Rocking Your World 2015: Week 46

My animals are always making me smile. Arwen is growing her winter coat now which makes her look huge. She has been fed up with me lately because I actually want to use my craft room to do some craft in, and she thinks it is all hers'! But today it is reasonably tidy, so she perched on a box of envelopes so she could look out of the window.

But she hates having her photo taken and knows the little sound my camera makes when I turn it on. I spent ages calling her, trying to make her turn round and look at me. When she finally did, 'If looks could kill.....!'

As usual for the week or two following my Christmas market, this has been a quieter week, with not too much going on. We have had some beautiful days, with blue skies to lift our spirits, and as long as you are in a sheltered spot, out of any wind, it is still quite warm. So we have been able to sit outside to eat our lunch every day, and when I have had nothing more pressing to do, I have stayed out on the porch to do some of my crochet, until the shadows come creeping up on me and drive me indoors. As a result I have managed to make the first two of my squares for my 'Log cabin style' blanket. Lucy, from Attic 24, gave us the pattern for the sunny granny square centres last week, and on Sunday she gave us the stitches for all the other squares with the colour arrangement of the first two. She will give us the order of the stripes for two more squares each Sunday until the New Year. I would love to think I can keep up with her, but I know some weeks there will not be enough time. But at least I am off to a good start.

Together with next Sunday's squares these will form the centre of the blanket, with twelve more squares to go around them. I love the way the colours all mix together. Even when two touching colours would normally clash, they look right. You can see how the warmer colours are forming the outside of the centre piece, while the cooler colours are forming a cross in the middle. The two little tags of wool are colour coded telling me the number of the square and its orientation, which will make it much easier to set the blanket when all the squares are finished.

I had a happy surprise this week when the postman brought me a card from one of my 'blogland' friends. It was one of her lovely zentangle drawings. I love RAKs and half their fun is the element of surprise. We get very little mail here, and most of what we do get is bills, so a surprise card was a real lift.

Another nice surprise appeared in my e-mail inbox this week. When I write up about something I have made, especially on my other blog, I always try to give credit to the designer of a file, or the maker of the stamp I have used, and this week I used some cutting files from a new designer. A friend of hers had spotted my blog where I had mentioned her name, and told her about it, so she came to read it, and she sent me a free cutting file as a Thank You. It is for a wreath of poinsettias, and has a lot of pieces, but I shall definitely be trying it out very soon. Isn't it pretty?

A few years ago, when I was visiting in UK, I bought a black dress with an all-over pattern of poppies. It is not a style I usually wear, so it doesn't get used a lot, but I always put it on for the Remembrance Day service at church, and again on Armistice Day. I showed you the dress in my week 46 post last year. This year I decided I would like to make a crochet poppy to wear on it, so I dug out a book of crocheted flowers, bought many years ago, and sure enough there was a poppy pattern in it. It was for an oriental poppy, so it came up a bit bigger than I had intended, but I rather like it, and it got lots of appreciative comments from my friends.

I am always warmed by the generosity of folk, and I had another example of this when I received a call from a lady at the Lions club, asking me to contact another lady who lives on a nearby camp site, who holds various charity events and wants to donate some money to ASADIS. I didn't know her at all, but I phoned her and we arranged to meet in a bar in the village when she came in for the market on Tuesday. She was a bubbly, Irish lady, who was impressed because I could spell her name - Siobhan. (The only reason I knew this was because it was the name of a little girl in my nursery and I spent many months teaching her to write it before she moved on to 'big school'. Phonetics don't work with that one!!) Anyway, Siobhan is holding a carols by candlelight, to include lighting candles for people whose names are in her book of remembrance, and the proceeds will be passed on to ASADIS. So kind from someone who knew very little about the organisation, but who just wanted to help.

Yesterday, Chris suggested we should go out to lunch, and we decided to try a restaurant that was new to us, but had been highly recommended by various friends. And we were not disappointed. The room was nice and had a lovely view, and the food and service were excellent. The standard was well above many 'menu del días' that we have had. It was another lovely sunny day with a bright blue sky. We opted to eat inside in case it was windy out on the patio, but after our meal we took a drink outside and sat in the sun for a while.

Chris has started wearing a light jumper but he feels the cold more than I do. I am still in summer dresses, which is pretty good for the middle of November. But I have slipped a cardigan on when I first get up some mornings, because as usual, it is often colder indoors than it is outside.

As you can see, there was a huge terrace out at the back of the hotel, and I walked all around it taking photos of the amazing view. It is fairly flat around Vera, so you can see for a long way. This was the view at the back, and right in the distance, I could just glimpse the sea.

Over to the side I could see the Cabrera mountains that are clearly seen from our front gate, and they slope gently down to Mojacar.

The campo is fairly green after all the rain, but as the sun was going down it cast a lovely pearly glow over the hills, and showed up the rusty brown that is still there in between all the new growth.

Ad that just leaves me with a couple of sunset photos taken at around 6 o'clock tonight. I took this one because I thought it looked like a giant hand reaching out of the clouds. It wasn't until I put it on the computer, that I saw the birds flying across to find their resting place for the night.

The shape shifters were around up there, and my hand soon became a big pair of pincers, or maybe a dolphin playing in the waves. I think I preferred the hand!

Right, I'm off to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles now, and Rocking my world at Celtic House. Do join me and share some positivity from others that link there.

Rocking Your World 2015: Week 45

We are running out of weeks this year aren't we! As the first part of this post is about smiling, I thought I would share this with you. I saw it on the internet this week. When I was little, my mum used to say "You smile, and others smile, and soon there miles and miles of smiles; and life's worthwhile because you smile" This made me think of her, and yes, it made me smile!

And while we are in a good mood, here is another picture that made me smile. This is my two lovely, little great-grandsons, enjoying playing with the Autumn leaves. I can't believe little Alfie is ten months already, and Isaac is a proper school boy. How the time flies. Their mum's friend Nesta Lloyd, who is a professional photographer, took this for her, so all credit goes to her. Thank you for allowing us to share it Nesta.

This week hasn't been the easiest one, not so much for me, but for many of my friends. One dear friend had her house burgled while the family went out for supper on Friday night. They lost a lot of valuable items as well as credit cards and cash, and understandably they are feeling very violated and upset. They also experienced a small earthquake in their area. Fortunately it didn't send waves out as far as us. And to cap it all, while we had severe thunderstorms and heavy rain all through Sunday night, they had an horrendous storm, with hail stones big enough to cause damage to plants and paint work, and the road to their village was cut off all through Monday by flood water. This is the village where my church is, so a lot of my close friends were affected. But of course, in this post we try to find the positives in every situation, and the positive that came from this was a real sense of love in the community, with everyone helping out where they could, taking food and flowers to those affected, and helping with the clearing up in the aftermath of the storm.  We try to make our little church a real source of light in the area, and it was seen in the reaching out from one to another.

We then had a bit of a worrying time with our big boy Kim, the German Shepherd-Mastiff cross dog that we took in as a pup three years ago. Last weekend I treated all the dogs and cats with anti-parasitic spot-ons and Kim seemed to have a reaction to it. He 'lost his wag' and was very sad. He hardly left his bed, and slept for most of the day. Every time I sat down he wanted cuddles, and although he is around 38 kilos, he still thinks he is a lap dog, and kept trying to sit on me! He was scratching the area where I applied the treatment, but he has never reacted to it before. He may have just been disturbed by all the noise on the street for Halloween, and the constant ringing of the bell and banging on the door, but fortunately his 'wag' came back yesterday. He did just about get out of bed to greet me in the morning, and today he is back to normal.

However, there have been some good things this week as well. Today, my same group of friends gathered together at Jasmine's house for her twice-yearly coffee morning cum charity market. I had my craft stall with the items I showed last week, and this week I managed to get a few more items made. I used my silhouette cameo cutting machine to make vinyl decals to decorate some sweet jars, and candle plates.

Next I used some bought cutting files to make these hanging ornaments. I thought they were an unusual shape, and I enjoyed making them.

My last project was something I have been meaning to have a go at for the couple of years since I bought the file for it. It was an image that I cut from vinyl and added to the front of a shadow frame. Then I put some glittered linen and yellow vellum behind it, and a string of ten lights behind that. I was very pleased with it when it was done. I sold it at the market today, so sometime I will have to make another one as I want one for myself too! I just love the imagery.

Once again, there are more details of how these were made on my other blog which you can see by clicking HERE. I also printed off five calendars which I designed using my own photographs to illustrate a Bible verse for each month. I shall be making a few more of these as I sold the ones I had made and took a few orders.

Of course, my Christmas stall woudn't be complete without some packs of mince-pies, so on Monday, which was a public holiday here for All Saints' Day, so there was no point in going out anyway as everywhere was closed, I had a baking day and made nine dozen mince-pies.

We were really lucky to have a beautiful day today for the coffee morning, so there was a good turnout, and there was plenty for them to see. Jean had her jewelry stall and Jasmine had her knitting and sewing, and lots of 'recycled' cards.

Anthony had done his usual amazing baking with delicious pasties, raspberry meringues, and cheesecake among other things, and Sue and Fran were kept busy in the kitchen, making tea and coffee.

Margie looked after a big bric-a-brac stall and Sylvia and William ran a tombola.

And here is my stall, looking a bit untidy because I had already sold quite a few bits and pieces. You'll have to excuse the cups of tea. My friend Eileen came to help me out. We were out in the fly-free porch area and the sun was streaming in on us, so we needed a tea break.

I took 92€ on my stall, which I was pleased with, and altogether we raised 420€ which will be shared between the church funds, The Barnabas Fund, and my Knit for Africa project.

There was a table and chairs set up out in the garden, for people to sit and have a break, so when all the

clearing up had been done, Eileen and I sat out there and ate one of Anthony's pasties for our lunch, as we were going on to a singing practice later in the afternoon, and we didn't have time to drive home, and then come back again. It was really warm sitting there, and I think we could both have done with a nap rather than a singing session, but we managed it all, and got home in time for tea!

One other happy moment this week was when the post man delivered a big squashy parcel to me and inside was  bright coloured balls of wool. I had ordered this pack to make a lovely crocheted blanket featured on the very talented Lucy's blog, Attic24. There were eighteen balls of wool in a mix of warm and cool colours, and they arrived all tucked neatly into an organzie sack. Isn't that a lovely way to send it?

I have now transferred the wool into a plastic crate, as I need to get to the different colours easily. Don't they look lovely all together? I shall use the sack to store the squares as I make them until I am ready to assemble the blanket.

The blanket is made up of sixteen squares in the style of traditional log cabin quilts, and they each use all the colours, arranged with the warm colours on one side and the cooler ones on the other, and are then sewn with like touching like. This photo of four squares joined together might explain it better than I can.

Lucy has given us the pattern for the sunny granny square in the centre of each large square, and she is going to feed the rest of the instructions to us each Sunday up until Christmas, with the idea being that we crochet along with her. I think it might take me a bit longer to finish mine, but I am looking forward to making a start now the market crafting is over.

And that's about it for this week. I do of course have some sky photos to close with. We have had some high winds this week that have 'shredded' the clouds in interesting ways, and they then pick up the colours from the setting sun. So here they are.

Now I shall link these up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World over at Celtic House, and then I think I have earned an early night. So I shall go to bed, but I will be back tomorrow to see what has had you smiling this week.