Friday Smiles 2024# Week 43

Well here we go again. I don't know where the weeks go, but go they do, and here we are at Friday again. We had a lovely big harvest moon last weekend and for once it was partially hidden for us by a layer of fluffy clouds. But I managed to get this photo from my bedroom window.

Tolly is getting very clingy because of all the changes and he often shadows me around the house. Usually he is content to sleep on my craft-room floor but this week he decided he wanted the high-shelf instead.

I have been working on the cardigan I mentioned last week. When projects hang around for ages I tend to loose interest in them, and it must be eighteen months at least when I started this, but I am pleased to say it is now finished.

I cannot find nice buttons over here, so I will wait until I get to England as I have seen several that are suitable on UK sites. But at least it is done and it fits!

So I wanted to get back to my sewing group this week, and really I had nothing I was working on to take with me. But there is a new Crochet-A-Long on one of the Facebook pages I follow. That means a section of the pattern is released every one or two weeks, and the idea is to work along to that timescale if you can. However my crochet is for pleasure and it is not a race so I download each section of pattern as it is released, and work it at my own speed. As is usual the company made a kit for this project though they are optional, and many folk prefer to make their own colour scheme, and use alternative makes of yarn. I did not want another box of wool here to pack, but I will want something to keep my hands busy when I arrive in UK, so I asked my son to order a kit for me and keep it safe until I arrive. Meanwhile I have downloaded the first section of the pattern which is for triangles. There are 60 of them needed! in a selection of different colour combinations, so I decided to give it a go with some oddmnts of wool I had, and here is my triangle.

I bought my first mandarines at the market this week. They are still a bit green but taste lovely. I noticed the oranges on the trees next door are starting to change colour so they will be ready soon too. The mandarines/tangerines/clementines all come first but the oranges are never far behind.

I looked out the back when I was getting our tea last night and there was a face coming over the hill towards us again.

I zoomed in for a close look, but it wasn't too scarey. It might even be friendly.

So now its off to Annie's Friday Smiles to publish this and link up to her post.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 42

Well the weeks are flying by. Only eight more this year! We have being doing our best to keep the house looking good which wasn't so easy when we had some of that dreaded 'brown rain' on Monday night which left a layer of orange sand on everything. But it did rain hard and that  was very welcome. It has been quite cloudy since but there has been enough strong winds to blow the clouds away most days and I have managed to get all my washing dry outside. 

One thing we did before the house photos were taken was to put new flowers in the four troughs that hang from our front railings. They are all annuals really and are often dead and gone by September. But I have kept them watered, and 'dead-headed' the flowers regularly and they are still looking quite good. Here they are along side each other. 

We had a couple come to view the house this morning but they didn't give anything away about their feelings and we are still waiting for feed-back from our agent.

When I first got back to crocheting after I broke my arm, (nearly a year ago!), I started a little bobble hat for one of the food-bank children's Christmas bags, and this week I actually finished it. No photo as I handed it straight in on Wednesday. Now I have gone back to a cardigan I was working on at the time of the accident. I wasn't happy with the first sleeve so I had worked it again but I didn't keep a record of the alterations. I couldn't work out what I had done. It is an all-over lace pattern which hid the stitches, so in the end I took them both out and am starting again. The first sleeve is now done, so now I have to try and make the second one to match.

I was doing some of it out on the patio yesterday evening when I looked up at the clouds and it looked like two eyes peering down on me. Don't you agree? A bit spooky but not scarey really.

There was a hint of pink behing the eyes so I went round to the other side of the house to see if there was a sunset and I found this lovely sky. Such beautiful colours all running together.

Tuesday was Chris's birthday and mine is today, so usually we go out on the day between our two dates. But on Wednesday I spent over an hour being fitted with new teeth. The bottom ones are now in, but not yet screwed in place, because the top ones need some adjusting, and he wants to get them right before fixing the others in. But I didn't think it was a good idea to go out for a meal until I had tried them out at home, so we went today instead. 

We both only eat a small meal at mid-day and very little at tea-time, so if we are going to eat out, it is best to go at lunch time. It was a beautiful day, sunny but not too warm, so we sat at an outside table on the patio in the Parque Commercíal, in Mojacar. We had a very nice meal and I had the best tinto verano that I have had all year. 

After our lunch we drove along the coast to Garrucha and sat on a sunny bench just enjoying looking at the sea. It was a lovely deep blue today. The sand dips quickly near the edge and there were a few late holiday makers sun bathing down there. But the season for holidays really does stop in September out here, and the men in this picture are busy taking up the board walks and stacking them under a shelter until next summer.

We then drove along to the fishing port to get an ice-cream. Our favourite kiosk was all closed up, but there is a nice little ice-cream parlour along the road where you can pick from around twenty flavours, and we each chose two from there, and again found a sunny bench to sit and eat them. Our wants and needs are simple these days and it doesn't take much to make us happy, so it was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

This is ready to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning, so I will now take my crochet out onto the porch and enjoy one more hour of sunshine before it starts to sink below the hills.

Friday Smiles 2024 #Week 41

This week I will start with some lovely skies and end with some, with maybe a bit if news in the middle! We have had quite a few clouds this week as well as lots of sunshine, and mercifully slightly lower temperatures, so Tom and I were both on the look out for lovely sunsets. On Saturday we were rewarded with this one.

It turned all the surrounding campo a dusky pink and I was facinated to see the green zone was swarming with little brown bats. I tried to catch some on camera but they move so very fast. But if you look closely at the photo below, you will see two of them centrally at the top of the picture. There are always one or two around but I have never seen them in such quantity before.

On Sunday we set out at lunch time to go on a little trip. It was the Lubrin annual food festival, and I knew Tom would enjoy that. Lubrin is a tiny village of mostly white and grey stone houses set on steep hills, with narrow roads, some of which are not wide enough to take cars. A policeman directed us up a very steep incline to a provisional car parking area and we walked in from there. We bought a strip of tickets, each one designated to a set numbered stall, and each stall specialised in a local dish. There was everything from goat's cheese to paella, and my favourite, little kid goat cutlets cooked over a barbecue. There were longish queques for most stalls so we each took all three tickets and queued for one item for each of us. The longest wait was for the wafer thin Iberian ham, because we waited while it was cut for each of us. It is a real art to carve ham this thin and they practise for many years to get really good at it. Because it was so freshly cut it tasted amazing. Our final queue was for much needed cold drinks. 

Lubrin is famous for its olive oil. We visited the olive press there once and it was very interesting. I nearly always buy Lubrin oil but I didn't want a new big bottle so I bought a very small tin of "oil pressed from superior olives with a minimum of mechanisation", and I must say it is quite special.

One thing I loved was that most streets had lovley crocheted mandalas and squares, strung together to provide shade, and they were surprisingly effective. We sat on some steps to enjoy our food, but as the afternoon wore on, it got very crowded and finding a spot to sit was hard, so we made our way back to the car to drive home. Here are a few of the pictures I took.

The road was long and winding and sometimes we were down in a valley, and then up on top of a mountain again. In this photo you can just see a yellow line at the top and that is the road we were aiming for. I think we wound round the hill twice on the way, but we got there in the end. 

As we decended again, down toward home, we had lovely views of the surrounding villages and campo and then down to the sea. Almost hidden behind a twiggy tree in the lower right corner, you can just glimpse the little white village of Mojacar Pueblo.

Apart from that I haven't done a lot except read and do my usual puzzles on my tablet. I did have a long chat with our son Ben who is writing a piece of relaxing music for me to play when I go to sleep.

Monday was cloudy and windy which resulted in this pretty sky.

Then last night we watched this fiery beauty develop.

Today was Tom's last day here so we got up in good time so we could get him to the bus station for 10.00. He was travelling by bus to Murcia and then high-speed train to Madrid where he will stay for the weekend, flying back home to Denmark from there on Sunday night. With half an hour before we had to leave he decided he needed one last dip in the pool! The water is quite cool now but he said it woud get him ready for the cold water in Denmark. He dips in the sea there almost all year!

Then he took a photo of Chris and I outside our house, and one of all three of us together.

Our house is on the market now. You can find it here if any of you are interested in seeing where we have lived for the past almost sixteen years. Now the waiting game begins.

So now its over to Annie's Friday Smiles here, to link up and visit you all tomorrow.

Friday Smiles 2024 Week 40

Hi again. What a whirlwind week! The weekend and Monday were spent doing all the last minute bits of tidying up - making sure all rubbish bags had been put out, sweeping the garden, power-washing the porch etc. Then on Tuesday morning the young man came to take the photos for the website. Before he arrived, Tom walked through and round the house making a video for us to keep, and I also took a still photo of each area. Obviously I am not showing them all here, but this is now my craft room as you see it when you walk in the door.

On the opposite side is my remaining desk with my computer, Silhouette Cameo, and lazer cutter, and my printer, plus a very tiny work space. Obviously I am not expecting to do much crafting here, but if I need it, I have a fold up camping table that I can put up under the window and quickly fold away again when anyone comes to view the house.

This is the plant I showed last week as a tangled mass of green, now untangled and sitting on the corner of the mantleshelf where it seems to be quite happy.

I know I have a lot of jumpers and cardigans. I like them to match what I am wearing, and for a few short weeks out here, they do get used. They tend to get bundled onto these shelves getting gradually more untidy, but now they are neatly folded and almost colour coded!  It makes me smile every time I walk into the bedroom and see them. I just hope I can keep them like this.

And one last minute thing I did was to send Tom to the supermarket for some fresh fruit so the fruit bowl looked lovely. I do like to see it like this, but all through the heat of the summer I have to put it all away in the fridge, but it will look good in the photos.

They have promised us that the house will be on the website by the weekend, but it is not up yet.

This week Tom has emptied the last three very high up cupboards above the fitted wardrobes in the bedrooms, and one in the garage. I have sorted everything out into four piles, keep, charity shop, recycle and bin, and tomorrow we will deliver the middle two, and the first one will be packed away neatly. Now I know that everything in the boxes and cupboards is for keeping, which will make packing much easier when the time comes.

And finally some rather lovely skies. On Friday night we had this, which was a bit unusual, and very pretty.

Then it has remained hot and sunny most days but with raher more cloud gathering in the afternoons, so I have been watching out for a good sunset, and last night we got it. When I walked round the back of the house it looked like a giant owl was swooping down on us. 

Tom and I both took pictures of it and I told him that if we waited a few minutes it would probably turn red. So we sat and watched as the colour deepened to gold, and then finally was had this bright fiery red. Stunning!

As it faded away, we were just going back inside when I looked back and saw one last face peeping down on us.

And with that I will say goodnight, and tomorrow I will publish this and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.