More Friday Fun.

I bet you thought I wasn't going to make it this week. Well here I am, and I am starting this week with another photo of my rascal Kim. I showed you last week that we had just bought a bed each for the dogs, so I dug out Miki and Foxy's favourite blankets, which slightly resemble Gruyere cheese, as they have had them since their puppy chewing days. (That is when they were puppies and chewed everything - not when they chewed up puppies!!). As this is Kim's first winter he didn't have a blanket so I found the last piece of the sheepskin bedspread I had used to make the other two. The next morning he dragged all three onto the yard and promptly set about making his match the girls' ones! For now we are keeping their house closed during the day so his blanket survives until it is really cold!

Other positive things that have happened this week:

I did some gardening and replaced a dead geranium with these winter flowering pansies. Aren't they sweet? Pansies always remind me of my sister Brenda because they are her favourite flowers. I love their little faces.

On Wednesday, at my usual craft group, one of our ladies had made up kits for us to make this padded tree, wall decoration.

Here are some of us hard at it. There were a lot of little triangles for us to stuff and stitch across, but that didn't stop us all having a good natter and a laugh together, though we are all concentrating very seriously here!

I dipped my knife into a new pot of Marmite! I wonder if anyone else appreciates the little 'tingle' that gives me. It's the little things in life.....

Today I tackled my dining room. The table looked like this!

But that is very positive because this is all the things that generous friends have knitted for my Knit for Africa project. Aren't people great! I sorted it all out, and then bagged it up, ready to take to my courier friend Phil. He is so kind, and whenever he has space in his van, he takes our knitting to UK and delivers it, free of charge. In fact we couldn't keep going if we had to pay postage on it, so his generosity has made a world of difference to us. When I counted everything I found we had 28 blankets, 72 jumpers and cardigans, 64 beanie hats, 9 teddies, and 21 cotton vests and T-shirts. They make a lovely colourful pile don't they?

If you would like to know more about my project, there is a link in my right side bar. At the end of the file there is a link to my photo file with some lovely photos of the families receiving our work.

I waked into the sitting room the other day and two of my cats were curled up together on my chair. They looked so comfy that I didn't want to move them. The little tabby Luna, rarely stays in the house by day, but it was windy and even Paco came away from his usual sunny patch, and dozed indoors.

Then in the evening I looked out onto the porch where the dogs were and two of them were on the cane settee! Foxy is a little in awe of Kim, but she was obviously comfortable enough to share a bed with him. Poor Miki is on the floor, but she jumps up on the settee too when one of the others moves. It is a wonder we have any furniture left. It will us sitting on the floor soon!

And finally yet another sky. We have had some beautiful sunsets just lately. The best one was Monday night, but I was out with a friend and for once I didn't have my camera with me, so I couldn't get a photo. But I quite liked this one. It reminds me of the song 'I see the bad moon rising' only , of course, this is a new moon not a bad one! It's just the way my mind wanders!

I shall post my naughty Kim on Annie's Friday Smiles again this week, and also link this to Rocking my World on Virginia's blog.  Have a positive week everyone.

Rocking my World Friday.

Hi. I am a bit last minute again this week. I sat down to do this, this morning but I kept getting side-tracked. I am feeling blessed this week because actually I have not done a lot, so I haven't got a lot to write about, but sometimes it is good to be able sit back and just take it easy.

So I am starting this week with a photo of my three furry friends, Kim, Miki and Foxy. 

I can't help smiling at this picture so I shall be linking it up to Annie's Friday Smiles later. Don't they look innocent? But if you look behind them you will see the havoc they caused to my fly-free netting,(currently shored up with bits of wood until they are better behaved!), not to mention the yard broom and several plastic milk bottles. Kim, on the left of the picture, is only ten months old, so he is really still a puppy, and we sometimes forget that when he chews his way through something. He has already grown bigger than the other two, who are both around four and a half now, and he still has six months or so to grow in. They are all rescue dogs so we don't know much about their parents, but the vet thinks Kim is an Alsatian-Mastiff cross. He is really a gentle giant, and very affectionate, but like all  'toddlers' he has a stubborn streak!

They usually only sit together like this when they think I have some treats in my hand for them. They were wrong! But I did give in and fetch them a biscuit each for posing so nicely for me.

Kim's favourite toy is an empty milk bottle. He will

play with for it for ages. But sometimes Miki will sneak up and take it, and she will guard it for hours and not let him have it back. Which explains why there are more than one littering our yard in the photos!

We have had some fun with the dogs this week. Kim suddenly noticed the old TV aerial on our roof. It is obsolete but as it is in a difficult place to reach, and is very securely wired in place, we have left it there. Kim can't have seen it before, but he was attracted by some noisy birds that were perching on it, and he decided that he didn't like it. So he sat near the corner of the house and just barked at it none-stop, and nearly drove us demented. 

In the end, Chris borrowed a long ladder and climbed

onto the roof to cut the wires holding it. It is now safely down where it no longer bothers Kim, but I was very happy to see Chris safely down on ground level too. We may live in a bungalow, but we are getting too old to be climbing ladders these days. I was supposed to be making sure the ladder was steady, but I am not sure I could have done anything if he had fallen!

Also this week we decided to buy a bed each for the dogs before the colder weather comes. They are out-side animals, and sleep in a wire enclosure all year. Last winter Miki and Foxy had our two old cane chairs to sleep on, but they were beyond use by Spring and we got rid of them, but they need something to keep them off the ground when it gets colder. After much deliberation we bought a medium size bed for Miki and a smaller one for Foxy and put their blankets in them.

Miki was straight in hers and she stayed there for most of the day as well as all night. (Note she took her milk bottle in there with her!). Foxy needed a bit of coaxing, but in the end she did settle into hers. For Kim we bought the largest one they had, allowing for a bit more growth, but so far he has shown no interest in it. However we put all three into their 'house' and they left very little floor space for him to lie on, so I am assuming he did eventually get in it to sleep. He had certainly had a good chew on the blanket in it by this morning! But every time he got out, one of the others jumped in. They obviously liked the idea of a 'king-sized' bed too, but we would never have got three big ones in their house. So now we have to try and teach them which one is theirs'. 

I did a bit of gardening this week and was rather upset to discover this. They are the caterpillars of the red saw-fly and they just love eating rose leaves. We do spray the roses several times a year and I thought we had got rid of them, but there must have been a later hatching that I hadn't noticed, so they are back.

It is time to cut the rose bushes back hard now anyway, but they are still flowering. It is hard to cut them back when they give such beauty.

This one is covered with water droplets because we did have a couple of little showers this week, though the sun was soon back out to dry it all up again.

On Tuesday night we had a spectacular light show as flash after flash of lightening lit up the sky. The thunder was rolling round the hills all around us, but we only had one lot of heavy rain that lasted about half an hour. It was our first proper rain since April, and really we needed it to go on for all day, though no doubt we would have moaned if it had! I stood outside for ages trying to catch the lightening on camera, but I don't have the knowledge, nor a sufficiently sophisticated camera to do it. I took around forty photos but none of them were any good. I have since read a few tutorials on it, but I still don't think my camera is quite good enough. I will probably have forgotten what to do by the time we have another storm anyway!

Although I have had a relaxing week, I have spent some time in my craft room, because that is my hobby so it is how I relax. As a result I have now got about eighty Christmas cards made. 

Last night I finished another run of a dozen, which you can read more about by clicking here.

Another blessing was to hear that our son had arrived safely in Denmark on Monday. I didn't expect him to go because of the storms, but his work is there so he needed to get there if he could. His Facebook status read "...the flight wasn't too bad, just a bit bumpy, but I think we landed sideways!" I was worried about him going, so it was a relief to know he had got there.

I will leave you with another sunset. I do love the sky and this was so dramatic and beautiful, I couldn't resist taking another photo.

Now I am off to link this to Celtic House and see what everyone else has done this week. Be Blessed!