Rocking my world 2015; Week 3

As promised this will be a shorter post than usual. It has been a quiet, uneventful week, but there is still plenty to be grateful for.

So I´ll start with my Friday Smile which I will link up over on Annie´s blog when I have finished this post.

It is one minute to midnight here, so 11.00 in UK, and this photo is my five sons having a family get-together, along with two of their partners and five of the grand-children. Thanks to the wonders of Skype I was able to be there with them for a little while, and as we were chatting, someone took this photo of them all and e-mailed it to me. What a super way to end the day!

With few commitments, I have had some spare time this week, and made good use of it by spring-cleaning the kitchen. It was in dire need of some attention, and as I was cleaning I also rearranged some of my equipment so I have a space for a new stand-mixer that will hopefully arrive early next week. My hands are not very strong these days and I was struggling with my hand-held mixer, so as a post-Christmas treat, I have ordered a Kenwood Chef. I can´t wait for it to arrive so I can have a good baking session.

Today we did some more rearranging. We have moved our big dining table into the end of the sitting room. It was too big for the dining room and we never used it in there, with the result that it got all my Africa knitting dumped on it. So this afternoon I sorted everything out, putting finished baby clothes and blankets into black bags, and sorting out the wool into plastic crates and drawers, so it is all tidy and organised now. Then we took the table into the other room where it looks much smaller! To make a space for it we have moved a small settee into what was the dining room and made it into a ´quiet´room, where we can sit if we don´t want the TV. There is still some sorting out to do in both rooms, but I am grateful that we got it done as we have been talking about it for a while.

On Wednesday I went to the hospital with my friend, so I could translate for her at an out-patient appointment, only to be told that there was no consultant there, and to come back the next day! The fact that it is a half- hour drive each way, and a waste of our time as well as petrol didn´t seem to occur to them, but there was nothing we could do, so we went home and returned again on Thursday morning. Everything went well the second time and I was glad that I had been able to help her. I keep trying to improve my Spanish but I sometimes wonder why, as I rarely get the chance to use it, so it was nice to have an opportunity to put some of it into practice.

I also used some of my spare time to make a ´New

Home´card for one of my sons who moved house two weeks ago. There was no time to make a card straight away, but as I had planned it, I made it anyway and posted it, and amazingly he got it two days later! I´ve never known mail travel so fast. And I know he was really pleased with it, because he put a picture of it on facebook, with a lovely comment. I had used a design that a lady on the silhouette facebook page had posted a tutorial for, but I used my own colour scheme and papers, and added a little verse on the back to make it personal.

We have both been grateful for warm, sunny days (most days anyway), which we have made the most of, sitting out for an hour or two each afternoon, and just relaxing. But we have also both been really grateful for the newly repaired fire that has made the sitting room so cosy in the evenings. The dogs have been coming in after tea and they are enjoying it too, though they do ask to go out again at bedtime. They sleep on the porch and seem to prefer it out there to a nice warm room, but I guess it is what they are used to.

Another project that I finished this week, is another blanket for Africa. Usually this means that I have sewn together some of the squares that friends at my sewing group have made and given to me. In fact when I had tidied up today I found I have a black bin bag full of squares so I must get some more sewn together soon, and edged. But this week I finished a blanket that was all my own work. Over the summer, when it was too hot to hold more than a very small piece of work, I made a set of squares with all the small balls of wool left over from knitted jumpers and cardigans. I wanted to try some of the many crocheted stitches that are available on the internet these days, so every square is a different colour and a different stitch. All are crocheted. Then I used some dark grey wool to crochet around each square and crochet them together. This makes  nice decorative seams which are much stronger than sewn ones. And finally I worked all round the edge. I love all the colours and textures in it. It will be going off to Africa in the next consignment that I send, so I hope a new little baby will like being wrapped in it too.

My last grateful for this week is for my husband and a group of friends who have listened and helped me to work through some situations that have been bothering me, without telling me what to do. I needed to make my own decisions which I have done now, but I was so glad of their support.

And now for my two sky photos for this this week. I particularly like photos of natural vegetation sihouetted in black against an interesting sky, so I have chosen two of these to show you this week. One was taken several days ago, and one was taken at tea-time tonight.

On that lovely note I will leave you to go over to Virginia´s blog to link up there, and I´ll see you all again next week.