Rocking Your World 2021: Week 31

Well I have another week of 'mixed blessings' but I will start with two photos that made me smile. 

This is my second son who was celebrating his 48th birthday at the weekend. He just loves the sea and sand, and hops across to the Welsh coast whenever he can. For his birthday he was joined by his partner of course, plus two of his brothers, his daughter, her husband and his grandsons, plus his own sons and stepsons, and some friends, and as you can see by his face, he thoroughly enjoyed his day. It always makes me smile to see my boys having a good time.

The second photo is again of Tango. On this evening I was sitting out on the porch as usual, with my crochet on hand, and I would not let Tango claim his place on my lap because it was just so hot. I was listening to a shuffled library of music and the blue cylinder beside him is my speaker. What made me smile was that he didn't even flinch when a louder or heavier song came on. At one time he even had his chin resting on the speaker. He must have liked the vibrations.

So during the week, Chris continued with the makeover in the yard. The space in the corner is where the shed was, and now he has removed all the bamboo fencing that covered the long wall. Under it was some very sad peach coloured paint that needed attention. He power washed the really loose flakes off and then we both had scrapers to to try and shift the rest. Yesterday he bought a sander and a good mask to finish preparing the surface ready for repainting. It is a long wall and we are considering doing it plain white with some tiling areas to break it up. But we are not sure yet.

On Tuesday Chris called me out to look at the clouds and they were beautiful. The whole sky was covered with 'cotton wool balls' which are know as Mammatus clouds. 

They usually become heavy with moisture and sure enough, shortly after that we had a wonderful storm. It cleared the air and washed the car! as well as pleasing all the plants. It rained quite heavily for a while and I continued to sit out on the porch, under our big sunshade which fortunately is waterproof, watching the rain bounce off the pool, but I am glad to say we were spared the huge hail stones that hit many places around us.

Chris wanted a lemon for his drink one evening so I went out to pick one off our tree which is just outside the kitchen door. It was this one which I thought was really funny because it is all the wrong way round. The fruit was oval as you would expect, but its place where it was joined to the stem and its point, were at the sides instead of the ends. But it was fine inside.

Now, as you know I am interested in the 'minibeasts' that share our life so here are a couple you may not have met. Everyone is, of course, aware of the dreaded wasp that likes to spoil our picnics and carries a painful and irritating sting. We get a lot of these coming to the pool apparently to collect water to cool their nest. They mostly congregate around the steps and rail, and don't really bother us as long as we don't bother them. If I see a live one thrashing about in the water, I try to retrieve it on a pool noodle and deposit it on the side to dry out and fly away, but quite a few do drown.

But here are couple of different wasps. Firstly this is a female Mammoth wasp. (I know it is female as it has a yellow face but I couldn't get that in the photo). These are considerably larger than a common wasp with a fatter body,  and can grow to 4.5cm long. Happily we don't see them that size here. They are  totally non-agressive and are not known to sting people.

And the second example is this strange creature. It has a black head and thorax, and then a long yellow tube which carries a 'comma' shaped abdomen on the end.  This is a mud dauber wasp, and again, although a female may sting its prey to paralyse it, it is not agressive and doesn't sting people. An interesting fact about this one is that it builds a beautiful little nest out of mud, shaped like a little clay pot, and lays one egg in it. Then she fills it up with tiny spiders and other insects and seals the top. When the egg hatches it feeds on the food store left for it, until it is big enough to emerge. I say it again; isn't nature wonderful?

The moon is almost full this week and I took this photo because looking up at it there was a very clear face on it. It is not so obvious in my photo but if you stand off from it and look and I think you will see it too.

Now here is this week's crocheted square, this time inspired by the thatched huts that are often seen on stilts at the edge of the sea on tropical coasts. I made this one and am halfway though making the other three (doing a round on each so they will all be finished by Sunday night ready for the last square pattern that will be released on Monday.

Here is the designers inspiration for it.

I have written this on Thursday because we have a busy couple of days. Today we took Kim to the vet for three small operations that will all be done while he is under the anaesthetic. I have had two phone calls so far to update us and ask how we want to proceed, so it was a bit more complicated than we had expected, but hopefully he will recover fine. We collect him around 5.00 tonight so I can't settle to do much and thought writing this would give me something to do.

Some other sad news is that last Friday we said 'Good-bye' to our little cat Paco. Some of you will have read about it on Facebook. Paco, along with the rest of his litter, was abandoned in a plastic carrier bag hung on someone's gate, even before his eyes were open. The lady took them in and her dog helped her to care for them, keeping them clean and returning them to her bed whenever they escaped. At six weeks old, he came to live with us and he has been our friend and companion for twelve and a half years.

We really miss him as he never roamed far from home, but although we are sad to lose him, we know he had a good life, and was loved and cared for. He died naturally in his sleep which is a lovely way to go.

So I will end there and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World in the morning. If I have time I will add an update for Kim but we have to go to Almeria in the morning to collect our TIE cards (ID cards), so there may not be time.

Thursday night. Update on Kim. He is home again and seems quite settled. About eighteen months ago we were alerted to an infection in a back toe because he kept chewing it. A course of antibiotics seemed to cure it but it kept reoccurring and no amount of medication would deal with it, so this time the vet decided it needed more drastic attention. So she has now removed the nail bed and bone from the toe. He has about seven stitches in it. She also removed a large, marble size skin tag from his haunch, and a fairly large wart from underneath his eye lid that was beginning to affect his sight. So all in all he has plenty to feel sorry for himself about, but he seems to be in good spirits. He still tries to chew the toe so he  has a huge 'lampshade' collar which he has to wear whenever we are not with him. But for now, one or other of us will sit with him during the day, so he only needs it at night.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 30

I can't believe it is week 30 already. We'll be on the countdown to Christmas soon! 

It has been a mixed week of highs and lows, but today we will concentrate on the highs.

I'll start with this picture of my lovely great-grandson Alfie. He is only 6½ and he has just won his 100 metre award in swimming. It always pleases me to see them learning how to handle themselves in water. He looks very proud of his acheivement.

Last week Thursday through to Sunday was our village fiesta. It was very low key this year with none of the street bars or market stalls that we usually have, but there was a small funfair and several activities arranged for the youngsters.

With it being so hot, we mainly stayed at home under a fan, but we did venture out on Friday night for the patronal mass. This is to celebrate our patron saint 'Virgen del Carmen'. The mass takes place on the main plaza in the early evening, and although we don't actually join in we do sit at the back and follow as much as we can.

The start and end of each fiesta event is marked with the letting off of firecrackers, or large rockets. Sometimes you can hear the 'swoosh' as they go up, and you wait, holding your breath, for the bright burst of fire and then a deafening noise, leaving little puffs of dark smoke where they were. Sometimes a whole volley of them are launched together and the noise is horrendous. Then just as you give a sigh of relief, another volley goes off. We have always thought this highly unnecessary, and every year there are complaints on Facebook, but it is a tradition that they seem unwilling to relinquish. Of course it starts all the dogs in the village barking, or hiding in fear. Kim is not too fazed by them though he did bark at them this year, but at the first sound, Foxy runs inside and hides behind a chair, and stays there all day if we let her!

The statue was put in place beside a temporary altar, and instead of the usual offering of flowers from everyone during the service, some people had added bunches around the plinth earlier, and also after the mass. Normally once the mass has ended we go off to see friends or have a drink at a bar, but this year, while Chris went to our local bar, I decided to follow the procession back up to the church at the top of the village, so this week I will share that with you.

The local choir sang several rousing songs during the mass and the music group played while the folk around us went up to receive the bread from the priest.

They then led the procession to take the statue back to the church. The 'trono' she is on is very heavy and four strong men carry it on poles on their shoulders. One person, this time the priest's assistant, has the job of making sure the bearers keep the rhythm of their side to side steps in sync, and he frequently knocks on the trono surface to tell them to stop. Four young lads were enlisted to carry stout poles with a hook on them which are used to support the trono while the bearers rest. The procession winds around some side streets and then up our road which is the main route up to the church.

 

The band kept up a slow steady beat on their drums, and sometimes broke into music. 

This all took a long time and it was getting dark as we neared the top of the village. There are some tricky corners to navigate here, and the men were getting tired. I was quite worried about one of the bearers who was elderly and his steps began to falter. On one stop he changed sides with the other man at the back so he took the weight on his other shoulder. It is seen as a great honour to be a bearer, and he was obviously not going to relinquish it. One of the men at the front occasionally let a member of the crowd take over for a while, but he stayed close by and helped them to keep in step.

Near the top of the village we reached the Town Hall and I was surprised when they slowly turned and walked her up to the main doors. Here they lifted her up as the upstairs windows opened and the Mayor and his helpers came out and showered her with rose petals as the crowd answered his shouts of "Viva  la Virgen del Carmen! Viva Los Gallardos!"

Then amidst lots of shouting and cheering they turned around and continued up to the church. I can't describe the noise, of people laughing and talking, the band playing a rousing number and suddenly the church bells pealing out their notes (which are deafening anyway).  As we turned into the patio in front of the church, the band moved to the side and the statue was taken up to the door, turned around to be presented to the people, and then lowered onto a table quickly brought from the church for the purpose. 

At that precise moments the fireworks started. It is the first time I have seen pretty, colourful fireworks since we came here. I have always assumed they are not encouraged because of the ever constant fear of fire, but obviously the fiesta is an exception. They were really nice and as they went off the bells continued to clang until one really loud explosion signalled the end, and we all made our way back down to the village.

I hope you have enjoyed sharing this little part of our celebrations with me. It is the first time I have  followed it so I know I haven't shared it before. I have added some photos along the way and I hope you can see some of the things I have mentioned. I am going to try to add a little video to finish. It is less than a minute long, but will give you a feel of what it was like. I hope you are able to play it.

Since then it has been too hot to do much at all. Chris did manage to dismantle the shed and on Wednesday night I helped him take all the panels, and other large rubbish out to lay beside our bin. Early the next morning we heard the crane lorry come to take it all away. It is such a useful scheme for disposing of larger items. So now we can plan what to do with the space, but we are in no rush. I expect it will wait for slightly cooler days.

We did have the 40º promised again on Monday and the same is forecast for tomorrow (43º). So another day indoors with the aircon on I guess. The rest of the week is showing 29º-36º, so that is pretty warm too!

I spent a couple of mornings in my craft room as it is at its coolest then, and I have a ceiling fan as well as a floor standing one which help. I managed to make a set of nine Christmas cards but they are for a challenge at the weekend so I can't show them here yet.

I have had a few late night swims to cool down before going to bed. We cool the bedroom down with the aircon for an hour, and then just leave a ceiling fan on all night, so if I start off cool, with a cool room, I usually manage to fall asleep OK.

Here are my additions for the Tropical Coast blanket. This week we were given the pattern for three small squares representing a cut open coconut, a shell and sparkling sea, and we needed to make four of each. I have done one of each, and all four of the blue ones, so now I am going to tackle the other three shells. I am not sure I will finish the coconuts as well, as it is too warm even in the evenings, to do very much. 

The designer didn't give is a picture board for this little squares so I made one of my own using her squares from the pattern.

And with that I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World.

Rocking our World 2021; Week 29

Last week I started by saying it was hot. Well this week it just got hotter! We had a freak temperature surge on Monday when even our shaded thermometer went up to 41 degrees. Going outside was like hitting an invisible wall of heat, and when the wind got up as well, it was like a hot hair-drier blowing on you, and to add insult to injury, it was carrying a lot of desert sand!. Needless to say we stayed inside with the aircon on. It is a rare occasion when we have it on all day as I find it very drying, and I am not convinced it is healthy to make the room too cold when it is so hot outside. But there are some times when it is very necessary and Monday was one of those times. The animals came in with us, and while Kim sprawled out across the floor, Foxy sat on the settee. She was just across from Chris and he managed to take this lovely photo of her. It really shows her blue eyes at their best. She is very camera shy so we rarely get a good picture of her.

I was very glad that we had made an appointment for Kim to have a much needed trim on Saturday. We were worried because he is notoriously uncooperative with groomers, to the extent he has had some very bad cuts, and on two or three occasions they have phoned us to collect him while he is still wet because he was so stressed out by the drier. Two groomers have even refused to have him. But we went to a different girl who I had been told had managed a friend's big dog very well, and we were really impressed. She was only a slip of a thing, but she did a really good job. She explained why his coat was not suitable for a close shave, but she removed all the undercoat, cleaned up the long hair on his rear end, and the back of his legs, trimmed his nails and feet, and bathed and dried him. She even sent me a video of him just laying there while she used a really quite fierce drier on him. She has a magic touch. He is a very handsome fellow, and even more so now he has been trimmed. I would definitely go to her again. I am sure it kept him a bit more comfortable in Mondays heat too.

Fortunately the intense heat only lasted for a day and by Tuesday we had a ten degree or more drop in temperature. Apparently we can't call it a heat wave as the temperature has to be above a certain level for three or more consecutive days for that, but whatever you call it, one day was plenty. For that day it was even too hot to get in the pool until late evening as it is in full sun, but we have made good use of it for the rest of the week. 

One morning I heard some noise out in the yard, and went out to find Chris starting to dismantle our old shed/changing room. It has become a dumping ground for pool towels, old garden chairs etc, and since it got wet inside when we had our big flood, the floor is unsafe and the whole place smells musty. So for quite a while we have talked about taking it down, but hadn't quite decided how we would tackle it. Of course, it didn't occur to Chris that it would have been easier if he emptied everything out of it first!  But it was too hot to work on it for long, and the next  morning we did empty it. I sorted everything into three piles, one to keep, one to throw away and one for the charity shop. We have to wait until 21st July for the next time we can put 'large items' out by the bins for removal, but that is not long now. Then all the broken chairs, old sun lounger cushions, and the panels of the shed can go in one lot.  The charity shop bits have all been washed, so I can take them down to Turre in the morning. The rest of the shed will be tackled early one morning while the sun is still low enough not to cook us while we work!

On Tuesday we had our first proper market. It was back in its own home, in the street parallel with ours. This week it is our village's patronal fiesta and although it is still very low key, there will be some fairground attractions for the little ones to enjoy, and the temporary market site on the car park was needed for this. But as well as being in its old position, there were more stalls and once again we were allowed to pick our own fruit and vegetables, using the disposable gloves provided on each stall. I was happy with that, and as this is the height of the summer fruits season I was able to come home with this lovely selection.

I love the little flattened peaches known as paraguyos, but they ripen very quickly so we will have to eat them first. But my best buy were these beautiful black cherries. Sometimes they lack flavour and don't ripen well, but these were just perfect and we are enjoying them immensely.

Gradually my hand settled down last week, though it troubled me in the night again last night, but I was happy to find that I can still handle a crochet hook, so here are the next squares for my Tropical shores blanket. I finished all four needed of the palm tree squares, and this week's one was much easier. It represents the waves and white foam as they break, and again I need four of them. I am on the third one so I expect I will have done all four by Monday when the next pattern is released.

It is a simple square so the designers picture board is simple too, but she has caught the essence of it very well.

And that my friends is it for this week. I have still failed to comment on some folks blogs, but had more success with others, so I will keep trying, and hopefully Blogger will do something to sort it out soon.

Linking up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 28

Here we go again. I am rather disenchanted with Blogger these days. It changes my font size for some paragraphs, and alters the formatting between the post edit and publishing, and now it won't let me publish comments to some people. So I am really sorry if you don't hear from me. I can promise you that I do visit everyone, and I do try to comment. After several attempts I think I managed to comment on most people's blog but Angela, I simply couldn't get one to 'stick' for you. Maybe I'll do better this week.

I am starting this week with a photo that just about sums this week up. Yes, it has been hot, hot, hot! This picture was taken one morning on our thermometer that is never in direct sunlight, and it continued to rise a few degrees through the day. Next Monday they are forecasting 47º in parts of Andalucía, which is unprecedented even for here, and is in fact quite dangerous to go out in, so I guess we will have a stay indoors day with the aircon on, and the animals inside to protect them too. We rarely use the aircon during the day. It is tends to dry you out. But there is a time when it is essential.

To make matters worse, on Monday we had a six hour power cut so we couldn't even have a fan on! I think everyone had the same idea and overloaded the supply. Thankfully we could dip in and out of the pool, but with the water at almost 30º it is more like a warm bath! But we survived, and no doubt we will again.

This photo made me smile. It is a very disgruntled Tango, because I wouldn't let him lie across my lap like he usually does throughout the evening. He had to make do with the little table next to me. The last thing I need right now is a fur blanket across my knees.

I had some good post at the start of the week. These arrived. They are a set of blocking boards for my crochet, and lots of pins. The boards are like the interlocking coloured foam boards that fit together to make a child's play mat, but they are a bit tougher and much thicker. The pins are a bit lethal, but there are plenty of them so I am able to pin my squares out securely.

Because I mostly work with acrylic yarn, I don't often bother to block my squares, but my multi-coloured ones I have been making for 'Sophie's Dream' blanket are made with yarn that  is a little acrylic and a high percentage of cotton. They have come out a variety of sizes, and not very square, so I knew blocking them would be an improvement.

I started by laying them all out on our bed, and swapping them around until I was happy with the arrangement. Then I took this photo so I could reproduce it when I join them up. 

Then I took four of them and dipped them in just warm water with a dash of hand detergent to rid them of any grease from my hot hands. I squeezed them out gently and stretched each one out to a 14inch square.  When I join all the boards together, I can get four squares stretched out at a time. They are pinned securely and left to dry completely. Then they are removed and the next four are stretched. I have twenty squares to do so I have five sets of stretching to do, but there is no hurry. I will probably leave the joining up until it is a bit cooler, and I can handle doing a border on a full size blanket. By then I will have twenty squares, all a nice neat shape and all the same size - I hope.

Here are two side by side. The yellow one has been blocked and the darker one hasn't. I am sure you can see what a difference it makes.

Of course, I am not one for sitting doing nothing so this week I have started a new project. I sit out on the porch in the evenings, with my floor fan pointing at my hands, and I find like that I can still work on squares, even if it is a bit more slowly.

The new blanket is called Tropical Shores and it is a Crochet A Long (CAL) so one bit of the pattern is released each week. It started this Monday, and rather surprisingly she gave us the most complicated square to make first. It depicts the palm trees on a tropical shore. You need four of them, so I made one so I could get my head around the pattern, and now I am doing the other three one row on each, so here is the finished one and the other three so far. 

I am not attempting to keep up with the pattern releases as for me it is something to do in the evenings, and not a race to finish it in no time, as then I'd have to find another pattern to do! But I can download each section as it is released, and then work on them in my own time.

Rather than buying all the wool the designer suggested, I decided to use what I have in my stash, and I ended up only needing to buy two balls of one of the blues, and two of white. So that saved me a lot of money. In her description of the pattern the designer has linked each design to the item that inspired it. So this is her picture board for the first square.

I am not sure I will be able to do any tonight. I woke up in the middle of the night with a flare-up of arthritis in my right hand. The doctor calls it false gout, but there is nothing very false about it as far as I am concerned.  It is incredibly painful. My fourth finger is swollen up like a little fat sausage and I can't bend it at all. In fact I may never be able to bend it properly again, as I had a similar attack in my left hand a couple of years ago, and that is the reason that I can no longer hold a knitting needle in that hand. I hope I get enough movement back in this one to still be able to crochet! I have taken some anti-inflammatory drugs today and it has settled down a bit, but throbs if I hang it downwards. Fortunately I have still been able to use the computer because it can lay gently across the mouse without having any pressure on it.

There hasn't been a lot to see in the garden. I think it is even too hot for most of the insects to be about during the day. We don't get many butterflies here anyway, so I was pleased to see this little one flitting around the lavender. In UK these were known as 'cabbage whites' and are not popular because their caterpillars can strip cabbage leaves bare in a day. But we don't grown much greens around here apart from lettuce, and this was so pretty.

But this is one bug that we only see when the temperature reaches at least 30º. It is the grub of the cicada. As soon as they hatch from their eggs they drop to the ground and burrow under the earth where they stay for up to seventeen years!  When the time is finally right, they emerge and dry out, and out climbs a cicada leaving this shell behind. I haven't seen a cicada yet this year - we usually get a few resting on our fly nets in the evenings, but I have heard them chirruping in the green zone. When they all 'sing' together it is an incredible noise, and is almost frightening until you know what it is. I used to think it was  loud electrical buzz in the overhead cables!

And finally here is my other finished project that I have been working on in the afternoons. I am so glad I got it finished before this really hot spell set in. I thought it was such a lovely design. It is a very long time since  I did any cross stitch, though I have got several very large pictures on my hall walls that I sewed some years ago. I wasn't sure whether my fingers are nimble enough now or my eyesight good enough, but I worked outside in bright day light, and managed much better than I had expected.

I was able to cut some mountboard and once it was washed and dried, (and pressed from the back into a dry towel to make the stitches stand out), I was able to stretch it and lace it on. A friend who does a lot of quilting gave me a very thin layer of padding to go between the sewing and the board, which really improves the look. Then I took it down to Mojacar and had it professionally framed. They did a nice job and I was pleased with it. So I wrapped it up in layers of bubble wrap and tucked it into a box which was a perfect fit, and posted it off to my son and his wife. They were thrilled to bits with it, so it was all worth while.

And here is little Aisling Rose in a photo taken at a professional photo shoot which she was just not very cooperative about. They couldn't coax a smile out of her and then she fell asleep for the rest of the shoot! 

They did get some very cute photos of her with and without her parents, but just to prove she does have a lovely smile, here is a less posed one that they took at home. (I bet you smiled back).

So now it is link up time with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, and I'll see you all again next week if I haven't melted into a little puddle by then!