms, and then a lady from the Town Hall helped them to find each shop so they could stop and dance outside it, and have a photo taken with the shopkeeper.

We stood and watched them for a while and it was really fun. I loved watching this girl. She was quite slight but played one of the biggest drums, and she hit it with such enthusiasm. I thought how satisfying it must be to get rid of all your emotions by banging on a drum for hours. And they did play for hours. Starting soon after the shops opened at 6.00pm, we could hear them playing somewhere right round until they all closed again around 10.30.

And that is about it for this week. I have had some lovely chats with the boys. Mike and his family are camping down near the south coast and have visited many of the places I knew as a child, so it had been nice to have some reminders.

It has been ridiculously hot again some days and is unpredictable as one day it is up around 38º and the next down to 31º and then up to 38º again the next day, so we have found ourselves spending quite a bit of time in doors with fans or the aircon on. I haven't even been down here to my computer and craft room much, making do with my phone which is fine for reading posts etc, but my not very good eyes, and 'fat fingers' make doing much else on it difficult. So I haven't made any more cards but I did get a message to say I had won a little prize with my set of cards on the Christmas Card Challenge this month, which was a nice surprise.

And I have done some more crochet so here is my final square for the Tropical Shores blanket.

This time we needed to make five of them, so I worked one first to get my head around the pattern. The centre section was quite challenging this month, but after that it was fairly straight forward. I have now done the centres of the other four squares so they will all be finished by Monday when the designer will post about how to join them and make a border. This square is representing 'palms along the shore' with the little thatched huts nestling between them. Here is the designer's photo board.

 

It reminded me of the beaches we visited on our three month tour of East Asia before we moved out here. And even here in Spain we have palm trees growing out of the sand all along the beaches, but not the thatched huts, not just here anyway.

So I think I had better end there and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World.