Friday Smiles 2024 Week 39

Hi again. Well work has continued apace and the end is in view. As is my way, I made lists - Things to do before photos; Things to do after photos; Things to put out on 'big rubbish' day; Things to store carefully etc, and I am pleased to say that there are only a few small tasks left to do this weekend on the first list, none at all left on the third one, and the rest is all do-able in our own time. The agent is coming to take photos on Tuesday and then we will officially be "Se Vende" or For Sale. 

Down here in my craft room all is bright and tidy. We chose cream paint for the walls but it looks more yellow in this sunny room. We also decided to paint what was Chris' office and ¡s now a dining room again, as the walls were quite marked when we moved the furniture. We have an old 'Welsh Dresser' that was here when we moved in, and we decided to put it back in the dining room but left it in the hall while the room was being painted. Poor Leo is confused by all the boxes and rooms changing and was looking for somewhere to lay out in peace, so he jumped up on the dresser and slept all day. As you can see, when he stretches out he is long now, and filled the whole table.

I have been working on one more set of loose squares that I must have started making about ten years ago. Every square was the same and I got tired of it so put it away. However I found enough squares to make up a small blanket so I sewed them all together and worked a border and had one more blanket to donate to the food bank. So that is most of my half-finished projects sorted now.

We have had some lovely weather and the men have been working hard, so after lunch they have a siesta outside (Strictly on a timer so they don't cook!). So I found two 'sleeping beauties' when I went looking for them yesterday.

One item on my list was to replace a couple of dying annual plants in the hanging boxes so there was some colour in them for the photos, so this week Tom took me to a garden centre and we came back with these.

We also bought these which look like a bit of a tangled mess but they are actually two green trailing plants, one to go on top of the little water feature on the porch, and one for the corner of the mantlepiece. They were soon untangled and trail nicely in their new homes.

The warm evenings are bringing out some large moths and Leo, who sleeps all day, goes hunting at night, and twice this week he has brought these in for us. Sadly they are dead when I find them but they are beautiful creatures. I believe they are humming bird hawk moths, and Leo does well to catch them as they can fly really fast. I wish he wouldn't catch them, but it is in his nature to do so.

Tom called me out to see the sunset last night but I was almost too late to see it. But I still thought this was a very pretty sky. The curled up cloud shows how windy it was a bit higher up.

Tomorrow we have to make another trip to the charity shop, and another trip to the recycling centre, then I just have to wash the bath mats and chair covers over the weekend, and we'll be ready.

So now I will get ready to publish this in the morning and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 38

Another week of chaos here but quite a positive one. We now know that the agent will be here to take photos on 1st October so we have a target to get everything finished by. It will all look a lot better after the weekend when we can again put large items out by the bin for collection. Then we can rearrange the furniture as we want it. 

I had warned Tom he might be doing some painting and here he is covering the two-tone wall that was behind my cupboards. Now my computer desk is in the middle of the room and this afternoon he will paint the walls on the opposite side of the room. It has covered well and looks so much better.

I have been trying to get decent photos of the two cats to make a re-homing poster and they are very uncooperative. As soon as they see me with my phone out, they look away. This is the best I have managed so far.

This little fellow has taken up residence in my kitchen this week. I don't know where he hides away all day, but each evening he is up on the ceiling, hopefully catching a few midges etc for his supper. Tolly hasn't noticed him there, but Leo was instantly aware of him, and each night he eats his supper with one eye on the ceiling. but he can't get anywhere near it, so it is quite safe up there.

Last week I showed two baby blankets I had made and here is another. This is big enough for a pram or pushchair. I used to make these little squares with left over scraps of yarn, when ever I needed something to do at sewing because my current project was too big and cumbersome to carry around. Every square is unique. Sometimes I would take a bag of red scraps with me, another time yellow etc and I had no idea how many I had made. It turned out I had 72 in total, so I arranged them in ten rows of seven, and ditched a couple. I crocheted them together and did a simple border. It was intended to keep going until there was enough for a bed, but this is big enough to be useful for one of the food bank regulars. Fortunately I had fastened in the ends of each square as it was finished, or this would have been a much bigger task to complete.

I have one more small blanket to finish sewing up and work a border for. I also had a colourful strip of work that I did years ago to try out a pattern from Attic 24, but I found it hard to work the long rows and knew a blanket would be heavy to hold, so I had just left it. I showed a friend at sewing and said "I don't think I can do anything with this bit" and she said "Yes you can. Add a fringe along each end and you will have a scarf for one of the children's Christmas boxes." So last night I did that. It is just waiting for me to get my good scissors to level up the edges and that is it done. It is good to see all these old projects being put to good use.

And that is how this week has rushed along. Next week will probably be even busier but then we can settle down and do the rest of the sorting in our own time, though we will of course have to keep everywhere tidy in the hope that there will be some viewings soon.

Now I have to unplug my computer again and get all the cables out of the way, so tomorrow I will link up to Annie's Friday Smiles using my tablet if I can.