home furnishings class

As the clock ticks inexorably towards midnight on 31st December and we close the door on 2016, I thought it was time to take a look back at the year we have just had. Most of the newspaper reviews I’ve read so far have focussed on the negative aspects, celebrity deaths, the seismic political changes afoot both in Europe, America and the rest of the world, and general doom and gloom.

I am very fortunate in that for us, in our little corner of the world, apart from the uncertainties of Brexit and what that could mean for us in the years to come, we’ve had a pretty good year. Looking back at all the interesting things we’ve done makes me think about how fortunate we are. If your 2016 has been a difficult one, I sincerely hope that 2017 will be better for you and your loved ones.

January 2016

The New Year saw us spending a few days up the coast from Gibraltar on the Costa del Sol, but we were back on the Rock in plenty of time to see the Three Kings Cavalcade. It was also back in January when I went for the first of my strolls around Gibraltar the first one was an homage to the many beautiful balconies, the second one paid tribute to the many steps we ‘enjoy’ here!

February 2016

February brought us some misty and stormy weather, but there was plenty of indoors activities to keep us busy here in Gibraltar. The second annual Gib Talks event saw speakers from all walks of life take to the stage for short talks on a huge range of subjects. Later in the month, the extraordinary Gibraltar Womens Association celebrated their 50th Anniversary, I found their story fascinating.

March 2016

In March, we were blessed with some beautiful sunny days with bright blue skies. Along with completing a tin man outfit for World Book Day, I finally managed to finish my Attic 24 Cosy Stripe Blanket after a year of hooking! We made the most of the lovely spring weather and took a dolphin trip out into the Bay of Gibraltar. There was also a beautiful exhibition in Gib celebrating women’s creativity.

April 2016

During April we made another short trip up the coast and headed inland to Ronda a beautiful Andalucian town. I was very productive at my dressmaking and home furnishing courses inserting my first invisible zip and producing curtain tie-backs for the public transport fan in my life. A tall ship called into port at Gibraltar and members of the public had the chance to go on board and have a snoop around.

May 2016

May meant Med Steps for me big time as I completed my final training sessions for, and then finished, the Med Steps 5 Challenge with my two stepping buddies. It was a rather intense day but we were so proud of ourselves for climbing to the top of the Rock five times in quick succession. We also managed to raise a fair amount of sponsorship money for the brilliant Cancer Relief Gibraltar. Some of my sponsors are readers of this blog and I am so touched that you took the time and effort to support our fundraising efforts – thank you.

As I spent so long prattling on about the Med Steps during my training, I figured I should tell you all about it: The Med Steps: a few facts & figures . May also meant saying goodbye to a good friend to me and my blogging adventures. One of the sad things about living an expat life is that many of the friends you make are in the same boat as you and therefore may not be around for long Saying goodbye…

June 2016

June was a very eventful month not only for me but for Gibraltar and the rest of the UK as a whole as BREXIT loomed large (this post was my most read of all time and by a very long way). Six months on, we are still no further forward knowing what it all means.

Another unexpected thing to happen to me in June, was when I chose to go back up the Med Steps one foggy morning. I thought that the mist would make the climb cool as the summer heat had begun to build. I was wrong. As I climbed up the Rock, I climbed out of the mist and fog. I was nearly roasted alive, but I did manage to take a rather good photo of the Rock emerging out of the mist below (see second left image on the bottom row above). I got loads of likes and shares and retweets with that picture taken on A mini stroll in the mist!

11th June 2016 marked International Yarnbombing Day 2016 and I had a little go myself with my first guerrilla crochet project as I attempted to Yarnbomb the Alameda Gardens to celebrate the park’s 200th anniversary.

July 2016

July equals the beginning of the very long school summer holiday in Gibraltar. As I stared down the barrel of 8 weeks of no school and the prospect of entertaining the three Little Postcards I felt a little overwhelmed. In an effort to find some way of surviving (with my marbles intact) I decided on day one that I would set myself the challenge of doing something crafty every single day of the holidays…. and the Summer Craft Challenge was born. One of our summer holiday outings took us up into the Upper Rock Nature Reserve to visit one of Gibraltar’s newest attractions, the Windsor Suspension Bridge .

August 2016

August, for us, was mainly spent in England. I travelled back with the Little Postcards to spend two weeks based in the North West with my parents (with a lovely trip down to Berkshire to visit friends) and then two weeks with Mr Postcard visiting his family in East Anglia. We were blessed with the best of English summer weather. When the sun shines – there really is no better place to be. Our East Anglia holiday base was Southwold in Suffolk, it gave us the perfect opportunity for multiple visits to a special place for us Southwold Pier .

The end of the month brought the school summer holidays to an end. After eight weeks of full-time kiddiwinks and eight weeks of the summer craft challenge, I was very proud to still be in full possession of my marbles (I think) and I also managed to do something crafty on every day except for one (the day we travelled back to Gibraltar). The final instalment of my challenge is here.

September 2016

September is always a very busy month in Gibtraltar. Just after the children return to school, we all have a day off for Gibraltar National Day on 10th September. Around this time we now have the Gibraltar Music Festival to enjoy too. This year saw the Stereophonics headline and Europe played the air guitarist’s dream of The Final Countdown live on the Rock.

Towards the end of the month, I was able to fulfil an ambition of mine to visit the Yarn Festival of Yarndale. It was everything I had expected and more, with bells on. My absolute highlight was meeting my crochet hero Lucy from Attic 24 and being able to give her one of my Llanitas (Llanita, the Gibraltar Yarndale sheep that is). The sheep were made to raise funds to support a children’s hospice in North Yorkshire, I made two and they have both gone to live in Yorkshire! My Yarndale 2016 (featuring Llanita’s Yorkshire adventures)

October 2016

In October I was still determined to keep up some of the crochet momentum I had achieved during the summertime and finished off my contribution to the Sixty Million Trebles project. I made a rainbow granny square blanket which will go towards the World Record breaking attempt to create a huge crochet blanket made up of sixty million treble stitches. Each treble stitch represents a displaced person or refugee. After the world record attempt the giant blanket will be made into smaller blankets and handed out to charities in the UK and those helping Syrian refugees. The organisers also hope to raise a considerable amount of funds too to help Syrian refugees.

A big event locally was the fourth annual Gibraltar Literary Festival 2016 I was lucky enough to be able to attend several events this year and really loved it.

November 2016

At the beginning of November we had just one Bunny in the Postcard household, then one Sunday afternoon during a walk through the Alameda Gardens, we found some abandoned rabbits. One of them, Blizzard, came home with us (Blizzard turned out to be a girl and she is now known as Snowflake). It was back in November when I had my first attempt at Podcasting I had such fun making it, and hope to be able to share another one with you soon.

December

In December we sadly said goodbye to Bunny Postcard. She had only been with us for 11 months but she’d quickly become a much loved member of the family.

This month I also headed out for my most recent stroll, to see some of the Christmas lights we have on the Rock – amazingly it was the 16th stroll post I’ve written this year. I also took the plunge (literally) and joined with the annual Boxing Day Polar Bear Swim at Catalan Bay – I’m still feeling proud of myself for doing it!

Thank you so much for joining me this year, I have loved having your company and enjoy reading all the lovely comments. Here’s to next year, who knows what it will have in store for us all, here’s hoping it will be a good one.

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series created by Natalie at the Threads & Bobbins blog. It gives you a chance to reflect some of the things you’ve been doing in your week through a series of seven photographs. To find out more, or to join in, pop over to her blog for more information.

I hope you’ve had a good week, it’s been a busy one here and I can’t believe Sunday’s come around so quickly again!

Med Steps training

A certain seriousness has come into our training for the Med Steps challenge this week with the realisation that we have just a month left to build up our stamina to manage 5 times up the steep climb to the top of the Rock in one day. The charity event, which raises money for the Cancer Relief Centre here in Gibraltar, is open to individuals and teams (some of whom actually run up!?). You can enter a team of 5 and each individual can do it once or like us (in our little team of 3) you can all do it 5 times. We won’t be breaking any records and the event is open from 9 until 5 on the day so there’s a very good chance we’ll take a long time to complete it.

One morning we all got together for a team training session – our first collective one for weeks, and did twice round. It’s starting to get really rather hot and this photo was taken on our second circuit (not too far from the top) when I stopped for a breather and some water. We are praying for overcast weather on the big day so we don’t all keel over from exhaustion and sun stroke – I fear some unflattering head gear may be de-rigeur. I’ll keep you posted on our progress, we are stepping up our training this week….

Postcard family bake-off

We have a Postcard family birthday coming up soon and one of the little Postcards thought we should have a baking competition to decide on the birthday cake of choice ahead of the event. Sadly it was not in the luscious English countryside and neither Paul Hollywood, Mary Berry nor Mel or Sue were in attendance (probably for the best).

Now, I do enjoy eating cakes but am not the world’s best baker by any means. In the interest of family harmony, I ‘threw’ the competition (shh – don’t tell anyone) by making millionaire’s shortbread ably assisted by the smallest Postcard while another young Postcard made a chocolate fudge cake with a garnish of sweets! The chocolate fudge cake won as it was a ‘cake’ and did taste rather good. The millionaire’s shortbread was incredibly sickly although it did improve on chilling. Now I have to make another cake in time for the birthday celebrations!! Just as well I’m doing the steps a lot in order to burn all of this off!

Final home furnishings class

This week, we had the last of our 12 home furnishings classes and we made curtain tie-backs. You may notice they are the same fabric as the cushion I made last time for the transport fan in my life – I hope he likes them! The Transport for London inspired material came into my possession after reading Nana Cathy’s blog post about The Remnant House (a great fabric shop in York). I had a look at their website and bought myself some great fabric to make things for my boys. So thank you Nana Cathy for telling me about this fab shop. I hope one day to visit it for real, although I fear I’ll end up adding considerably to my stash and to-do list when that time comes!

If you are in Gibraltar or nearby, and fancy having a go at learning to make curtains, cushions and tie-backs, I was taught by Dorcas Hammond of Dorcas Hammond Designs. She’s very experienced and a great teacher. Pop into her shop on Governor’s Street or find her on Facebook to get more info on her classes.

Dressmaking class

Sewing has begun in ernest on my first ever lined skirt in my dressmaking class. I had to unpick and re-sew my invisible zip but apart from that it was a good lesson this week and I’m pleased with the progress I made. Fingers crossed the rest of the skirt will go well 🙂

Watercolour class

In watercolour class this week, we focused on skies and the different techniques you can use to paint them. One of the most interesting finds was that by painting a thin wash of raw sienna first even under blue you can get a really nice glow. I’ve got work to do on my cloud formation as they are a little sausuge shaped for now but it was fun.

A nocturnal visitor

Spring must be here because for the first time this year I spotted one of these little chaps on the bathroom window. You can see the lizards or geckos even in the middle of winter here if it’s a sunny day. They crawl out from their hibernation place and bask in a sheltered sunny spot, but they disappear long before the sun goes down and the temperature drops. This week though, we have started to have a few warmer evenings and so this little chap was lying in wait for an unsuspecting moth to come fluttering next to our bathroom window and pounce! It’s quite spectacular when it happens – like a mini version of ‘Wildlife on One’ on your window!

Bunny update

Bunny’s doing well and his fringe is continuing to grow, however because of his long hair/fur he has a tendency to get dreadlocks and matted areas despite regular brushing so we are going to have to take him to the vets soon to have a bit cut out near his tail. It’s a bit close to his tail for us to want to attempt to cut in case we hurt him. He also needs some injections so that he can have a hop about on our back patio too… poor bunny it’s as bad as having to hoodwink kids into going to the clinic for jabs 🙁 not looking forward to that.

I hope you have a great week, goodbye for now!