Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 35

It has been a lovely week so here are some of the things that have made me smile. I will start where I left off last week, with the event in the park. It was, in fact, the Oswestry annual Hot air balloon carnival. 

We actually moved into this house a year ago last Wednesday, and the balloon festival had been the weekend before we arrived so we missed it. I have been to it once before, maybe four years ago, while visiting my son who lives near here, but I was looking forward to it this year, and of course, we had a bird's-eye view from our house.

However I like to be a bit more hands on than watching from a window, so I was up at 6.00 Saturday morning, and marching across the grass,  to watch the balloon launch. It was a beautiful morning and there is something rather special about watching huge inflated balloons, silently rising into the sky. Not always silent as there were intermittent blasts from their burners. A surprisingly large crowd had gathered to watch them go up. I saw at least twenty-five balloons launch. It was strange as sometimes you could see three all inflating until their seams became taute, and you thought they were the last ones, but as they rose up, three more were preparing behind them. Five was about the most that could inflate in the space at any one time, but the next ones were always ready to follow them. Here are a few of the many photos I took. I like the central one where the stripey balloon in the centre was lit up by the rising sun behind it. 

Some were quite plain, others carried advertisements but some were more fun like the one winking at us, and the yellow one which surprised me because it was quite plain as I watched it getting ready, and then it turned in the air and had an alien face on the other side.

I was quite shocked to see that one balloon did not have the usual basket under it. Instead it's 'pilot' was simply strapped to an open chair with his gas cylinder strapped behind him. Rather him than me!

The park was well supplied with food and drink stalls, fairground rides and games, and pop-up shops selling novelties which kept the many families who visited, well occupied. 

These two alpacas were a popular attraction and you could walk with them round the park.

We went back over there in the afternoon to meet our son and his family. Young Aisling kept us busy but fortunately she accepted the limit we placed on the number of treats she coul have. Of all the rides she was insistant that she wanted to go on the high swing roundabout, and flatly refused to let Daddy have the seat beside her. I thought it was too high for her as she is only five, but we needn't have worried. She loved every minute of it.

Having gone home to have our tea, we again ventured out at 9.00pm for the highlight of the day known as the Night Glow. For this around five balloons are inflated and every now and then one lights up as their burner blasts up to keep them stable. They are tethered so they can't take off. Meanwhile ten or twelve other burners are removed from their balloons and are set up around the arena, and their controllers sent up blasts of fire in time to loud music that has everyone singing and dancing. It is quite exciting and a great fun spectacular. Again I took too many photos to show them all here, but here are a small selection to give you some idea of what it was like.

It all happened again on Sunday except for the Night Glow which is only on Saturday. We didn't go over again but after dinner I did sit out by the front door with my sewing and watched the people having fun. Every now and then one tethered balloon would inflate in the arena. As it loomed above the trees you realised just how huge some of them are.

I spent Monday and Tuesday afternoons, shortening two pairs of trousers that have languished at the bottom of my closet for ages. I have a feeling we will be wanting trousers again soon. I am not a needle-woman by choice, but I am happy to have got this chore out of the way.

Yesterday was a bit grey and damp but my lovely grand/daughter Emma sent a message to say she wanted to show me something. So at ten o-clock she came round and picked me up and we drove to Gatacre Hill Fort, just on the edge of Oswestry. We parked in a layby and went through a gate, and there we saw this beautiful field.

Isn't that an amazing sight for a field in the midlands. We had to take a quick selfie with them behind us.

We chatted with a man who walks his dog round the perimeter every day, and he said the land-owner had recived a grant to plant the field with seeds for the birds and other wild-life. There was a lot of barley and maize as well as something gone to seed that google lens said was radish seeds. But of course it was the sunflowers we had come to see. 

They were not as tall as cultivated sunflowers but I love the way they all turn their faces to the sun so they were all looking at us! I asked the man if we could pick a few and he said 'Oh yes. I have picked some but when I put them in water they die!' So Emma and I walked around and chose four heads each that still had compressed centres so should have some life left in them. So far so good.

Some were still in tight bud and it will be another few weeks before they are all set to seed but then the birds will have a field day. Already there were some smaller critters enjoying them.

I have always loved sunflowers but find them frustrating to grow as they almost always look over the fence away from the garden, so instead I bought  this from a plant sale I went to at Easter. It is called Helianthus-Lemon Queen. It has taken so long to get to flower but does now have quite a few and there are loads of buds still to come. The flowers are smaller than I think they should be but this is its first year so we will see what next year brings.

I was happy to have another visitor this morning - Emma's brother Mikey popped in for a cup of tea and a catch up. We don't get to see him very often so it made a very happy morning. Now I am waiting to have a chat with my son Ben and then it will be tea-time and the end of another day.

Apologies for the length of this post. I just had a lot to write about this week.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 34

 Picture of the week.

Isn't that just beautiful. It is beautiful on several counts but mainly because it is Mum's Peace rose, and because it was such a relief to wake up and find the garden had been blessed with rainfall at last. I love to see the flowers and leaves with raindrops on them. I liked the colours in this one.

I was out earlier than usual for a doctor's appointment this morning so I cut across the park and down an alley that leads out onto the main shopping area. This broadens into a walkway lined with seats for weary shoppers to catch their breath, and big tubs of plants. Right now they are mostly brown and sad, but they had their share of the rain last night, and it is one of life's miracles that within a few weeks they will be turning green again. (I am hoping some of my perennials will also recover).

We had a nice visit from our son Mike last week and this week we met him over on Red Square for a drink and a chat. He posted this amusing photo on Facebook because he has spent the summer holiday working a mobile shop at various music venues around the country. It is hard work and difficult hours, but he manages to enjoy the sun and some of the performances as well. Basic accommodation means his unruly hair becomes even more unruly and as he put it "Nature has claimed me back to the wild for festival season". He is back home now and tomorrow he is taking his family off to Greece for a well-earned holiday so it was nice to have a catch-up before he goes.

Because I wanted something not very taxing to do yesterday evening, I tried out a wind spinner pattern that  liked. It is really quite pretty. I am going to make it again one day in yellow, brown and green, and add a sunflower top and bottom. (That was the original pattern design).

We have something quite exciting to look forward to in the park at the weekend, and this morning preparations were already underway. I will leave you guessing as to what it will be, but I am sure there will be photos next week (weather permitting of course).

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 33

Phew! It has been a hot one hasn't it? That in itself says I haven't been up to much more than sitting in the garden with my sewing, or curled up with a book, but I also had a day out on Monday because I had a very virrulent sickness bug Sunday night through Monday. Fortunately it only lasted for twenty-four hours and now I am back to normal except for feeling very sleepy and thirsty. But I have been very good at keeping hydrated all week so no worries there.

Fortunately, before all that kicked off, on Sunday afternoon we had a lovely visit from my daughter-in-law and grandson. We compared notes on crochet projects and caught up on family news, and I was able to give her my wooden, embroidered Christmas decorations for our son's church's Christmas fayre. I remembered, just in time, to grab a quick photo as they were leaving.

I have a soft spot for cosmos flowers. They are so dainty on their fragile stems, swaying in the breeze and come in a lovely range of colours from dark red, through pink and mauve, to white.  So when I saw a kit to grow some in Sainsburys I bought it and planted them straight away. They all started to sprout and I knew I would need to thin them out but unfortunately we were then away in Cheshire with our son, while the bathroom work was being done, so they got very neglected for three weeks or so. When we returned they were amazingly still alive, but very weak and spindly and I thought they were a lost cause. Then I saw tiny flower buds on some of them, so although they were a fraction of the size they should be, I planted the strongest ones out around the garden and left them to 'sink or swim'.  I was surprised to find that I did get a crop of teeny, tiny flowers on some of them, but one or two that went into a tub near the back door, did develope more fully and I now have a few very pretty flowers. So they weren't a complete waste of time after all!

Yesterday I was again sitting outside sewing and I had set my chair next to a coreopsis plant that is enjoying a second round of flowers, and I couldn't help but notice how many little flying creatures came to visit during the afternoon. Apart from a common fly we had sevral common drone hover flies that came back time and time again. I thought these were honey bees but I learned later that the hover fly tries to mimic the honeybee drones, but it only has one pair of wings and the bees have two. (You learn something new every day!). They are still important pollinators and are welcome on my flowers. I also saw the bigger bumble bee again and a very pretty blue holly butterfly. This was tiny with each wing no more than a centimeter across, and it was so fast. It closed its wings everytime it landed, and was much to fast to catch it in flight, but even the underside of its wings were a pale blue.

Of course, last night I had to try to photograph the eclipse. I have safety glasses to use when I am looking at my laser cutter in action, so I used them to protect my eyes. Because of the buildings behind us, we can only see the sun setting from up in my craft-room, and most of my pictures ended up with a triple image like this one. I realised, too late, that this was because I was taking them through my window which is double glazed. 

However I did manage to get these two, one from the start of the eclipse and one from the end, as the shadow was moving off the other side. Not too bad for an amateur with just a phone camera.

Yesterday we had a brief visit from our son Mike who has spent the last few weeks running the mobile shop at various rock festivals. It is hard work with lots of lifting, long hours and not wonderful accommodation, but it pays well and he has been doing it for several summers. He has one more to go to today and then he is taking his family off for a well-earned break in Greece. He loves the heat and copes well with it. He always visited us in Spain in August! It was good to have a quick catch-up.

And that is another week that was.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 32

It is again time to look back at the week and highlight the happy moments. Well it has been a mixed week. On Sundays we have music in the park and this week it was a jazz band and as the sun was shining I decided to take my chair out onto the litle concrete step under the front window, to do my sewing and listen to the music. It was very plasant for a while and then it actually started to rain and I had to move indoors!

It turned out to be a damp and windy night and the next day there was a whole flock of seagulls on the grass. We are quite a way from the coast so maybe it was really wild there and they were driven inland. We do not usually see them in the park.

The garden has benefitted from some rain though we haven't really had enough to do much good. However my pink carnations are thriving, and I am pleased with these. Many years ago, my late brother-in-law taught me to grow them from the little side shoots that are always found on the stems when you buy a bunch as cut flowers. I had some several months ago and kept six side shoots in water until they started to root. Then I planted them in a container outside. The birds kept pulling them up, and I kept replanting them and five did take root properly and I have had a lot of flowers on them. They are a bit tall this year, but next year I will plant them in the garden and hopefully they will be a bit lower and bushier then.

We had a wasted afternoon on Monday as we had to go to the hospital in Shrewsbury for Chris' eye injection. The bus is only hourly so sometimes we have to arrive rather early. There is always a long wait at this clinic and I was annoyed that I had forgotten to slip my Kindle in my bag. After his initial check-up we waited an hour and he was then called down to the doctor's room. There were a lot af folk already down there so he came back because there was nowhere to sit. Eventually he was called again and then he came back almost immediately to say they weren't doing any more that day because it was too hot! It really was stifling in there so we were happy enough to walk outside for the shuttle bus to Shrewsbury bus station. But then we had another long wait for the bus back to Oswestry. We had left home at 2.00 and got back just before 7.00. A five hour trip for nothing, and we will have to do it again soon when they send him a new appointment. But the injections are helping a lot, so I guess it is worth it in the long run.

This is what has occupied most of my time. I saw the cutting file for this owl in an Etsy shop and I knew I would enjoy making it. It is probably the most intricate piece I have made so far, using my laser cutter. 

There are six layers of wood. Layer 2 is walnut and layer 6 is mahogany, and the rest are basswood ply. I went on Amazon and chose a range of wood dyes, and dyed each layer to get the contrasts I needed. Then each piece was varnished lightly and then it was assembled and glued together. I am really happy with it and he will go up on my wall with my other owls.

I have also managed to make a couple of birthday cards and aother few Christmas cards ao I catching up now.

The cloudier skies we have had this week have given us a few nice sunsets. I don't always see them because the sun goes down behind the houses at the back of us. But on Tuesday I was up on the third floor, in my craft room, and I caught this one from my window. It disappeared very quickly so I'm glad I spotted it when I did.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week31

It is hard to believe another month has gone by, but here we are at the start of August which is usually a fairly quiet month for us. I mostly relax with a good book or do a little bit of sewing, and occasionally some crafting. I have almost given up on the garden until the autumn as I feel guilty hosing it at night, though I have managed to keep my tomatoes going, but many of the plants are dying off already. I hope they will return next year!

I have started having my milk and eggs delivered twice a week as it saves me carrying them from the shops, but the delivery is usually at around 3.00am, so it sits on the doorstep for several hours before I get up to retrieve it. While it is so hot I have agreed to leave the empties out in a cool bag with a couple of ice blocks in it, and the new delivery is put in there so it stays cold until I am awake. Last night I put the empties out just before I went to bed and I was captivated by the moon seen through the big tree in the park. I took several photos trying to catch the atmosphere and here are the ones I lked best.

Also peeping through one thing to see another, here is the main flower beds in the park, viewed through a statue of Wilfed Owen, a First World War poet and soldier who was born in Oswestry. His poetry tends to describe the horrors and futility of war, unlike other poets at the time. He is commemorated in various places around Oswestry, but this is a relatively new statue in the park.

The sun is now streaming through my window and I am too hot to sit here any longer so I will close for now and prepare this for posting in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 30

The temperature has dropped just enough to make this a more pleasant week so my time has been divided between sewing in the garden and making cards up here in my craft room. This week I have made a set of six Christmas cards each with five little angels on it, so there was some colouring to do, but fortunately my Silhouete cameo did the cutting out for me. You can read more about how they were made here, on my craft blog.   

I am sewing little bits of my counted cross stitch/embroidery project most days, but in the evening the light is not good enough for this so I have done some simpler sewing and made a set of four of these Christmas decorations. They are cut from thin wood, and the pattern marked on them using my laser cutter. Then two identical ones are stiched with embroidery floss, and then blanket stitched together which hides the untidy back of each one.

When there is enough shade to sit in outside I do my sewing and am entertained by all the birds. A pair of wood pigeons visit daily and their wings make so much noise and always make me jump. But this week we had some other visitors. These three baby sparrows are just fledged. They followed their mother onto the fence and then sat there, not quite sure how to take off again. They chatted together, demanded food, and eventually took off to land on the fence on the opposite side of the garden. One of them missed and needed a second try but he made it OK.

Then this very scruffy juvenile blackbird hopped along the path. I think he is just shedding his baby fluff and getting a full set of feathers, but he is very untidy right now. I fed his parents all through the winter so it is good to see they have successfully raised at least one young.

I really wanted to grow some runner beans in the garden but the ground just wasn't ready in time. So instead I have four tomato plants, one golden cherry, one red cherry, one standard red and one big beefeater type. I bought a very flimsy box to plant them in, and because it kept blowing over and falling apart, it is now roped to the wall. 

Despite the rough ride they have had, they are growing well and yesterday I picked my first two 'sungold' cherry tomatoes. There are lots more to come so I hope the sunshine keeps coming for  while yet.

There has been nothing particular in the park this week, but now some of the schools have broken up, there is no shortage of people to watch. It is very well used throughout the day.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 29

 In contrast to last week when I had more photos than I knew what to do with, this week I have very few, so I will keep this a short post.

My week has been dominated by all the horrifying photos coming on the news from Spain. The wild fire was, of course, right by what was my home village until last year, so I recognised the area, and knew many of the people mentioned and interviewed. Although the fire was not actually in Los Gallardos village it was in the area under its juridiction, and it did come right up to the perimeter of the village so the smoke and ash have left their mark, and the air quality is awful. Plus the death toll is so sad and there is still fear for the more than twenty people who are unaccounted for. We went up to Bédar many time, and took our visitors to a restaurant there that we liked. Because the houses are made of stone, many are still standing but the wooden parts, door frames, outbuildings etc, are gone. So too are the livelihoods of the Spanish families who have lost their orange groves and almond groves. This should be the week of the big annual fiesta in Los G. but that has of course been cancelled. It all has made me very sad.

But this post is supposed to be about what has made me smile so here are a couple of garden photos.  As the back garden is not yet ready to do much to, I scattered a packet of marigold seeds over some pots, (each containing a baby fruit bush that hopefully will come into their own next year), and they have given me so many flowers, making a lovely splash of bright colour out there.

Also, despite the heat, our new rose bushes are giving us a second flowering and the little 'tequila sunrise' is so pretty. The flowers are smaller this time, but they are very full and frilly, and go through a lovely range of yellow, to orange to pink. I am really glad we chose that one.

As it is too hot to sit outside until late afternoon when the garden has some shade, I have been busy in my craft room. I made three birthday cards needed this month, and also a set of six Christmas cards using a clear script stamp which is one of the very first ones I owned. It was bought on my first visit to the NEC craft show in Birmingham some thirty plus years ago. I was fascinated by Barbara Gray (Santorelli then I think) and her Clarity stamps. I stood watching her demonstrating for ages and this was one of the stamps I bought.

And that is it for me this week. Stay cool and hydrated everyone.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 28

 Well I have a lot to smile about this week, and lots of photos to share, but I will start with last Saturday when again the park came alive to the shouts of excited children as TNS (a local football team who play in the Welsh league), organised a fundraiser fun day, with bouncy castles, inflatable football pitches and games. And No! I didn't take any photos even though I met my very excited grand-daughter over there. 

It was also the Oswestry Food and Drink fayre so all the streets around were lined with stalls selling street food, local produce, baked items and locally distilled whisky. It was too crowded to take a meaningful photo, but I bought some very tasty pies and some lovely cheeses.

However, the day before that, on the Friday I took loads of photos when I had a day out with my daughter-in-law Ella. Months ago she told me she had been to Oswestry Ironworks with her sister and I mentioned that I had never been there but woud like to one day. She promised me we would go there for lunch one day but it has taken until now for us to find a day when we were both available! Fortunately it was another lovely sunny day so off we went. I wasn't sure what to expect though I knew they had sculptures made for scrap metal. Probably their most famous sculpture is the "Knife angel" - an angel made entirely from knives surrendered after an arms amnesty. Sadly that was not on show for us as it is currently on a nationwide tour.

But we did see the famous gorilla made from 40,000 plastic spoons collected by children from around the world. 

https://www.blackcountrymetalworks.co.uk/spoon-gorilla

It is in the centre of this collage along with some more fantastic exhibits.

These are some of my favourites, especially the 'Grim reaper' carrying a lantern in place of a scythe. I hope you can click on the image and enlarge it enough to read the caption next to him. 

I also liked the cut away head listening to music through headphones. The work involved in creating each one is amazing.

There were some cute little characters with an explanation of the materials used, and also some characters familiar to the younger visitors.

These fruits stood out because of their bright colours which clearly show the cogs and gears used in their construction.

The vehicles were pretty cool, especially the car made from drift wood, and the van with a millipede wound round it and each of its legs was a golf club.

Of course there were lots of mythical creatures allowing the makers to use their imagination, and all were very striking.

We walked a good few steps as the sculptures were spread over a wide area. I couldn't stop taking photos which is why I have put them into collages, but this is only some of the ones on show. But tired and hot, and mindful of the time when Ella's daughter needed to be met from school, we decided to stop our wanderings and were glad to settle in this lovely restaurant for a very tasty late lunch.

And finally, not an exhibit but my lovely smiling grand-daughter enjoying her day out.

One last happy event for this week is that now the garden is cleared of builders rubbish we decided to buy a little bistro table and chairs for our patio. There isn't much space out there yet but this is big enough for a cup of tea each, and even a light meal if we wanted it. It is a very pretty design, and we actually both agreed on the same one which made buying it easy.

And that is more than enough from me for this week.