Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 48

Another week has been and gone, and I have very little to write about. But at the weekend I saw our local policeman who helped us so much on the day of the storm, and he asked me whether the telegraph pole was still in our garden. When I said it was he promised to phone up on Monday and ask them to come for it, and sure enough, the next day there was a knock on the door and a man told me he was there for the pole. He had a crane lorry and soon he and his mate had the pole roped up and they carefully lifted it over the front wall, taking great care not to knock against anything. We are glad it has gone. One less thing to think about!

I have been busy with my laser cutter again this week, but first here is the finished bread board that was a work-in-progress when I showed it last week. (apologies to those who have already seen this on Facebook). I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Since then I have also made this cut out Nativity lantern. Agan I used an svg file that I bought off Etsy, and it was supposed to be for 3mm thick wood. I bought some more sheets of birchwood ply from Amazon which was supposed to be 3mm, but I guess it wasn't exact because the tabs on my lantern were too thick for the holes, so I spent one evening using an X-acto knife to shave each tab off a little on each side. It was fiddly but in the end it did go together and it was better, less waste-full, than altering the pattern slightly and cutting it all again. Now it is put together it is quite sturdy.

I like the images on the sides too, especially the little donkey.

Of course it looks even better with a small light inside it. It is supposed to be a battery operated tea light, but I didn't have one of those handy, so for now it has a small coil of tiny LED lights.

I really have nothing else to add this week, but of course I do have a couple of sky pictures that happened to catch my eye this week, so I will close with those and get ready to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 47

Week 47 and Christmas is coming to Los Gallardos! On Tuesday a man knocked on the door and asked us to move our car along a bit so that he could put up the Christmas light, so now we have our usual angel right outside our door.

Yesterday afternoon I decided I had sat around long enough so I had a walk around the village to look at the other lights. These stars are stretched across our road at intervals.

And this design is repeated all up the parallel road.

This one is on the front of the little church. I am looking forward to seeing them all lit up.

While I was out I also took some photos of the trees around the plaza and the children's playground opposite. Every autumn the work men come with a lifter-lorry and skip to trim the trees, and what they do seems quite drastic. The trees are given a flat top, sides and bottom, so each one resembles a polo-mint. They are hollow in the centre and look a bit sad, but we know they will be full again come the summer and giving much need shade to anyone sitting under them.

Occasionally one loses its round shape, but it is still trimmed with a hollow center.

The sun is back now and it is relatively warm with a sharp wind unless you find a sheltered spot. I love these bright days when the sky is a clear blue, but we did have a fair bit of rain at the weekend, and earlier this week. It always amuses me to see this hibiscus. They love the rain and always send out new flowers after a shower, but this one is usually a very bright yellow with a deep red centre. But after heavy rain the colours seem to run together and I get an orange flower. It will be yellow and red again come the summer.

Here is something a bit diferent that I have just finished. I can't remember when I last did any latch-hook work but it was back in the day when 'Redicut' was a well known company selling rug making kits, so it is probably forty years since I bought this little set, and started making it. I came across it at the back of the cupboard when I was sorting everything out and thought I might as well finish it. It was about one third done, but amazingly I still had all the little bundles of cut yarn, and once I got back into it, I soon had it finished. It is supposed to be a cushion but I know I wouldn't use it like that, so I found a ball of chunky wook and crocheted an edge around it to make a small rug. My grand-daughter might like it by her bed.

I had quite a bit of the border wool left so I crocheted this pair of hand-warmers. They are much thicker than I would ususally make, but maybe I will be glad of them if we get to the UK this winter.

Today I am doing a very different project. I set up my lazer engraver and I am engraving a rather nice picture onto a plain wooden bread-board that I bought off Amazon. Hopefully I will be pleased with the finished result, but it is going to take several hours to do, so I will show it completed next week.

There have been a few red skies this week so here are a couple of them to close with.

And now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and publish this tomorrow.

Friday Smiles 2024#Week 46

We have had a week of showers, some light and some persistant and heavy, and I think we must have had more rain in the past week than we had all through last winter. But we are not really complaining. We are warm and dry at home, and at least the reservoirs are filling up which keeps the agricultural workers happy.

We had some fun on Sunday when there was a rally of vintage cars driving through the village. They then parked up around the main car park so we walked over to have a look at them. Apparently to be vintage they have to be more than twenty years old and less than one hundred, which explains why I recognised so many of them from my childhood days. Many were American, such as Packards and Chevrolets,  but also Fords and a handsome Rolls Royce. They were obviously well loved and well cared for, though some looked far from comfortable to ride in. Here are just a few of them.

I recently showed a trial-run triangle I made to try out the pattern for a kit I have waiting for me at my son's house in UK. A new part of the design is released each week, so I have now tried out the square - a fairly straightforward motif to make, ...

... and the popcorn diamond which was a bit more tricky. But I will be taking my time to do it, so it should be manageable. Although the pieces look very different they fit together beautifully. Jessica Wifall is a very clever designer.

Not a lot else has happened this week but we have had some very lovely, and other rather exciting skies. They range from calm sunsets with storm clouds creeping in, to lowering clouds in an eirie light, to fiery orange and reds. The last one made me think of an angry Yoda.

And that is it for this week, so I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and publish this in the morning.

Friday Smies 2024 Week 45

We have had a much quieter, less traumatic week than last week I am glad to say. But I have had a medical appointment most days and as nearly everything is a drive away, one appointment seems to take up much of the day, so I haven't been at home to do a lot. I had no new photos to show so today I walked round the garden to see what effect all the rain has had.

Firstly next door's garden that was a dry, mud plain, is now lovely and green. I expect it will be waist high with weeds by the end of the month, but that is better than dry earth. 

My little herb garden I planted outside the kitchen door last spring, it thriving. The rosemary and lavender at the back are looking good and healthy, the mint is just visible and the front has been taken over by my basil. It has grown so tall and smells wonderful every time I brush past it. Even the parsley which looked dead, is trying to show a few new leaves again.

My oleander is covered in new flower buds. It is usually dying back now.

I coudn't miss this lovely branch of pink bougainvillea that swayed across the path. It is still beautiful despite someone' nibbling its leaves.

Round at the front we have several roses in bloom again. They seem to have flowered off and on nearly all year. The pale pink ones smell lovely too.

This is the trumpet vine in our neighbour's garden. It always flowers over on our side and is prolific when not so much is in bloom in the autum. I love it.

And this is my favourite hibiscus. It doesn't flower as much as my others do but when it does, it is perfect! It used to be pinker than this, but it has a beautiful stamen and the petals are frilly at the edges. And it does love a bit of rain.

I mentioned last week that my covid injection was more painful than usual, and when it was done on Wednesday I couldn't raise my arm, but by nightfall it had worn off and I thought no more about it. But as I got ready for bed the next night I saw that my arm was dark purple almost down to the elbow. This is it a week later. It is fading now and was never sore like a bruise, so I guess he just scraped a vain.

During the time I have managed to get down to my computer I decided to start making my monthly calendar for next year. Usually I am doing it in a frantic rush in January! I like to use photos from the same month this year, so I as I go through it I can look back at what we were doing a year ago.  Here are a couple of the months I have finished. Of course they each have the months dates in a grid hanging below them, but I didn't need to show them in the pictures. I just have September - December still to do. I haven't yet decided whether to wait until the end of the last two months  to do their pages, or whether to take the photos from last year. I will see how I feel when I have done October.

I had a good visit to my dermatologist yesterday, and a full diabetic health check earlier in the week. The latter doesn't happen as often as it should so I am pleased to have that done.

So apart from some nice chats with a couple of my lads, that is how another week just slipped away. Now it is time to get this ready to publish tomorrow and link upwith Annie's Friday Smiles.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 44

Week 44 and what a week it has been. For us it has been a catalogue of disasters but they fade into insignificance next to the terrible storms in Valencia and other areas. I am sure most of you will have seen this on the news - pictures of a street in Valencia with piled up cars, houses filled with mud and water, and trains derailed. 

They are saying it is the worst natural disaster in Spain for over thirty years, with a hundred and fifty-eight fatalities so far, and the hunt continues for folk who are missing. Our hearts go out to the families affected and those trying to help them. Nearer to home, in the Almeria area, they had hailstones as 'big as eggs' which caused considerable damage to car windscreens and body work. But can we find a silver lining? Well the reservoir are at least half full and agriculture is benefitting from the rain. (A year's rainfall in one day!). Our gardens are happy too. And I am very touched and grateful for all the messages people have sent us, checking that we are OK.

For us the silver lining is that we have escaped with barely a scratch. Our week started when the waste disposal unit packed up. I love that machine and I felt priviledged to have one as I don't know anyone else in this area who has one. Normally when it stops, pressing the reset, or turning the drum fixes it, but this time nothing worked. So in the end we called a plumber to take it out and replace it with a normal plug and drainage system. I was a bit worried about selling the house to someone who has never seen a  waste disposal, as they can be incredibly dangerous if you don't understand how they work. So maybe removing it was the best option. Had we been staying here I would have replaced it with a new one.

Then we decided to test light the fire in case anyone wanted to see it in action, or we needed to make the room nice and cosy for viewers, and that wouldn't work! We had the same problem at the start of last winter and we had to call a gas man out to clean the sealed unit and replace 'something'. So now we are waiting for him to come again.

Our third disaster was rather more serious. Just inside our garden wall there was a tall telegraph pole set into the tiles, carrying telephone wires for the rest of the street. On Tueday morning we heard a loud crash and when we went to investigate we found the pole had been blown over. We have had high winds before and the pole has stood there for at least thirty years, so it is just our bad luck that it chose this week to come down.

Again it has a silver lining because we are incredible lucky that no-one was out there, no-one was lying on the sun lounger, and it missed the side of the house by less than a foot. It broke the head rest of the lounger and shattered a large plant pot, but the damage could have been so much worse. Of course the cables were down draped across the front of our house, and our fiber cable snapped so we had no internet or TV!

I took photos of it all and took them up to the Town Hall. I was taken straight in to see the Mayor who was in the middle of a meeting, but he immediately rang the local police and by the time I had walked back down to the house, they were there. Their response to any real problem is exceptional.

We know our local police man quite well and he spent ages looking at the damage and taking more photos, and then he talked to the telephone company. They were slow to respond as they had so many calls about damage and flooding to deal with.

But later that day a man did come and make everything safe. The cables have been cut and removed, and the pole is lying up against the wall. Eventually someone will come and collect it and replace all the cables but they are not going to put another pole in which is good. They will use one out on the roadside that carries electricity cables.

We rang the fibre cable company we get internet from and today a man came and replaced the cable and made sure everythng is working properly for us. Another smile.

So a difficult week, but how much worse it could have been. In some ways it is a good thing we have not had any viewings for the house this week, but it is mostly tidied up again now.

We had several warnings about the Dana - also know as Gota fria or Cold drop. This occurs when there is cold air up high and warm air from the Mediterranean coming in below it. So we were expecting heavy rain and thunder storms, but we often get an orange or red alert so folk don't repond as well as perhaps they should.

But it was no suprise to us when it started raining steadily on Monday. This is our pool and it reminded me of mum who always said, if it bubbles when it lands then it will rain all day! She wasn't quite right because it stopped at tea-time. But we had thunder and lightening rolling around us in the night.

Leo is not a fan of rain so he spent the day indoors. He sure knows how to relax!

Yesterday was dry and fairly sunny so I got the sheets washed and they soon dried out on the line. At lunch time we walked round to the medical centre and both had our flu and covid injections. Needless to say Chris didn't even feel his, but I had a painful left arm for the rest of the day. It has eased off now and just feels slightly bruised today. Another good thing done anyway.

So now I am all set to publish this in the morning and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles. I am so glad I have the internet back to do this!