Friday Smiles 2022; Week 40

My week started with a rather unusual church service. Sunday was the Saint's day for St Francis of Assisi. He is the patron saint of Italy but is probably better known as the patron saint of animals, and the natural environment. Apparently is is quite customary for churches to offer a service of blessing for pets, but it is not something we have done before. However we had six lovely dogs at our service, and pictures of cats and other beloved pets on all the walls. This little girl was with the people sitting next to me and she was so good, not making a sound for the whole hour. 

The lessons, semon and prayers were all related to God's creation, and our responsibitiy to care for the animals etc, and at a relevant point in the service, Father Alan put his hand on each dog and gave it a blessing. As we sat quietly at one point, I felt something wet and cold on the back of my arm, and this lovely old fellow had come to say hello. I gave him a little fuss and he just laid down quietly again.

Needless to say I left my furry friends at home. Kim would never have sat through the service. He just loves people and would have wanted to say hello to everyone, and confining any of the cats to a cat carrier for that long would have resulted in some very vocal protests! But it was a lovely service all the same.

I am happy to say that Kim's foot seems to have responded well to the antibiotics and he is almost walking normally again now. As you can see he is back to his usual self. In this photo you can see how he lays in a very lop-sided position because his left hip is arthritic and just collapses. He also cannot sit any more, but just lies down if you tell him to 'sit'. But he is happy enough and spends most of his time on the patio, just wandering in every now and then to make sure we are still around.

This made me smile. It is the top right hand corner of the above photo, and it looks as though my plant pot is smiling!

I have made a good start on my new crochet project. I bought a ball of this yarn because I wanted to try it out. As you can see from its name band, it is made entirely from recycled plastic bottles. I have seen many ways that people are trying to reuse some of the mountans of used plastic we see everywhere, and I thought this sounded like one of the better ideas. It is surprisingly soft and very strong. It is DK weight and is called Scrumptious! They also make Truly Scrumptious which is Aran weight. It also comes in a huge range of colours. I wanted something light and fairly neutral so I chose this one which has just a hint of green in it. It is called Honeydew melon sorbet. Sounds as though I am going to eat it, not crochet with it.

I needed a neutral colour because I am teaming it up with this very colourful, variegated yarn called Wanderlust - colour Hawii. As you can see, both yarns are worked together, and I love seeing the colour changes appear in the contrast yarn.

The motifs are hexagons and these five completed ones show the range of colours so far. I think the next one which is starting pink, will soon be blue towards the outside. The top two hexagons have been lightly blocked and now lay quite flat. As you can see, when first made, they are a bit scrunched up like the lower three. The next two are on my blocks now. Next week I may be able to show you what I am doing with them.

Next Sunday  will be one of my favourite church services - Thanksgiving for the Harvest. We are invited to bring any dry goods which will be distributed by Zurgena Town Hall as part of our regular 'food bank' help; our way of thanking Zurgena council for allowing us to use one of their buiildings free of charge for our meetings. But Harvest Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without some fresh produce as well, so we also take offerings of fruit which is distributed to the children in Zurgena school.

So I thought it was time I had my own little harvest display at home again. I came home from the market on Tuesday with these. Don't they look lovely? And I am truly thankful that I have access to these fresh vegetables and fruit every week, and living in Andalucia, the 'market province', by buying locally grown produce we are helping a lot of families that rely on agricultural work for their living.

After some sunny and comfortably warm days we now have a few days of possible rain. Today that turned out to be a short, but heavy shower just as we were getting up. The sky is  almost clear now, but up until lunch time it was grey with wet-looking clouds gathering. I was sitting in my recliner chair enjoying my first cup of tea of the day, and immediately Tango jumped on my lap and settled down there, and Kim came in out of the rain. Note he is not using his nice bed, but prefers the stone floor still, but he does lay in it sometimes.

I really like this time of year when I can sit out on the porch most days in a sleeveless dress and not needing a cardigan, and still feel comfortable, but we really need some rain, so if a few wet days lower the temperature a few degrees, so be it.

Now I shall get back to some cards I started to make yesterday, but ended up chatting to my sister for an hour or so instead. Family always comes first!

I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2022: Week 39

Hi again. Friday does seem to come around rather fast doesn't it, but as usual I am sure we can all think of things that have made us smile during the week.

I am happy because I have finished my Celtic Tiles blanket. It was heavy and very hot to have it piled on my lap on Tuesday night while I worked the border, but it was worth it to know it is all finished off properly. 

It has a simple border in a slightly contrasting colour which I also used to crochet the 'tiles' together using the 'flat zipper seam' which I think is neatest for this style of motifs. The border was finished with a round of surface slip stitches which gives it a nice definition.

Chris chose this pattern and bought the yarn, a cotton/acrylic mix in Aran weight, so this will be keeping his knees snug and warm on chilly evenings very soon.

I have started another small project but I will share that next week when I have done enough to show.

We had a little drama with Kim this week when he suddenly started limping around tea-time on Saturday. By Sunday he was unable (or unwilling) to walk and just held his right front paw up in a pathetic way to tell us it was hurting. However he wouldn't let me anywhere near it to investigate even when I tied a soft bandange around his muzzle so he couldn't nip me. Fortunately I had some dog painkillers that the vet gave me for Foxy, so I kept him going with those over the weekend. On Monday we managed to get an appointment with the vet and she thought he might have broken his toe. But a couple of x-rays later she said she couldn't find a break though it was quite swollen and obviously still painful. So she has given him a course of antibiotics and more painkillers and we will reassess next week when he has taken them all.

He is pretty good at taking medicine but is not keen on these bright pink antibiotics. They are huge and he needs 1 1⁄2 tablets twice a day. As you may be able to see in this picture, their colour makes them stand out in his food and he is suspicious, so I have started adding each one in a little bit of peanut butter, and they are going down well so far. I am not sure how much they are helping. He is now walking with only a slight limp but he still won't let me touch his paw and yelps if anyone or thing comes too close. So we will have to see how it goes.

Now we have made a space in the sitting room by taking away the sofa Kim used to love to lay on, but which had become too much of a climb for him to get onto, we have bought him a big memory foam bed. It arrived on Tuesday and he is getting used to it. It is plenty big enough for him to lay out on, as he doesn't curl up much these days, but he prefers to lay across it with his head over the edge.  Maybe he will lay in it better when the floor is cold in the winter.

I have been busy in my craftroom mostly making a set of six Christmas cards. But these will be entered in a challenge in October so I can't show them yet. But I also did a little bit of scrapbooking too. I have been trying to get back to making a few layouts but I never seem to have the time. 

It is just over a year since we had to say 'Good-bye' to our Paco and I started a double layout about him then, but it got shelved, and I never went back to it. So yesterday I got it out and finished the first page, and then did a second one, so these can now go in my album of 'Random things'. I have got the bug now so maybe I will manage to do some more.

Chris called me out to see the sky at the front of the house the other evening, and it was so lovely. The sun sets on the other side of the house, but these clouds were reflecting its last rays before it disappeared.

Yesterday this is the sky I woke up to, and I had to take a photo of it, because white fluffy clouds are a novelty here! Our sky is usually completely grey and overcast or just clear blue, but clouds make it look so much more interesting.

And here is one final sunset photo that was just such glorious colours, so I thought it was worth sharing.

So now I need to get this ready to post on Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.

P.S. I prepared this on Thursday afternoon, but then last night I went out to see if there was a pretty sunset and I found this extraordinary sky. I thought it was worth adding on here today.