Rocking Your World 2020: Week 9

Well I hope something has 'Rocked your world' this week. It has been a mixed week for us as yesterday we lost a dear friend. She was an English lady, who, with her husband, was the first English resident in our village, so she has a huge number of Spanish friends as well as English. She was a lovely lady and we will really miss her.

That aside it has been a lovely week here, starting with last Saturday which was Carnival Day. it was a sunny afternoon though not the warmest as the parade doesn't start until 5.00pm. As you can see, the streets were buzzing.

Our little village carnival is such fun because all the families get involved. Those not in the parade, all turn out to cheer on those who are. Some groups hire elaborate costumes while others are all hand made.  Here are just a few of this year's entries.

This group had adults and children dressed alike and a lot of work had gone into making their costumes.

This family always build their set around the youngest member who is confined to an electric wheelchair. This year he was riding an elephant.

 

Some groups were slightly more bizarre.

One of our friends is inside a dinasaur. They were very difficult to walk in!

Music was provided by two bands. The one above was very colourful in wigs and skirts. In the group below the two girls had more 'clothes' on their heads than their bodies, but they enjoyed dancing down the street and their drummers were very good.

That evening everyone had the chance to vote for their favourite group on the Town Hall website and three prizes were awarded.

First prize went to Mary Poppins with their smartly dresses nannies and little sweeps (even down to the wee one in a pushchair).

Second prize went to this group called Keeping Los Gallardos Safe, with lots of little 'cops' and the adults were the 'robbers'.

And in third place was this group called Popcorn. They were my favourites and I know they made all their own costumes, so well done to them.

We went down to the slip road at the front of the village to see them set off and then they went all around the villlage, stopping to dance, blow bubbles and throw around giant inflatable balls every few yards along the way. This year they came up our road so we hurried ahead of them back home and watched from our front gate as they went passed. A Spanish lady I know came out of the parade to paint red cheeks on me! It was, as usual, a good fun day.

Chris decided to do some more gardening one day and he attacked the bougainvillia that grows all along the fence at the side of our house. It is a very robust grower and as the space is not very wide, (it is outside our kitchen door and houses the water softener, recycling bins, and is also where we feed the dogs), so it needs to be kept in check. But it is a big job so doesn't get done very often. Anyway, this time it is cut right back to the bare trunk. Just look at how much debris there is to clear away.

And here is what is left. It looks a bit brutal but we know it will all be back in a month or two. In places the woody stems have grown through the wire fence to such an extent that we can't remove them.

It has opened up the view from the kitchen window and made it much lighter. The groundsmen have since been in and strimmed the high weeds next door, so it is even lighter now.

Yesterday, after the sad news about our friend, I told Chris I wanted to go down to the Playa and walk along the sea-front so he came with me. It was a really warm day and we both went in T-shirts and left out 'woollies' at home. I am glad we did. I noticed this morning that I have pink line at the bottom of my sleeves and the back of my neck. We walked a long way along the promenade at Mojacar, and back again. I actually hit my target for steps on my fitbit and that doesn't happen as often as it should. I like that bit of coastline. In places you can't get down to the beach, but it is rocky, the sea is very clear, and there is a constant noise of gentle waved breaking on the rocks.

I stopped to watch the cormorants on the little rocky island. They all congregate there to warm their wings, and chatter to each other. They always amuse me.

We noticed that all along the prom, the mimosa was starting to bloom. That explains why my hay-fever has started up again!. (Some call this acacia and it is wattle to our Australian friends, but I still think of it as mimosa). It is not the pretty pale yellow one that used to be popular for wedding bouquets in UK, but a rather harsher yellow, and absolutely laden with little pom-pom flowers. it is prolific around here in March.

I also saw these very pretty flowering grasses. They were moving gently in the breeze.

And finally I spotted this tree. I thought it was dead but Chris said it was only in Winter mode and hadn't woken up yet. Either way I loved the shape, so when I got home I had a play with it.

I like to have the chance to practice using my photo editing programs and this photo was perfect for that. First, after several attempts I managed to isolate it from the background and make it into a black silhouette. Then I used adobe photoshop and some digital scrapbook files to turn it into a blossom tree. It is not a brilliant result but I had a fun afternoon trying!

Now it is time to link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

Rocking Your World 2020; Week 8

Here's something I spotted this morning that tickled me.

Hopefully you are all smiling now, so let's see what has rocked my world for this week.

It has been another week of changeable weather, and I would be happier if it had been a little warmer some days, but when I see what my friends and family have been facing back in UK with storms Ciara and Dennis, I know I have lots to be grateful for. 

I had to be at a meeting for 10.00 on Monday morning, but the forecast said it would be a warm and sunny day so I put the washing machine on the night before so I could hang everything out to dry before I went out. But when I woke up on Monday there was thick fog, the like of which we very rarely see here. But I trusted in the forecast and hung my washing out anyway and sure enough by mid-morning the fog had cleared and the sun was out, and by the afternoon, everything was dry. So I am grateful for a reliable weather forecaster too.

This is a photo from early 2009. It is not brilliant but I couldn't find a better one in the time I have. It is the view of the Cabrera mountains as seen from our back railings.

However, this has been the view most mornings and evenings this week.

I know the mountains are there, but they have been hidden from view by low cloud or thick mist. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had low cloud and a fair amount of rain, but the other days the sun has soon scattered the mist and we have spent time sitting outside in the sun, and even managed to eat lunch outside one day.

Early Wednesday afternoon we sat out the back just watching some ants. They are such busy little creatures. There were three of them each going to different cracks between the crazy paving to collect grains of sand/stone, much bigger than their own heads. Then they all carried them back to the same spot a couple of stones away and dropped them, then scurried back for the next one. It was fascinating to watch them, and you have to admire their industry, and unwavering sense of direction. 

Beside me Arwen was sleeping and soaking up the sun. Little did he know that I was about to scoop him up to shave that tummy. He is starting to moult and every night there is a load of dead leaves and twigs wound up in his tangles, so the easiest solution is to shave it off. I may have to shave his sides too, but for now just his tummy will do.

Last week I showed some of my favourite wild flowers and here is another one. This is called Asphodel and it grows in profusion along the road side and on open ground where the soil is quite poor and dry. 

It flowers on long stems that wave gently in the breeze and it looks so pretty.

The individual flowers are pretty too. I am sure we used to grow something very similar as a cultivated plant in the UK. Here is an interesting quote from Google "In Greek mythology, the Asphodel is one of the most famous of the plants connected with the dead and the underworld: the Asphodel Meadows is a section of the ancient Greek underworld where ordinary souls were sent to live after death."

While I am talking about flowers here is a picture of the tulips I bought last Friday, taken this morning. I can't believe they are still looking as good as when I bought them. They have lived on my kitchen table as that is where I spend a lot of time, so I thought they may as well sit where I can enjoy them the most. I don't think they will open out far, and probably they will soon fade and die, but haven't they done well?! I will share a little trick with you that some of you may know already, but when I was told it, it seemed so bizarre that I didn't believe it would work, but it does! It depends how you like your tulips to be. They have a tendency to droop over quite quickly which to me is a shame as you don't get to see their beautiful stamens (especially on the big red ones that look like poppies when they open up). But when you first get them, if you take an ordinary sewing pin, and push it through each stem, about a centimetre (half an inch) below the base of the flower, then take it out again and put the flowers in water, then they will not droop. As you can see, it worked for mine. The first time I tried it I left the pins in  and it looked a bit odd, but then someone told me I should take them out again. You live and learn!

When I do manage to get to my craft room to make cards, I really enjoy stamping and colouring. My favourite colouring medium is my alcohol markers and a few years ago my lovely husband bought me the full set of 168 colours of Copic Ciao markers. I love them because unlike most alcohol ink markers they have a brush tip, and they blend beautifully. Sadly some of my most used colours have recently dried out so it was time to replace them. Crafters Companion have just released a new version of their Spectrum Noir pens called Illustrator which also have a soft brush nib. (The original Spectrum Noir pens don't have this). So I decided to try them out. I chose a range of colours and sent off my order, and on Tuesday they arrived. I love having new pens so I was excited to try them out. I am fairly pleased with them. They are very nice and smooth to use, but the ink colours do not match the pen tops at all, and some colours are not at all true to the colour chart I chose from. However, they are within the range of shades I needed so I will enjoy using them. To help me select the pens I need on any project I keep a colour chart of all my Copics so I can see what they are actually like on paper, so my first job was to make a similar chart for these new pens.

As you can see it was greens and skin tones I needed most. I have since used them to colour some stamped images on a set of four Christmas cards I have made for a Challenge I join in with on 25th of each month. So I'll be posting them on my craft blog next week.

And another little bit of craft news. As you probably know by now, I have had a Silhouette Cameo machine for years now. It is something that connects to the computer and you can import an image into the software, or design your own, and the computer then sends it to the machine which cuts it out. My Cameo 2 was getting a bit worn and wasn't communicating with the computer as well as it used to, so when they brought out version four in November, Chris ordered one for me for Christmas. How lucky as I? It arrived quite quickly but I had several other things going on at the time and I decided to wait until I had time to try it out properly before I did anything with it. 

So last week we set it up but I had trouble trying to register it, which meant that it wouldn't recognise my software etc. I went to the Silhouette site (in America) and used their chat line to try to get help from their advisor. Unfortunately the instructions he gave me didn't help. (It felt he had not understood the problem properly which was probably down to me not explaining it well enough!). As they are eight hours behind Spanish time, I had to leave it until after the weekend, but yesterday I had a free afternoon and I had another go. This time I was connected to a young lady and she was so helpful. She soon had my machine registered and explained several other things I asked about so now I think I am all set up and ready to go. So I am very grateful to a lady called Kadie, who was so patient with me yesterday and so very capable at understanding my needs and dealing with them. Now I am excited to get started with it. Friday is not the right day for me as I have a lunch time commitment and then choir practice, but maybe tomorrow I can have a go.

I am also very grateful to the Silhouette experts who have taken time to make videos available on youtube to help with actually using the machine, inserting the blades correctly, how to load the paper etc. There is a good instruction manual for the software but nothing that I could find on actually using the machine, so these videos have been a great help.

And on that note I will quickly link up to Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, before I go off to lunch, and when I get back I will try to do some visiting to see what has made you smile this week.