Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 30

It has been too hot to do anything exciting this week so I haven't much to write about. Yes, we did reach the promised 40º on Sunday morning! It was not the most pleasant day and we spent much of it indoors with the air-con on.

I have spent some time in my craft room with my fan nearly touching me and whizzing round as fast as it can go. I am not good at sitting doing nothing all day, and I have read several books on my Kindle, so for a change of eyesight I decided to come down here and do a bit of  laser cutting.

I was quite pleased with a set of six hexagonal coasters I cut, each with a different geometrical pattern cut out of them. However, I am not sure how much use coasters are when they are 'full of holes' so I cut plain hexagons from thin mdf board and glued them behind each design. I then sprayed them front and back with a waterproof varnish. 

I was even more pleased with the little box I made to put them in. It was a bought file but I needed to adapt it to take the extra depth caused by the backing layers, without displacing the shaping of  the feet, or the slots and tabs to put it all together. I added a little glue to the joins and then sprayed inside and out with varnish and this was my end result. It will make a nice present for someone one day.

I needed a new canister of spray varnish so I went to the local ferriteria (hardware store) with my son Tom. While there I found some small sheets of 3ply wood and bought some to try. I wanted to try a bigger cut and the wood I buy from Amazon is expensive and size choice is limited, so I thought this might be a cheaper option. Wrong! I soon realised that the wood was very poor quality but I decided to use some as a practice piece anyway. I made two small Christmas decorations to help me sort out the best engrave and cut settings. The engraving was not very good but they cut well, so I brightened them up with some paint and glitter and then varnished them to make sure the glitter stayed in place.

Then I decided to try my bigger project and as you can see here it was not very successful. The right hand side of the wood sheet was better quality and engraved reasonable well, but the left hand didn't engrave well at all. I had similar results when I tried to cut it out, with the right side cutting smoothly but the left hand side needed a lot of help from my craft knife to cut right through. This left rough edges that needed sanding. The cause was probably the glue holding the layers together.

But hey, not every attempt will turn out just right and it is a lesson learned. If I want to make a big project again, I will buy good wood! And I have a quite attractive dragonfly. His front legs came off so I reattached them with paper strips and glue, but he will probably fly across my wall for a while. I can see his imperfections but not everyone will.

My hand continues to do well, but the shoulder wound has not yet healed. The heat is not helping it. But today at the clinic the nurse was pleased and said it looked a lot better, but 'slowly, slowly', so I still have to attend twice a week to have the dressing changed. I shall be so glad when it can be uncovered so I can shower properly again.

And finally for this week, Wednesday was my second son Mike's 51st  birthday, and his daughter posted this lovely smiley photo of him on Facebook, with his youngest grandson on his shoulders. Mike was ten, twelve and thirteen when my three younger sons were born and he adored them all, especially as babies, and went on to be a great 'big-brother' to them as they grew up, and they are all best of friends now. He has had some ups and downs in his life but he has always been a good dad to his children, and now he has the next generation to enjoy. Smiles all round.

And on that happy note I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and publish this in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 29

Well we have survived another week, .. just..., but boy has it been a hot week, and a noisy one too. Yes it was fiesta week, starting last Thursday evening and going on until Tuesday evening this week. As it was so hot we did not go over to the plaza every night, but we could see the lights and fairground rides, and hear the music, while sitting on our porch. But we did go over briefly on Friday and again on Saturday night to watch the horses. One road is filled with sand and young men on horses gallop along and try to catch one of the ribbon sashes rolled around a wire across the road. If they suceed they are rewarded with a gift  (and sometimes a kiss) from one of the girls sitting on a raised platform at the side. They are all dressed in pretty flouncy dresses and have elaborate hairdos with flowers and combs in it. One young man was quite sucessful and managed to catch several ribbons and he took his horse back to girls to rear up and bow to them.

The plaza is full of tables and chairs, served by young people from one of the three temporary bars set up around the edge. They sell small beers, and wine and each drink can come with a tapa - a sausage, meat or cheese on a piece of bread. It was facinating to watch this man carefully slicing an Iberian ham into wafer thin strips. It is a real skill and takes many years of training to get it right. He was doing pretty good! (I love the painted chair beside his table).

Tuesday was the actual saint's day for Virgen del Carmen, our village patron saint, so on that day most of the village assembled on the plaza for a special mass. 

Many of them bring floral tributes to lay around the statue of Mary. This year there was a second statue that we think was Jesus holding the hand of a child, but we are not sure.

We sat right at the back behind one of the bars, and during the mass the bar staff were busy cooking the first round of meats for the tapas once the bars started serving.

After the mass the statues are paraded through the streets of the village, and we joined the crowd following them. Aren't the lights pretty?

They finish their parade at the Town hall where the Virgin is showered with rose petals,  and the Mayor shouts out a tribute to which everyone responds "Viva!". Then they process up to the small plaza outside the church where they are greeted by the band playing the national anthem, the bells ringing out in loud peels and then the only proper fireworks we see all year. It is quite a moving spectacle, and eventually the statues are carried into the church to their usual resting places.

Of course we took loads of  photos and videos, and using two of my sons and one of mine, I have merged them into a short video to try and convey some of the atmosphere of the evening. You can see it HERE.

That officially marks the end of the fiesta. There would be music and dancing still going on over on the main plaza, but we were ready for bed so we made our way home down our quiet, empty street. Peace for another year!

I have had enough of temperatures in the upper thirties already and we have weeks of it to go yet, but we have air-con in the main room and our bedroom, and fans everywhere, so we are just about managing. I am not good at sitting doing nothing, but I am so glad that I don't have to do anything, so I can do the bare necessities as and when the mood takes me!

My hand continues to do well but the shoulder wound is not there yet, so I still go to the clinic regularly to have it re-dressed, and hopefully it will settle in the end. As I have to keep it dry it is difficult to shower properly and dips in the pool are out of the question. I am envious of Tom dipping in and out when he gets too hot.

I prefer my fan at shoulder height in my room, but Chris has quite an efficient floor one and Tolly soon found it was the perfect place to lay. He's not very elegant, but at least he is keeping cool the best way he can.

So time now to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and publish this in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 28

Progress has been made this week. I am happy to report that my hand is well on the way to being healed. I had the huge dressing removed on Monday and 25 stitches removed. Now I have one corner covered with a small dressing for a few more days more as a precaution than anything else and everything seems to be functioning well. Unfortunately the graft site on my shoulder is not doing quite so well. It was infected and the centre section has opened up, but the rest is fine. They took some of the stitches out and the rest will be gone in the middle of next week. I am taking antibiotics so I am hoping the infection will be gone by then. I am so grateful to the hospital staff who have done a great job on my hand. They will call me back when they have the results of the biopsy on the part they removed.

This week our son Tom finished his train journey across Europe and arrived here on Tuesday evening on a bus from Murcia to Vera. Now he is settled in his 'office' on our sitting room table, where he works all morning and part of the afternoon, and then relaxes for the rest of the day. Although he loves his life in Denmark it is a tad chilly there so some Spanish sunshine makes a nice change for him.

Vera has a small bus station separated from the main road by a long flower bed. While we sat waiting for Tom's bus to arrive  I  just had to take a photo of this beautiful hibiscus shrub. It was covered in huge pink flowers all seemingly at their best at trhe same time.

The cats are struggling with the heat (So am I!), and spend a lot of time sprawled out on the stone floor in front of one of our fans, or in a shady corner they have found, but Leo still manages to make time to play for an hour after breakfast. He is a born hunter and this week I found him lying in our passage watching this baby bird he had brought in. It was a bit shocked but unharmed, so I gently carried it outside and as it looked almost fledged I risked gently throwing it up into the air. Sure enough it managed to flutter its way to a nearby tree, so I hope its mother found it. Leo was too hot to bother following to see where it went!

I wasn't able to do much while I had the huge dressing on my hand, but I did have another session with my laser cutter. I have mentioned before that my sewing group put together bags of small gifts at Christmas for each child who's family use the food bank, based at the English church where we meet. There are around 100 children with ages ranging from a few months to older teenage, so it is quite a challenge and we work on gifts throughout the year. We like to include small toys such as minicars, spinning tops, bubbles etc so I decided to make five sets of Tic-tac-toe games or Tres en raya, Three in a row, as the spanish children call it. My first set used tiny dinosaurs as the counters, and I thought they were so cute, that I made two more sets. 

Then I did a set of smiley and cheeky faces, and one of very decorated O's and X's. Of course I also made the bases with the grid engraved on them. I am hoping one of the ladies in the group will make little drawstring bags to put them in. Here are all my pieces. I have just varnished them lightly to protect them from sticky fingers, and am waiting for them to dry.

This week is Fiesta week in the village so the men have been busy putting up lights and bunting everywhere, and the car park is busy with the building of a roller coaster, bumper cars and other rides. It all kicks off tonight, but the main and final day is next Tuesday. So we are in for a few noisy days and nights, but I am sure we will survive. It is such an important occasion for the villagers, and the atmosphere is happy and full of fun. It is so hot so I don't see us going over to the plaza very often, but I am sure we will be going over for a while in the evenings.

A funny story to end with. I bought two oil dispensers from Amazon a while back, one for olive oil and one for sunflower oil. They pour but I also wanted them for the spray for when I want to lightly oil something for the air fryer. When they came I was diappointed to find one of them wouldn't spray. The other was fine and I didn't get around to returning the faulty one, which was my fault. Anyway this week I decided to try again and ordered a third one. The parcel arrived this morning looking a bit squashed and what was inside made me laugh so much. This what it should look like.

This what was in my parcel!

It looked as though it had been left somewhere excessively hot and had just shrivelled up. This time we did tell Amazon and they said they would refund the money but we didn't need to send it back. So as the top was unaffected, I tried it out on the base of the faulty one and it works just fine, so I have my second oil spray with no further cost. Win , win for me.

And with that I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and I'll see you in the morning.

Fiday Smiles 2024# Week 27

I have done very little to write about this week. I could do with the temperature dropping around ten degrees as I am melting most of the day and night! The heat saps my energy and my 'get-up-and-go'.

It is also quite limiting to have my right hand out of use, almost. In honesty the operation went well and I have no pain in my hand, but it has a special healing dressing on it which makes it look as though I am wearing a boxing glove. Despite all my efforts, it is looking rather grubby now but I am not allowed to touch it until I go back to the hospital next Monday.

They took the skin for the graft from the front of my right shoulder and just pulled the two sides together with fifteen stitches! They are due to come out on Monday as well, but I am not sure it is healing quite as well as I had hoped. I have the dressing changed at the clinic every day and they are keeping an eye on it, so I will just have to wait and see. But all in all it seems to have been successful.

With the temperatures getting very close to 40º now it is hard to find anywhere to keep cool. We have used the air-con most afernoons for a while, and I now have my big industrial fan out on the porch, so I can sit outside in the evenings, while Chris enjoys the football. I bought the fan for my craft room but it is too strong even on its lowest settings, and it blew all my papers and bits and pieces away, but outside it is fine.

I am a bit sad today as we said 'Good-bye'  to my beautiful Tango. Everyone laughingly called him 'Grumpy Cat', but he couldn't help the shape of his face, and there wasn't a bad bone in his body.

It was the right time for him and a kindness not to keep him struggling through another hot summer. He was stone deaf and almost blind, and often stood in the middle of a room in a daze as though he didn't know where he was. He no longer interacted with us, nor the other cats, so his life had no quality.

I have put together a collage of some of my favourite photos of him, and he will be alive in my memory for ever.

And that is all I have for you this week. My apologies to anyone I didn't visit last week. Workmen next door were pruning back some bougainvillea and they cut through our cable leaving us with no internet or TV. A man came to fix it on Friday but he was unable to reconnect us so he said a man would come on Monday to put up a new cable; which he did. So we are now back to all systems go, and hopefully I will get to everyone this week.

So I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and publish this in the morning.