Rocking Your World 2021: Week 35

Hi everyone. I am starting this week with a photo that really made me smile. These teddies are not my work. They were made by my clever sister Brenda, who is 90 years old! Her daughter posted the photo. She has packed them up ready to go to a mother and baby unit in Sierra Leone, Brenda was always good at making animals, and especially loved little teddies. When I was younger and tried to make toy animals or characters on the boys' jumpers, I used to get her to do the faces, as she had a gift for getting them right.

Another week has flown by. The sudden rise in Covid cases in the village, which seemed to follow the small fiesta here in July, has slowed down and is in fact reducing quite quickly again, so that is a positive thing. But we still stay home unless we have a good reason to be out and about.

After some exceptionally hot days, the temperature has dropped and life is a bit more comfortable. It would be even more so if it wasn't so humid. We  actually had some rain on Tuesday. It didn't last for very long but it came down quite fast. Unfortunately it was heavy with dessert sand again, so everywhere was left looking brown and dirty. We had to pour water on the car windscreen before we could drive anywhere. But at least I could delay getting the hose out for another day.

I had a nice delivery early in the week. I am tired of waiting for my big oven to heat up just to cook a small pie etc for the two of us, and it makes the kitchen so hot for ages, so I ordered us a small table-top oven. I am quite pleased with it. It heats up very fast, and cooks in good time, but it seems to me a bit flimsy. I chose one that is made in Spain to avoid added taxes, and it was in the top five 'best of its kind' list on the internet, but I would have liked it to be a bit more robust. However, it has a rotisserie bar and I am looking forward to cooking a whole chicken on it at the weekend.

For those who asked, the zucchini chocolate cake I made last week, was very nice. It stayed lovely and moist, and we enjoyed it.

A couple of weeks ago I bought two kalenchoe plants in Lidls. I often choose them because they are very resilient, withstanding a lot of sun, and flowering for ages, often keeping going for several years. I put them in my three tier plant holder on the front porch, because the geraniums had finished for this year, but of course I then wished I had bought a third one for the top. So yesterday we popped into a garden centre and I bought a red one to complete my trio. They do look nice and bring a spot of colour up to the porch. As you can see, the pink one has got some flowers turning brown. I think I may have over watered it, but I am confident that it will soon recover.

And finally, I did manage to join all my squares together and crochet the border for my Tropical Shores Blanket. There were a few more palm trees to work around there, but I like the way it looks. I have washed it and laid it out on the orange bed-settee to dry which has given it a slightly orange look, but it is actually bright white which makes all the colours really stand out. It is slightly wavy around the edge so I could probably have gone down a size of hook to work the border, but I am not worried about that. It will sort itself out when it is used.

Next I may attempt to join my big coloured squares. It may be a bit too hot still to have an even bigger blanket on my lap, but it is made with thinner yarn so it may not be quite so heavy.

Now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World.