Med Steps Challenge

Review of 2017

~ Making Stitches ~ 8 Comments

Crumbs, it’s looking awfully like we are on the cusp of another New Year, it surely can’t be a whole year since the last one, it’s gone far too fast. I guess now’s as good a time as any to have a look back at some of my Postcard from Gibraltar highlights from the past 12 months….

January 2017

A new year meant a new challenge for me this year, a photo challenge. Last year I read Nana Cathy’s blog and was intrigued by her weekly photo challenge. When January came around I thought I’d join in myself. It’s been such fun and quite inspiring throughout the year to have weekly prompts to find pictures for. If you fancy joining in check out Wild Daffodil’s blog for more information.

Also in January I joined forces with my friend Kate of H and FlossieDoodle to start the Gibraltar Crochet Collective. We did meet weekly to crochet and chat over coffee although our meetings have got less and less frequent due to other commitments lately. Our mascots Gib and Rocksy went for a bit of an adventure.

Another new project for me this month was my podcast, you can find my blogposts and the related podcasts here.

February 2017

In February I ran my Creative Gibraltar series looking at some of the very talented craftspeople who live in Gibraltar. I began with my lovely watercolour teacher Deborah M Lawson and ended with local craftswoman and up-cycling guru Sue Orfila. February also brought us the 2017 installment of Gib Talks. I was also fortunate to be able to speak to Gib Talks organiser Julian Felice before the event for one of my podcasts.

March 2017

March was a month for Lenten crochet (far easier than giving up chocolate) which helped support the Sixty Million Trebles effort, a beautiful Suffolk family wedding and a sad goodbye to our rescue bunny Snowflake.

April 2017

April began for us in Southwold in Suffolk, one of our favourite places and involved a lot of Med Steps training, which was very handy for burning off those seaside fish and chips! I was also able to finish another Sixty Million Trebles blanket – this one from the Gibraltar Crochet Collective.

May 2017

May meant Med Steps 5 Challenge again this year and I even managed to beat my time from last year! You can hear my podcast about it here. We also flew back to the UK for our second family wedding of the year.

June 2017

June started for us in Wigan in Lancashire, the location of our latest wedding and the perfect setting for a lovely walk. It was also the Calentita! food festival in Gibraltar. (For some reason the same aerial photo of Gibraltar appeared in May and June’s collages – not sure why that was. It is a good photo though don’t you think?).

July 2017

In July our big summer of travel began with a trip up to the North West of England and a flying visit to North Wales. We also drove to Portugal.

August 2017

This has got to be my most cosmopolitan of all months, featuring travel in Portugal, Rome, France and of course good old Gibraltar. Which reminds me, I have loads of holiday photos on my phone and camera SD card which are crying out to become blog posts – watch this space in the New Year.

September 2017

September is a big month on the Rock, this year more than most as Gibraltarians celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum when they voted overwhelmingly to remain British. Gibraltar National Day on 10th September coincidentally happened to be the day of my 100th Sunday Sevens. We also had a fabulous music festival.

October 2017

October brought with it some interesting weather, beautiful sunshine, murky mists and exciting lightning storms.

November 2017

November was a good crochet month for me as I finally got around to making last year’s Little Box of Crochet autumn wreath. I also greatly enjoyed this year’s Gibraltar Literary Festival with talks by Nicholas Parsons, Patrick Gale and local photographers and naturalists Clive, Geraldine and Stewart Finlayson.

December 2017

December seems to have rushed by in a flurry of end of term carol concerts and panicked making of Christmas presents (some of which failed to get finished in time). There have been some opportunities for peace and quiet though, namely the last Saturday before Christmas when we avoided the shops and headed for the beach for peace and tranquility.

Summer craft challenge

For the second year running, during the long summer holiday we get in Gibraltar, I decided to set aside a little time each day to do something crafty and I documented this with my Summer Craft Challenge. Each day I featured a photo on Instagram and each week I wrote a blog post on my progress.

At the beginning of the challenge I made a little amigurumi unicorn which I got the kit for in an edition of Simply Crochet magazine. I christened her Europa and she became my Summer Craft Challenge mascot and came on our travels with us. There were several occasions when the Little Postcards thought Mummy had lost her marbles posing a crocheted unicorn in various European locations for photographs…

This year, I returned to work part-time after 13 years as a full-time, stay at home Mum. I have to admit that during the last few months I have found it hard to make time for Postcard from Gibraltar alongside my new commitments and at times I’ve wondered whether I can actually keep it up. I have had some really lovely comments and support from my online friends and that’s kept me going. Thank goodness I have Sunday Sevens and the weekly photo challenge to keep me ticking over during ‘dry’ spells.

I think I would really miss the community I have ‘met’ through Postcard from Gibraltar, and if I’m honest, it’s you and the support you’ve given me which gave me the confidence to apply for the job in the first place. Thank you very much to everyone who’s taken the time to read my posts over the past 2 and a half years, and for the virtual friendship you have given me too – it’s not taken for granted. Every comment and like is very much appreciated.

Here’s to 2018 and all the wonderful challenges it may bring!

Best wishes to you and yours for the New Year x

Sunday Sevens #72 26.2.17

~ Making Stitches ~ 24 Comments

This post goes way over the usual seven photos for Sunday Sevens… mainly thanks to my epic journey back from Manchester to Gibraltar last Sunday. So here goes…

Last Sunday in eight photos…

I ended my flying visit home to visit my parents with a walk on Sunday morning. It was just around the streets by their home, the streets where I grew up. Up this path is a pond where numerous adventures were had while I was growing up, from exploring and hide and seek to pond-dipping (or fishing as we called it then) for frog spawn to bring home in a jam jar. I can’t imagine letting my boys wander off over the road to a pond and telling them to be back in time for tea…. times have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

I’m so glad I got the chance to see some snowdrops while I was over. I love them. Also making an appearance were other spring flowers which were enjoying the unseasonably mild weather. These lovely dwarf iris were poking through last autumn’s leaves.

Then it was time to say goodbye and head to the airport once more… bye bye Manchester, until next time!

I know it’s a cliché but these clouds really did look like cotton wool from above…

I’m not altogether in my comfort zone while flying. I’m quite happy cruising along but I’m not over happy with take off and landing. I took my crochet into the cabin with me. I had heard it was allowed, but I had also heard about a knitter who had her needles taken off her. I took one of my least favourite hooks just in case it was taken away.

Nobody batted an eye lid, so I was fine. I continued with the quintuple trebles of my Spun Gold shawl to take my mind off the descent in to Malaga… yes Malaga. Stormy weather in Gibraltar meant that two of the three previous Monarch flights to Gibraltar had been diverted to the Spanish airport because they couldn’t land in the strong winds. Our pilot didn’t even attempt to land in Gibraltar as the air traffic control tower there told him the winds were beyond safe limits. It was going to be a very long trip home…

As chance would have it I bumped into an old friend at the Malaga baggage reclaim. She told me her husband was driving up to Malaga to collect her rather than wait for her to get onto one of the coaches laid on by the airline to ferry the stranded passengers back to the Rock. I was offered a lift back and I didn’t need to think twice about the offer. The lift must have saved me at least an hour travelling time.

Please excuse the grainy image, but I wanted to show you the flags on the Gibraltarian side of the border with Spain as I arrived in Gibraltar late on Sunday night. I was nearly blown off my feet as I crossed into Gib, I am so glad the pilot didn’t attempt to land as it would have been a very bumpy ride! My return journey took 8 hours door to door, a considerable time longer than usual but at least I got back safely and I’m extremely grateful for that!

A murky Monday 

Monday morning was decidedly murky, the winds from the day before had dropped quite a bit but it was rather gloomy looking. Can you spot the mahoosive super yacht in the background? It’s called ‘Yacht A’ and cost a reported £83 million pounds. It was ginormous, the highest mast is 100 metres tall. It was arrested by the Gibraltar Police because of a debt and we were able to enjoy seeing it moored out in the Bay for a few days.

Dressmaking success


Apologies for the uninspiring picture, but it’s a plain black dress I’m making so can’t really jazz that up. What I can say is that on Tuesday I more than made up from my catastrophic boo boo at last week’s class by cutting out fresh pieces for the back of my dress and I completed all 4 of my princess-line seams. So my front and back pieces are ready for a zip and lining. Then there’s the small matter of sleeves….. hmmm not looking forward to that part.

A blustery day for the Med Steps 

I climbed the Med Steps on Wednesday with one of my Med Steps 5 pals. It was another blustery day as you can see from the sea. We did wonder whether we would get blown off the side of the Rock but fortunately it was really sheltered on the Med Steps.

Saharan Dust

Why oh why did I leave my washing out on Wednesday night? The Saharan dust came back, with a vengeance. Still at least I hadn’t washed the car!

Watercolour class 

Our watercolour teacher is still encouraging us to explore our inner abstract. I have to admit that I am having mixed results with this… I did like the rainbow splodgey effect of the bottom painting. It reminds me of tie-dyed T shirts.

More Med Steps 

Friday morning was much nicer weather wise, it was less grey and you could just about feel the warmth of the sunshine peaking through the clouds above. I set off on a solo trip up the Med Steps and took my time seeing as I was on my own. It was lovely to enjoy my beautiful surroundings, it felt very spring like up there.

Sunday Sevens has been rather a long one this week, I do hope you didn’t nod off in the middle! Thank you for stopping by and thanks for sticking with it to the end!!

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

Sunday Sevens #69 5.2.17

~ Making Stitches ~ 15 Comments


Hello there, believe it or not, this is the 200th Postcard from Gibraltar blog post! When I started this little blog back in the summer of 2015, little did I know it would still be going strong 18 months later or that I would start podcasting!

Thank you so much to you all for your likes, kind comments, and all round marvelousness. The virtual support I have received over the past 199 posts has been very much appreciated.

The past seven days have brought us another mixed bag of weather here in Gibraltar with strong winds and rain interspersed with some lovely sunshine. I hope you’ve had a good week. Here’s this week’s edition of Sunday Sevens.
Polluted sunset


We had a lovely sunset again on Sunday evening. Sadly though we couldn’t go outside to fully enjoy it. The toxic smell of chemicals from the Cepsa plant across the border in Campamento was so strong that it caught the back of my throat. Plumes of black smoke were seen billowing out from the chimneys at the oil refinery and blew right across the Bay.

Clearly in contravention of EU rules on pollution, the plant’s immediate neighbours must have been choked with the smell. So dangerous and so frightening. It’s no wonder that the number of people in this part of the world suffering from asthma is higher than the average.

Starting as I mean to go on…


This year’s Med Steps 5 challenge is just 3 1/2 months away so no time like the present to get fit so I can achieve 5 times round again this time! Monday morning was utterly glorious, so I left the unmade beds, laundry and breakfast dishes to go for a walk. The jobs were still there for me when I got home but I felt a whole lot better for it.

Gib & Rocksy

Do you remember Gib from Sunday Sevens #67 22.01.16? Well I thought he looked a bit lonely, so he’s got a new friend. This is Rocksy. They are the mascots for a new crochet group here in Gibraltar; the Gibraltar Crochet Collective. We have a Facebook page which tells you where we are going to meet each week if you fancy joining us.

Dressmaking class 

The pattern is drawn for my princess line dress in my dressmaking class, it’s time to get cutting…

More Med Steps


This photo was taken from the sitting position! Phew after doing the steps on Monday, my legs were a bit stiff when it came to Wednesday’s attempt…

Watercolour class

At this week’s watercolour class, I went back to the primulas I was working on last week and finished them off. They now have a terracotta pot to sit in and their leaves are finished. I’m pleased that I managed it without making a mess. I had to be talked into going back to this by my teacher  Deborah M Lawson but I’m glad I did.
And finally…


Do you think someone had a bit of fun at work one day??!

I have walked down this path quite a few times… this week I walked up it for a change and spotted this!! Is the stick man walking like an Egyptian or just doing the funky chicken do you think?

Thanks for stopping by! Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series created by Natalie at Threads & Bobbins blog.

Review of the year : 2016

~ Making Stitches ~ 10 Comments

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 #20 28.2.16

~ Making Stitches ~ 18 Comments

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series created by Natalie at the  Threads & Bobbins  blog. It features seven photos from the past seven days. If you would like to join in, pop over to her blog to find out more. 

Saharan dust  

You may remember that in last week’s Sunday Sevens I had a rather dramatic photo of the waves crashing onto the rocks at Europa Point. Well, that stormy weather whipped up a lot of Saharan dust and on Sunday we were treated to a rather murky and strangely atmospheric day. We decided to go to the cinema in the afternoon and walked across the grass at Commonwealth Park on our way home. All our shoes were coated in orange dust by the time we got to the car. The car was pretty orange too – so glad I washed it at the end of last week!

 Curtain valance  

In my home furnishings class this week we began to make a curtain valance which  will be attached to a small pair of matching curtains. I love this cute boat fabric – I got it in a sale (even better). I’ve been working on my curtains as homework but they are proving to be problematic- I measured them and cut them accurately. Then I measured my seam allowance exactly and pinned the seams. Then when I remeasured them before machining them they were wonky and the measurements were way out. They have been put away in disgust…

And so it begins… 

 

In my dressmaking class I cut out the fabric for my full circle skirt. I love it so much – it has flowers embroidered on it in coordinating thread which you can’t see in the above picture. I have done my back seam and inserted my zip already. Just need to finish the waistband and hem and it’s sorted. I had a lot more success in this class than with my curtains!

Lemon curd 

 

We are lucky enough to be able to grow lemons on our back patio. Last year with our homegrown ones and a few gifted to us by friends & neighbours I ended up with a bit of a glut so made some lemon curd. I had never tasted it before that first time making it – it was delicious. So, as I found myself with rather a lot of lemons in the fruit bowl this week I thought I’d have another go. This photo doesn’t do it justice, believe me when I say it’s glorious.

Med steps, the revenge! 

 

Due to poorly children and wild weather conditions I haven’t made it up the Med Steps for a whole month. This week, though, accompanied by two crazy friends, we restarted our training for the Med Steps Challenge (which involves climbing them 5 times in the one day – yes I know, utter madness). Anyway, we set off and it was rather hard work after 4 weeks without training. It was a foregone conclusion that we would do it twice and at the end of the second circuit we were feeling pretty energized so decided to have a go at a third trip up – BIG MISTAKE. Cor blimey it was tough. If I hadn’t have been with my training buddies I truly would have laid down part way up and finished it on my hands and knees. It was utterly exhausting. I got home and only had the energy to kick off my shoes before flopping on the bed and falling asleep for over an hour!! I’ve been feeling like a very old woman ever since. Any pleasure at having completed the 3 circuits in 2 hours 50 minutes has been overshadowed with the terror of wondering how awful number 4 & number 5 will be… Anyway the above photos were taken one on each trip up the steps. I took loads of photos on the third trip just for an excuse to stop!!

Watercolour daffs 

 This week at my watercolour class I was planning to begin my next architectural painting. However, when I arrived for my lesson, my teacher had a beautiful vase of  daffodils in the middle of the table and I decided to put the ‘window’ picture off until next week and have a stab at the daffs. I’ve had some successes with painting flowers so I somewhat arrogantly thought ‘how hard can this be?’. How wrong I was – they are flipping hard in spite of their relatively simple shape. Perhaps their apparent simplicity is the hard part as they can very easily look out of proportion. They are gorgeous ‘spring-y’ colours though :-).

 Sunny skies 

Yesterday we enjoyed beautiful skies after the morning’s showers had cleared away. I think fluffy clouds like this against the blue are so beautiful. 
I’ve had a great week, although looking back through this post I realise I sound a bit moany as a few things were harder than expected – I don’t mean to be! I do hope the week has been good for you too. Thank you for stopping by and for those of you who take the time to leave a comment – thank you, it’s lovely to hear from you. 🙂 

Sunday sevens #15 24.1.16

~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

Processionary caterpillars  At this time of year we see this interesting phenomenon – the march of the progressionary caterpillars. They are pine caterpillars which live in pine trees (as the name suggests) and when they are on the hunt for food they head off for a walk to the next nearest pine tree in a long line. They are not as cute as they appear though as they give off a poison in the hairs on their backs which can cause irritation to humans and be very dangerous to animals. A good friend of mine almost lost her family dog after she tried and eat one of these. Anyway, these were taking a walk across one of the paths in the Alameda Botanical Gardens last Sunday and Mr Postcard took the photo for me.

Med Steps challenge update  I only managed one trip up the Med Steps this week but I am very pleased to say that I reached a huge personal milestone and did the double. I managed to climb them twice in one hour and forty minutes. I’m very pleased with that effort and delighted that I have overcome the hurdle of being able to do it more than once. I am still a long way off managing the five times required for the Med Steps challenge but I’m closer to achieving it than I was this time last week!

Curtain no 1 finished In my home furnishings class I completed my first sample curtain this week – a rod pocket curtain. Here it is in all it’s glory. Next stop a tab top version…
Meet the newest member of the Postcard family  Please allow me to introduce you to our newest family member. He’s cute, fluffy and doesn’t say much. We’ve only ever kept goldfish before now, so we’re on a steep learning curve with bunny.  He’s going to be a ‘house rabbit’ as both our balcony and patio get a lot of direct sunlight so we worry it would be too hot for him to stay outside permanently. He’s currently residing indoors in the biggest cage we could find in the pet shop but we are hoping to make him a bigger ‘run’ so that he can stretch his legs without us having to watch him constantly. So far his trips out of the cage have seen him making bee line for the edge of rugs and electric wires for a bit of a nibble! It feels so mean to keep him locked up but there are too many hazards for him at the moment to let him have free reign. Any tips on indoor rabbit keeping you can share would be gratefully appreciated. You may be seeing more of him…🐰

Skirt number 2 underway Two weeks into term and my second skirt is coming together quickly in my dressmaking class. This time it’s a corduroy gathered skirt. Its pockets, seams & zip are done. Bring on the waistband, gathers & hem :-). I shall do a big reveal once it’s completed (and if I’m happy with the finished article 🙂 ).

Star struck
I got a little bit star struck this week. I posted this photo on Instagram of me darning in my endy bits on my Attic 24 Cosy Stripe blanket and just look at who liked it… only Lucy from Attic 24. Oh my word – how exciting is that??? I told Mr Postcard and Number 1 son, their reaction to this momentous bit of news was total bewilderment…. Well I was chuffed anyway!

Watercolour door

 Well folks, the cling-film came off and it left me with nice textured stripes on my door. I’m not sure how happy I am with the whole picture but it was just a practice. I cannot take any credit for the techniques or the composition, as I mentioned last week, I was copying an exercise in a Jean Haines book called Atmospheric Watercolours (it’s based on a building in Venice). I would love to try painting a real Gibraltar doorway and I’m just gearing myself up for it!

 

That’s all from me this week for Sunday Sevens. I do hope you have had a good week and are enjoying a nice weekend. Sunday Sevens is a blog series and I’m linking with Natalie at Threads & Bobbins. Have a great day! 🙂