Friday Smiles 2022: Week 47

Now my Christmas cards have been sent off to Uk, I feel strangely 'unrushed', and have spent quite a bit of time just playing with some digital files and software, not because I want to use them at the minute, but I like to explore their possibilities.

However I have done some real crafting too. I wanted to try something different and I saw some paper sculpture online that I liked so thought I'd give it a go. This is called 'slice-form' sculpture and it is made by cutting lots of layers of paper and interlocking them with a series of slits. Of course they have to be perfectly designed to fit together, so I followed a link to a designer on Etsy who had several designs to choose from, and I picked a Nativity sphere. Because I had quite a bit of it in my stash, I decided to use vanilla light-weight card, and for once my Cameo machine was in a good mood, and cut all the layers first time of trying. You were encouraged to number the pieces as you cut them (there were 32 layers altogether), and once you purchased the file, you were given a link to a helpful assembly video. I have to say it was very fiddly to put together, and sometimes, as you locked a new piece in, one of the others popped out again! So it was taken apart a few times, and almost ended up in the bin, but perseverance paid off and I eventually made this.

It is lit from underneath with a small LED light base that I bought from Amazon.

This view from the top shows how the layers are combined.

I was quite pleased with the result and wanted to have a second go, now I understood how it worked, so I showed the Etsy page to Chris and let him choose a design. He chose this one, which was just as tricky to make, but if I am honest, I think it worked better. Because it is a complete sphere, with no construction underneath as a base, the light shines through better. This time I used white card which I had to purchase on Amazon to get one I knew would cut well.

The lights I bought came as a pair, one with a warm white light and one that cycles through several colour. One advantage of these decorations is that they fold quite flt, making them easy to store for another year.

I have also been busy in the ktichen, because when I saw all the lovely fresh vegetables in the market, I decided to make a batch of Picalilli, so here is my work space. The cauliflower is the biggest element and that is done in the bowl, and the rest is ready to chop. I salted it and left it to stand overnight, and this morning I rinsed it well and mixed the spices and soon I had ten jars of pickle. I used to make double this quantity, but I am not sure whether I still have a market for it, and chopping double quntities of everything would have been hard on my knees and hands, so I thought this was plenty for now.

I also made a small batch of my hot chili, ginger and garlic jam. This only makes six jars but it is an aquired taste, and doesn't sell as well as the picalilli, but it is actually the one we like, and our jar had run out, so I wanted some more for us, and maybe a couple will sell. We will see!

On Tuesday we had trmendous gale force winds, which blew over one of our large palm trees and smashed its pot, (annoying because it was expensive and newly purchased!), it tossed one of our metal garden chairs into the pool, at the deep end of course so it took both of us to fish it out, and sadly it snapped all three stems of my Echeveria succulent, so now I will  not know whether it would have opened any further, not this year any way!

Our car was successfully fitted with a new clutch on Monday so I feel safer driving it now. I am pleased about that.

I am on a TV break most evenings while Chris watches the football, which I have no interest in, so I am concentrating on my crochet and have made quite a few motifs for my blanket now. I like the way the coloured yarn is working up.

We have had some beautiful evening skies this week and I couldn't decide which photos to share, so I made a collage of some of them.

And that is about it for this week. So I am off to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles. 

Friday Smiles 2022: Week 46

Now I can officially say "Christmas is coming". Some of the magic leaves Christmas when there are no longer young folk at home, but, maybe because I believe so strongly in the real meaning of Christmas, I still find it an exciting time, and do my best to instil some of that into our home. It would be very easy for us two to think it is just another day, but I won't let that happen, so my much loved tree will come out on 1st December, along with a couple of nativity sets and a few other decorations.

But today, two things happened to bring that tingle of anticipation closer. Firstly the postman brought me a small package and inside was a gift and my first Christmas card of the year.

Then the men arrived outside with their bucket lifter and installed an angel and star light on the telegraph pole at our gate. It won't be lit for a while yet, but its nice to see the lights are going up as usual this year.

Also this week we went down to Mojacar to the main post office so I could post a parcel to my sister with most of my UK Christmas cards in it. She will put UK second class stamps on them and post them at the start of next month, and even with the cost of sending the parcel, this system saves me a lot of money, so I am very grateful to her for doing it.

After the Post office we had a ramble through the Parque Commercial, a small retail centre with a supermarket, several café-bars, and a range of small lock-up businesses which sometimes carry more interesting items than we usually see in our local shops. One company has two shops, one of which is a ladies outfitters and another is for men. They tend to be rather out of our price range, but both happened to have a good sale rail outside and I found a lovely top for me, and for Chris we bought two pairs of real quality trousers, reduced to less than half price, so we were very pleased. I could do with Annie's expertise now as I have to shorten both pairs of trousers, one of my least favourite jobs, but I will get them done I am sure.

We had a special service at my church on Sunday which was, of course, Remembrance Sunday for us. In the days leading up to it, a few folk had gone in to decorate the church with poppies and pictures, and it all looked lovely.

We had a very special service singing many of the traditional hymns, and one of our congregation played the Last Post and the Reveille on his trumpet, which was very moving.

We had some surprise visitors when five of the Andalucian Knights Templar arrived in full regalia.They brought a lovely arrangement of flowers with them to go in front of the altar, and they did their best to follow the service. Only two of them spoke English but we all got on well, chatting and sharing refreshments after the service. I don't know a lot about the organisation, but all are welcome at our church and it was nice to see them there. Here they are with Tony, one of our licensed Lay Readers who was leading worship that day.

We had some good news at the end of last week when our rather elderly car again passed its ITV, (MOT in UK), though we have agreed to take it back to our mechanic to have a new clutch installed on 21st. It is not really urgent but the last thing we want is to be stranded somewhere on the motorway because it has packed up completely, so we decided to get it fixed now.

A couple of things have made me smile in the garden. My tall succulent has opened its flowers a little showing small red trumpets with yellow centres. Having looked on google I think this is as far as it will open, and it is really very pretty. Even the stems have turned pink to match the flowers.

After last Christmas two of the poinsettias that we always put on our tri-stand in the front porch, slowly dropped all their leaves and died. We expect this as my friend in UK who owned a chain of garden centres, told me they are specially bred to last one Christmas and are not really suitable to try to keep alive for the next year as they need very controlled spans of light and darkness. But out here, and when I lived in Cyprus for a while, I did see them growing naturally and returning year after year. So when our third plant from last year, held on to its leaves, although they did all turn green, it looked so healthy that we decided to plant it in the garden and see what happened. Well in the last couple of weeks, some of its leaves are turning red, and it still looks to be in good health. I don't know how much of it will turn but we will certainly leave it there and see if it continues to survive.

We have had some heavy, thundery storms this week but fortunately most of the rain has fallen during the evenings and at night, and most days have been warm and sunny. But even on sunny days the dark clouds gather by teatime. One evning the sky was getting very dark and we though another storm was on its way, but suddenly there was a break in the clouds and a lovely patch of blue sky could be seen behind them. (It was much bluer than it looks in my photo).  It was lovely, like opening a window on a different world.

I have been seeing faces in the clouds again this week so here are a few that I spotted. Can you see them too?

And now it is time to link up with Annie. See you all over at her blog