Monday

I woke early this morning - don't know why - at least I wasn't fretting over cooking lunch today as I would be eating Chez-Knips after art.  It was a beautiful morning - the clouds making for a spectacular sunrise as it began to creep over the mountains over towards Lyssos.

I was o a bit of a roll this morning as I had a couple of jobs I wanted to get completed before setting off.  I had decided that I wanted to do something with the lovely fabric that used to grace Frank and Thelma's folding card table - I had been using it as a table cloth but it wouldn't sit flat so it was proving a bit of a liability.  I needed to get Mum's machine out and get creative!!

I wasn't overly creative as it happens - I just cut it in half and made two new cushion covers for the conservatory sofas.  I love that fabric - it is real 1950s vintage and most probably from Africa which is where Frank and Thelma used to live.   It lives on once more gracing our sofas and I am happy!

Job done I set about walking down through the village to Sheila's - it is considerably cooler today than it has been of late but the sun was shining when I set off.

The island is springing to life all over the place.  Today I noticed that there are almonds on some of the trees - I don't know if these are the bitter almonds which we used for making Amaretto or whether they are the standard sweet type which are rarely harvested as they are so difficult to extract from their shells.

You can sometimes go in to Finnikas and see the ladies with their little hammers tap tap tapping on the almonds but more often than not the nuts are left to rot on the trees which is a bit of a shame but then if they are anything like the pine-nuts John will tell you that you are better off going to the shops and buying them!!

The only traffic I encountered on my walk through the village was a rather scraggy ginger and white cat which we keep mistaking for Billy No Mates - we are guessing that he/she is from the same family as they look so alike.  She wandered down the village in the middle of the road without a care in the world!!!

I finished my picture of the little boy last week and was undecided about the next picture.  I had found one of an old Greek woman and another of some children flying kites and a small one of a ballerina.

I thought this might make a nice little picture and thought I would offer it to Sofi our belly dancing teacher as she also teaches ballet and is, in her words, obsessed by it!!!

I struggled at first with the paper I was using - for some reason when I started off with the background I just couldn't get the colours to blend in the way I wanted them to.  It may have been that bit of the paper or it might have been that maybe my hands had been greasy or something but things didn't go to plan!!

Sheila suggested leaving the background and trying the body which I did and eventually I managed to get things working correctly!  She is a very elegant figure and I think it will end up ok in the end!  I showed it to Sofi and she was delighted that I had offered it to her.

I returned home to find John still working on his cladding and I got changed to I could give him a hand and save his fingers.  The weather had been quite miserable all morning - I did manage to walk home when it was dry but I hadn't been back long before the heavens opened.  Fortunately it was only for a short while but it did, literally, put a dampener on things so we packed things away and John will resume the work on Wednesday when he is home all day.






Just going to finish the blog with this rather fetching picture of Diana who seems to be embracing the whole belly dancing experience by trying on one of the tops that Sofi brings with her.  She opted to dance with only the scarf around the hips despite us trying to persuade her otherwise!!

A hard work-out this week with some resistance band work and a lot of leg work which ended up with me having cramp for a while!