sunshine

Sunday Sevens #91 9.7.17

~ Making Stitches ~ 16 Comments

And so it begins…. schools have broken up for summer here in Gibraltar and the eight week-long summer holiday is underway.

I will continue posting Sunday Sevens, the photo challenge and my summer craft challenge throughout the summer but as for any other more considered posts – well we will just have to wait and see. I see days filled with beach outings, picnics and other child friendly activities and hopefully a bit of adult relaxing too.

Here’s to summer fun!

A sunset walk

I’m pretty sure I have posted a photo like this once before after a similar evening stroll to the recycling bins – ah the glamour!  Still the view makes the task a bit more appealing :-).


Casting my vote

This year’s Gibraltar National Day marks the 50th anniversary of the referendum when Gibraltarians voted overwhelmingly to remain British. For the past month or so, there has been a special exhibition of press cuttings and Pathé news reels of the time. 

Part of the exhibition features a polling booth where you can cast your own vote in a mock second referendum. School parties have come down to see the exhibits and the children have also had the chance to vote in a childrens’ referendum. I cast my vote too!

First figs 


We have figs!! Last year our little fig tree did bear fruit but something or someone snaffled them before we got the chance to harvest any for ourselves. This year we were rewarded for our patience and we have 2 ripe fruits. There are more still to come as well!

Cake!


We have had two birthday celebrations in the Postcard household this week. One required a home made cake. It was rather tasty 😋 

Nothing to see here…


Diamond the Postcard family pet rabbit has got a new party trick.. He loves jumping up onto the sofa during his evening romps around the lounge and making me jump out of my skin. I’ll be sitting there watching telly or crocheting and bam he’s suddenly up beside me! He’s such a cheeky monkey.

Instagram milestone


This week my Instagram account reached a bit of a milestone. It now has 500+ followers. Fancy that! Thank you to everyone who’s stopped by and said hello 😊

Beautiful Europa Point

Yesterday morning I took a little stroll to the lighthouse at Europa Point. It was a gorgeous morning without a cloud in the sky. Trinity Lighthouse was looking fab with her new lick of paint and the scaffolding taken down.

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series featuring seven photos from the past seven days and was created by Natalie from Threads & Bobbins. 

Sunday Sevens #89 25.6.17

~ Making Stitches ~ 12 Comments

Hello there, I hope this week’s Sunday Sevens finds you well and happy. If you saw my last post, you will know that Postcard from Gibraltar is now the ripe old age of two years old! In some ways it feels like I have been writing these posts for ever, but in many other ways it feels like only recently I plucked up the confidence to start typing out my first blog post. Thank you to all of you for the positivity you have showed me over this last two years.

Now you see it… Now you don’t 


Well, Gib didn’t quite totally disappear, but you get the drift! Last Sunday we had talked about taking a trip into Spain, but we ended up staying a lot closer to home and heading down to Europa Point. We had visitors this week in the form of Mr Postcard’s parents and we went for a walk at Europa Point, the Little Postcards had a play at the park and I took my father-in-law for a walk down to the Europa Foreshore. 

While we sat chatting at the park I was watching the Levanter cloud coming and going over the peak of the Rock of Gibraltar. I kept taking pictures in the hope I would catch it completely obscured but this is as close as I got.

Dressmaking class 

In this week’s dressmaking class i actually managed to get some sewing done! I have lots track of the number of weeks I have spent drawing my new pattern. I am currently working on a blouse and boy, oh boy, it’s been a long drawn out affair. Well, the pattern is finished and this week I got the chance to actually sew. I made a sample collar ahead of the real thing. It was a relatively painless process, let’s see how the real thing turns out….

Chocolate cake and watercolours

We had a real treat at our watercolour class this week when one of my fellow students arrived bearing cake. She was weighed down with homemade flapjack and chocolate birthday cake from her daughter’s birthday party the day before. I was ‘forced’ to have a tiny sliver of flapjack and then was presented with this gorgeous piece of cake. It only slightly distracted me from finishing off my mussel shell…

Sports Day

I know I have featured a photo just like this one before in Sunday Sevens, but it never fails to amaze me when I take a seat at the Victoria Stadium for one of the Little Postcards’ Sports Days and see them running their races at the National Stadium with the Rock of Gibraltar as a back drop. It’s such a far cry from the school field behind a row of terraced houses that I competed on when I was trying to balance a clay egg on a table spoon!

Season of sea mists

We have had some belting sea mists this week. I know it is the season for it, and perhaps with the very hot weather we have been ‘enjoying’ of late, it has added to the phenomenon. Some days it has come all of a sudden and taken me by surprise, other days I have been able to watch it slowly creep up the Bay from the Strait and towards land. I love listening to the huge tankers almost singing to each other with their fog horns.

Dolphins!

As we had our special visitors this week, we decided to go out on a dolphin boat trip one afternoon when the Little Postcards had finished their half day at school. We were not disappointed as you can see. We saw literally hundreds of them. I took lots of photos on our trip and I will share some more of them in the next few weeks.

Against all odds…

You wouldn’t think that a pavement at the side of the beach would be the most fertile place for a flowering plant to thrive would you? One evening this week we took a trip to Catalan Bay to have dinner on a balmy summer evening and as we walked to the restaurant I spotted this plant growing up in a crack between the paving blocks. I am not completely sure what it is, but it does look a bit like the Hawaiian Busy Lizzies my Mum used to grow on her her kitchen windowsill and a woodier version of the Busy Lizzies I used to have in a hanging basket by my front door back in England  (I may be way off the mark with this). Anyway, whatever it is, it made me smile.

 

I hope that this has been a good week for you, whatever you have been up to. Thank you for stopping by, and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to post comments on my blog and who have responded to my Tweets this week too, that has made me smile as well.

 

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

Sunday Sevens #87 11.6.17

~ Making Stitches ~ 5 Comments

Hello there, you may be forgiven for thinking that this week’s Sunday Sevens is rather reminiscent of last week’s. For the second week in a row I climbed aboard a plane and flew out of Gibraltar to visit family in England. I normally go at least 6 months between such trips but happy circumstances meant I was able to make a quick return visit to the North West of England.

Summer’s here!


Last Sunday was a bit of a scorcher – summer has definitely arrived here in Gibraltar. We went for our first dip of the season in the pool. My latest Sixty Million Trebles blanket came with me too.

World Environment Day

Monday was World Environment Day, and Gibraltar put on a series of stalls in Commonwealth Park to highlight the work being done by the various environmental organisations, governmental and charity. The TV cameras were down there filming while we were passing through.

 
Here we go again!

Tuesday evening saw me heading back onto the tarmac to catch a plane to Manchester. A long awaited solo trip back to see my parents without children…. bliss (although I did miss them a little bit 😉).

Cheshire & crochet

Wednesday was beautifully sunny and we headed off into Cheshire, which is pretty close to where I was brought up. I just love the wide open green spaces – so different to what we are used to seeing each day in Gibraltar.

We called into my new favourite wool shop: Black Sheep Wools. My goodness the yarn, the colours, the inspiration… I could spend all day and a fortune in here! I love it. 

I added to my stash and even convinced my Mum into dusting off her knitting needles and buying a pattern to make herself something. I don’t think she has knitted since my eldest (now a teenager) was very little, I do hope she enjoys her new project.

So here’s my stash, which includes a very nice surprise of a belated birthday gift (pink & white Sugar n’ Cream yarn and my first ever Caron Cake) and my missing April edition of Little Box of Crochet which I was able to collect thanks to the lovely Emma at Little Box of Crochet.

Homeward bound

All too soon it was time for me to board another plane to take me back to Gibraltar and my boys. Bye bye Cheshire countryside!

It was only the next day that I discovered I had had a very close call. The plane I was travelling on and the next departure to Malaga were the last two allowed to takeoff from Manchester before the airport was evacuated because of a suspect package. It was two hours before planes took off again. As far as I’m aware no one was harmed thankfully, just a lot of waiting around for passengers and staff.

En route to Gibraltar I carried on working on my Sixty Million Trebles blanket, it’s working up really fast. Very quickly I could spy the Rock out of my window!

Calentita!


Yesterday the 11th annual Calentita Food Festival came to Casemates Square. It’s got to be 6 years since we last attended due to small children. We had a nice evening and ate some interesting food. I will share some more photos very soon…

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

Sunday Sevens #80 23.4.17

~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

Hello there, this Sunday Sevens has come around quickly. I have had a quiet week in Postcard terms with no midweek posts, I figured that after four posts last week, you wouldn’t miss me too much! 

Schools started back here on Tuesday after just over a week off for Easter, so it’s been a bit more like normal again. We’ve had a vey mixed bag here weather wise with warm sunny days to begin with and gale force winds to end the week!

Bitten by the Med Steps

My Med Steps training hasn’t gone too well this week. On Monday afternoon I tried to repeat my two times round from last week, but failed. It was a gorgeous warm day and the heat of the sun was just too much. I got to the top in superquick time on the first lap but nearly wilted. A second attempt would have been silly. The views were lovely on the way down though…

Lent crochet update


So, finally on Easter Monday, I completed my Lent square Sixty Million Trebles blanket. The blanket will go to help Syrian refugees. 

Also this Lent I have managed to make a couple of baby blankets for Cherished Gowns, who support bereaved parents and I’m part way through another Sixty Million Trebles blanket too – this one is being worked corner to corner. I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve managed to make.



Naughty bunny

Hmmm, this bunny is in the dog house. Every evening we let Diamond out of his run for a bit of freedom in the lounge. Each day we move all hazards away from his level so that he can’t eat anything he shouldn’t. This week we failed…

In the corner where the phone and internet router live there’s a rats nest of wires, which although it annoys me, I hadn’t found a solution to. That was until Diamond chewed through the phone cable!!! I saw him go for it and in the time it took me to get off the sofa and walk less than a metre, the deed was done.

The wire has been replaced, and the incident was incentive enough for me to sort the wires out. Some electrical conduit, a hacksaw and drill later and the wires are rabbit proof! Diamond was none the worse for his evening snack.

Sunset


On Wednesday evening there was a lovely Saharan Dust enhanced sunset. The way the clouds were lying across the sun was lovely so I grabbed my camera with my big lens attached and realised I had a flat camera battery – grrr! This shot was taken on my phone, but isn’t a patch on how the camera would have captured the image. The battery is now charged and ready for the next snap…

Cruise ship season 


Now Easter has passed, cruise ship season is well and truly upon us. There have been several large ships in this week and the difference it makes when you are in town is quite dramatic. It’s great for Gibraltar’s economy, but it can make negotiating Main Street quite a slow affair!

Crochet reward


I was so determined throughout Lent to only crochet things for other people (gifts, Sixty Million Trebles and Cherished Gowns baby blankets) that I abstained from looking at all other things crochet. My monthly subscription from Little Box of Crochet remained unopened, as I knew I would be desperate to make a start on it straight away. 

On Tuesday I had the time to start my blue sky hug scarf from Little Box of Crochet, and on Thursday my monthly Simply Crochet magazine subscription appeared in my post box – oh how I enjoyed immersing myself in both!

Med Steps failure part II 


On Thursday morning I attempted the Med Steps again, but failed to even start them. The wind was so gusty as I climbed up to Jews Gate, where the Steps begin, I was almost blown off my feet. Perhaps not the best conditions to attempt scaling the side of the Rock of Gibraltar…

A more tame walk was undertaken instead. Just look at the wind whipping up the water out in the Bay! Apologies for the blurred focus – I didn’t realise that I’d focused onto the wall – doh (slaps forehead) another photography fail this week!

The stormy weather continued into Friday too. The Upper Rock was closed for safety due to high winds and we had literally hours of thunder rumbling from mid afternoon and into the evening. The first dramatic boom came just as I was heading out on the school run so I had to dash back in to pick up raincoats for us all. Thankfully the shower was light so we didn’t get soaked!

That’s all for this week, not the most inspiring edition of Sunday Sevens I’m afraid, let’s hope next week brings more good photo opportunities!

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series created by Natalie from Threads & Bobbins blog. It features seven (or maybe more) photos from the past seven days.

A stroll through the clouds… 

~ Making Stitches ~ 11 Comments

I wasn’t planning on going for a walk up the Med Steps this morning, but I’m so glad I did. It was beautiful and I also got the chance to climb up through the clouds again. You may remember I took a similar walk like this just under a year ago… A mini stroll in the mist.

The sun was shining as we set off from the western side of the rock but as we walked around to the eastern side it was a bit cloudy. You could still feel the  sunshine beating down through the clouds though.

Looking up the sky immediately above us was so clear and bright!


  

As we climbed and looked out to sea it became obvious the clouds were actually forming a low blanket which the top of Gibraltar was just poking up out of.

From the summit you could just spy the northern tip poking out above the clouds.

Looking north

Looking south towards Morocco, the clouds were creeping around from the Mediterranean and into the Strait of Gibraltar.

Looking south
To the north, on the western side, the airport runway and part of town had been hidden from view as the misty cloud swept around and into the Bay.

Looking north west
We headed back down the Rock after our exertions in the cool shade feeling proud of ourselves for having achieved our goal. Within an hour the two cloudy arms had joined across the Bay and were encircling us in a giant cloudy hug. 

I drove into town to find myself severely underdressed (the T shirt was a bad idea!) and shrouded in cloud…. Can you believe these two photos (above and below) were taken just 10 minutes apart?!

Looking up the Rock from town
I’m pleased to report that the cloud has now burned off and we are basking in bright sunshine and blue skies!

Ahhh that’s better!

Main Street
How many seasons in one morning?! The weather and the micro climates around the Rock are part of the fun of living here.  It’s not just the apes, British Bobbies and red phone boxes that make Gibraltar unique.

Sunday Sevens #67 22.01.16

~ Making Stitches ~ 10 Comments

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Sunday Sevens. It’s been a funny week weather wise here in Gibraltar, it started off gloriously sunny and relatively warm for January and then the rain and the cold came…

Sunny Sunday afternoon


The weather last Sunday was truly glorious. We had a lot of stuff to do so we couldn’t properly get out but we popped to Commonwealth Park for an hour to let the Little Postcards run off a bit of steam. It was so lovely to sit on a bench in the sunshine for a while.

Dressmaking class

After two weeks of drawing out a pattern, rubbing out, remeasuring, then cutting and sticking, I finally have a paper pattern for a DRESS! I’m really excited about starting this one. It’s based on the pattern I used for my princess-line top but has been lengthened to become a dress. Sorry for the uninspiring photo… you can’t really jazz up pattern paper on a grey desk!

Crochet fun


May I introduce Gib, the amigurumi ape. I hope you will be able to see a bit more of him in the future, as he’s going to help a friend of mine and I do something crochety (if that’s a word?!). I will keep you posted on Gib and his upcoming adventures.

I forgot to include this photo last week… it’s the crochet project I completed before beginning Gib. These shark slippers were made for a friend.

A cold snap


The sunshine of the weekend and early part of the week ran off and left us midweek. The rain came and brought the cold with it too. For those of you up north in the British Isles, 4.5 degrees C may not sound cold but for us southern softies it’s a tad nippy. This was the temperature when I got into the car at 8am one morning.

I was talking to one of the granddads outside school one afternoon and he was saying he was shocked to see his dashboard tell him to beware of black ice! That is something you really don’t expect to see living in Gibraltar. The cold weather did bring snow to the region. Sadly not to Gibraltar (much to our disappointment) but you could see the snow on the tops of the hills along the coast from up the Rock. There was a lot of snow in Malaga, and along the Costa del Sol. It was the first time Marbella had seen snow for decades.

Grrrr!


I don’t make a habit of wearing skirts, tights or heeled shoes but I had an important meeting to attend this week and I needed to be smart. Feeling very far out of my comfort zone I headed off up the street to my meeting when – squelch – I stood on one of those really annoying wonky paving slabs with dirty water hiding underneath.

Dirty water sprayed right up the front of one leg, and another load up the back of the other one. Fortunately I managed to clean myself up and headed onwards. Help my goodness if I didn’t stand on exactly the same paving slab on the return journey (photo is of the second dowsing which wasn’t as bad). To any passers-by on the outward trip when an expletive may have slipped from my lips, you have my utmost apology.

Sunset 

Thursday evening’s cold repaid us with the most beautiful sunset. I was rather trapped between buildings at the time for football training, but even so, you can see it was a belter.

Seagull sentries

I went for a bit of a wander one afternoon this week and ended up climbing up into Upper Town. I passed this sentry box which had been claimed as an ideal lookout for these two seagulls.

Final make of the week

I was a bit crochet crazy this week, after a long hiatus without my hook. This ‘Bunny Ballerina’ was made using the same pattern book as Gib, the ape. It was a Christmas gift from my lovely little brother. The book’s called ‘Amigurumi’ and is by Lan-Anh Bui & Josephine Wan. It’s full of lovely patterns of all sorts of animals. I think I’ll be making a few more of these…. This one is off to her new home shortly to live with a newborn baby girl.

That’s all for this week, I hope it has been a good one for you. You may have noticed I haven’t done any painting for a long time (since well before Christmas). I have missed my first two watercolour lessons of 2017 by being poorly last week, and then this week I had a poorly Little Postcard off sick on watercolour day… Everyone is fit and healthy now (touch wood) so hopefully I’ll get the chance to get my paintbrushes out again next week!

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

An outdoorsy sort of day

~ Making Stitches ~ 4 Comments

  
Hello! I hope this finds you well and happy. We’ve been treated to a beautiful day today, the weather has really made a huge improvement after a stormy start to the week. So far this midterm holiday has meant for us (well me) quite a lot of sleeping, in a big comfy bed without the sound of traffic (specifically scooters/mopeds) buzzing past the window, reading, crocheting, eating nice food, 5 exercise classes (I’ve not been totally lazy) and generally not moving very far. Today though, we decided to change our routine slightly and managed to leave the apartment by 10am and headed off up the A7 to Fuengirola to visit the BioParc Zoo.

  
Our first and only previous visit to the zoo was about 5 years ago, back in the days when we were still a family of 4. It’s an unusual sort of a place, like a verdant oasis in the centre of a busy town. It has a relatively small footprint for what it manages to pack in, and although I’m not a huge fan of keeping animals in captivity, the organization does at least appear to look after the inmates well. 

  
We were amongst the first to arrive at our destination which meant we almost had the place to ourselves to start with. 

   
Apparently these birds look a lot like me?! I’ve been told my hair stands up like their feathers when I’m cross. 

I also bear a passing resemblance to this orangutan according to certain family members….  

Gee, thanks boys. 

The zoo has an erm ‘interesting’ history, it was once the site of a very poorly run establishment which kept it’s animals in small and cruel conditions. The BioParc now prides itself on being a much healthier place for the animals to live and teaching the public about preservation.

The highlight of the trip for all of us was seeing the gorilla. My, he was big, and he was sitting, almost waiting for for his visitors right by the window of his enclosure. He must have known we were there but he appeared to take great pleasure in not acknowledging our presence. 

   

Second favourite was probably the crocodiles, although one member of the family was convinced they weren’t real as they were as still as statues!
  

The trip was a really nice morning’s entertainment for us all, not too big but large enough to keep the boys engaged for a few hours. And I just loved the grounds, they are so lush and green!

 
After the zoo, it was high time to return to our holiday apartment, regroup and have lunch.  By the time all were fed and watered and number one son had completed his English Comprehension homework it was late afternoon, high time for a stroll along the beach…

  
So off we headed, with the plan of walking for one hour in one direction and then turning around and walking back for a hour…

   
    
    
    
    
    
  

Coooo-eeee, Gibraltar, we can seeeee youuuu!!!

  
Ahhhh, sunset!

I shall not tell you about the copious sibling arguments which erupted along our walk, nor shall I point out the fact that it took us 2 hours to cover the distance ‘normal folk’ without small people would cover in approximately a quarter of the time. I’ll just leave you with those idyllic images of a family stroll…  😉 

 

Sunday Sevens #4

~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

Time flies when you’re having fun, I can’t believe this is my forth installment of the Sunday Sevens series. I have linked up with Natalie at Threads and Bobbins to let you see what I’ve been up to during the past week. There was no watercolour class to share this week and my dressmaking class didn’t offer up any exciting photos so I’m craft free this week in Sunday Sevens.

1 Let’s go fly a kite

Last Sunday, we all jumped into the car and headed off up the coast to just outside Estepona. We had a great family day out visiting my brother and his fiancée who had just flown over to stay for a long weekend with her family at a beautiful villa right on the seafront. My boys absolutely loved playing in the huge garden there, and spent most of the day tearing around the enormous lawn. Although the weather wasn’t perfect, it didn’t dampen our spirits, the windy conditions were perfect for kite flying. We were also able to handover the frog & fox hats I’d been working on for a few weeks.

2 More rain!

The wet, autumnal weather of the last few weeks has continued here in Gibraltar. Thankfully it hasn’t been as wet as it was last week and the landslide I mentioned in my rainy weather post has been cleared up and the road reopened thanks to some frantic work. The rain brought this little chap out and was a focus of much attention on the school run by my own little bug hunter. He was fascinated by the snail, and we had to look out for him each day to see if he was still there, sadly he has moved on…

3 Lunch with a view 

I went for lunch with my parents to the Eroski supermarket café one day this week and had front row seats for the activities going on at the airport. We sat out on the roof of the supermarket and watched the comings and goings. This photo shows the EasyJet to Gatwick taking off and for those of you not familiar with Gibraltar and it’s unique airport arrangements, it also illustrates how the main road from the Rock to the border with Spain bisects the airport runway. The traffic is brought to a standstill with traffic lights and barriers each time a plane needs to take off or land. Well, almost each time, my in-laws were once on a plane which was forced to pull up at the last minute and take a brief detour as the pilot saw traffic still on the runway as he was coming in to land! That, thankfully, is a very rare occurrence.

4 Sunset at the marina

One evening this week, I found myself walking through Queensway Quay marina at sunset. It was really lovely and I couldn’t resist taking a photo.

5 Ocean Village Marina 

Another of Gibraltar’s marinas is Ocean Village, it’s the largest and busiest. I walked through on my mission to buy some more school uniform ready for the soon to come winter weather and thought it looked glorious in the afternoon sunshine.

6 Street art

This beautiful wooden sculpture appeared outside a frame shop in Gibraltar this week. The shop is called Face Frames, so it perfectly illustrates the name don’t you think? How refreshing to see something so beautiful to advertise a shop instead of the usual neon or plastic signage. It sits right at the end of a road off Main Street and has instantly become a landmark, dominating the end of the street. I love it!

6 Hallowe’en

Now, if you read my previous post Trick or Treat? Hallowe’en – bah Humbug!, you might find this photo a surprise. I am not quite the old misery I perhaps made out, so when my boys asked if we could carve a pumpkin, I couldn’t say no. Here’s our very simple effort. With more time I would have liked to make a more intricate carving but time didn’t allow. (The face was designed by my 8 year old, he wanted a cheeky face, not a scary one :-)).

7 Midterm getaway

  

It’s midterm in Gibraltar now, school broke up on Friday. We decided to go away for a few days so yesterday we reluctantly said goodbye to my parents who have been here for the last couple of weeks, we packed up the car and drove a short distance along the Costa del Sol to just outside Marbella.  This magnificent palm tree is right outside our home for the next few days. 

I believe strong winds and rain are lashing Gibraltar this morning, luckily for us the bad weather hasn’t followed us here. 
Have a great week all of you.