Rocking Your World 2016: Week 14

Hello again. I hope everyone enjoyed a Happy and Peaceful Easter. I had a very quiet day on Good Friday and Saturday, but Easter Sunday was lovely with a special service at our church. It had been decorated in the front corner with very pretty flower arrangements and of course purple cloth.

As you are probably aware, a small group of us have been meeting each Friday afternoon to practice two songs to sing at this service, and these were well received by the congregation.  We are referred to as 'the choir' but I think that is a bit of an exaggeration, but we do try to all look the same so we wore black trousers or skirts, white tops and red accessories, which along with our red folders made a nice splash of colour.

(Apologies for the photo. It is a still taken from a video).

Through this weekly post, and my craft blog, I have made friends with Lisca who I am sure many of you also know within blogland. She lives about a two hour drive inland from us, and her house is much higher so it is colder too. Well she, and her husband decided to bring their camper van down to Vera for a short holiday last week, and on Sunday they came up to our church service, and we invited them home to have dinner with us. Being very traditional, Chris and I still enjoy a typical British roast dinner every Sunday, even through the hottest months. Really, once it is in the oven we can keep away from the kitchen until it is ready, so it is not a hard meal to make whatever the temperature is outside. Anyway, Lisca's husband Graham seemed very pleased to have such an 'English' meal, and it was very pleasant to share a meal and chat, and get to know one another better. I am afraid we were so busy talking that this is the only photo that was taken!

It was such a lovely afternoon, and our porch was sheltered from the wind, - the thermometer out there on a shady wall was showing 27º - so we were able to sit outside after lunch and enjoy the sunshine until it was time for them to leave.

Apart from that we have had a very quiet week. I haven't shown you my smile yet so here it is. I happened to see this on facebook today and I could so relate to it, as I am sure many of you can too. There must be a lot of students at that university.

I had another happy moment this week when another parcel of wool arrived. This is for a lovely lap blanket to crochet. The design was inspired by the life and work of controversial Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and the designer, Jane Crowfoot, is going to release the pattern in eight parts, one each fortnight, starting next Tuesday. It is a CAL project (Crochet A-Long), where the idea is we keep up with the pattern releases and all finish together. There have been hundreds, in fact I think thousands, of the yarn packs sold, so there will be some very busy crocheters around the world next week. I am of course, still working on Sophie's Universe. I'm on Round 56 with another fifty or more to go, but I am having some problems with muscular pains in my arms, and soon she will be too heavy to hold, and it will also be too hot to have a blanket in the making, spread across my lap as I work around it. Frida's flowers is made from several large motifs, so they will be easier for me to handle right now, but I shall continue to work on Sophie as well. And that's not mentioning the little animals I am knitting ready for a Christmas fair, all my half finished projects for Africa, my Ireland scrapbook and several greetings cards that are barely passed the planning stage. So you can see, I could indeed relate to the photo above.

Here is something else that made me smile. Isn't it beautiful?

This is the amaryllis that my friends at the Wednesday group gave me to thank me for their crochet lessons. It was in tight bud when they gave it to me last week, but I put it on our front step where it gets the early morning sun and then it is in the shade, and it has opened up so quickly. It is called 'White baby', but each white petal has a pink edge which is so pretty.

I am also very excited about this plant in our front garden. When a friend of mine returned to live in the UK two years ago, she gave me this plant which was very small and in a small pot in her garden. We bought a rather huge pot and moved it into that, and it soon started to grow. It was a bit like an untidy head of hair at first, but the stem has stretched up longer and much thinner now. Every now and then, a new set of 'leaves' grows up from the centre, and the lower ring dies off and you can gently pull them away.

But just lately we thought it was getting to be a rather odd shape. The newest centre shoot didn't separate like it usually does, but it just kept getting taller, and the whole plant looked a bit bedraggled and sad. I thought maybe I wasn't watering it enough over the winter so I started paying more attention to it, and this week I realised that the new shoot is in fact a flower! I had no idea it even had flowers. But this evening I took this photo and you can clearly see there are flower buds all the way up it. I am excited now to see what it will look like. At the rate it is changing, I think I will be able to show you by next week.

Another thing that rather tickled me today was when we went to Turre to take two of our cats to the vet. One was Arwen, who lives just in this room, and gets a bit fretful when she is taken out, so I waited until the last minute to persuade her (forcefully push her), into the carrying box. The other was Tango, who is too laid back to ever get stressed. I set his basket on the kitchen floor with the door open, and a few minutes later he wandered into it and settled down as though he went in it every day. He is barely aware of Arwen's existence, but she hisses and growls at anything that moves, so I decided to put one on the car floor behind my seat, and one in the boot. Before long Arwen started to complain. She has a high pitched, tiny mewing voice. Then Tango answered in his deep mournful mee-ow, and they took it in turns to make these two noises all the way to the vets. It was like a slightly discordant duet and Chris and I were in stitches listening to them. Fortunately neither had a too serious condition, so soon they were back home in their separate areas and happy again.

I am glad to say we have had some better skies in the evenings this week so I have two photos to close with. One was tonight. I went shopping later than usual and on the way home I thought the sky looked like it might produce a nice sunset, but then it cleared and there weren't really enough clouds to make it interesting. But just before it went dark I looked out and saw this lovely arc of light. I love the way there is nearly always a little bird in my photos, flying back to wherever it roosts for the night. There are a couple in this one, but you may have to click on the image to enlarge it before you can see them.

This other one came earlier in the week, when the high wind that often starts at tea time, had broken up the cloud giving this beautiful effect.

And on that happy note I will go and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World, and I'll see you all next week.