Friday Smiles 2023 # Week 44

Lets look back at the week and remember what made us smile. This was a trip back to my childhood. As a child I had a few dolls and I loved them all, and often knitted or occasionally crocheted clothes and blankets for them. A Spanish friend of mine called Cati, collects dolls and still makes extensive sets of clothes for them, and this week she had a exhibition of them on the ground floor of the new library, so I wandered up to have a look. On the left were rows of dolls dressed in various national costumes.

On the right many dolls, mostly of one kind which I understand was the most poplular one for little girls in Spain back in the day, were dressed to show the changes in fashion over the year.

Through the centre there were a selection of dolls with a disability. You can see one with a hearing device, one that is blind, one in a wheel chair and one with Downes Syndrome. These reflect the work Cati had done for many years through her charity to support 'special' children, including her own, now adult daughter who has Downe's Syndrome.

There was so much work on show here and I am glad I found time to go up and see it.

I spent one morning making a small start on my efforts to declutter. I chose the garage as my starting point as it is a depository for anything that needs a home, and once it goes in there, much of it is never used again. All my friends save their glass jars for me and I had accumulated far too many of them. I have decided to cut right back on jam making as I do not have the markets for it that I used to have, though I have promised to continue making picalilli for my sewing group friends who buy as much as I can make. So my jars are now sorted into bags of ten, along with their correct lids, and I kept around fifty of them. All the rest went to the glass recycling bin. I then sorted out the cat food bins, the pool towels and a few other boxes, and it is amazing what a difference it has made already. There is a long way to go, but with me it is slowly, slowly, and I will get there in the end.

We had some pretty rough weather mid-week and I spent the day in my craft room, making this light-up decoration for Christmas. It was a bought cutting file that I cut on my Cameo machine, and then assembled with sticky foam between each layer. A string of tiny LED lights were fixed around inside the base layer with glue dots, and when they are turned on it really shows the layers of shadows.

As a family we have never celebrated Halloween, though now it is almost as popular in UK as it is in America. Here the children have a communal celebration on the plaza, with a Haunted house and some games, and the adults man stalls selling snacks and drinks. After that, some of the children do go around the village 'Trick or Treating' but we only had three knocks on the door this year.

But the next day (Nov 1st) is All Saints Day and that is very special out here. The street outside each village cemetery is full of flower sellers, and from early morning folk come to buy flowers and take them in to decorated their loved ones graves. (Here the coffins are 'buried' in tiers of stone shelves, as the ground is too hard to dig graves). The marble pathways are swept clean, and candles are lit, and some families even gather to eat a brief meal as they visit each grave, which is intended to keep memories of their loved ones alive. Here is a photo, (it is not mine as I did not walk over there this year), of our village cemetery on the evening of All Saints Day.

I was late starting to prepare this because I had a video call with my son Ben that lasted for over two hours! We were joking about which one of us did the most talking and decided it was fairly even this time. He always makes me smile, and we enjoy our weekly catch-up.

We had another gorgeous fiery sunset last night, and I caught these doves resting on a TV aeriel, before flying home to their roost for the night. 

Once again the colours moved swiftly through the orange and red and faded to pink and purple, and because I couldn't choose which ones to include here, I made another collage so I could use more of them.

Now I am all prepared to publish this in the morning and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.