Friday Smiles 2024 Week 8

Friday again and the sun is still shining, despite orange and yellow alerts on the forecast page for rain, storms and a deep drop in temperature. So we will wait and see what the weekend brings. But in the meantime we will continue to enjoy the warmth and sun. I have even shed a layer of clothes because it was so warm sitting outside to eat lunch yesterday, though I know I will probably need it again in a day or two.

The garden is enjoying the sun too. This morning I noticed several buds on my fresias out in the front yard. It is way earlier than I usually see them. Also the jasmine is again bursting out with more flowers every day. You can see here just how many buds are on it. The lovely perfume fills the house when I open the window in the morning.

This is the poinsettia we thought we would plant out after it had sat in a pot all through the Christmas  season 2021. It hasn't grown a great deal but it still looks really healthy and now some of the leaves are turning red. I am hoping it will continue to grow and thrive.

I have been having fun getting to grips with the laser cutter a friend lent me. I bought some 15mm bass-plywood and a few A4 sheets of 3mm birch-plywood. Here are just a few of my trial runs. I cut a small square from the thinner wood and then engraved a picture of Leo. This started out as a photo so I had to learn how to use Gimp to change it to a black and white line sketch and remove the background before I could engrave it. One thing I learned is that it was a mistake to cut this against the grain of the wood, so next time I will turn the base around first.

Next I tried cutting out a couple of plain shapes. It took a lot of passes and the 'smoke' and fumes were not very pleasant, but fortunately I was able to work with the window wide open. You may just notice that I lost the tip of the music note tail, by being too impatient. Another lesson learned. Hopefully I will have a completed project to show in a week or two.

It really made me smile when I took in this parcel from a courier yesterday. I had ordered the wool for a new project and the only place in Europe I can order it from is the Netherlands. The postage was high, but as it was a big order I decided to accept that. They always send their orders in these boxes. I wonder how many others have smiled at it as it travelled across to me?

And of course, what was inside made me smile even more. I took this photo in bright sunlight but although the blue and grey are pretty close to their true colour, the third one is not orange as it looks here. It is a shade called 'tomato', and has a much pinker/redder hue with just a hint of orange.

Right now I am busy working on my Tunisian crochet hexagons. I chose a much better contrast colour for the second one and the pattern stands out well. Here it is on my blocking boards, to make sure it is the same size as the first one.

Tonight I will finish the third hexagon. I used a varigated blue wool for the contrast this time, and it has worked well. You can see why I need to block them. 

I am happy to have got the hang of this technique, but the blue main colour splits very easily, which is a nuisance. Also these are made with 4ply wool and I much prefer to work with Double Knitting weight, so I will be having a go at a motif with the new wool in a day or two.

Today is my 'baby boy's' birthday. He is actually thirty seven but he will always be my baby. Born when I was in my fortieth year, (which was considered unusual in those days), I was always grateful to have such a healthy and happy baby. He completed our family and has brought lots of joy to many people, with his music.

It was also my sister's birthday yesterday and she was eighty-nine. So a very happy birthday to both of them.

Now I will get ready to link up with Annie's Smiles in the morning, and get outside in the sun for a while.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 7

Another lovely week has flown by and we have had a few smiles along the way. There was lots to smile about on Saturday as it was our village carnival day. This is always a happy occasion with lots of folk, old and young alike, dressing up as part of a team, a family or an individual. The parade goes all around the village and folk line the streets to cheer them on. We are lucky as they pass our house so we can watch from our own doorstep. Here is a jumble collage of some of the people who were involved. (There are much more elaborate and larger parades at the towns around here, but we do pretty well for a little village).

Leo decided to sit beside me on the path to see what was going on. He never likes to miss anything, and he got lots of admiring comments which he accepted with his usual rather fierce stare!

Fortunately the sun shone on the revellers though, as usual, they were a bit slow getting started so the sun was going down by the time they got back round to the big marquee on the carpark where there is music and dancing for anyone who wants to join in.

I had some happy photos from the family including this one of our great/grandson Alfie who was awarded with a Gold certificate from his teacher. He has had the teacher's award for the week on several occasions, but apparently he had set his heart on winning a gold award this term, hence the big smile. Well done Alfie.

And here is our little grand-daughter Aisling helping mummy make pancakes, and having a wonderful time. At Christmas she had one of the high step-stools like Annie's Louie had, so she could reach the table top to join her mum cooking, painting etc. They are such a good idea.

Our youngest son Ben is setting up his own business offering to sing and play the piano at functions, but also to have local artists come to his studio at home to record and master their songs, and to help them improve their productions. He can make films of occasions using his drone and set the videos to music, and as a sideline he likes making soap to sell! This is his studio with his new wide screen monitor.

We have had some lovely warm days with Almeria region breaking records again for the highest temperature for February on record, but we have also had some gale force winds, and some very grey days. Today we had a very gentle rain fall around tea-time, but it wasn't enough to do the garden any good. All the reservoirs are even lower than they were last year, and we have not had any significant rainfall all winter. So this week we are all on water restrictions, with an allowance of 200litres per person each day. This is actually higher than the average household uses so it isn't too bad, but we are not allowed to water the garden beyond just 'sufficient to keep it alive', and no filling or topping up of swimming pools, so we will be sad if the restrictions stay in place through the summer as we usually top our pool up every week June-September. 

I had a hearing test this week which confirmed that hearing aids would be a good idea. They are very, very pricey out here so we are looking at options for now. I also had laser treatment on my right eye to clean the cataract lens, and everything is clearer and brighter today. Now I will get tested for new glasses.

The wood I ordered for the lazer cutter arrived this morning so I will be having a play again soon.

I have ordered a big bundle of wool for another pattern so I have something else to work on in the evenings. I get bored with one pattern all the time so I like to have a few projects on the go at the same time. This one will be very challenging as it is worked mainly from charts and I like to have a written pattern as well. But I have done a little test piece so I think it is worth a try.

We had to be up early for our eye clinic appointment yesterday so I saw a lovely red and orange sunrise. It cast a rosy glow on the white houses round at the back of us.

The night before had given us a strange funnel shaped sunset. Both were beautiful in their own way.

So now I am off to polish this up ready to publish and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 6

My how the weeks fly by, and here we are at Thursday already, and time to look back at what we have enjoyed over the past few days.

For a start I have enjoyed the weather which has been mostly sunny, with a little hazy cloud, and one grey, damp day. But on Sunday it was lovely so we again decided to take the opportunity for a walk along the coast. We went down to Mojacar, and because we decided to go before lunch this time, it was very quiet there. (The Spanish families all turn out for a late lunch and walk on Sunday afternoons).

Just below the water line at the start of Mojacar beach, there is a large rock where most mornings the cormorants come to spread their wings and dry them in the sun. They always make me think of a group of old ladies gathering to have their morning gossip.

I could stand and watch, and listen to the waves rolling in and breaking around the stones for hours, but we were there to walk!

I don't know how far we went but it was a little further than usual as I had clocked up 8,000 steps when we got home - well over my daily target of 5,000

We passed this building which houses the beach 'facilities', and it is always kept freshly painted as it is one of the features along with the children's play area just near it, that help to keep our blue flag award each year for that stretch of beach.

I had to smile at this angle of the end of the building. At first glance the only thing I saw was a face of a man with a droopy moustache. Of course I soon realised it was a whale's tail, but it still made me smile.

We stopped at one of the beach cafés for refreshment before walking back to the car.

As we passed the rock on the way home I saw one bird was still there. It had a very white chest and I thought it was something different, but looking back at my earlier picture and zooming in on it, I dicovered that all the cormorants had white chests. I was surprised as I thought cormorants were all black, but when I looked it up I found that most of them are, but there is also a sub-species known as white-breasted cormorants, so my walk was educational as well as healthy!

I mentioned last week that a friend was introducing me to the craft of laser cutting, and it turned out to be a bit more of a chore than he had expected. The first machine he lent me wouldn't work at all, so he swapped it for another one which only partially worked! When we returned that one he had got the original one fixed so I now have that one back, and Yay! it is working. But it is not a straightforward machine to use and needs a lot of trial and error to find the right settings for power and speed, for each material, so I have had plenty of failures, but I am learning. I needed a good silhouette image to play with and the first one that showed up on my computer was a treble clef, so I went with that. And I have managed to cut one out from medium weight card, and have engraved a larger one into the surface of some MDF plywood. 

So now I have to plan a project and work out what materials I need. I do have some thinner sheets of plywood and some birchwood ply on order from Amazon but it won't arrive for over a week. In the meantime I can try some other images from thinner card - too thin and it will burn. I can also try to learn how to edit a photo to give me an image I can engrave with shadow-fill, rather than just an outline. So plenty to keep me busy. This photo shows it in action, but I have to wear dark green goggles when it is in use to protect my eyes from the laser beam.

It is a long time since we had a nice sunset, but on Tuesday evening I was just in time to catch this one before it all went dark.

One more little 'happy' is that this morning the bandage was removed from my hand. It is not completely healed but is no longer infected so doesn't need to be covered. I am hoping it will now continue to heal and the scar will fade and settle down a bit more. It is not a pretty site but at least it isn't sore any more.

And finally a funny little tale of a wee pixie. He is one of many that I made with my boys thirty years ago. We sold them at the primary school fete, and this week our home town local newspaper ran a feature called "A trip down memory lane", with the caption "Can you spot anyone you know?" Well sure enough, there was a photo of my son Tom holding up a Santa which we had also made, and the young girl beside him is holding one of the pixies. It was of course, a photo of the school fete, Christmas 1993. (Tom was 10). But back in December Tom had posted a picture on our family chat page showing his pixie being hung on his tree this year with the caption "Mum made this in the 90's". So I am not the only sentimental one in the family. Who knew that a bit of felt and a ping-pong ball could last so long.

And now I am ready to post this tomorrow on Annie's Friday Smiles.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 5

We have had a mixed week of bright sunshine days, and cold grey days, but last Sunday was one of the sunny ones so we decided to go for an afternoon walk around Vera Laguna. We never know whether there will be lots of birds there or none at all, nor what they will be. It is dependent on the weather a lot as the lake is entirely natural, so wild life is free to come and go, and also it is only a short stretch of sand away from the high tide line, so on really stormy days it just becomes one with the sea. However, on Sunday it was crowded with seagulls, plus a fair flock of moor hens. The more usual ducks and geese were nowhere to be seen.

The lake is lovely with its backdrop of reeds, at this time of year swaying with feather flower heads, and beyond them, the misty mountains. 

Looking the other way, you can see the sea, and if you look closely at this rather blurry photo (blurred because I cropped and enlarged one section), you can see a further row of seagulls sitting along the edge of the sea.

Every time a child ran passed shouting at the birds, or just playing, the gulls all took off, and then settled again a bit further away. I have never seen this many gulls at the lake before.

The moorhens must be used the children because they continued to bob around near the shore.

It was a lovely walk and blew the cobwebs away for us. We should do it more often while the weather is sunny but not too hot.

We only have live TV to watch but the programms are quite good at this time of year, so we usually spend our evenings with the fire on, comfy on the new settee, and I do a little bit more of my crochet each evening. So I have now finished the first motif of the blanket I am making.  It was a case of two steps forward and one backwards. I don't expect to have to do as much unpicking as I have with this, but I am comfortable with how it works now so hopefully the next motif will go better.

I don't think I made the best choice of wool for my secondary colour for this first one. It was sock wool and it changed colour too frequently so the pattern is not very clear, but it is alright. Here it is on my blocking board. I have steamed it and when it is quite dry I will store it away until the next one is done. By blocking them I can make sure they are all the same size. There are twenty altogether and they will all have the same blue yarn for their main colour, with various secondary colours using up oddments from my stash.

The warm weather is confusing the garden again. I noticed as I came in from shopping, that my bright pink geranium is looking better now than it did a couple of months ago. It even has two more heads of buds coming up for when these ones die off. I have normally brought them in under the porch for shelter by now.

I have a friend who has been a crafter ever since I first knew him, but he is now limited to only leaving the house on his mobility scooter so he spends a fair bit of time at home. To keep busy he has developed his skills with laser cutting, 3-D printing and other technical wizardry. He has a lot of knowledge in the field of electronics and on Tuesday he invited me up to see his machines in action. I was very impressed with his set-up. There were four laser cutters, and a computer to control them and an amazing array of wires and switches, all in a small garden 'shed'. And behind that, in what I think would be called a narrow storage room he had three 3D printers all set up ready to use, and another machine that I have forgotten the name of. (Of course I was too interested to stop and take photos!)

He talked me through the software for the cutters, and I did manage to cut one image out of 400gm card. Then he gave me the smallest cutter to have at home on 'long term lend'. So yesterday we set it up in my craft room and installed the software, but we could not get it to read the files. Chris spent ages trying to sort it out for me but we had to admit defeat. So we are going back to Steve's probably tomorrow afternoon, and he is going to swap it for a different machine that he thinks may work better for me, and give me a few more tips for using it. So maybe by next week I will have something to show.

It was cold and grey when I set out this morning. I had an early appointment with the nurse to have the dressing on my hand changed. I hoped to have it uncovered by now, but although it is no longer infected, it is very slow to heal properly, so I am again well wrapped. But never mind. I can do most things I need to, and I have silicone gloves for washing, and in the kitchen.

It has taken all day for the sun to finally break through, so I am hoping for a brighter day tomorrow so I can wash the sheets and get them dry outside.

So now I will just finish this off ready to publish and post on Annie's Friday Smiles tomorrow.