Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

In no particular order.  Feel free to ask about any of them, I might even create a post about some of them next month.

1 - The Ferret  A creation of my own, based in the Sherlock Holmes (ACD) 'verse.  A song and dance mustelid.

2 - Werewolf!Lucas  Another of my creations.  Based in Spooks (MI5) where Lucas North is now a werewolf, and continues to work for Section D in both human and vulpine forms.  This is a party-loving werewolf, who likes to look smart.

3 - Cake  I have already posted about cake for Challenge #2

4 - Families at church.  We have a lot of engagement with local families, and apart from baptisms, we also have a toddler group and after-school club, a youth group, occasional Saturday activity mornings and in a couple of weeks we're running a Teddy Bear's Zipwire.

5 - Getting engrossed in my cross stitch while listening to something on the radio on my headphones.  Perfect for shutting out the rest of the world.

6 - My To Be Read list which is once more threatening to fall off the shelf and onto my head when I'm asleep.

7 - My total inability to resist the urge to 'complete' a list.  Recently I found two music programmes on the radio which have a number of series, going back several years.  So, of course, I need to listen to them all (or at least the interesting majority) over the next year.

8 - The thought of no_true_pair main challenge (with 8 characters) sign up coming next month.

9 - The fact that the skirt I bought some years ago and rarely wore still fits and was perfect to wear today in the heat.

10 - The sheer wonder of creation - how the sun is changing its poles between North and South; all the amazing galaxies out there (points vaguely in all directions at once).

Today sunshine_challenge has the Zinnia as its flower.  The Victorian meaning of the Zinnia is a friend you haven't seen for a while.  Which worked in remarkably well, as today I had lunch with an ex-flatmate who is in Gloucester for the Three Choirs Festival.  We haven't seen each other for some years, for various reasons, so it was lovely to catch up.

The alternative flower is the Red Rose.  Two years ago it was our 40th wedding anniversary, the ruby anniversary and so I bought my husband a suitable rose bush.  Unknown to me, our son also bought us a similar rose, so now we have two.  Here is a flower from one of the two bushes, I'm not sure which.




I am also playing catch-up, because I knitted a Daisy to go with the theme for Day 4:

Day Five's sunshine_challenge flower was the Goldenrod.  No-one will be surprised that once again I've gone for the secondary flower, an Orange Rose.

And I'm posting a couple of days after the challenge was posted, as I've been busy and I had to knit a second rose:



It's been quite fun knitting these roses, so I thought I would make an offer, that if anyone would like a knitted rose to let me know which colour they would like and DM me their address, and I'll make one.  It may not be for a little while, but you will receive a rose if that is your wish.

Yesterday's sunshine_challenge was for the Bluebell.   After a long search I found a photo from April 2020:



But wanting to have a current response, I again went with the alternative which was the Lavender Rose.  We don't have any roses that colour, so I decided I would knit one:

I always enjoy taking part in sunshine_challenge and this year I think there will be a number of photos.

Beginning with today's prompt: Iris

Here are some irises I photo-ed about a month ago beside the canal:



They also feature in a drabble I wrote for holmes_minor Yellow Irises

What can I say about Amethyst?  One of the associations mentioned is that of spirituality and that's the one I shall pick up on.  In the Church of England tradition (and I assume the Roman Catholic one, since the Anglicans simply continued with the parts they were happy with and just jettisoned the other - something religious leaders have continued to do to this day: taking the bits which fitted their own viewpoint) there are three main colours for the altar cloth (the tablecloth put over the altar), namely green, white and purple.  White is for major feasts (Christmas and Easter), purple for Advent and Lent (which probably have correct terms, I'm not interested so never remember) and green is for what is termed 'ordinary time', which just means all the rest.  There's red as well but that's only a few Sundays.

Advent and Lent are times for reflection.  I know Lent has the tradition of giving things up, but that only makes sense if there's a reason for doing so.  Yes, I do try to restrict some of my online time, cutting back on scrolling and unsubscribing from various email lists, which does have some personal benefit.  And it prompts me to eat less biscuits/cake, or at least think about it, which again is no bad thing.  Advent has a tendency to be swallowed up in preparation for Christmas, and there are the delights of Advent calendars.  I always treat myself to a Jacquie Lawson Advent calendar, which provides a little drop of fun in what can get to be quite a fraught time.  And the online calendar the Open University provides has introduced me to some free short courses I would never have thought of otherwise, and is therefore a Good Thing as Pooh Bear would say, continuing to broaden my horizons.

Lent has less attractions.  There is as mentioned the 'giving up', but for me it provides the opportunity to think a bit more.  Again there can be the tendency to look at one's failings (what might have been termed sins), however for me it provides something more positive.  A chance to look back and decide that an activity has run its course, and it's time to move onto something new.  Possibly a shift in direction, not so much a complete about face, but a small change, due to circumstances changing.  And 40 days is a long time, so no need for quick decisions with equally quick regrets.  And the opportunity to try something, without any major commitment.  I've been surprised at how I've begun Lent with vague thoughts and ideas and finished with some positive concrete outcomes.

Again, today's sunshine_challenge has got me struggling to find something to write.  I've settled on the image I posted for last time's fan_flashworks challenge, which was 'Blue'.  These are blue waves, which form the border for the cardigan I'm knitting Mini Hobbit.



Waves in three shades of blue against a turquoise background.

I struggled a bit with deciding how to interpret today's sunshine_challenge but then it occurred to me that pink is often looked at as a female colour, but quartz implies something strong.  And I thought of the women in my family, and how that summed the generations up.

So, beginning with my grandmother, who died in 1980, sadly a few months before we married.  She was a very determined lady, who regretted having to stop teaching when she married, which would have been in the first half of the 1920s.  As soon as she was able to have a bank account of her own, she opened one at the bank which was the opposite end of the high street from the bank my grandfather used.

My mother, despite her physical state, remains as sharp as ever.  She will have a laugh with the staff, and although a product of her own times, seems willing to accept things are changing.  She cared for my father as long as she could, and he was only admitted to hospital when she could no longer manage physically - she is just over 5 foot, he was about 6 foot, so if he fell out of bed she had to get a neighbour to help, or call an ambulance.  A few years later she sold their property and moved to live closer to us.  She remained resolutely independent until illness overtook her, and then accepted the need first for respite care and then promptly agreed that it was better to remain in the care home - signing the forms herself.

My daughter has always carved her own path.  She didn't take A-levels, but went to college to study Outdoor Education, staying away during the week.  Failing to get into uni immediately, she had a year out and then studied as a paediatric nurse, where she worked for 7 years, before starting training to be a paramedic.  She's currently an Ambulance Technician and back at uni part-time, alternating studies with working as a technician.  One of the highlights has been driving down the motorway at 104mph.

And lastly, mini Hobbit, my son's daughter, and my granddaughter.  She's only 5, but she's bright and very logical - you definitely need to be one step in advance all the time (good job I had plenty of practice with her auntie!).  Initially deemed as lacking social skills when she started school last September, a change of teacher halfway through the first term and she's got excellent social skills, but is quite independent.  Like the rest of the family, if she doesn't see the point of doing something, she won't!

Day 7 of sunshine_challenge Zephyrus is the god of the west wind and apparently the bringer of the gentle winds of spring.

However, as a Brit, the west wind brings the rain, which for those in the west of England means directly from the Atlantic Ocean, and even having dropped some of that water over Ireland and Wales, there's normally plenty left for us.

It will come as no surprise that I have written a number of fics which feature rain:

Summer Murder in the Rain, which is a Lewis casefic

Watching the Rain a ficlet where Dr Watson is looking out of the window

Avoiding the Rain is another ficlet where a modern day Hamlet is trying to avoid his mother

Sun After Rain is John Thornton/Margaret Hale from BBC North & South set a few years after their marriage

Kissing in the Rain is Spooks, Lucas/Adam, the title says it all.