Rocking Your World 2016; Week 10

Well here we are at Friday yet again. It has been one of those weeks with lots of little things going on so the days pass almost without you noticing them. But first here is something that made me smile.

This is my great-grandson Alfie, and when I opened up my Facebook page and found him smiling out at me, of course I smiled back! Isn't he gorgeous?

And then, today, I found his equally gorgeous, big brother Isaac, AKA Harry Potter, all dressed up ready for World Book day at school.

Now back to my week, starting with Sunday which was Día de Andalucía, a very important day for our village people. It is always celebrated in the same way. The big marquee that is set up for Three Kings Day is left up to be used again on Carnival Day, and then again on Día de Andalucía. Green and white bunting is hung across the roof space, and the stage is given a backdrop of banners from all the provinces of Andalucía, and arches of green and white flowers are grouped at the front of the stage. Here it is all set and ready to go.

First there are several dance displays by the two dancing schools in the village. There is a degree of rivalry between them, but they are both very good.

Sadly, as it fell on a Sunday this year, and I go to church in the morning, we didn't arrive until just as the dancing was ending, which was a shame. I love to see the youngsters dance. The movements seem to come to them so naturally. I think they are born with good rhythm. 

After the dancing it is the turn of the village choir to entertain us. We were there in time to see them. The ladies all wear Flamenco style dresses, and they sing with great enthusiasm.

This is followed by a lunch of meats and cheeses, salads and bread, all prepared and laid out at the back of the marquee by the ladies of the village, but we don't stay for this, as it is very much a treat for the local people, and although I am sure we would be made welcome, we usually go home after the entertainment. And this week, there was a Sunday roast dinner in the oven, waiting for us!

Monday was another opportunity for me to liaise between Cati for ASADIS, and an English group who had a donation for them. This time it was the group Dames of Turre, and as Monday was also a holiday - because Día de A. had fallen on a Sunday - Cati was not working so she was able to come with me. She came forward with me to accept the cheque, but I had to speak for her as she speaks no English.

I am out of my comfort zone with a microphone in my hand, but it is amazing what you can do when the situation calls for it.

Tuesday was a straightforward day, and as usual I went to my home group in the morning, this time up at my friend Margie's house. She has two lovely cats. Cameron is all black, and he is an independent animal, who tends to disappear when there are visitors at the house. But the white cat, Blanca, is very friendly and often plays around our feet, chewing the handles of our bags etc! But this week she sat with us, on her own chair, and she really seemed to be taking it all in.

On Wednesday I went to my sewing group where I had agreed to help a group of ladies learn to crochet. They were waiting for me when I arrived with their wool and hooks, so I talked them through the basics, and some of them took to it really well. One lady decided it just wasn't for her, and another wants to try again maybe as a one-to-one lesson. But the others managed to make a strip of trebles and 'granny stripes', and next week they want to learn how to go round corners to make a square. Look at the concentration on their faces.

Once this group is up and running, there are more who want to learn too, so I will be doing it for a while I think.

I have to leave home at around 5.45 to get to my choir practice, so by the time I get home from sewing, and make our lunch, I only have a short afternoon before I go out again, so this week I decided to have some 'me' time. I put my nose in a book, and it is a good thing I set my alarm, because once I start reading, time loses all meaning to me. But it was a nice relaxing afternoon.

Yesterday morning I made some three fruits marmalade using grapefruit, oranges and lemons. I prefer the bitter orange one I usually make, but this is quite a good alternative, and this year I have really struggled to get the bitter oranges, so my cupboard is nothing like as full as it should be. The citrus fruits will be around for a few months yet, so I can always make some more if it sells well.

Thursday afternoon brought another of the quirky local fiestas around again, This time it was Día de Los Viejas, or Day of the Old Ones. I think this is the most bizarre of all our fiesta, because it is when the children take figures of old people out to the countryside for a picnic, and when they have had their food, they use rocks and sticks to beat the 'old ones' until they fall apart to reveal the packs of sweets hidden inside them! Here is an example of some of the 'old ones' that we saw.

For many from our village, a country picnic means a trip to the purpose built picnic area next to the sports centre, high up behind the village. It was  a beautiful day yesterday so we took our picnic and went to join them there. It is a lovely spot, with tables and benches in place, and lacy trees to give some shade.

There were lots of families there already. Some of them used the built in barbecues, and others arrived with big pans of paella, or box after box of cold meats and cheeses. It is a real feast. 

Last year I managed to find out that the idea of this picnic started way back when the forty days of fasting for Lent was an obligation for everyone. But the monks realised it was too great a burden for the ones who had to work, so they introduced one day when they could eat as much as possible to keep them going through their fast for the rest of the Lenten period. However, I could find no origin for the "Bash a Granny" tradition as it is irreverantly called by many folk!

All around the wall there were groups of the 'old ones' and the children kept creeping back to make sure their's was safe, but no-one touched them until after the food had been eaten.

When the children were tired of sitting at a table they started to collect a little pile of 'ammunition', stones and rocks, and some had arrived armed with big sticks and metal bars. And when it was time to attack, it was really quite brutal.

The puppets were surprising strong, and the children hurled their rocks over and over again, or beat at them with their sticks, until heads began to roll. Mostly the heads were a newspaper parcel that contained a sizeable bag of sweets. And depending on whether they were shop bought, or hand-made, some had sweets inside the body as well.

We watched the families have some fun time together, until it was time for us to wander back home. As we were about to leave I realised that we were sitting under a really lovely mimosa tree. They are everywhere out here, and the flowers are just opening. The pollen bothers me a bit, but they are so beautiful that I can forgive them for that. We cut down the ones right outside my craft room window which  is nearly always open, as I was asking for trouble to sit by it for too long, but I love to see them blooming everywhere else.

Here is a little something that always makes me feel happy. I had a "Pollyanna Whitticker" moment. (Apologies if you haven't seen the film and wonder what on earth I am talking about). I have two crystals hanging in my kitchen window.

Now the bougainvillea hedge has been cut back, the late afternoon sunshine hits the crystals and sends rainbows dancing around my kitchen.

It is still quite windy here so the crystals are never still. Sometimes the rainbows dance across the cat bowls and they try to chase them, and wonder where they have gone when they whizz off in another direction.

I loved the film Pollyanna, and have watched it many times. The little girl with her 'rainbow makers', brought so much happiness to those around her, and I always think of that, when I sit and watch my rainbows dance.

There was a super post on Facebook this week, from Brian Hatton, the founder and director of Greenfileds Africa, the charity that I support with our knitting and fund raising. He and his wife are out in Kenya at the minute, and when he can get some internet connection, he likes to send us posts about his stay. He sent this sweet photo with the story below it.

"Miracle baby

Introducing beautiful baby Cynthia Shirleen who was born in our hospital 6 weeks ago at a mere 6⅟2 months weighing 1.02 Kg (2lbs 4oz) Nancy, who delivered her, said “We expected a dead foetus and you can imagine our joy when we delivered this beautiful, fully formed baby!” Cynthia was incubated using the “kangaroo nursing” technique, common in Africa, whereby the baby is bound fairly tightly to the mother, skin to skin, so that they share the mother’s body heat. Cynthia now weighs 1.6 Kg (3ibs 8oz) and is doing well. Karen had packed a full case of premature baby clothes which Barbara insisted we brought out with us. You can see that even these look big on Cynthia. The ‘prem Teddy’ in the picture is 100mm (4 ins) tall."

Now that really makes me happy, and it is very encouraging for my knitting friends, to see their work put to such good use.

And that brings us back to the weekend once again.

So I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking your World at Celtic House, and leave you with just a small collection of sky shots. The first was at tea time on the first evening without the wind this week. There were no clouds to make it spectacular, but after such a wild week, it just struck me as being so very peaceful. 

Now we are back to the usual sunny, breezy days with just a smattering of clouds, and yesterday there was such a lovely sunset.

That's all folks. Have a lovely weekend.

Rocking Your World 2016: Week 9

By now I am sure that you are all aware that our sons are very important to us, and I usually feature each of them when it is their birthday. Well this week our youngest son was 29, so here he is enjoying some sun on a recent holiday. 

Ben is the musician in the family (so is his brother Jonathan), and he mainly likes to play the piano and sing songs, both those he has written and covers of others. When he plays at one of our parties, one of his most popular songs is Billy Joel's "Sing us a song; you're the piano man", so once again his birthday card featured a piano. I call it a card but it was too dimensional to pop in a envelope, but as I was going to UK in January, I knew I would be able to hand deliver it.

So I made this exploding box with musical images and quotes on each side, both inside and out.

When the lid is removed, the box opens flat and inside was a little piano, filled with flowers.

You may think that it is an unusual design for a 29 year old man, but he loved it, as I knew he would.

If you want to know any more about this design, there is a detailed post about it on my craft blog which you can find HERE.

I was able to chat to him on his birthday via Skype, and he played a trial piece to me on his new keyboard which he had only just taken out of its box. I do love the way Skype makes the miles so much shorter!

It has been a week of mixed weather, and with less time outside, I have managed to spend a few hours in my craft room making a set of six Christmas cards, as well as a couple for birthdays. I have had a willing helper, but every time she got bored, or thought I wasn't paying her enough attention, Arwen pawed at my arm, just to remind me she was there.

On Monday I went to the doctor with Chris, to translate for him, and then he took me out for an unplanned lunch, which was a nice surprise. But as we left the restaurant, I took this photo of the mountain in front of us. It was almost hidden by a cloud of dust.

And it was the same looking down the road when we got back to the house.

We have had a lot of windy days and it brings in sand from the dry ground locally and across from the desserts of Africa. When it dies down there is a layer of red sand on all the outside furniture, the car etc. Right now it is blowing a gale outside my window, so there may be another clean-up job to do in the morning.

But it hasn't been like it all the time, and even when the wind blows it still quite warm. We have had a few days when we have eaten our lunch outside in bright sunshine. One afternoon the dogs started barking and we could hear the distant jangle of bells. Then a big herd of goats came rambling into the green zone behind the house. There were some lovely animals in the herd. They almost climbed the trees to crop the new shoots from them, but were equally happy cropping the dry scrub at ground level. The old goat herd just said one word and they all followed him, though this was a new man and he had a couple of dogs with him to help keep the herd in order.

There have been some other good points this week too. We went to Vera together yesterday and managed to achieve a few little bits of business that need our attention. Our first port of call was at the main medical centre for our area, to make an appointment for Chris to have an X-ray, and they did it while we were there, so that has saved us a second visit.

My friend Phil arrived in UK safely and I heard from his wife today that our knitting for Africa has been delivered.

I had a long chat to my sister Jean on skype.

Chris and I managed to do a bit of gardening together, cutting back the bougainvillea hedge and collecting up the drifts of dead leaves and flowers.

We had two sunny mornings when I managed to get all the washing cleared including the bedding off the guest bed, though I did have to put about ten pegs in each sheet so that I didn't get back from the shops to find them in next door's garden!

This morning I met my Spanish friend Cati in a local bar for coffee. We even managed to have a fairly good conversation, and I only resorted to using Google translate once, when it was important that she understood what I was asking her.

Despite the mixture of high winds, rain, sun, and oscillating temperatures, the garden is thriving. The freesias that I bought at last week's coffee morning are flowering.

This was the first one to open, and now I have a bright pink one as well.

My deep blue Portuguese Squill is also in flower.

It took me a while to identify these the first year I had them. Their botanical name is Scilla Peruviana. They are related to the little single blue scillas that are sometimes seen in an English garden, but they also have a whole plethora of alternative names - Peruvian Squill, Peruvian Scilla, Cuban Silla, Giant Squill, Peruvian Lily, Caribbean Jewels, and Hyacinth of Peru. That's a lot of names for one little flower!

Another flower that is blooming well is this one.

A friend of mine had a very large domed shrub of this in  her garden, and when she moved out I took a couple of cuttings. The one that looked the most healthy I planted in a pot and it although it is still alive and has some flowers on it, it has grown very leggy and the leaves are yellowed. The smaller cutting I stuck in the ground almost under a small tree, and it has taken several years to grow, but now it is a healthy plant with deep green leaves and lots of flowers. But I have never been able to find out what it is. I have searched the net but nothing they come up with matches it. So I am hoping one of my readers, perhaps from a warmer area than UK, might be able to identify it for me. I do like to know the names of the plants I grow, and this is such a pretty one.

And that brings me almost to end of another week. There have been no nice sunsets this week, but I do have one more photo to show you, that is as bright and colourful as the prettiest sunset. I have finally finished my "Sunny log cabin" crocheted blanket. I have shown some of the sixteen squares as I made them, but having done them all by Christmas, I had to wait a few weeks for Lucy at Attic 24, who wrote the pattern, to post a tutorial on what order to join them up in, and how to do the edging. Then I had my holiday, and when I got back I put my efforts into finishing off a few Africa projects to go in the load that Phil has just delivered. So with all of that done, I got my blanket out again this week and finished it off. 

I am really pleased with it, and for now it is on our bed, spread on top of our duvet, and it really brightens up the room.

So now it is off to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and I'll see you all again next week.