Rocking Your World 2021: Week 3

Here we are, half way through January already, but I haven't got used to writing 2021 yet; have you? Once again it has been a quiet week, but it has been so cold, that staying at home has seemed like a good option, even if we had the choice to go out and about.

We did have a lot of rain to end last week and start this one, but since then it has been much brighter, and quite sunny. It is that time of year when outside is warmer than inside as long as you are in the sun and out of the wind, so we have spent some time sitting on the patio, getting our sunshine vitamin D, but as soon as the sun moves behind the corner of the roof, we scurry indoors because there is a dramatic drop in temperature in the shade. The evenings are cold so we are glad of the fire, and often a lap blanket as well. But we can't complain. Further inland they have had it much worse than us. In Madrid they caught the tail end of storm Filomena and over night they had 30cm of snow, the most that has fallen there in over fifty years. It is a real novelty for them and there have been plenty of videos of folk skating on the ice, building snowmen and having snowball fights. (Everyone wearing a face mask I should add, though social distances sometimes were difficult to maintain!).

I particularly liked this photo taken in Madrid. The snow just covering the statue of a chariot gives it a rather splendid look. 

Mid-week I decided to go to the local bakery and I went the 'long way round' on the road instead of the usual short cut across the mud car park and I am glad I did, though the remaining puddles weren't as bad as I had expected. I stopped to record the reflections of the trees and clouds in the water. The mountains at the back were still a bit misty but we had no more rain.

Chris and I went round the garden emptying any containers as still water is a breeding ground for bugs, even in this cold weather. We have a black plastic dustbin in the front yard where we throw any debris, dead flower heads etc, and it was full to the brim, confirming our feeling that the rain had fallen right through the night. Chris then did some gardening, firstly cutting right back all the roses, and weeding the little patch in the front of the house. There is a very persistent weed that covers this patch all the time. It is quite aromatic when crushed, and the dogs love it, which is why they are watching from behind the gate. You can have too much help!

Chris then turned his attention to the jasmine that flows over the dividing wall between the front yard and the pool area. It is absolutely rampant and really would benefit from being cut right back, but as you can see at the right of the photo, it already has lots of buds for the spring flowering, so we didn't want to be too zealous with the shears. But I did ask Chris to prune back the part that had covered my Bird of paradise tree, so that too could bloom later. So now he has done that it is much better, with both plants able to have their moment of glory when the time is right. Maybe this autumn we will get them both pruned hard, so they can start again next year.

When Chris cut back the roses he found two last flowers that he picked for me. The larger pink one soon began to fade indoors, but the little yellow one was a tight bud and it opened in the warmth of the sitting room, and it is beautifully scented.

Meanwhile, I wandered over to my elephant foot palm and started to peel away last years blades from round the base of the new growth. Hidden right at the base of them, I found masses of tiny black and red flies in a webbed nest. Guessing they were not good, I did my best to move them out of the palm and I think I must have flicked a couple onto my clothes, which then got trapped inside them, because by nightfall I had around thirty bites all over one side of my body. They were so itchy and I covers them with bite cream, but that night I took an antihistamine tablet to calm them down so I could sleep. They continued to itch, though slightly less intensely for a couple of days. Now I can still see the red marks but they are not really bothering me. I haven't had time to identify the flies yet but I shall look them up later. 

I checked the palm again today and although the stems are now bare where the infected blades had been, I found quite a few had settled in the new growth, so I have sprayed them liberally and I shall continue to check on them.

As I said, we are happy to sit by the fire in the evenings. We have the TV on, but Chris often chooses to watch something different on his laptop. Paco has got wise to the fact that Chris sits quite still and has taken to sitting on the back of his chair with his chin resting on Chris' shoulder. He sometimes stays like that for hours.

Tolly on the other hand, has a good sleep after his tea and then wants to play. He is used to climbing onto the back of this chair to play with my string of 'Danish gnomes' that hang there every Christmas. He is very peeved to find they have all been packed away now and is half sulking and half dozing while he decides what else he can do to annoy us!

On Thursday, while Chris was busy in the garden I decided to have a baking session so I mixed up a white bread dough first. I cut the risen dough in half and made four big rolls with one half, and a small loaf with the rest. Then I made a ginger cake. I particularly like this recipe as it is lighter and less dry than some ginger breads are. It uses golden syrup and some of the syrup from preserved ginger, as well as having sultanas, and some of the preserved ginger pieces roughly chopped, added to the mix. It is a very 'wet' mix and the fruit always sinks but it tastes really good!

While Chris taps away on his laptop, and I have one eye on the TV, I still do some crochet each evening. As my hands are not so good during the winter, I only do a few rows each evening, but my squares are coming along nicely. I showed you the colour changing balls of yarn I am using, and the pattern, called Sophie's Dream, is several large squares all made to the same pattern. As long as you can work with a steady tension, you can just get three squares out of each ball. So with my first ball, called Rosewater cocktail, I made these three, and I only had a few meters of yarn left at the end!

 

Now I have almost finished the second ball called Blackberry mint, which started by making the deep blue square. Then the second one was more teal/turquoise. The third square has started out still fairly turquoise, but as you can see from the remaining yarn, it will mainly be an olive green colour. (Not my favourite colour but I know it will fit in with all the others just fine).

And that's about it for this week. We have very high numbers of virus cases in our village again, 49 by yesterday, so we are quite happy to stay home except for absolute essential shopping. I had a visit to the supermarkets yesterday and am unlikely to need to venture any further than the bakery just around the corner, until we are into February. In fact we are expecting tonight's announcement to put us back into a tight lock-down where we are confined to the village, which is why I did the supermarket run yesterday.

But we are warm and well fed, and during the week I have had chats with all the boys. Ben and I had a two hour plus video call on Wednesday night and put the world to rights. It is lovely to be able to chat and laugh with them even though they can't visit us. So we have plenty to be grateful for.

Now I must link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and we will see what next week has in store for us.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 2

Hello again to all my friends and followers. Somehow this year didn't quite get started when it should, so "Week 1" of 2021 didn't happen.

Looking back at the last couple of weeks, very little happened anyway. Both Christmas and New Year's days passed as almost normal days. I did manage to make Christmas dinner a bit special, and both days I was able to video chat with all our boys so that was nice. Most of them had to cancel their plans though the oldest one, living in London,  suddenly found himself in tier 4 just days before Christmas. Two of his sons were away but were expected back for the big day, so after some frantic phone calls and hasty packing, their both got last minute trains and made it home minutes before the  lock-down came into force at mid-night, so their family was complete. The following week Ben managed to get down to his brother's place in Shropshire and arrived home the day before they too were both in tier 4. Now they are struggling to provide home schooling for their children, as well as trying to work from home, but they all have sufficient technology to do it, they all have a warm house to do it in, and so far they all remain in good health, so that is certainly something to be very grateful for.

We still have a certain amount of freedom of movement, but our numbers are rising again (37 in our village, up from the 2 we reached just before Christmas), so we are expecting more restrictions to be imposed soon. Fortunately I went to our 'English' freezer shop early this week, originally just to get my fresh milk, (because I don't like the boxed milk in tea), and I came home with three bags of shopping, as it struck me that we may not be able to get there again for a while, so I may as well do my monthly shop while  I was there. So we have full cupboards and freezer, and I have no intention of straying far from home now for quite a while. Another thing I am grateful for.

We have just had two days of continuous rain, and it is very cold, so home is the best place to be anyway. This week, some areas of Spain have recorded the lowest temperatures since records began.

It hasn't been all bad weather though. We have had some lovely sunny days when sitting outside with our morning cup of tea has been a real pleasure. On the Sunday between Christmas and New Year, we went to a concert by the Los Gallardos and Bédar band, on the plaza in front of the new village theatre. The band members were well spaced out as were the audience. We arrived at the last minute and all the chairs were taken, so we sat on a concrete bench at the side. (A heated cushion would have been nice!). The band are good and it was a nice change from being at home. Everyone was wearing a mask and we were in the fresh air so it felt very safe.

For their last piece, the band all put on red hats and played a Christmas medley. It included 'Jingle bells' and I heard a few lines of 'White Christmas', but most of it was Spanish songs. I did recognise one which our choir sang at a concert last year, and it seems to be included in everything to do with Christmas out here.

The Cabrera mountains made a lovey backdrop for the concert.

I can now share a little project I completed at the end of November but I couldn't show it until I was sure it had arrived at its destination safely. It involved some reminiscing and along the way I picked out these photos, that you might like to see. You are probably aware that I am the youngest of eight siblings, so here is a photo of my Mother with the six children who were born before the war.

Mum is at the back and Grace and Evelyn are both in front of her. Evelyn sadly died last year, just after her 92nd birthday and Grace a few years before that. Also both my brothers have passed away. The youngest in the photo is Dorothy who is now around 85 (I think), and the sister just to her left is Brenda who celebrated her 90th birthday at the beginning of December. It was for her that my little project was undertaken. She was always a gifted sewer, and her first job on leaving school was smocking baby dresses for a shop. 

This next photo was taken  in 1961 and I still find this amazing, it was the only day that mum had all of her eight children at home together!

Jean and I, the two 'post-war' babies, are at the end of the line. We are in age order, and Brenda is standing directly behind mum. When Jean and I were very small, Brenda would make 'crinoline ladies' for us using rose petals for their skirts. She would also embroider the ladies on the corner of hankies, or on tray clothes with crocheted lace for their skirts. 

When she got married, I guess I was about four or five, and Jean and I were her little bridesmaids. I think clothing was still on ration coupons so there was not the material for full crinoline dresses, but she made us each a bonnet that goes with the style. We also had adorable little angora boleros, and I can still remember that.

She has also always loved pansies, so whenever I am making a card for her birthday etc I try to incorporate a pansy in the picture. But for her special birthday - I think 90 is pretty special - I wanted to use a crinoline lady. It turns out that images of them are not in fashion at all, but I eventually found an embroidery pattern, such as she would have sewn many years ago, and adapted it to make a digi-image which I coloured and mounted for her card.

I also found an old pattern for a doily and I knew I had to make it for her. It was in finer cotton than I have used for a long time, worked with a very fine hook, and some was very fiddly to do. There were also a lot of ends to sew in which is not easy to do neatly on such fine work. But I was pleased with the end result, and when I had starched it a little so that it held its shape in transit, I parcelled it up and sent it to Brenda. I now know that it arrived safely and she loves it, so it was worth the effort.

Brenda has three daughters but not even they were allowed to travel to spend time with her on her birthday, so all of us, and wider family and friends, sent one of them photos, slide shows and videos, and they put together a 'family greetings' show. They put it on a DVD so it was easy for her to manage on her own, and she told me how much it meant to her, to watch us all. As you know, family is very important to me, and I am happy that we have managed to keep in touch with each other as our paths diverge, and occasionally cross one another again.

I have made good use of this time at home to continue sorting out my craft room, which I started before Christmas. I have a bad habit when new items arrive, to open them and put them in a basket at the side of my desk until I have tried them out, and then not doing it, so they just stay there. So I had quite a collection of stamps and dies that needed sorting, cataloguing and then filing away. I am almost done now, so I must really try to do better this year - probably not buying new stuff would be a good start. I think I've lost the plot a bit when owning a new stamp etc, outweighs the using of it!

However I did have one creative day when I produced my usual one-page calendar. I like to have a copy above my desk so when the boys ring me about planning a visit I have all the dates to see at a glance. Chris also likes to have a copy on his 'office' wall. Once again I have incorporated all our boys so they are smiling down on me as I sit here. (Have I mentioned, that family are important to me!). I have a flat bed printer so I am able to print these calendars out in A3 size, which makes them easier for me read.

Sadly there were no Three Kings celebrations here this year. We are the only village around here who has this play and fair so it was sadly missed. However my decorations still stayed up until twelfth night, as they always do, and the passed couple of days have been spent taking them down and packing them away. I used some empty plastic boxes to collect things in before finding their correct home, and someone thought they could help!

A couple of others thought it was too much work, and just laid there watching! Since the rain started two days ago, they have hardly moved from this spot!

So now we face another quiet, uneventful week. On the whole I am quite content with this slower pace of life, though sometimes it gets a bit boring. I really miss seeing all the family. It has never been this long without one or other of the boys visiting us, since we moved here nearly twelve years ago, and I have tried to get to visit them as well as my two sisters in Dorset most years. But I do hope and pray that the vaccinations will bring this virus under control, so that soon some semblance of our usual life can return.

Stay safe and sensible everyone, and here is a little message of hope for you all, that was posted on our church Facebook page today.

Now I will just link with Rocking Your World Friday, and Annie's Friday Smiles, before everyone thinks I have disappeared altogether.