Europa Point lighthouse

The adventures of Llanita, the Gibraltar Yarndale sheep

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Llanita, the Gibraltar Yarndale sheep

Introducing Llanita, Gibraltar’s very own Yarndale sheep. For those of you unfamiliar with Yarndale, it’s a festival of all things woolly which takes place in Skipton, North Yorkshire in September. It’s in it’s fourth year now and each year, the organisers ask for crocheters and knitters to contribute a little item to decorate the festival, and as with last year’s event, those items will be used to generate funds for a local charity.

Baa!
 
In past years they have asked for bunting triangles, mandalas and flowers. This year, they have asked people to contribute little knitted or crocheted sheep. I have contributed to this effort in the past and couldn’t resist sending a Gibraltar representative to Yarndale again. 

The charity they are supporting this year is the wonderful Martin House Hospice for children & young people. Many years ago before having small people of my own, I was lucky enough to visit this marvelous place through my job. It is a magical place where everyone is greeted with a smile, so positive and uplifting. 

Before Llanita was packaged up and sent off, I couldn’t resist having a little bit of fun with her … she’s been around the Rock on a bit of an adventure, and even got lost! Here’s what she’s been up to:

Visiting the Convent

You can’t fly the flag for Gibraltar without a visit to the Convent, the official residence of the Governor of Gibraltar. She popped in for afternoon tea and a chat about her important job representing the Rock at Yarndale. 😉

Hanging out in Casemates Square
She loved hanging out in Casemates Square, it’s quite the place to be seen, especially on a Friday night when the bars and restaurants are busy.

Admiring the art at the Gibraltar National Gallery
Quite the sheep about town, Llanita decided to soak up some culture on a visit to the Mario Finlayson National Art Gallery at City Hall.

Llanita likes nothing more than a sheep dip in the pool on a very hot day…

You just can’t beat an early morning frolic in the luscious grass at Commonwealth Park. A little nibble of that for breakfast sets her up for the day, but please don’t tell the park keepers!

Frolicking in the grass at Commonwealth Park

So here’s the thing… I discovered to my horror, shortly after taking the above photo, that Llanita was missing. No!!! Cue: little Bo Peep tune.

I could only assume she must have loved the feeling of the grass on her hooves so much that she didn’t want to leave Commonwealth Park. 

But we still need a Gibraltar Yarndale sheep I hear you cry… Drum roll please: in a Dolly the sheep type cloning exercise we have a replacement…. Llanita Mark II.

Continuing the good work done by Llanita Mark I, Llanita carried on her pre-Yarndale tour of Gibraltar. Next stop: the beach!

Llanita loves it at Catalan Bay but isn’t a fan of the sand on her hooves. She loved it so much that she’s been twice!

She also really enjoyed her trip to the Gibraltar Fair but the candy floss at the family pavilion was more her thing than the noisy rides…

The imposing Trinity House Lighthouse at Europa Point is right up her street. It even matches her woolly jumper!

Just like all beauty queens who represent Gibraltar on the international stage, Llanita posed for a photo on the runway in front of the Rock before flying off to join the flock of woolly sheep at the Yarndale Festival.

She packed her very own postcard from Gibraltar so that the other Yarndale sheep know her name and where she’s from.

Bye bye Llanita, have a safe trip! Keep the Gibraltar flag flying!


Baa baa!

But that’s not the end of Llanita’s story, no sooner than she was ready to set off, who should put in an appearance?

The original Llanita turned up in a totally inexplicable place, under a beach towel at the bottom of the beach bag! She must have been hiding in there all along. What a happy ending to the Llanita the Yarndale sheep story – now one Llanita can fly off to Yarndale and the other can stay at home with me!!

Llanito or Yanito is the dialect spoken in Gibraltar and includes a mixture of English, Spanish, Genoese and words borrowed from other languages.

A Llanita (pronounced Yanita) is a female Gibraltarian.

Sunday sevens #24 27.3.16

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Happy Easter!

   

I’m starting this week’s Sunday Sevens with the cutest shop window display in Gibraltar. It belongs to the Originata shop & gallery on Governor’s Street. The shop is run by a lovely lady called Sue, who makes all the pretty things she sells and she offers craft classes as well. Sue cteates a lot of her products from recycled materials and tiles, shells and sea glass she finds on Gibraltar’s beaches. 

My first attempt at a lined curtain
Well I’ve done it, I have completed the curtain section of my home furnishings course. I’ve made samples of a rod pocket, a tab-top, a standard tape top, a small pair with a valance attached and now a fully lined curtain. I’m chuffed with what I’ve learned and been able to achieve over the 10 lessons. I’m particularly pleased with the neat hand stitched corners on the bottom right above. We have just 2 more lessons on the course and it’s cushion time when we return after Easter.

Now you see it, now you don’t…  

This week in my dressmaking class I had a couple of practice attempts at invisible zips as I’ll be using one for my next skirt. After quite a few deeps breaths (I’m being polite here!) and fair amount of unpicking I managed to pull it off reasonably well. Apparently they aren’t quite 100% according to my teacher but I’m pretty pleased with them. Whether I’ll be able to replicate it when the pressure’s on and I’m doing my skirt… time will tell!

Wierd weather 

 

This may not seem a big deal to UK visitors to the blog, but on Tuesday I witnessed a rare weather phenomenon for Gibraltar… hail stones. Can you see one in the centre of the photo on my windscreen? Soon after hitting the car, they melted but crikey, after 6 years of living here I have never seen hailstones here before! They were followed by very heavy rain and a thunderstorm, perhaps winter hasn’t let go just yet! 

Easter holiday time!

 

Thursday meant the first day of the school holidays here in Gibraltar. We had a couple of friends over to play and a trip to the park at Europa Point to get buffeted by the winds. Hide and seek was played and ice cream was dribbled down chins. It was a really sunny day but a little cold out in exposed areas – which is exactly what Europa Point is! The kids didn’t notice, they were too busy running around having fun. Gibraltar’s lighthouse is right next to the park – I couldn’t resist taking a photo; red, white and blue are a great colour combination.

 Easter bunny

  

It is the season for bunnies, so I couldn’t leave our very own Easter bunny out of this week’s Sunday Sevens. He’s growing a very funky hairdo, if it gets much longer it’ll flop into his eyes and I’ll need to give him a hair clip or a trim! He is such a monkey, his days of hopping about on my bed are numbered – he had a good old  chew on my duvet this week. 

 Bank holiday painting

 
I’ve been very good and had a go at a spot of painting this weekend even though there was no class. I was inspired by some beautiful ‘Bird of Paradise’ flowers (I think they may be called Strelitzia or something like that). I’m not sure what my art teacher will make of them but I had fun painting them. I even managed to do it with my three amigos in tow. They came along every now and then to see the progress and then went back to their business. It’s the first time I’ve attempted painting while they’re not at school – so far, so good.

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series which features seven photos from the past seven days. Sunday Sevens was devised by Nat at Threads & Bobbins blog. Pop over to her blog to find out more, then you can join in too!

Sunday Sevens #19 21.2.16

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A special Sunday 

 Last Sunday was a rather special day for me, on a personal note, one of my best friends (who used to live in Gibraltar) came back to visit with her family for half term. Despite being on a flight at the crack of dawn, failing to land at Gibraltar due to 80km per hour winds and the plane being struck by lightning they successfully landed at Malaga and got the bus down to Gibraltar to meet up with nearly 30 friends for a great (late) lunch at Queensway Quay marina. It was so lovely to have the old gang reunited and there were a few emotional moments. The photo above was taken as we left the marina to head home between the storms! 

Aside from that on a Postcard from Gibraltar note I had my most successful day yet. My post from last Saturday, about Gib Talks went bananas on social media locally and my viewing figures went through the roof. I woke to find I already had 39 views that day and that grew every time I looked at my phone to the hundreds!!! Thank you to everyone who has supported me on my blogging journey so far and hello and welcome to anyone who’s new to Postcard from Gibraltar, it’s lovely to have you along for the journey!

Curtain 3 completed! 

 I’m very pleased to say I’ve managed to make up any lost ground in my Home Furnishings course and in this week’s lesson I started and completed a curtain! It was a standard tape topped curtain in a very bland sample material. I have already bought the fabric for my next project and I promise it’s a bit jazzier than the previous three off-white offerings as I’m bored of that colour now.

A new week, a new skirt 

 As soon as one skirt had been completed on my dressmaking course it was time to crack on with the next one. From gathers to a full-circle skirt. This week’s lesson saw no sewing at all, instead there was measuring, drawing, cutting out and sticking. Firstly I had to redraw the pattern for a plain simple skirt to my own measurements, then adjust it to make a full skirt. That’s my carefully drawn out pattern sliced into strips like a grass skirt and then fanned out and stuck onto a bigger piece of paper. Also in the picture is the material I’m using to make it. I love this fabric, I bought it from a reduced / special offer basket at a fabric shop near my parents’ home before we moved to Gibraltar – that makes it coming up to 7 years old. I liked it so much I was frightened of making a hash of it. Now I can make my skirt with the help of an expert dressmaker, and not just bodge it together on my own – I’m so glad I waited!

Watercolour florals 

 After finishing my door painting last week, I decided to take a floral break from architecture for a change. I’m happier with the top 2/3 of this painting of fuschias than I am with the buds at the bottom, but it made a refreshing change before I get architectural again next week. I think I’ll try a window next. 

A bit of flower power 

 Our bougainvillea is doing really well on our balcony at the moment. It’s been such a grey and damp week weather wise, but this shot of magenta is a real pick-me-up as you walk past!

Founder’s Day   Yesterday, Gibraltar’s Scouts & Guides joined together to celebrate International Founder’s Day & Thinking Day. It was so nice to see all the different sections of the groups out in force. There was a lovely ceremony attended by dignitaries including the Governor of Gibraltar and his wife, who are the patrons of the Scouts & Guides on the Rock. The young people had been due to parade along Main Street, as is the tradition on Founder’s Day, but strong winds meant that part of the event had to be cancelled sadly. 

Stormy seas  

Those same winds made for spectacular scenes on the Eastern side of Gibraltar and at it’s most Southerly point, Europa Point. As we drove along the coast we could see the sea was very rough and stopped to admire the huge breakers crashing into the cliffs. The road was soaked by the spray and you needed the windscreen wipers going in order to see where to drive! It was very dramatic although perhaps a little scary to see the true power of the sea.

Sunday sevens #8 29.11.15

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 1 Europa Point

 

On Monday morning it was such a crisp clear day, that I took a rather scenic detour home from the school run to see the sea off Europa Point. The Trinity Lighthouse is the only lighthouse outside the UK which is controlled by Trinity House in England and looks out over the Straits of Gibraltar towards Morocco in the distance. It was so clear that you could actually make out buildings and cranes in the port across the water in North Africa.

2 Festive Watercolour 

  

I quite fancy having a go at printing my own Christmas cards this year for a change and have been experimenting with designs, I’m liking this holly but this photo was taken after the first layer of paint – it’s not finished yet. I’ll share the finished article with you when I’m happy with it.

3 Dressmaking class



  
Uninspiring photo I’m afraid, but this week’s dressmaking class was all about gathers and pockets.

4 November sunshine  

 
Wednesday was another glorious day, Main Street was chockablock with shoppers at lunchtime. There was a big cruise ship in and the place was bustling, there was a really positive atmosphere no doubt brought on by the beautiful weather.

5 Christmas purchases 

 
A couple of absolutely essential pre-Christmas purchases. I feel a granny square hot water bottle cover and some snowflake gift tags coming on!

6 Christmas makery has begun…  

  

My present production line has begun, a little later than I’d hoped for, but I’m on my way. You’ve got to love granny squares 🙂 well, I do!

7 Thursday flashback 

 

I’m sorry to be repeating a photo from a previous post, but I REALLY enjoyed the Convent Christmas Fair this year. What’s more, my blog post about it got SO MANY views. Far more than I’ve ever experienced before. Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to have a look at my little blog and for your comments here, on Twitter and Instagram. It’s so nice to hear from you and hear that you’ve enjoyed what I’ve written – it gives me a warm glow just thinking about it 🙂
Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series featuring seven photos from the last seven days. It was created by Natalie at Threads & Bobbins. Take a look at her blog for more information on the series. Have a great week!