Bus stop crochet

This week has seen me with actual free time during the day as all three Little Postcards went to school for full days for five whole days. I can’t tell you what a difference that has made for me in terms of being able to get things done. The house has been cleaned, the ironing is up to date and I even managed to fit in a bit of crochet too. I’m working away on my #sixtymilliontrebles blanket and trying to do a little bit every day.

When it’s finished it will be added to many other blankets to make the biggest crochet blanket in the world which is being created to raise awareness for the sixty million refugees in the world today. It will then go on to be a blanket for someone who needs it either in the UK or Syria. For more information on the project look out for sixty million trebles on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Back to school for me

The time came this week for me to return to school myself. I’m now in my second year at the Dorcas Hammond Fashion Academy in Gibraltar. Last year it was all about skirts, this year I’m learning about tops and dresses. We hit the ground running this week with our first lesson in drawing our own pattern to make a vest top. It’s been interesting and challenging so far, although reassuring that I haven’t forgotten everything I’d learned last time!

Here comes the rain

If you’re a regular visitor to my blog, you may remember me banging on about the weather here in Gibraltar since we returned from our holiday in England in the summer. It’s been really unbearably hot with a scorcher of a heat wave. On Tuesday, the rain came in spectacular style with thunder and lightning and with it came cooler weather… what a relief!

Normal service is resumed…

Once the rain had cleared off the sun came back but with less ferocity. This is the kind of weather when it’s a pleasure to live here, clear blue skies and sunshine but actually being able to function without wilting and needing several showers a day! I took this photo on a walk by Rosia Bay on Thursday morning, it was just so blue and beautiful.

Back to painting class too

Another of my regular weekly classes started up again this week, my lovely, relaxing watercolour classes. Oh how I have missed these lessons over the long summer break. I had grand plans to paint when I was on holiday this year and managed to get to my destination with the correct paper but had forgotten to pack my paint and brushes! I had hoped to do a bit more painting during my Summer Craft Challenge, but as it requires a bit of space, time and equipment it didn’t really happen during the school holidays.

This week I finished off a watercolour of the Rock of Gibraltar and discussed some ideas about what my next project will be. I have been greatly inspired by our English seaside holiday this year, so hope to recapture that on paper soon. Whether it will look anything like I have in my head is another matter!

A Pokemon birthday

We have been celebrating a birthday again in the Postcard household this week. I was given a design brief of the Deathstar from Star Wars for the cake. After Googleing images of Death Star birthday cakes, I soon came to the conclusion that it may be slightly beyond my skill set. As Pokemon is currently on trend in our house I figured I couldn’t go too far wrong with a Pokeball cake instead. It went down very well with the birthday boy and tasted ok too. Everyone was happy and that’s another party out of the way – phew!

Bumper harvest

Here’s something to make you allotment holders and veg patch devotees chuckle… This year we treated ourselves to a fig tree, they grow like weeds here. There’s one at the end of our road which is cut back to a stump every year to stop it overhanging the road, and every year it grows back as big as ever and is laden with fruit.

Our little tree which is no more than a metre tall had about a dozen fruit on it earlier in the summer. ‘Not bad for the first year’ I thought. I watched the largest fruit swell to the size you see in the supermarket but it looked a little under ripe to pick. A day later, it was perfect – so perfect the ants had invaded and were devouring it.

What a shame – but never mind there were still plenty of others to have a go at. Each time I was on the patio hanging out washing I noticed that the remaining figs were growing fewer in number everytime I looked. Either something or someone had been pilfering our figs – they hadn’t fallen off as there was no sign anywhere in the garden of the fruit.

Yesterday while doing the laundry I spotted we had just two left on the tree, so I picked them – that way we can at least taste them when they ripen (I hope they ripen ok when they are picked!). It’s a mystery as to what’s happened to the rest of our crop… and to think I had envisioned making all sorts of recipes with our home grown figs. They are a rather puny couple of specimens, but at least they have done zero food miles 😉

Thank you for joining me for Sunday Sevens again this week, it’s been lovely to have your company!

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series created by Natalie at Threads & Bobbins