Rocking Your World 2021 :Week 49

Not many posts left to go this year, and I am now beginning to feel a little bit Christmassy.

I have just heard from my sister that my parcel of cards have arrived and she has put stamps on them and will be posting them by the weekend. I know it is early but I like to think it is one thing out of the way. It may seem a long way round for a simple task, but by doing this she has saved me around 30€. The Spanish mail is so expensive and I can't make a card that is under the minimum weight and size for a lower price.

Inspired by Lisca's post last week when she had made a 'toad in the hole' for lunch, I thought I'd have a go. It is probably a few years since I last made one but my Yorkshire pudding mixing has improved since then so on Saturday that is what we had. And I have to say it was probably the best one I have ever made. It was very satisfying to watch the batter rise around the sausages and turn a golden brown.

When we had our new fire fited a while ago, the man told us he would need to make a hole in the chimney breast to fit the new flue. He said he would repair it but we would be responsible for repainting it. He did a descent job of filling the hole and eversince we have had a big white patch of plaster on the dark terracotta wall. We wanted to give it plenty of time to dry out completely before we covered it, but this week I asked Chris to do it as I will be putting decorations on the mantlepiece very soon. Fortunately it is not that long since the room was decorated and we had a pot of matching paint still usable in the garage. So on Monday Chris gave it a couple of layers of paint, and now it is dry, you can't see the repair at all. So I am grateful to have that done.

I was not so grateful when my washing line broke on Wednesday, but fortunately it was a dry day, and quite windy so some of the washing had tangled in the line which prevented it from reaching the ground. I have four parallel lines and they are attached in pairs, so I was happy to see the front two are still taut and strong. Only the back two have broken and this morning we popped into the ferratería and bought some new line, so hopefully we will get that fixed by the weekend.

On Friday the men were outside our house fitting a Christmas light to the telegraph pole, and to each pole from us, down to the bottom of the village. Normally they are not lit until mid-December, and I have always assumed this is because they stay on until after our Three Kings festival, but this year they were lit straight away. We noticed that, although they were on all down the street, the one outside of our house was not! So when I went up to market on Tueday I popped into the Town Hall and reported it. That same afternoon the men were back and they soon had it working; very good service isn't it?

So now we have a pretty coloured bauble lit up outside every night.

Although it has been quite sunny some days, (See the deep blue sky in the photo above),  there has been a very cold wind from the north, and I was amused to see that Tango had made himself a little nest in the long grass next door, and he slept soundly there all afternoon. It was sheltered and warm for him, and I hardly noticed he was there, so he must have felt safe from Tolly's rather energetic attempts to make him play.

I have been busy making decorations this week. One wall hanging is waiting to be assembled , but I did finish this layered angel. She is double-sided with LED lights between the wings of the two halves. I thought she turned out quite well, and when I tried her out in a dark room last night, she showed up well again. The layers were all cut on my Silhouette cameo machine using a cut files that a designer posted on our Facebook page.

I have also been doing a few more rows of my big crochet project, and this week I worked row 84 of 168 so I am now half way! I have also made a few more of the tiny squares, but because they are divided into colour bags right now, I do not have a total to hand. 

But this week I started a new project as well! I know, I should know better, but we saw a pattern that we both liked, which is again a bit different from anythong else I have done, and I decided to make it for Chris. He chose the colour yarn from the website and even said he would pay for it, so that is big grateful! I ordered it from a Spanish website on Friday afternoon and it arrived on Saturday! That was a surprise. The blanket is made up of twenty square tiles, all the same and all in the same colour, so I made one using the hook they recommended, but I am a fairly tight worker and it came out much too small, and a bit stiff. So I undid it and made another one using a size bigger hook and making a real effort not to pull the yarn too tight, and it is just right for the recommended tension. I made it a bit damp and blocked it so I can make sure each one is blocked the same and then it will all go together nicely. Here is the one I have done. The pattern is called Celtic Tiles.

And now I just have one sunset photo that I saw last night just before it faded away.

Tomorrow I hope to get the Christmas tree up. I will have to try to Tolly-proof it! But for now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and see what silver linings have brightened your clouds this week.