Friday Smiles 2022: Week 4

It has been a wet and cold week, but I am not complaining as we have a comfortable home to stay inside until it improves. In fact the sun is due to shine again on Saturday, and the ground has benefitted from a good soaking. In fact quite a bit of the rain has been during the night which is even better.

But it has been colder than we are used to, so on Monday I decided to make a warming casserole for our lunch. I had roasted a small chicken on Sunday so the next moring I stripped the rest of the meat off it, and put the carcass and skin into my instant pot (basically an electric pressure cooker), with some water, and left it to simmer for an hour or so to make stock. While that was happening I cut up a range of vegetables that I rounded up from the fridge and cupboard. I always think it looks so nice and you just know it will taste good. Then I added a small jar of garbanzas (chick peas in UK).

I strained the bones from the stock and put the veggies back in the pot with the stock and again cooked it for around 45mins. Finally I decanted what I thought we could manage to eat that day, into a heavy casserole and added herb dumplings, and finished it off in my mini oven. (I could have just added the dumplings to the pot and continued cooking with the pressure reduced, but I find they do better in the oven).

It was a very welcome mid-day warmer, and the left overs were 'zizzed' in my smoothie maker to make three portions of thick, smooth soup for the freezer.

Another thing which warmed us up was a squishy parcel that arrived from the Aran Sweater Market in Killarney, S. Ireland. I had bought Chris an authentic Aran woolly jacket for Christmas and he has worn it exclusively ever since. So when I had notification of their January sale I suggested he bought a second one, and he chose a lovely jumper in a shade called evergreen. It is a dark green-blue mix and as you can see, he is very happy with it. There was a time when I would have knitted it for him, in fact I did make several back in the day, but as I can no longer hold the needles, this was a good alternative.

I also treated myself to one and I chose a long length cardigan in what was called 'sienna'. I was worried that it might a bit too bright orange from their picture, but it is actually a lovely russet brown (rather like a red squirrel), and it has been wonderful in the chilly mornings this week.

We both have Irish heritage so these intricate cable patterns really appeal. And in keeping with that I have done some more work on Chris' Celtic Tiles blanket. I need twenty tiles, and I finished the eighth one last night. Here it is waiting to be blocked. I have been very sensible and sewn in the ends as I finish each one so it is ready to be blocked and joined. I have one on my board from a couple of days ago which is dry and can now come off, and the new one can go on. You can see what a difference it makes. The slight stretching really brings out the pattern, and of course, it ensures they will all be exactly the same size for joining them up. I stretch them onto the block dry and fix them with the bar pins. Then I have a small hand-held steamer which I use to steam them enough to relax the fibres . This makes them fairly damp so they stay on the board until they are quite dry, by which time I usually have the next one made.

My main focus now is to finish the big project started in the Autumn. I can see the end is in sight, albeit a little way ahead yet, so I tend to work a double row of that first and then work on one of the tiles, or my Crimbo Limbo shawl until bed-time.

My lovely ginger cat Tango has a urinary tract condition which means he has a special diet and he drinks a lot of water. He has a water fountain in the hall and a bowl outside the kitchen door. Tolly doesn't like the moving water in the fountain and mainly drinks from the bowl (or the dogs water bowls round on the porch). The other day when I went out, Tango was having a long drink from their bowl, and Tolly was patiently waiting his turn. I did even see them both drinking together one morning, but of course I didn't have my camera to hand, and it doesn't happen very often.

I did get a set of Christmas cards made for a challenge this month. I used the bauble images from a card I received at Christmas, and duplicated it and cut it out, and made a matching set of five cards. You can see how it was done on my craft blog. Here is one completed card and the pieces ready to make four more.

I have become rather obsessed with the new game that is sweeping the internet, called Wordle. I don't know whether you have all seen it. I know Lisca has had a go. The aim is to find the chosen word for the day. It is a randomly generated five letter word from the English dictionary. The game is similar to the old peg and board game Mastermind that I played with my boys years ago. You are given a blank five by six grid and you enter any word on the first line. If a letter is in the word of the day, but not in the position you have put it, then the square turns yellow. If you have a correct letter in the correct place, it turns green. If itis not in the word at all, then it turns white or grey. With this information you guess another word until all the letters turn green. You have six guesses and then the game is over and you have lost. If you manage to find the word you can copy the grid and paste it in Facebook. Here is one I did a few days ago. The 4/6 means I found it in four guesses. The good thing is that it is free, there is no App to install, (just search on google), and there is only one word each day so it doesn't take up too much time to play.

On Thursday I really impressed myself by trying the game in Spanish, and I managed to find it with five tries!

With very little sun, we have not had any dramatic skies this week, but I did have a lioness looking down from the clouds one evening.

And with that little gem I will link up with Annie's Smiles on A Stitch in Time.

Friday Smiles 2022: Week 3

Hello again. Thank you for joining me. I have  very little news to share with you but it has been a pleasant week with plenty of sunshine and not quite such low temperatures as last week (which incidently were the lowest recorded for that week, breaking last year's record cold). I have, however added another layer of jumpers as it is still chilly unless you are in direct sunlight and out of the wind. 

When I let the dogs out on Wednesday morning the sky was cut in half by a dead straight line of cloud. I took this photo over the garden wall, as I thought it represented our weather lately, half sunny, half clouds and rain. Fortunately the clouds gave way and we had a sunny morning.

It has been a week for getting a few things done at home. I spent one morning rearranging the garage which in fact is not used for the car, but is a general storage area. It gets pretty messy at times, but once Chris had helped me store the Christmas decorations away in the highest cupboard, I was able to move around and get things back in their proper places so it is safer to walk around now. That makes me happy.

I also partly sorted the freezer - still a bit to do there -  and this morning Chris helped me really clean the ceramic hob. I do keep it clean but residue still builds up on it, and Chris's hand's work better than mine and he did a much better job than I can.

I cooked pigs cheeks for our dinner one day. It is not something you see in the shops in UK very often, but they are popular here served either as a tapa or a main course and are called Carrilladas. They are slow cooked for a couple of hours and are the tenderest meat I know. I also baked bread, but my kitchen was too cold for it to rise properly so I stood it on top of the oven while I cooked our lunch and that woke it up!

I have also done quite a lot of crafting. I have been working on a fairly complex cutting file for a birthday card I need soon.It's not finished yet but I can't show it yet anyway.

Something else I achieved that has needed doing for a long time, is to revamp my wall clock. I made this a good few years ago and I renewed the photos when we had the room decorated and I had to make the script again. (It is vinyl cut on my Silhouette machine). The clock mechanism was bought online, from America I think, and it keeps very good time. However the family is ever growing, and the grandchildren change so fast, so it was hard to fit everyone in this time. But I am happy with the results for now.

As we tend to settle down a bit earlier on chilly evenings, I have also done quite a lot of crochet. My main project is a good three-quarters done so I am hoping to finish it soon. But it is heavy to hold so I only do a couple of rows each day. In between I work on my Celtic tiles for Chris' blanket, and I also have another little project on my hook. 

Now it is harder for me to source my favourite yarn that I used to order from UK, (now priced out by high import duties), I have started using a lot by a company called Scheepjes which I can buy from a Spanish shop. Just before Christmas they issued a mystery box called Crimbo Limbo, that contained a simple project to occupy people during the lull between Christmas and New Year. It contained a pattern for a shawl and the yarn to make it. It was a limited edition and proved to be very popular. A lot of people were disappointed when they couldn't find one in stock anywhere. 

I was only prepared to buy one if the Spanish shop had it, but when I enquired, they had sold out within hours of putting it on their site. However, they put my name on the  waiting list in case they were able to get further supplies, and just a few days before Christmas, one arrived by courier. We were asked not to open them until Christmas Day so as not to spoil the surprise for everyone.

The main yarn is one of the colour changing whirls in shades of green, made especially for the project and not available to buy from the shops, together with two smaller balls that work well with it.

The whirl started very dark in the centre and gradually becomes lighter until the end when it is a very pale mint. You were told in the pattern to start in the centre and as you can see, I have worked the darkest rounds and it is now a mid green. If you can make it out on the pattern book, you will notice that after the basic pattern there is a very different pattern worked with the two solid colour yarns, to make a wide border. It is nice light-weight piece of work, and when I am not feeling up to working the heavy blankets, I do a row or two of this instead.

Apart from a lot of long chats with family members, that is about it for this week. So I will get linked up with Annie at a stitch in time, and do my best to visit you all.

Friday Smiles 2022 : Week 2

Well here we are again at the end of another rather uneventful week. Sadly the lovely weather has left us for now and we have had a fair bit of rain, though fortunately a lot of it was during the nights, and the temperature has dropped rather dramatically, leaving us with a very chilly house each morning. That's a good incentive to get some housework done, as moving around is warmer than sitting still! And we do have a lovely fire to make the main room a cosy place to settle down for the evenings.

After publishing my post last week I spent the day taking down all our decorations and getting them all packed away until next year. Tolly was asleep on the settee, and as I stripped the tree, I put each decoration on the seat around him until he was completely surrounded and he didn't pay any attention at all. Even when he woke up he only patted at one and decided it wasn't worth playing with, and wandered off. He was really good this year, and didn't damage any of the Christmas things.

Last week I told you how the Three Kings walked the streets for Epiphany and this week the Town Hall published a big set of photos of them talking to various families on their route. I was amused to see there was one of Chris and I, with one of the king's attendants giving me our bags of sweets.

The Christmas street lights stayed on all weekend, but on Monday and Tuesday the men came round to take them all down, so we are all back to normal now.

On Monday afternoon we were sitting out on the porch and as usual we had several furry friends around us. I turned round to see Tolly asleep as usual, on Kim's big soft bed. He was stretched out and almost covered it's width.

Kim was sitting next to it and wondering why his space had been invaded. Eventually he did venture to reclaim one corner so he had somewhere for a soft pillow, but he made no attempt to move Tolly off. Cats really do rule the roost!

Tuesday was our last really sunny day, so, as rain was forcast for the rest of the week, I decided to go for a walk all round the perimeter of the village. It took me just under an hour and it was good to stretch my legs for a while. It was very quiet with few folk around. I don't think anyone is going out unless they need to yet. I stopped as I came to the front of the village to take this lovely photo of the Cabrera mountains. The sun was getting low so there is a pattern of deep shadows on them.

If you follow the range to the left, at the very end you can just see the little white village of Mojacar. There is a steep road winding up to it and you always feel you are quite high up when you are there, but really it is only on a big hill and is dwarfed by the higher mountains behind it. I zoomed in as far as I could to take this photo.

The three poinsettias I bought to go in my plant stand on the front porch, are still looking beautiful. Of course they are specially grown for house plants over the Christmas season, but I wonder whether you have ever seen one in it's natural state. I passed this one in someone's front garden when I was out on my walk. Isn't it amazing? The conditions must have been just right for it this year.  This is only a part of it and it was covered in 'flowers' all over. I lived in Cyprus for three years, many moons ago, and I had a poinsettia tree by my gate. It was way taller than me, but nothing like as full and splendid as this one.

It was also nice to see the first blossom on the almond trees. This one is on the green zone behind our house. The trees there are old and straggely and are never tended, but they still manage to produce blossom and a few nuts each year.

I spent a couple of hours last night chatting to my son Ben on the internet, and this afternoon another couple of hours flew by as I exchanged news with my sister. I am so very grateful for our good internet connection.

Despite the rain and clouds, or probably because of them, we have seen a few nice sunsets this week, so here are just a couple of them. 

And one of the Cabreras reflecting the setting sun.

                     

And finally something I spotted that made me smile, so I hope it will you too.

Time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles now. Do join us if you have had something this week that has made you smile.

Friday Smiles 2022: Week 1

Having been absent for a couple of weeks, I thought I would show my face again today. You may notice I have changed my post title for the new year. I continue to visit my friend Virginia at Rocking Your World each week, but for personal reasons she has changed her blog to private so I need to use her special link to go to her, and I can no longer link this post publically to hers, so it seemed a sensible thing to do.

I do hope you all enjoyed Christmas and your celebrations were not spoiled by too much ill health. Several of my family in UK have succumbed to Covid over the holiday period, but fortunately none of them have been seriously ill. The number of cases in our village is very high for the size of the place, so we have continued to stay home most of the time. Today is the Three Kings Fiesta, but for the second year running, the main event has been cancelled due to the pandemic. Some Spanish towns have held their's but with some changes, i.e. only using the wider roads, the kings not throwing handfuls of candies into the streets for the children to collect etc. Our Town Hall sent a letter from the Kings to all the children to explain that they wouild receive their gifts in a different way this year. (Normally done en masse in a big marquee). However the Kings did dress up and walk the streets of the village yesterday, accompanied by  loud music from a van, and with a few followers. We went out to the gate to wave at them and one king came over to give us a bag of fruit jellies each. It made me smile and they are doing the best they can in the circumstances.

As an aside to that, I read this morning that the capital of our province, Almería city, went ahead with its parade. (We went to watch this one year and it was quite spectacular). I gather they had toned it down a bit and only used the widest roads instead of their usual route, but the kings distributed 13,000 kilos of candies! (bagged up instead of being thrown loose I expect). I should think the dentists in Almería are kept busy!

We had a rather damp and grey Christmas day but it has picked up considerably since then. The sun has been out and for a few hours each day, it is really warm. Last night we had heavy rain for a couple of hours, but the sun is back today. Most days we have sat outside to eat our lunch, and enjoyed relaxing in the warm, but by four o'clock the sun is going down and it soon gets chilly again, so we make sure we move back indoors before we get cold.

One day I had a visit from a friend who brought me a crate of bitter oranges. I also have a crate in the garage of sweet oranges that we picked from the trees in next doors garden. Usually they come and pick them themselves during Christmas week, but so far they haven't come this year. We only pick the ones that hang right into our garden, but I hope they come and pick the rest soon. I hate to see them just ripen and fall.

I wonder if you can see which are the sweet and which the bitter ones.

Close up they are quite different. The bitter ones have  much rougher, knobbly skins. And of course, when you cut them open, the difference is much more obvious. The bitter ones have thick pith and lots of pips which is what makes the marmalade set so well.

Once picked, they don't keep for too long so on New Year's day I made marmalade, and yesterday I made a second batch. That is enough for this year as I have lost most of my outlets. But I still sell a few jars, and we use some ourselves.

Well done all of you who recognised my nativity set as Willow Tree. That is correct, and as it is quite pricey I have built it up over time. This year I ordered one last piece. It was easy to find places selling the whole set, but not so easy to find individual pieces, but I eventually found the goatherd I wanted. It took a long time to come but it turned up on Monday so I was able to display it with the rest for a few days before it is all packed away again. 

As usual I started taking things down today (Thursday) and tomorrow it will all be put away. I have always kept my decorations up until 'twelfth night' and that seems even more relevant here where Epiphany is celebrated more than Christmas is. The house looks empty when it all comes down, but there will be more light coming through the window with the tree gone, and I can have a proper clean through.

Every year I make a wall calendar to go up above my computer so I can see the whole year's dates when the boys phone me and talk about events, visits etc. I like to incorporate all their pictures so they are always smiling down on me. Chris has a copy on his office wall too. Here is this year's.

I like to include a photo of the animals too and I didn't have a good one of Luna. She is semi-feral and really only comes in for food morning and night. She has some Siamese in her and is very vocal, and can be very demanding for her food. Unfortunately she does not get on with the other cats, especially Tolly and really screams at them if they come near her. This makes it quite difficult to get a decent photo of her but I managed one in the end. As a tiny kitten she was the prettiest tabby I have ever seen. I used to say she was a 'chocolate box kitten', and she is still very handsome with totally symmetrical stripe markings. It is just a pity she is not a bit more friendly.

I also make a page per month calendar to go on my kitchen board. It is not essential but I like making it. I have printed out all the pages now and just have to get them bound together and ready to hang. Each month I use a photo/s taken in that month the previous year, but this year I made April's page a collection taken through the year of our newest grand daughter, who was born on 1st April. Here it is. 

And here are a couple more pages.

We had some exciting news at Christmas that we will have a new great-granchild in early July. We don't know the gender until 22nd of this month, but Isaac and Alfie are very excited to have a new brother or sister.

And finally a picture of a 'shark' that glided across the sky last night.

And with that I will pop over to link up woth Annie on her Friday's Smiles page.