Rocking Your World 2021: Week 35

Hi everyone. I am starting this week with a photo that really made me smile. These teddies are not my work. They were made by my clever sister Brenda, who is 90 years old! Her daughter posted the photo. She has packed them up ready to go to a mother and baby unit in Sierra Leone, Brenda was always good at making animals, and especially loved little teddies. When I was younger and tried to make toy animals or characters on the boys' jumpers, I used to get her to do the faces, as she had a gift for getting them right.

Another week has flown by. The sudden rise in Covid cases in the village, which seemed to follow the small fiesta here in July, has slowed down and is in fact reducing quite quickly again, so that is a positive thing. But we still stay home unless we have a good reason to be out and about.

After some exceptionally hot days, the temperature has dropped and life is a bit more comfortable. It would be even more so if it wasn't so humid. We  actually had some rain on Tuesday. It didn't last for very long but it came down quite fast. Unfortunately it was heavy with dessert sand again, so everywhere was left looking brown and dirty. We had to pour water on the car windscreen before we could drive anywhere. But at least I could delay getting the hose out for another day.

I had a nice delivery early in the week. I am tired of waiting for my big oven to heat up just to cook a small pie etc for the two of us, and it makes the kitchen so hot for ages, so I ordered us a small table-top oven. I am quite pleased with it. It heats up very fast, and cooks in good time, but it seems to me a bit flimsy. I chose one that is made in Spain to avoid added taxes, and it was in the top five 'best of its kind' list on the internet, but I would have liked it to be a bit more robust. However, it has a rotisserie bar and I am looking forward to cooking a whole chicken on it at the weekend.

For those who asked, the zucchini chocolate cake I made last week, was very nice. It stayed lovely and moist, and we enjoyed it.

A couple of weeks ago I bought two kalenchoe plants in Lidls. I often choose them because they are very resilient, withstanding a lot of sun, and flowering for ages, often keeping going for several years. I put them in my three tier plant holder on the front porch, because the geraniums had finished for this year, but of course I then wished I had bought a third one for the top. So yesterday we popped into a garden centre and I bought a red one to complete my trio. They do look nice and bring a spot of colour up to the porch. As you can see, the pink one has got some flowers turning brown. I think I may have over watered it, but I am confident that it will soon recover.

And finally, I did manage to join all my squares together and crochet the border for my Tropical Shores Blanket. There were a few more palm trees to work around there, but I like the way it looks. I have washed it and laid it out on the orange bed-settee to dry which has given it a slightly orange look, but it is actually bright white which makes all the colours really stand out. It is slightly wavy around the edge so I could probably have gone down a size of hook to work the border, but I am not worried about that. It will sort itself out when it is used.

Next I may attempt to join my big coloured squares. It may be a bit too hot still to have an even bigger blanket on my lap, but it is made with thinner yarn so it may not be quite so heavy.

Now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World.

Rocking Your World 2021; Week 34

We have had a quiet week and I am glad of that as it has been too hot to do much anyway. I feel sorry for the animals. Their fur may offer some protection from the sun, but all the same it can't be easy being forced to wear a fur coat all the time! It makes them very sleepy. I often wonder what Tolly does all night because he sleeps for most of the day. As soon as he has eaten breakfast he stretches right out across the siting room floor and just stays there, while we have to step over him. Sometimes he has enough of the hard floor and jumps onto the settee only to sleep again. But I guess it is warmer there than the on the stone tiles and he rolls around and twists into all sorts of positions. I think here he is trying to get the ceiling fan to cool down his belly!

I am happy to say that Kim is well on the way to his normal self. I still clean his toe twice a day but it has just about healed right over now. His eye still bothers him a bit but I am going to buy more antibiotic drops (the vet left me with a prescription so I could get more from the farmacia), and keep treating it. I have a feeling it is as good as it is going to get, but we'll see. We have not supervised him quite so closely for the past few days and tonight we will allow him to sleep without the collar on and I am sure that will please him.

I put my back out at the beginning of the week, no idea how, so sitting down all day wasn't doing me any good, and I joined the locals in taking an afternoon siesta. Lying flat for a while has helped and I am a lot better now, but I do try to get up and move around regularly. In the evenings it has been mostly too hot to have a blanket on my knees so I have done a lot of reading on my Kindle, and magic puzzles on my tablet.  I only do 280 piece puzzles because the pieces are too small on the screen if I do more, but I am working through a series of puzzles (one released every day but I don't do them all!), where you don't see the picture first so you have no idea what you are trying to make. It can be quite challenging sometimes, and keeps me busy. 

But I have done a little bit of crochet and last night I finished joining my squares together. Now I am working on the border so maybe I will have a finished piece to show next week.

One evening our quiet street was disturbed by a sound and I suddenly realised it was the families from the top of the village exercising their horses. They used to ride them down the street quite often, but we haven't seen them for a couple of years. I took a quick photo from our front porch. I love to see them. They think the world their horses and keep them well groomed, and they ride very erect and proud.

The sun has brought some flowers out again. Hibiscus is one plant that enjoys the hot weather as long as they have plenty of water, so I hose them every couple of days. And this week we had all four varieties in flower. Top left is the most common red one. All of them would be happier planted in the ground but even in a pot they put on a good show. The top right one is deep pink. I have had it for about five years but this is only the second time it has flowered. The petals are slightly frilly and it is very pretty when it does show its face.

Bottom right is the orange one I bought last year I think. It is very vivid and makes a lovely show when there are several blooms out on it. And the yellow one, bottom left, I have had for years now. I pruned it back hard last year so it is a better shape now. The flowers are lovely with their deep red centre and pretty stamen, but when it rains hard the yellow and red run together and the whole flower is pale orange!

In a mad moment I decided to bake a cake . I put the oven on as little as possible these days but it is nice to have something different for tea. This recipe is for Zucchini Chocolate bread. Zucchinis are cougettes for my UK friends, and they are called callabacin out here. They are the main ingredient of the cake and are supposed to make it very moist. It looks and smells good, but it warns you not to try to cut it until it is really cold so I haven't tried it yet. I will give my thoughts on it next week if I remember.

Today it is a little bit cooler and Chris managed to get out in the yard and chip away the very last of the old yellow paint from the long wall. So the next job will be to paint it, but they may have to wait for a couple of weeks as the paint dries almost to fast when it is this hot.

They weren't wrong about the heatwave they said was coming and we had a few days when even in the shade, the thermometers registered 40º. The ones on the street signs are often a bit misleading as their sensors are sometimes in full sun, but a  friend posted a picture of one in Granada showing 50º. That is quite near where our blog-friend Lisca lives so she may have had some hotter days than us. But I can vouch for this one as it is on our porch, on a wall that gets no direct sun. It only goes down a few degrees at night so we have used one of the floor fans out there some evenings. Unfortunately, as the temperature drops a few degrees the humidity rises, and it was 95% the other day.That makes it more unpleasant than the heat alone, but at least we can jump in the pool once the sun has moved off it a bit, though this week even the pool water was 30º. I shan't be sorry when September comes around, with hopefully a bit more comfortable days.

But it is all good really. It may be too hot to do much, but we are in the enviable position of not needing to do much, so how lucky are we! I hope you are all getting some summer weather and the chance to relax and enjoy it. Now I am off to link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

I had a few problems publishing my comments again last week, so I sent a couple via Messenger. I am using my PC as I am useless with smaller devices for doing anything more than reading things and browsing Facebook etc., but it is getting a bit out of date. Chris has promised me a new one very soon. It may be a hassle to get all my favourite programmes transferred, but I am hoping it will iron out some of the problems I have had recently. Anyway I will visit you all, and do my best to post a comment.

Rocking Your World 2021; Week 33

This week we had another family birthday. On Tuesday it was our middle son's birthday. Jonathan is more at home, and most often photographed, behind his huge drum kit which he plays with great gusto in the three or four heavy metal bands he is involved with. They do gigs around his home town of Manchester, and further afield whenever the opportunity arises. But I just love this photo taken a couple of months ago, of a tender moment with his wife and their new baby girl. It is part of a set taken professionally and my favourite.

 

Jonathan had a somewhat turbulent childhood and teenage years, and has always loved his heavy metal music , so the thought of him ever holding a baby, changing a nappy, or even pushing a pram, was way beyond anything I could imagine, but he has taken to Fatherhood like a duck to water and likes nothing better than being left in charge of his little princess while mum has a time-out for herself. Of course A. has changed since this photo and at 4 months already rolls over and over and is trying desperately to crawl. They don't stay babies for long.

In his early teens the one thing that Jonathan wanted was a pair of black Converse boots, and at the time they were impossible to find. We eventually managed to get him some for his birthday from America. So when I saw a cutting file to make a little multi-coloured running shoe, I just knew I could convert it, and made him a birthday card like a black Converse boot. He loved it and he remembers that we paid $13 for his pair around 1997 I think, and at the time it seemed a lot for some canvas boots, but apparently you would have to shell out £65 for some in UK now!

Our week has been mainly spent still taking turns to sit with Kim to make sure he doesn't chew his foot etc. We had another trip to the vet on Monday, intending to have the stitches removed but the toe has not healed sufficiently well, so I have antiseptic to clean it with twice daily and another course of antibiotics to hide in his food. But they were more concerned about his eye which had become inflamed because the stitch is irritating it, so back we went on Tuesday so he could have another anaesthetic, to have the stitch removed. I can tell it is more comfortable for him now, but I have to try to put anti-inflammatory cream on it and antibiotic drops in it twice a day. And of course, the collar is still necessary at night, until his toe is completely healed. The tablets make him sleepy so he spends much of his day laid out on the porch, under a fan, with one or other of us sitting beside him.

We left him (with his collar on) for a short while on Sunday to join in with a bit of fun in the village. It was the end of the 'Week of Culture' when various activities took place at the new theatre on the edge of the village. (They used to use the school playground, but now they have this lovely purpose built venue). There was a family film one evening, plays by the village drama group, and a visiting drama group came another night. (Our grasp of listening to Spanish is not good enough to make attending these events worth while, but the theatre isn't far from us, and we could hear quite a bit just sitting on our porch!) But on the last night there is always some form of street entertainment, aimed at the whole family, right down to the youngest members. It has been something different every year we have been here, and some are much better than others, but this year it was quite fun. 

Starting on the plaza, three strange vehicles arrived manned by a young man and two girls, and another man on quite high stilts, the sprung metal ones that meant he could bounce around. 

Things like this don't start until 10.00 so it was quite dark, but they had very bright lights on them so we could really only see them in silhouette at first. The man ran around the plaza with a long pole carrying a firework that shed sparks and screamed which got everyone's attention. You probably realise that they are allowed to do thing here that wouldn't be permitted under Health and Safety regulations in UK, but we have never seen anyone come to any harm.

Next the man on stilts started bouncing around. He had a big 'cannon' that shot a constant stream of paper into the crowd. It took everyone by surprise but they loved it. Especially the children who started rushing around trying to collect the most streamers.

They did a short bit of dancing and then started to process around the streets of the village, with the crowd following on behind them. At various suitable places they stopped and moved the crowd into a circle around them to watch various tricks. At the first stop the young man did some quite impressive tumbling, and then got a single-side ladder from one of the vehicles. The two girls supported it while he again did some gymnastic moves on and through it.

Then we continued up through the village. All the way the stilt man continued to fire his paper cannon, making sure to reach families watching from their doorways up the side streets, and on high verandas etc. At another stop the girls brought out a long skipping rope. They turned it while some of the children took a turn at jumping in it. Then the man on stilts also skipped it which was quite clever. He was tall so they had to turn the rope high enough to go over him. It is blurred because of the motion but you can see the rope in this photo.

Lastly the young man took a turn jumping the rope, normally first, and then doing handstands over it etc. At the end he did press-ups still jumping the rope at each turn which was also quite impressive.

They danced and bounced all the way still firing paper at  the crowd. Here you can see some of the little girls still trying to collect bunches of it. Finally they made their way back to the plaza for some pretty good break-dancing, more fireworks and paper shooting , and then it was all over. 

Even though it was nearly midnight by the time they finished there were plenty of children, including toddlers, running around and enjoying themselves. Of course, in true Spanish style, they would all have had a good siesta before coming out. It was a fun event, and I am impressed at how our little village tries to raise everyone's spirits during the summer holiday season. It is good because many village families do not have a holiday away from home, and these events must give them a real boost.

It has been crazily hot again this week, but not as sunny. We have had a couple of days with grey overcast skies, and although the temperature has dropped a few degrees, it is still above thirty, but feels several degrees hotter because of the high humidity. So we have been happy to sit under the fans and sometimes the aircon, and I have read a lot of books, done quite a few  online jigsaws and still managed a little crochet. So this week I started to join my Tropical Coast squares. As with most of these Crochet-Along, the blanket is quite small, so I decided to use a narrow lace join which will add a few centimetres to the size. 

I may add another layer along the two shorter ends before I work the border. I did try to design a variation using extra squares, but it wasn't going to work. Also I knew I didn't have enough matching yarn to do that and as it was bought from UK, and my last order attracted a 50€ tax bill, I couldn't justify trying to buy any more. But I think I have enough yarn left to make a row of waves at each end. I love the design and it reminds me of beaches in Thailand, so I am glad I decided to make it.

Without Paco demanding attention, Tango and Tolly have become more attached to me and also more friendly together. One morning I caught them relaxing together on the table out the back. They would never have lain together like this before.

Another thing that has pleased me this week is to see flowers on my Adenium (Desert Rose). I really thought it had died during the winter. It didn't just lose its leaves, it lost all signs of life. But I kept watching it, and watered it occasionally. I knew it could 'drown' if over-watered. Then a few weeks ago, a tiny green shoot appeared, and now it has had several flowers. Isn't it beautiful? I think something I did last year was not beneficial, and it is not such a big and healthy plant as the original was, but I have read up about looking after it, and hopefully I will do better this year, so it blooms again next year.

And that's about it for this week. I have written this on Thursday night again as tomorrow morning we are back to the vet for Kim to have a final check before the vet goes on holiday and the clinic closes for a fortnight.

They are warning us of another heatwave and temperatures around 43º on Monday, so I guess we are in for another quiet week. But first I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking your World 2021.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 32

Another week and we don't seem to have done a lot in it, as we try to have one or other of us free to 'dog-sit' Kim, to make sure he doesn't chew any of his stitches. He is not doing too badly but we do have to keep an eye on him at all times. He wears the collar at night, but he hates it and cowers in a corner if he sees us approaching with it, so while it is so hot, we are trying not to use it much during the day. He hopefully will have his stitches removed on Monday.

Of course we did have to put the collar back on him the first day because we had our appointment in Almeria City to collect our TIE cards, but fortunately the pain killers and antibiotics I gave him with his breakfast, just about knocked him out for the day! We made it to Almeria but the queues were long and took a while to get moving, but our turn came eventually so we now have our cards which puts us one step nearer to being able to travel away from Spain - not that we intend to just yet.

We did venture out on Monday night to support a local initiative called Noche Blanco, or white night. It is held each year to promote businesses within the village. It had been a hot day and although the temperature did not drop significantly, the clouds gathered at nightfall, giving us this rather nice view of the Cabreras from our gate.

They cleared  again a bit as you can see from this picture I took when we rounded the corner and had a wider view of the hills. The white house belongs to a big family of bakers, and it is at the head of the green zone. It  is hiding our house which is behind and to the left of it, on the far side of the zone.

Shops within the village that wanted to take part in Noche Blanco had white balloons on display so you knew which they were. Many of our shops are really just the front room or garage of a private house, reused as a shop, and if they didn't have a sign up (some don't), you wouldn't know they were there.

This one is our favourite baker's shop, where we buy freshly baked, usually still hot, bread and pastries.

At the start of the evening we were given a card with the names of all the shops involved, and if you visited them, they stamped your card. If you bought something from them, they stapled your receipt to the card, and if you managed to get a stamp from every shop, plus at least three receipts, you could enter your card in a raffle. We went to quite a few and did make two purchases so we did our little bit to help the local economy, but we didn't complete our card. As the prize this year was an electric scooter, I don't think we really wanted to win anyway!

Several shops moved a stand of their goods out onto the street with brightly coloured toys, and sweets on display to attract folk to them.

Gonzales is the only shop in the village where I sometimes buy fruit and vegetables between market days. It is the tiniest shop, but they have a better selection than anywhere else, and they put on a good display for the evening.

There is usually some form of entertainment and this year they had hired a percussion band who did some impressive drumming. Our local police kept them moving in the right direction and they paraded around the streets where any of the shops are. There is a little shoe shop right at the lower end of our street, quite a distance from the other shops, but the band still went down to them.

They were led by a man who himself played a drum and gave instructions to his band using a yellow plastic whistle!

They stopped on the plaza and did a routine of moves and different rhythms, and then a lady from the Town Hall helped them to find each shop so they could stop and dance outside it, and have a photo taken with the shopkeeper.

We stood and watched them for a while and it was really fun. I loved watching this girl. She was quite slight but played one of the biggest drums, and she hit it with such enthusiasm. I thought how satisfying it must be to get rid of all your emotions by banging on a drum for hours. And they did play for hours. Starting soon after the shops opened at 6.00pm, we could hear them playing somewhere right round until they all closed again around 10.30.

And that is about it for this week. I have had some lovely chats with the boys. Mike and his family are camping down near the south coast and have visited many of the places I knew as a child, so it had been nice to have some reminders.

It has been ridiculously hot again some days and is unpredictable as one day it is up around 38º and the next down to 31º and then up to 38º again the next day, so we have found ourselves spending quite a bit of time in doors with fans or the aircon on. I haven't even been down here to my computer and craft room much, making do with my phone which is fine for reading posts etc, but my not very good eyes, and 'fat fingers' make doing much else on it difficult. So I haven't made any more cards but I did get a message to say I had won a little prize with my set of cards on the Christmas Card Challenge this month, which was a nice surprise.

And I have done some more crochet so here is my final square for the Tropical Shores blanket.

This time we needed to make five of them, so I worked one first to get my head around the pattern. The centre section was quite challenging this month, but after that it was fairly straight forward. I have now done the centres of the other four squares so they will all be finished by Monday when the designer will post about how to join them and make a border. This square is representing 'palms along the shore' with the little thatched huts nestling between them. Here is the designer's photo board.

 

It reminded me of the beaches we visited on our three month tour of East Asia before we moved out here. And even here in Spain we have palm trees growing out of the sand all along the beaches, but not the thatched huts, not just here anyway.

So I think I had better end there and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World.