Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 23

It has been an odd sort of week. We started of quite busy when our son Jonathan came round  to trim our hedges. He brought his two little girls with him. Aisling brought a big bucket of 'bouncy dough' to play with, and I spent most of the morning making animals with her. She was nice enough to recognise all my amateurish shapes! Then our older son Michael turned up with his stepson who at just 16 is taller than anyone else in the family, so our little sitting room was very full.

On Sunday I went to church as usual and we had a lovely service for Trinity Sunday led by Sarah, Bishop of Shrewsbury, who was a lovely friendly lady and we had a good chat over a cup of tea after the service.

On Tuesday night I babysat with Aisling and Niamh for the first time so that Jonathan could take his wife out to dinner for her birthday. They don't often go out in the evening as Jonathan leaves for work at 5.30 most mornings so he goes to bed early. Aisling was as good as gold and after reading her school book to me she went off to bed. The baby was a bit unsettled when she realised her mum wasn't there, but she settled in the end.

The next two days were taken up with hospital appointments, one for me and one for Chris. Although both were relatively straight forward, the round trip is almost a day out so I didn't get much else done.

Yesterday I went round the shops with a tape measure trying to find boxes the right size to fit in my freezer. I managed to find three. They are all different but that doesn't really matter. My freezer has four open shelves and two small drawers at the bottom. The drawers hold vegetables and chips, but everything else gets pushed in wherever it fits, and because the shelves are too deep for me to reach to the back, some things get lost and forgotten. So This morning I took everything out, sorted it into 'raw meat', 'prepared meat', 'pies, and precooked meals', and 'sundries', such as bakery goods, ice-cream, desserts, and anything else that didn't go anywhere else. I think it will be much more efficient to use now.

While at Ben's I finished the mandala I was crocheting. It is called Autumn leaves. The pattern showed it made in a variegated green yarn but it spoke more of Spring to me than Autumn, so I chose yarn that changed from bright yellow, through orange to purple. Here it is pinned out on my blocking pads. They aren't quite big enough but I needed to get an idea of what size hoop tyo order. It is now on its way to me and I will have the difficult job of crocheting it to the hoop. It will look better when it is properly stretched with a plain wall behind it so I will show it again when it is done.

Now I am enbarking on a new piece of cross stitch and other embroidery. It is a kit I bought and the fabric is pale green, even weave linen. I haven't used anything other than Aida cloth for a long time and it will be quite tiring for my eyes, but I am not in a rush to do it, so little by little. And I find the light during the summer is much better for sewing so I shall have a go. The kit came with some very pretty threads and three tiny vials of very tiny seed beads. (They are going to be fun to sew in to it!). There is also a ten page booklet of the pattern. So wish me luck and don't expect to see much progress for quite a while.

Last week I said I had managed to solve the rubik's cube in five minutes. I haven't tried again since then but today I did it in just over 4 minutes! I have an app on my tablet to use with it. The red below is a screen shot. The row of tiny letters under the time is a set of moves to follow to get an authentic random shuffle. (They change every attempt). So you shuffle it, tap the screen to start solving it and tap it again when you have done it. My eldest son Jim had the first cube I had seen back when he was just into secondary school, and he held the school record for the fastest to solve it, but I never mastered it back then. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands now!

And finally, I have been playing with the camera on my new phone and one afternoon I took this shot of a spider's web, gently swaying in the breeze on the outside of my craft room window. I used full zoom and I love how it turned out, it is like a set of fairy lights.

And that is another week flown by. 

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 22

Well folks you may be wondering where I have disappeared to these past few weeks. The fact is that the work to renovate our bathroom, which we expected to take a week or so, turned out taking four weeks, and while at my son's I only had my tablet, (normally only used for puzzles), and I did not feel up to writing and editing a blog post on it. Also I had a lovely relaxing break up in Cheshire with Ben, and spent most of my time, reading, crocheting and doing afore-mentioned puzzles.

And more surprisingly I learnt to solve that old fun game, a Rubik's cube. From a random shuffle, I can now solve it in just under five minutes. I might add that Ben can solve it in under 40 seconds! but I don't have his dexterity. My hands struggle to get the right grip and I cannot flick two rounds at a time like he can. I was just quite pleased to have mastered it.

It was also a time of rest and recouperation for Chris who a month after his operation, is now much stronger and well on the mend. There is still a way to go, but we are pleased with the progress he has made.

It will be our last visit to Cheshire as Ben will be moving before the end of the summer, to live in Hereford, at the old railway station he and his partner bought last year. Their renovations are almost done and they hope to be there by August.

His current house has a lovely 'garden room', and that is where I spent most of my time. Sitting on a very comfortable recliner chair I could look through the open door onto their lovely garden. 

On warm days the whole front wall concertinered open and zooming out I could see this to the right.....

..... and this to the left.

His partner Ant is a keen gardener and he loves bearded iris. During the first week these all opened and were quite beautiful. By the time we left, blue, purple and white ones were open too.

I don't have any of these in my own garden but when we popped back mid-way in our stay for a hospital appointment, I found my flag iris were all in flower.

One day at Ben's we went for a walk round a very pleasant park and he took this photo with his mini-drone. 

It hovered in front of us and he controlled it with his phone. I found it a bit unnearving but it took a good photo.

I have been contemplating replacing my phone for a while, and I thought it might be a good idea to buy a new one while I was with Ben as he was able to easily transfer all my files and show me some of the finer settings that I would have missed. It is an Oppo Find 9 pro and has a super camera which I was keen to try out. One night I used full zoom to take this picture of the moon and I was very impressed at how it came out.

We have now been home for almost a week and we are very pleased with our bathroom so it was worth the wait. We have a big walk in 'rainfall' shower, an almost silent flushing toilet, and a modern wash basin with drawers under it. The morror above lights up if you wave your hand under it! There is now a nice wooden floor instead of the aweful carpet that was there. The builder is on holiday this week but he is coming back on Monday to build a tall slim cupboard in the small alcove beside the basin, and then it will just need a bit of decorating.

I think in my last post I showed the ground cover companular just coming into bud. Well when we came home it was a mass of purple bell flowers, all over the walls, steps and borders. It has spread to the neighbour's gardens too. 

The whole of the front garden is looking very colourful with a big patch of yellow rock roses, a red berberis bush, and geranium and petunias in my three tubs at the top.

And today the first of the new roses we put in in the autumn, is in flower and it is a beauty! It is called tequila sunrise.

We also found that the front, decorative part of the park has been planted up with begonias, silver leaf, and african marigolds. It will be a riot of colour again soon, just in time for the Britain in Bloom judges to come to town. There will be somrthing around the standard poles too very soon I am sure.

I must say the council do their best to put on good events for the town's folk and when we walked by on Friday night we saw they were fencing off the central plaza, which is normally a car park surrounded by shops and cafés. By the next morning it was a beach with a thick layer of sand that had buckets and spades across it, and stripey deckchairs all round it. The parents were enjoying sitting in the sun and their children were having a whale of a time in the sand. It was a really fun idea.

I think I have just about caught up now. Next week it will be back to a more normal post.