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.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 27

We had another weekend with activity in the park. This week it was for Oswestry Pride. There were a few tents and stalls set up early on Saturday morning and people drifting in from all sides. At around 12.00 they all formed a line and there was a parade through town. It was fairly low key by most town's standards but we are a fairly small town. Anyway there were lots of colourful costumes and people enjoying themselves and that what I like to see.

Another addition to the park is our stone snake. I don't know who started it but I have watched it growing as the days go by and it is quite an impressive length now.

The front area of the park is looking beautiful. I showed it newly planted a few weeks ago, but look at it now. I want to know what magic spell the gardeners uses to make them all bloom at exactly the same time!! The judges for "Towns in bloom" were in the park on the hottest day so far, so I hope they take the temperature into consideration when judges the flowers. Like us, they were wilting a little.

All through July and August there is music in the bandstand every Sunday afternoon. The first week it was a band from Shrewsbury and this week it was the more local Porthywaen band. One of my sons played a trombone with them a good few years ago. Quite a few people come with chairs to sit around and listen, but we can hear them from our house.

Last week I told you about the red-tailed bumble bee. Well this week we had another variety in the garden. He was sitting on my ox-eye daisies, and seemed exhausted. So I found a syringe and gently dripped a few drops of sugar water onto the flower. You can just see it in one of these pictures. He immediately drank it all so I added a few more drops. He became a bit more active after that and eventually flew off. I googled his photo as his big red thorax was very distinctive and not something I had seen before. He also had a white tail not really visible in these photos. Apparently he is a "buff-tailed tree bumble bee", and they have only been seen in UK since 2021. The first siting was in Wiltshire and they have since spread widely. He was very big so just possibly 'he' was a 'she' and was the queen about to form her new colony.

We have had a painter in all week, painting the ceilings and any bare plaster walls in the kitchen, utility and bathroom. He finished today and it all looks so much better. So now I can hang a few things that have been waiting for this, including a pin board, a kitchen cross stitch picture I made many years ago, and various other bits. Also we had a skip to take the rest of the building rubble etc so now we can take a deep breath and rest until the autumn, when we are considering having the sitting room decorated and new carpet put down.

I don't get many sky pictures these days but this one really made me smile. Either the cheeky cloud is putting his tongue out at me and winking, or it is having a smoke and the smoke got in his eye! Either way I hope someone else can see the face. It jumped out at me so clearly, but maybe I just have an odd way of looking at things.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 26

Week 26 already. That's halfway through the year!Is it just me or does time speed up in direct ratio to your age? This has been a pleasant week. Nothing exciting happening but nothing bad either and that's the sort of week I like. 

Firstly 'Thank you' to all those who took time to read my blog last week and leave nice comments. I hope I  got back to you all. My computer is in my craft room which is in the roof, i.e. it is a loft conversion, so in this weather it gets a bit like an oven and I tend to only come up here in the morning, but I am actually trying to make a run of Christmas cards as I am very behind with them this year, so my browsing time has been limited.

I did have a fairly drastic haircut last week which is fine for the summer, so I will try to get the photo changed for my profile. It is a bit shorter than I had planned but it will grow again so that's fine.

I happened to cut through an alley between some shops on my way home one day, and I spotted a little shop that only sold anything related to cats. Of course I had to pop in to take a look and I came away with a new mug. Some of you may remember that I have a pint mug which I fill with tea in the morning and again at tea-time. (The rest of the day I mainly drink water so it is not really too much tea). Anyway, with there just being the two of us, I only put the dishwasher on every two days so I wanted a second mug for day two. However I have tried many and although they are described as "fine bone china", they are too thick and therefore too heavy even before I fill them. My new one is proper fine china, lighter full than my most recent one is empty. It is so fine that I can see the level of tea in it through the sides. It also has a big wide handle making it easy to get a grip.

As you can see it has a 'happy' cartoon cat on the side, and there is a small one inside as well. I was chatting to my son Ben on a video call and he was having fun experimenting with Ai to edit photos and make videos. I am not a fan of Ai as I want to believe what I see, but when it is just family playing around I don't mind. He wanted a photo to show me what it can do, so I sent him one of my mug, (taken at an angle to show inside as well), and said "Tell it to change the cats to Maine Coons" and within seconds it sent me this one back. 

It's a pity it isn't for real because I like it better than the original, but I must admit it is clever, and a bit scary at the same time.

I made my strawberry jam as planned, and it is so good! It made more than I expected but I have given some to my boys when they popped in on Father's day and the rest will see us through the year.

Despite the heat, I prefer to sit outside rather than in the house, and in the afternoons the back garden does have some natural shade, so I have been sitting out there to do my sewing as the light is so much better and I can do it without using the magnifier. I like listening to the birds, and watching the bees going in and out of my foxgloves. The rose petals shower me like confetti when the breeze blows. I sit next to that shrub I showed a couple of months ago when its new leaves opened like tiny curled ferns. Now it is in bloom with clusters of tiny, frothy white flowers.

And I am so pleased to have my first flower on mum's Peace rose. She would have loved it too.

I don't see sunsets here because of all the housing at the back of us, and at this time of year I am not up early enough to catch the sunrise! But up here in my room I can see over the roofs a bit and managed to catch this pretty sky one evening.

And that is enough rambling for this week. It is time to get back to my card making,

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. 

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 22

Well folks you may be wondering where I have disappeared to these past few weeks. The fact is that the work to renovate our bathroom, which we expected to take a week or so, turned out taking four weeks, and while at my son's I only had my tablet, (normally only used for puzzles), and I did not feel up to writing and editing a blog post on it. Also I had a lovely relaxing break up in Cheshire with Ben, and spent most of my time, reading, crocheting and doing afore-mentioned puzzles.

And more surprisingly I learnt to solve that old fun game, a Rubik's cube. From a random shuffle, I can now solve it in just under five minutes. I might add that Ben can solve it in under 40 seconds! but I don't have his dexterity. My hands struggle to get the right grip and I cannot flick two rounds at a time like he can. I was just quite pleased to have mastered it.

It was also a time of rest and recouperation for Chris who a month after his operation, is now much stronger and well on the mend. There is still a way to go, but we are pleased with the progress he has made.

It will be our last visit to Cheshire as Ben will be moving before the end of the summer, to live in Hereford, at the old railway station he and his partner bought last year. Their renovations are almost done and they hope to be there by August.

His current house has a lovely 'garden room', and that is where I spent most of my time. Sitting on a very comfortable recliner chair I could look through the open door onto their lovely garden. 

On warm days the whole front wall concertinered open and zooming out I could see this to the right.....

..... and this to the left.

His partner Ant is a keen gardener and he loves bearded iris. During the first week these all opened and were quite beautiful. By the time we left, blue, purple and white ones were open too.

I don't have any of these in my own garden but when we popped back mid-way in our stay for a hospital appointment, I found my flag iris were all in flower.

One day at Ben's we went for a walk round a very pleasant park and he took this photo with his mini-drone. 

It hovered in front of us and he controlled it with his phone. I found it a bit unnearving but it took a good photo.

I have been contemplating replacing my phone for a while, and I thought it might be a good idea to buy a new one while I was with Ben as he was able to easily transfer all my files and show me some of the finer settings that I would have missed. It is an Oppo Find 9 pro and has a super camera which I was keen to try out. One night I used full zoom to take this picture of the moon and I was very impressed at how it came out.

We have now been home for almost a week and we are very pleased with our bathroom so it was worth the wait. We have a big walk in 'rainfall' shower, an almost silent flushing toilet, and a modern wash basin with drawers under it. The morror above lights up if you wave your hand under it! There is now a nice wooden floor instead of the aweful carpet that was there. The builder is on holiday this week but he is coming back on Monday to build a tall slim cupboard in the small alcove beside the basin, and then it will just need a bit of decorating.

I think in my last post I showed the ground cover companular just coming into bud. Well when we came home it was a mass of purple bell flowers, all over the walls, steps and borders. It has spread to the neighbour's gardens too. 

The whole of the front garden is looking very colourful with a big patch of yellow rock roses, a red berberis bush, and geranium and petunias in my three tubs at the top.

And today the first of the new roses we put in in the autumn, is in flower and it is a beauty! It is called tequila sunrise.

We also found that the front, decorative part of the park has been planted up with begonias, silver leaf, and african marigolds. It will be a riot of colour again soon, just in time for the Britain in Bloom judges to come to town. There will be somrthing around the standard poles too very soon I am sure.

I must say the council do their best to put on good events for the town's folk and when we walked by on Friday night we saw they were fencing off the central plaza, which is normally a car park surrounded by shops and cafés. By the next morning it was a beach with a thick layer of sand that had buckets and spades across it, and stripey deckchairs all round it. The parents were enjoying sitting in the sun and their children were having a whale of a time in the sand. It was a really fun idea.

I think I have just about caught up now. Next week it will be back to a more normal post.