Rocking your world 2014: Week 37

Here we go again. It is Friday and another week has flown passed. I hope it has been a good one for you. Here it has been a hot one, too hot in fact for me to sit outside early afternoons, so instead I have been resting in the sitting room with my chair set between the open door and the open window, in the hope of catching a breath of wind, but most days, needing the fan on full blast to move the air. Here I am doing a bit more of my cross stitch picture, and little Tango decided he needed to sit on my lap so he could feel the fan too! Not only is he like having a wool rug on your legs, but he also found my moving thread a source of great entertainment, and he did his best to catch it between every stitch, so I could have done without him that afternoon. But he has been with us for three months now, and is only just beginning to come out of hiding and approach us, rather than us finding him, so I wasn't going to turn him off. Chris caught him on his phone camera, with such a look of innocence on his face. You have to love him really!

We were looking forward to seeing the last of the three super moons early in the week. Chris said I should try to photograph it before dark so there was something else in the picture as a point of reference, so I took this one at sundown.

Later in the evening I took this one. It is not so good of the moon, but it's a more interesting photo.

Later again I took this one which I am also showing you, because to me it looks like an animal having fun playing with a ball of light. OK. So that's just me being fanciful, but I like it anyway.

And while we are on sky photos, here is one I just managed to catch on camera. It had been a very hot day but a bit overcast, and towards tea-time, the storm clouds were gathering over the Cabrera mountains. I just happened to catch it as the clouds parted a little and there was a small patch of rainbow colours. I got my camera just in time, because a few minutes later the clouds had covered it over again. It is not a good quality photo. I had to point and shoot quickly, but worth a try, I thought.

While it has been so hot, I haven't been able to do any knitting but I did have a small crochet project on the go, and on Tuesday I finished it off. So here is Patchwork Puppy - the latest member of the Perry zoo? As one of my friends pointed out, at least I won't have to feed this one!

I wonder if you know what these are. You may remember a photo from a few weeks ago showing a palm tree overladen with stems of dates. Well these are some of those dates. They are now sold in our markets like this, but I will keep them for a week or two, and gradually they will turn brown and squishy, and then they taste wonderful!

Chris and I are both continuing to lose a little weight. I am wary of losing too much too quickly, because then it tends not to stay off, but we are being careful what we eat, and it seems to be working. I am just waiting for it to cool down a bit now, so I can try to do a little exercise as well. Part of our healthy diet is to have one of my fruit or vegetable blends three or four times a week. Last night's smoothy was made from an orange, a banana, a whole raw carrot, about an inch of root ginger, and a little of my home-made yoghurt. This time it did taste as good as it looks. That picture makes it look as though my old coca-cola glass has a face on it. It hasn't really, but I have a reputation for seeing faces everywhere!

Two things made me very happy this week. 

I have been collecting donations from friends at church, towards the shipping costs of my Knitting for Africa project, (My courier friend takes the knitting to UK for free, but we try to include a donation with each consignment towards the shipping cost to Africa). My friends collect their small copper coins in jam jars for me, and it had all been sitting in my cupboard over the summer, just waiting for me to sort it out. In UK you can put coins of the same denomination, into plastic bags which the bank then weighs, but here they have to be carefully counted and fitted into fiddly little plastic sleeves supplied by the bank, which then fasten with popper-like studs. They are an absolute pain to do, but the bank won't accept them any other way, so I made myself get on with the job. Nineteen rolls of one cent coins later, eighteen of two cent coins, another eighteen of five cents, and so on, in the end added up to a wonderful 100€ which I have passed on to the charity. They weighed an absolute ton but fortunately I managed to get a rare parking space right outside the bank, so I didn't have to carry them far. I am always overwhelmed by the kindness people show, and the support they give for my project.

Another nice surprise came with the postman. We rarely get personal mail here except on our birthdays and at Christmas, so to come home from the shops and find two envelopes addressed to me was big happy surprise. In one there were a set of number puzzles. My sister Jean buys a puzzle magazine each month because she likes doing all the crossword, etc, but she doesn't usually attempt the number ones. I, on the other hand, soon get bored of crosswords, but I am fascinated by numbers, so each month she tears the number puzzles out of her magazine and stores them up for me, and when she has enough to make it worth while, she sends them to me. So this week I have something new to keep the old grey cells ticking over. They make a nice change from the Killer Sudoku that I usually do.

The second envelope came from my grand-daughter, and she sent two ATCs she had made especially for me. This was a lovely surprise as it is a long time since we last exchanged these little pieces of art work. She used to come to my house a lot in UK, and liked to look through my folders of ATCs, and she did make a few, so of course I also made a few for her. But I thought she had left that behind as she moved into her teenage years, so I was really pleased to get these.

And now, before I leave you to link this up with Virginia's blog for Rocking your World, and Annie's Friday Smiles, week 84,  I'll just give you this week sunset. It's not as colourful as some, but still bursting with light and beauty. 

Have a beautiful week everyone, and I'll see you next time.

Rocking your world 2014;Week 36

Despite sitting at my computer to write this early this morning, it is now tea-time and I am just getting started. There are just so many interesting things to look at when you switch on in the morning, and I'm very easily distracted!

That said, I have very little to write about this week. It has been a good week. 

I managed to have a long video chat with son number two this morning, using Skype. He is off work with a prolapsed disc, and is very bored with lying flat on his back. Unfortunately he has had similar problems before which resulted in him needing surgery, and that is the case again this time. They don't have a free slot until early October, but I was pleased to see that he is keeping cheerful, and making the best of the situation.

We still had our son Tom with us until late Tuesday night, so I am very grateful for lots of time to sit and chat with him, and catch up on how life is treating him. It was good to see him relaxing, enjoying the sun and the water, and just chilling out - if you can chill in the hot Spanish sun!

He had a final dip in the pool at midnight, before heading off for the airport at around 2.00am.

The other thing that has made this such a good week is the compete revamping of my craft room, so this week you will have a guided tour of how it was done.

Tom was a huge help to me, as my new furniture arrived from IKEA at 9.00 on Monday morning. (They rang me on Sunday afternoon to say they would be here at 8.00 so I was up in good time). It was only a desk and a book shelf but they were big, solid pieces, and Chris and I would have struggled to handle them without Tom.

Of course the first task was to prepare the room by emptying most of my stuff into our bedroom. There is a bed under there somewhere! On an earlier visit to IKEA we had bought a two-wheeler sack

trolley, which proved invaluable with my heavy boxes of paper etc. This left me with an almost empty room though I did leave the old computer desk with the laptop still connected until the very last minute.

So first we rotated my big L-shaped work desk through 90 degrees and fitted it into the right hand corner under the window. Then we built the new computer desk, also sort of L-shaped, and fitted it into the left hand corner under the window. We moved the computer and printer across on to it, and demolished the old desk.

Next we built the new bookshelf, which has the old one on top of it, and put them in place. In my original plan I had turned my tall filing cabinet around so it protruded into the room, in order to get the book case in, but it turned out that this did not leave me enough space to get access to the built-in cupboard, so Tom suggested swapping it with the book case and pulling it out even further, so the case could slot just behind it, and this worked well.

Finally he helped me bring back my two storage units for the Really Useful boxes, and stack them one above the other. 

He had done all he could, so off he went to sit in the sun and share a few beers with his dad, and I set about returning all the boxes and files, and arranging them where I wanted them. I am very pleased with the end result, especially as I have achieved my main objective of de-cluttering and greatly enlarging my work area, which up to now has had one of the storage units on it. So here we go with a quick walk around the room.

Firstly, on the right as you enter is a built in wardrobe. The end section had four shelves filled with 'things that don't go any where else'. Then the double section has a hanging rail with a set of full-width drawers below it. The rail does house some of my clothes, but the drawers are filled with craft items!

Beside this, and directly in front of you as you come in, is the new and old book shelves which now house all my folders of stamps, ATCs, tutorial notes etc, and also some boxes of patterned paper snippets, WIP, and finished cards. This is flanked by the rotated filing cupboard where all my plain paper and card live, as well as embellishments, peel-offs, etc. (You can just see some of my favourite photos behind a set of magnetic frames, which have moved from the cabinet doors to the end panel).

Around the other side of this is my working area, with my desk, now cleared except for a few essential items that I like to keep close at hand.

I have quite a large mirror to go on the wall above the desk, but I want to do something with its frame, and add some vinyl before I hang it. The back of the cabinet is to my right and this is a handy place to store my magnets which I use to peg up items to dry, or bits I don't want to lose. And behind that is a table holding one of my mini sets of drawers, which makes good use of the 'dead space' created when I pulled the cabinet away from the wall.

To my left, the working area extends under the window. Arwen is happy to find she still has a place to lie in the sun. I had shut her in the bathroom while we were working and she was not too impressed when I first let her back in. But now she has found her spot, she is quite happy again. Of course the space under the desk is filled with more drawers and boxes housing glitter, spray paints, embossing powders, envelopes and much more.

And so on round to my lovely new computer desk. The coloured cloth covers my big wide-format printer, hopefully protecting it from cat hairs! The space on the right is perfect for when I am using my silhouette cutter. The shelf at the back is new, but this area will change a bit as I have been promised a new PC with a big, wide monitor, to replace my dying laptop, but I have to wait until my birthday and Christmas for that.

And finally, beyond the desk is a tall tower of wobbly plastic drawers, and then the double unit of boxes where my scrapbook papers, Christmas 'stuff', colour-sorted snippets, pens and ink pads etc live.

The drawers came with me from UK and they are not idea, but they serve to house, things I only use occasionally, like clay, templates, old wooden stamps, water pencils etc. Maybe one day I will buy one more narrow storage unit to match the rest, but it won't be just yet.

And then we are back to the door. 

So I really appreciate what a lucky lady I am, and I am filled with admiration for those of you who work from a dining room table etc. This is my craft haven, and I spend several hours in here most days. So really I have no excuse for not making lots of lovely things have I? And I am sure you can understand why I am so grateful and smiling this week. I like to work in an orderly way, and it gives me immense pleasure to have everything sorted like this. I just need to make a few more labels so I can find everything in its new home, and then it will be done.

Now before I go to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles - yes it is lovely to have her back, now settled into her new home - and Virginia's blog, Celtic House, I will just leave you with another beautiful sunset.

And as I got up earlier than usual to meet the IKEA men on Monday, I can also share a lovely sunrise. The sun is just peeping through the grape vines on the framework in the house across the road from us. Lovely eh?!