Friday Smiles 2022: Week 45

Another quiet week but a busy one somehow. Twice a month we have a date when we can put anything out by our street bin and the coucil will collect it the next morning (if it hasn't already be taken by a passer-by). So this week we managed to man-handle a large fridge out between us. It lived in the garage and was used mainly as a drinks cabinet all summer, though it also houses fresh milk so I can buy enough for one or two weeks in one go, and also all my vegetables which do not keep well here out of a fridge. But sadly it just stopped working and it had to go. Someone took the scrap metal off it that evening and the council collected what was left the next day.

So on Monday my first task was to clean out the space in the garage where it had been, tuck away some plastic crates in its place giving us a safer pathway though everything, and give the floor a good clean. When we moved in, our family was amused to see that the garage had a marbled stone floor and a large carpet over it! But out here some garages are huge and as well as having a car parked in them, they have a living space with comfy seating and a TV, so a carpeted floor was not that strange. However, our garage is not that big, but we do not put the car in it. Houses here are notoriously short of storage so anything we can't find a home for, goes in the garage! It is now clearer and a nicer place altogether. We do intend to replace the fridge, maybe with one a bit smaller, at least before next summer, but hopefully before then. I have a much newer one in the kitchen but it is very small and doesn't hold much, which means more frequent trips to the shops as I can't store much.

But I have also had some time to relax and do 'my own things', so I have sat on the porch reading  all afternoon, finished making my Christmas cards for posting, and most of the local ones as well, and made a good start on my new crochet. I thought I would show you the first motifs I have made so you can see how the colours in each ball work up. There are five different motifs but I have started with a plain one to get a feel for the yarn, and I shall do all sixteen that are needed in this colour before I move on to a different one.

I am afraid I can't show you my mandala yet as I am still trying to find a suitable hoop. The wooden one I had seen was in Germany and it would have been ideal. It only cost 16€ but when I came to buy it I had a shock when I saw the postage. It was 150€ !! and that is posting within Europe, so we can't blame Brexit and import duties for that. I think the couriers have upped their prices massively as a result of rising fuel costs, but it will put a stop to a lot of on-line shopping if it continues that way, and will feed the large corporates like Amazon who manage to work around it to some extent. Anyway I approached the florist in our village to ask if she could get one for me, but after some fun trying to understand one another which left us both laughing, she said she can only get them up to 30cm, but she would ask her husband who does metalwork, whether he could make one. I am going back tomorrow to see what he said.

Today I did some shopping in the morning, and this afternoon I have started writing all my cards to people in UK. I usually send a small parcel of them to my sister and she posts them on which works out a lot less than paying international postage for each one. I took them in to work at the sitting room table which is under the window, but they kept blowing away so I had to close it. I have written my annual letter that goes to a few friends who are not internet users, and I forgot to move it before taking this photo, hence the untidy smudged area in the corner!

The rest of today's photos are all of evening skies. We have had some truly gorgeous weather for November. I have even eaten lunch outside most days. Monday evening certainly went down in a blaze of glory.

But in the evenings the clouds gather and yesterday we had a loud thunder storm and some fairly heavy rain. It didn't last all that long but much more is forecast for this weekend. This was the sky just before it started.

On Wednesday the sunset was criss-crossed by several vapour trails and I tried to take a panoramic photo which will my blog header for a while. Here it is before I went to panoramic style.

And here is a photo I saw on the net this week. Isn't it amazing. Nature can teach us a thing or two about resilience, and not giving up!

Annie is back from her holiday now so I will link up with her at A stitch in time and see what she got up to while she was away.