Belly dancing and Birthdays and Bulbs! (Spoiler alert!)

The weather is absolutely scorching here, yesterday hit temperatures of 29 degrees with promises of over 32 to come. The Met Office has issued heat waves warnings for the first time ever! After two summers with hardly any sun, Britain is enjoying the sun. We have had rain, but it’s been at night! You know, when you were a kid in the olden days before the Sims came along, you would imagine your perfect world in your head and on your drawing book, and it only ever rained at night! Listen up Gods and Goddesses!

Some pictures from my garden!

So what have I been doing for the last week or so? Well, I’ve managed to lose another four pounds making total weight loss now 1 stone and 1 pound so far! The Wii Fit says that I’m now in my ideal range and no longer a bit overweight! I’ve got another half stone to lose before I’m at my goal weight. Daily dog walks and plenty of gardening have helped I think. I probably would have lost a bit more but I went to a Birthday party on Friday night and of course had to sample the naughty delights laid out including cake! More of that later on!

Thursday night was the Summer Hafla which was great fun! The coach was leaving at 6pm and I was supposed to be teaching till 4pm, so I let my students go half an hour early so that I could get home, change and be at the meeting point in time. It was a fab night with many many different styles – tribal, Celtic Gypsy fusion, African fusion, Raqs Gothique, a belly dancer and a flamenco dancer who perform together, Bangra fusion, Bollywood fusion….too many to mention really!

Then Friday night we had a Birthday BBQ for a friend…well it would have been a BBQ but the weather was a bit iffy (night-time showers) so we had a party inside with our usual pass the parcels and party bags and lots of naughty food like home-made burgers, falafels, garlic and herb bread, huloumi (not sure if this is the right spelling), salads, hummus, pasta, meringue and raspberry deserts, lemon meringue pie and birthday cake!!!

(I’m sure I must have put weight on after this cake!)

Even the dogs got involved!

And the crafting? You may think I’ve been resting on my laurels, or chopping them down anyway, but no! There’s been crafting action too. Yesterday I painted some bulbs ready to put in my eBay shop

And I finished my huge swap project for the Hippy Swap over on Craftster. TintedShadow don’t read any further! So this project has taken forever but it’s finally finished and I’m so pleased with it!

TintedShadow doesn’t crochet so I knew that I wanted to crochet her something because I always think it’s nice to make someone something that they can’t make for themselves. She had a poncho on her list of things that she’d quite like so the stripy poncho idea was born. I totally winged this baby. Then I had the bright idea to add a little something…

and decided to add a hood which took so long but really really worth it! I wanted the hood to be a little loose around the face, and to kind of drape on the shoulders a little, which it does! Actually when you wear it, it looks like one of the Elven Fellowship cloaks from the LOTR films.

So I’m finally finished it!

And then, building on my smocking success of last week, I created these!

Again, I kinda winged this pattern, I half drew round a pair of trousers that I liked and changed the fullness of the legs a little. The fabric is from my stash so they didn’t cost me anything.

I shirred round the waistline to make them fit snugly

And because I can’t not do, I embellished them with some ribbon and lace! I’m planning some appliqué too!

My next swap project is this…

…any ideas as to what it might become? If it’s sunny where you are, enjoy the sun!