Rocking Your World 2019: Week 25

Thank you to everyone who visited and left encouraging comments last week. It is always lovely to hear from you. I don't know whether everyone has the same problem with Blogger as I do, but I no longer get notifications when someone leaves a comment, so I have to remember to go to my dashboard and check for new ones. That is why it sometimes takes a while for them to appear under my post. However, I enjoy hearing from you, and they do get seen by the next week!

So, this week of course, started with our choir concert. It was up in Albox - roughly a forty minute drive from here, so Chris agreed to be my chauffeur as I don't like driving less familiar roads after dark. It was held in the function room of a small hotel, and the charity we were supporting did a good job of selling tickets, so the room was full.

We did two forty minute sessions, including some old favourites from our repertoire like a medley from Les Miserables, and some new pieces including Bohemian Rhapsody which was quite ambitious, but was very well received.

David is a very good MD and knows how to get the best out of us. I don't know how much money was raised but it must have been a good sum with a raffle and the ticket money. Generally we invite a charity to organise a concert - venue, advertising, tickets and a raffle if they want one, and we just turn up and sing for free. It usually works quite well, and we do one Friends and family concert each year for our own funds. This concert was for an organisation called AUAN who have worked tirelessly over the past decade to regularise the paper work for people whose houses were deemed to be illegal, despite them having the correct paperwork! - and therefore freeing them from the fear of having their homes demolished. It has been a worrying time for so many people, but this organisation have managed to find a path through the bureaucracy, and are beginning to see the results now. They have to meet huge legal costs so we were happy to help them raise some much needed cash.

Since then the week has flown past. I did manage to get to the market on Tuesday, and I found the local cherries were down in price a little, so I bought two  and a half kilos to make some jam. The girl knocked an extra 30 cents per kilo off because I was buying a lot, so yesterday I made a dozen jars of jam. Half them are 'sold' on order all ready so I may make one more lot, but I'll wait until nearer the end of their season and see if they get even cheaper.

Of course the worst part is removing all the pips. It takes quite a while to stone that many cherries and it can get messy, but the jam is lovely so it was worth the effort.

I don't know is any of you also follow Virginia's blog called Rocking Your World, which I also link this post to along with Annie's Friday Smiles. Well last week, Virginia posted a picture of a plant that lives in her bathroom, and it suddenly shot up a long stem that eventually had a fairly insignificant little flower on it. Well I have one just the same (not the same plant, but the same behaviour).

Mine is a cactus and I thought I'd share it here. It sits by our window and the stem has been stretching up for several weeks. I watched with interest as buds started to form, but I needed to get right in close to see the tiny flowers when they finally opened. Its very pretty but you do have to look closely to appreciate it!

Chris and I each have our own space, mainly because we each have so much equipment, materials etc that we would need a barn to both fit in it. Also we like to listen to different music while we work etc, so this arrangements works for both of us. I have my craft room, and Chris has his 'office'. We both work in semi-chaos, but we nearly always know where things are. Chris has his computer desk and a second table under the window. He chooses to keep his blind down through the summer, but the windows open, and the cats have discovered this is a cool place to spend the morning. I was surprised to see both Charlie and Tango quite happily sharing the space this week, but when Paco jumped up there and saw the competition, he decided "two's company but three's a crowd", and promptly made off to find a different place to rest in.

This morning my computer decided to throw a wobbly, and after closing itself down, it refused to open again. So I am very grateful for a techie-minded husband who managed to get it up and running for me again.

And now for my Ta-dah moment. My blanket is finished. I love it, and my son does too. He saw it in progress when he came over on holiday last month. Another son, Ben, is coming over in July and he is hoping to be able to take it back for Jonathan. So here it is.

The pattern was called Early American inspired afghan, and the patterns all have their own symbolism so the designer, Lissa Conley, gave us this picture to explain what each section represents.

There was the option to have the wolves both facing to the right, or facing each other and I chose the second option. It was also my choice to use two alternative colours, with black as my main colour, and then I decided to use yellow for the moons. That was almost my undoing as it turned out to be quite a hassle, but I am glad I persevered with it. I am also glad that I managed, by sitting under the fan and doing a few rows each night, to finish it, as the weather is now very hot, in the mid-thirties by day, and I couldn't manage such a big, heavy piece of work for much longer. I shall be looking for small and simple items to work on now until the autumn.

I thought it had been hanging around for a while, and the dog has drooled on it, and the cats have sat on it, so since taking the above photo, I put it inside a single duvet cover and washed it in the machine on a gentle program. It came up really well, so fresh and bright, and I was able to pull it into shape and leave it to dry, so now it is all ready to parcel up for Ben to take back to its new home.

So now I just have two more photos of the night sky to share. Chris found the app on his phone and we were able to confirm that the planet I could see was in fact Jupiter. It was still visible this week, though a little lower in the sky so I took another photo of it. I don't know where the green came from?

As it was so big and bright, I also took another one of the full moon which turned out rather well.

So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World. Have a good weekend everyone.