Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 25

Time is running away so fast that I am not sure I will ever really catch up with myself. But here are my high spots from this week.

Sunday morning I drew back the bedroom curtains to see marquees once again going up in the park, and soon we heard a PA system being tested. I cut across the grass to go to church but I couldn't decide what was going on though there was some stripey flag bunting being tied around the bandstand. My knowledge of flags is not good enough to tell me what was going on. But by the time our service was over and I was walking home, I had learned that it was a special celebration for the Bulgarian community in our area. I had no idea there was that many of them around, but there were delicious smells coming from their food tent, their music was cheerful and their costumes were beautiful. I stood and enjoyed watching some of their traditional dancing. It reminded me a bit of Spain with music costumes and traditions. And it was a lovely day so they enjoyed themselves until passed teatime.

As I walked home I spotted this little fellow on the grass. Apparently it is a red-tailed bumble bee.  I didn't know there was more than one type of bumble bee, but we learn something new every day!

My new sewing project is making progress, albeit slow progress. It is a real struggle to see what I am doing for long, so I usually only sew one long thread and then have a reast. Meanwhile I needed something a bit more simple to take to my knitting club and they were meeting this week. (1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month). So I decided to make a start on a crochet project that has been calling to me for several months, ever since my daughter-in-law got me interested in it. I won't tell you what I making yet as it will be a Christmas present for someone, but here is just some of the wool I will be needing.

Today I popped into town for some essential food shopping and Sainsbury had a huge pile of strawberry punnets all on today's date, so they were marked down to half price. (Obviously World cup viewers are more interested in the huge mountain of cheap beer than in strawberries and cream!) I immediately thought "strawberry jam" and bought some. Now there is just two of us, I only need to make a small amount, and I don't intend to get into selling it like I did in Spain. But the fruit is perfect, and very sweet and juicy but, of course, they will not keep for long, so after this I shall make a start on the jam.

Tomorrow I am busy with a hair appointment in the morning and a Spring Covid injection in the afternoon, but I will get round to you all over the weekend.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 24

 Hello again. It has been a mixed week of sunshine and showers, but fortunately the sun shone for much of the day on Sunday and it was the day of the Community Games in the park. When we woke up the men were already setting up maruqees and sound systems, and soon we heard music across the park as they tested it out. All day there were demonstrations from all the local sports groups from badmington to gymnastics, to martial arts and kayaking. They had each perfected a routine and the loudspeaker was calling out how to contact their leaders if they fancied having a go. I went to church as usual in the morning, but after lunch I wandered over and watched the gymnasts. Two of my boys were in the first group of children to become members of the club when it first started back around 1992. There were a lot of stalls around the central arena selling sports wear and equipment, or raffle tickets to raise funds for their club. I came away with a clump of mature michaelmas daisies which will hopefully give me some flowers in the autumn, and a couple of tomato plants. Not very sporty but it helped their kitty!

I have made a start on my sewing project. It did prove very difficult to see as I had feared it would, but I bought a large neck mounted magnifier, and with that I am managing quite well.

Chris had another hospital appointment on Monday but as it was only a consultation he didn't need me to go wih him, so I stayed home and made a couple of birthday cards for later this month. But we are both going there again tomorrow for him to have a CAT scan. They are now looking into what they were investigating before when they discovered his aneurysm, which was critical so it took priority. Now that is out of the way he is back on track.

My garden is slowly taking shape. I can only do a little bit at a time but the side border is being helped by the beautiful rose next door. The border is backed by a brick wall and this is topped with a narrow wooden fence. Their rose is a climber that has spread almost the full length of the fence and branches hang down on our side. It is smothered in buds and the first ones opened this week. It was in flower when we arrived here late last August, and went on flowering well into the autumn, so we will be enjoying it for a long time I think.

And that is all my news for this week. Next week is due to be sunny again, so enjoy it everyone.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 23

It has been an odd sort of week. We started of quite busy when our son Jonathan came round  to trim our hedges. He brought his two little girls with him. Aisling brought a big bucket of 'bouncy dough' to play with, and I spent most of the morning making animals with her. She was nice enough to recognise all my amateurish shapes! Then our older son Michael turned up with his stepson who at just 16 is taller than anyone else in the family, so our little sitting room was very full.

On Sunday I went to church as usual and we had a lovely service for Trinity Sunday led by Sarah, Bishop of Shrewsbury, who was a lovely friendly lady and we had a good chat over a cup of tea after the service.

On Tuesday night I babysat with Aisling and Niamh for the first time so that Jonathan could take his wife out to dinner for her birthday. They don't often go out in the evening as Jonathan leaves for work at 5.30 most mornings so he goes to bed early. Aisling was as good as gold and after reading her school book to me she went off to bed. The baby was a bit unsettled when she realised her mum wasn't there, but she settled in the end.

The next two days were taken up with hospital appointments, one for me and one for Chris. Although both were relatively straight forward, the round trip is almost a day out so I didn't get much else done.

Yesterday I went round the shops with a tape measure trying to find boxes the right size to fit in my freezer. I managed to find three. They are all different but that doesn't really matter. My freezer has four open shelves and two small drawers at the bottom. The drawers hold vegetables and chips, but everything else gets pushed in wherever it fits, and because the shelves are too deep for me to reach to the back, some things get lost and forgotten. So This morning I took everything out, sorted it into 'raw meat', 'prepared meat', 'pies, and precooked meals', and 'sundries', such as bakery goods, ice-cream, desserts, and anything else that didn't go anywhere else. I think it will be much more efficient to use now.

While at Ben's I finished the mandala I was crocheting. It is called Autumn leaves. The pattern showed it made in a variegated green yarn but it spoke more of Spring to me than Autumn, so I chose yarn that changed from bright yellow, through orange to purple. Here it is pinned out on my blocking pads. They aren't quite big enough but I needed to get an idea of what size hoop tyo order. It is now on its way to me and I will have the difficult job of crocheting it to the hoop. It will look better when it is properly stretched with a plain wall behind it so I will show it again when it is done.

Now I am enbarking on a new piece of cross stitch and other embroidery. It is a kit I bought and the fabric is pale green, even weave linen. I haven't used anything other than Aida cloth for a long time and it will be quite tiring for my eyes, but I am not in a rush to do it, so little by little. And I find the light during the summer is much better for sewing so I shall have a go. The kit came with some very pretty threads and three tiny vials of very tiny seed beads. (They are going to be fun to sew in to it!). There is also a ten page booklet of the pattern. So wish me luck and don't expect to see much progress for quite a while.

Last week I said I had managed to solve the rubik's cube in five minutes. I haven't tried again since then but today I did it in just over 4 minutes! I have an app on my tablet to use with it. The red below is a screen shot. The row of tiny letters under the time is a set of moves to follow to get an authentic random shuffle. (They change every attempt). So you shuffle it, tap the screen to start solving it and tap it again when you have done it. My eldest son Jim had the first cube I had seen back when he was just into secondary school, and he held the school record for the fastest to solve it, but I never mastered it back then. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands now!

And finally, I have been playing with the camera on my new phone and one afternoon I took this shot of a spider's web, gently swaying in the breeze on the outside of my craft room window. I used full zoom and I love how it turned out, it is like a set of fairy lights.

And that is another week flown by.