Blooms

As the summer temps cool down, the plants and flowers are having a second bloom, which gives the garden a nice bright feel.

We have Chinese bazaars, independent shops that seem to sell everything, although not always a good quality, but they do tend to sell nice plants at reasonable prices.

Rebecca bought me some petunias a few weeks ago from her local chino and once repotted they have flourished nicely, so I asked her to keep her eyes open for other nice plants. 

Beautiful, and both for only 8 euros
Here Puff is enjoying their colour, Merlin is in another part of the courtyard!

I used to enjoy buying crysants in Tiverton at this time of year, they always gave, lasting a long time and creating a lovely colour as the days drew in.

Here, these types of plants are mainly used to celebrate All Saint´s day (a national holiday) 1st November, (the day of the dead)

However as I don´t associate them with this day, I shall just enjoy their blooms.

Bit of DIY too this week, our log burner had gone a little tarnished due to the chimney leaking a bit.

The prep took the time, protecting all the walls, floors etc from the spray paint.

Before

and after, all ready to go now

Have fun, enjoy your extra hour

take care

xcx

Tasty morsels

Bit of an autumn clean going on here today, I decided the gas hob was due for a bit of elbow grease, then somehow moved on to sorting out kitchen cupboards. Made good progress making space to put things away instead of being left on the counters. Next question though, will hubby find anything lol

Jo from Through the keyhole put a post up referring to Walkers crisps, choose or lose campaign

http://jo-throughthekeyhole.blogspot.com.es/2017/10/choose-or-lose.html

It was fun to see the flavours people preferred, including the marmite love or hate ones.

Today Chris popped into the supermarket and came home with these

Allioli is a popular garlic mayo here, I did try them, but not many because of the milk coating, but have to admit they were rather delicious.

This is a spinach, goats cheese and onion tart I made for Saturday´s bbq

Apart from the button on the cardi, I have finished the dress set for Leocia´s doll. The pattern was for a 16" doll, so I hope it fits hers.

Just for fun, I took a photo of a 1/12 scale dress I made ages ago to see the size comparison, this was made using 1mm needles, a tad fiddly

 

Take care

xcx

Sunsets

Last night was the end of the season for the BBQ´s in the plaza. A nice, warm, clear evening, that was well attended. We started earlier than usual at 8pm instead of 10pm just in case it got cold, but this also meant that it wasn't such a late night (early morning!)

As is the way here, as more people arrived another table was set out and the sharing of our goodies began, Chris had already set his gear up and played for most of the evening.

Good fun had by all

The other evening Chris captured this lovely sunset

Last December I made various items for the first little market held in the plaza to raise funds for the village, but then it was discovered this wasn't permitted by the council so was invited to have a table just for me. I had made various fingerless gloves and was chuffed to sell 5 pairs.

Pilar, one of our neighbours came round to ask me to make her another pair to give as a present. Luckily I had a Blue Peter moment and showed her the ones I still had left over. Another pleasing result.

I needed to know how much yarn they took to make so decided to weigh the gloves then the leftover yarn rather than start to knit and not have enough. I am glad I did, as there wasn't enough. Saved some time and effort there!

Hope everyone had a good weekend

Take care

xcx

Thunder and lightening

We have just had a huge storm, hail, thunder, lightening and torrential rain, but now its all gone, the sun is shining and we have power back. We shall have to wait for everything to dry before clearing up, tree debris, our gravel drive half way into the plaza, soil washed into strange places, oh well it watered the garden!



The other day Rebecca helped me to sort out one of our garages, you know the scenario, boxes still packed with things, not sure what to do with others and then turning a blind eye. This was also where I had stored some of my Dad´s Tiffany style glassware he had made, as I didn't have enough room in the house. Anyway after various comments mostly, why did we keep this? we made excellent progress and cleared loads.
Amongst the ´finds´ was this

Does anyone else remember this, or even had one, I loved doing this as a kid. The box was complete, even the pens were in the box, ok totally unusable, but still. 
Be nice in a few years time to play with the girls and say this was Grandma´s toy.

The other totally awesome find was a cassette tape with my Mother reading the story she wrote for my son, some 33 odd years ago. Chris, very carefully, sorted it out to be able to play, you remember, the pencil in the hole trick etc! it worked!
I haven't plucked up courage to listen yet, probably need a box of tissues at the ready, but what a lovely legacy to be able to produce copies using modern techniques, reprint her written words and let her great grand children hear her story.

I encouraged my grandparents to record some of their lifetime stories and so now have both a lovely family history and a social one too. Do encourage your older family members to record/write some of their stories too, once they are gone, they´re gone.
Only thing is Rebecca too is now asking me to do the same, her excuse is she can´t remember the stories, opps time flies!

take care
xcx

Minies again

Yesterday was our Miniatures club meeting, getting a bit thin on the ground now with only 4 of us there this time!  We haven't met up since May due to every ones own commitments, but we decided to carry on the last theme, window boxes and planters.

I took the workshop this month as everyone wanted me to show them how to make embroidered ferns. A lovely variegated effect is achieved by tweeding two threads together. The technique is needle weaving, which allows the fern leaf to fall free once completed, the longer you make it, the more it twists. They also resemble spider plants
(Just viewed the photos, opps, sorry bit blurrey!)

Its a very soothing technique and everyone enjoyed doing it, you can be as wild and full on as the fancy takes you and when finished, by cutting quite close to the finish petals they can be inserted into troughs and pots. Next time it creeping plants, ie aubretia

There have been builders in the square today, one of the stone walls to the plaza store is in need of some serious tlc. They have rebuilt the wall and added a new window surround. At the end of the day we realised we didn't have any furries around. Cat trap! there were four of them investigating all the work giving their opinion. True to word of being inquisitive. Where the others were is a mystery lol....

Lucy was the only one who owned up!

Take care

xcx

A visitor

This wasn't going to be my post for today, but we had a visitor last night and Chris was clever and quick enough to film it.

During the day we had been watching an eagle, circling and swooping around in the valley, but this evening this huge owl suddenly appeared. We have heard the odd hoot now and again but its the first time we have seen one here.

Look at his huge claws

We do get concerned for the furries when huge birds like this appear, some of ours are quite light and tiny, no match for talons

take care

xcx

A trip out

We decided on a little trip out to explore some of the little coves along the coast. It was about an hours drive, pleasant with less traffic now the main season has ended, very sunny and bright.

First up was Grandella, a pretty spot, but my was the wind blowing, made me smile as the information board said it was renowned for ´gentle breezes´!  

Being hungry we decided to visit the local restaurant - Oh my - talk about captive audience,

A small bottle of sparkling water for me was 2.95e, Chris had a coffee, a reasonable 1.65e, with a mixed salad and potatas bravas (spicy potatoes) to share the bill came to 20e. Moral of the story - take a picnic!

We visited another cove further along, but this was a cliff top view only and again extremely windy.

On our way home we passed through an area that was totally devastated in last years horrific bush fires. Amazingly the area is now covered in greenery as everything starts to replenish.

This whole area had to be evacuated, in this park area a sculptor has used the remaining tree stumps to carve the most wonderful animals.

As you can see there are a few more stumps left, so I do hope they continue carving, lovely to see the inspiration after such a tragedy. Apparently it is one of the bomberos (fireman). Probably most of it done with a chain saw.

I leave you with a photo Chris took the other evening of the harvest moon

Enjoy whats left of the weekend

take care

xcx

Sunsets

With the temps being slightly cooler we were able to get out into the wilderness, sorry, garden and do some cutting back and tidying. As we are on the campo and rural we cannot get a burning license until at least 20th October and only then if our local town hall regulations permit. So we had to be careful how big a pile of overgrowth we could make. Nice to make a start though.

Apart from that a very lazy couldn't be bothered to do much weekend, hopefully we can find a little bit of get up and go this month. Repairs and outside projects can kick in now, maybe even a little bit of painting where hopefully it doesn't dry on the brush.

 

Its sunset season with some really spectacular skies. The bottom one show one of our huge cacti flowering, then it will die. Shame

Have a good day

Take care

xcx