Wednesday

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men????  Today was going to be our final flick round the house and garden before the visitors arrive and we were presented with a lengthy power-cut which meant I could do nothing I had planned.  We were in two minds as to whether to get the generator out and at the moment we decided that we should, the electricity came back on.  At that point we were in the middle of a project which John was able to complete using his battery operated power tools.

John had seen a wooden heart project on tintyweb and wanted to recreate it using some of the lovely pieces of hard wood we have knocking around - some of them are just too good to burn in the woodburner.  He wanted to make something we could give to our friends as a memento of their little break here in Cyprus and the power outage this morning provided the ideal opportunity to get it under way.

All this activity went way over Charlie's head as he crashed out on the rug in the sunshine - too exhausted to move - to be fair the sunshine coming through the glass was lovely and as we have now doubled up on the voiles on the windows which face the swimming pool it looks and therefore feels warmer in there.  I had noticed that you could feel quite a draft coming off of the glass at night and we want to try and use the conservatory as much as possible.  I had thought the violes I got in Jumbo were nice and dark - they looked like they were in the package but when we hung them up they weren't as dark as I had hoped - however John went outside and I stayed inside holding a number of fingers up for him to count and he said he couldn't see a thing so that is good.

Every year at this time of the year we are lucky enough to be able to apply to learn a traditional craft, in previous years I have done gourd carving and basket making and this year we are doing traditional mosaics which is very very different to any mosaicing I have done in the past.  The subject is going to be a fish.

We are also lucky enough to have the lovely Eleni taking our classes - she took us for basket weaving last year and was disappointed that we never got round to paying her a visit in Lefkara afterwards - we have promised we will definitely do so this year.  Last year our lessons took place at the Palates Hotel but this year we are in the old Doctors surgery next to the school.   The lighting is not so good there and the seating uncomfortable!!

For today at least it was the same four students as at basket weaving last year, me, Diana, Kelly and Janice.  Kelly has done mosaicing before - the same sort of thing as I had done but this is very different because you place the good side down and you work on the back which means you don't really know what the finished article is going to look like until it is revealed at the end.

We are supplied with everything we need, a pattern, the tiles, cutters, glue, frame the lot but we all struggled (a) to work out the correct side of the tile to cut and (b) to cut it without the pieces shattering - as a result I soon began to run out of materials!

This was the result of four hours work - not very impressive is it? and tomake matters worse I have to go in tomorrow morning and afternoon because our visitors arrive tomorrow and I will have to miss an hour tomorrow afternoon and the whole of Friday and all the tiles have to be in place by the end of Friday.  I finished the day with an aching back, blistered hand and thumping headache.