A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 12 February 2019 - T for Tuesday

Good morning boys and girls, It's T-Day again! We are all invited at Elizabeth and Bluebeard's with a blogpost that has a beverage or beverage reference in it.

I'm going to start with this postcard that dropped into my mailbox this week:

It came from Germany  and was sent by Mia, who lives in Aachen (near the Dutch border) but had been to York on holiday. She had tried to visit the Betty's Tea Rooms but it was always full. I can imagine. It looks very nice. 
This is the stamp, celebrating the centenary of the Möhnetal dam. It (the dam) has an interesting history. Wikipedia writes this:

In 1904 calculations about the future demand for water for people and industry in the growing Ruhr-area determined that the existing storage volume of 32.4  million m³ in dams of the Ruhr river system needed tripling. Thus, on November 28, 1904, the general assembly of the Ruhrtalsperreverein decided to construct additional dams. During 1908 to 1913 they built the Möhnetalsperre at a cost of 23.5  million marks. When opened, the dam was the largest dam in Europe. 140  homesteads with 700  people had to move. It was built to help control floods, regulate water levels on the Ruhr river downstream, and generate hydropower. Today, the lake is also a tourist attraction.

The dam was breached by RAF Lancaster Bombers (“The Dambusters”) during Operation Chastise on the night of 16–17 May 1943, together with the Edersee dam in northern Hesse. Bouncing bombs had been constructed which were able to skip over the protective nets that hung in the water. A huge hole of 77 m by 22 m was blown into the dam. The resulting huge floodwave killed at least 1,579 people, 1,026 of them foreign forced labourers held in camps downriver. The small city of Neheim-Hüsten was particularly hard-hit with over 800 victims, among them at least 526 victims in a camp for Russian women held for forced labour.

Though the Organisation Todt quickly repaired the dams with 7,000 men from the construction of the Atlantic Wall, the impact of the raid on German industry in the Ruhr valley and indeed on the civil population was significant. According to Albert Speer, "the power plant at the foot of the shattered dam looked as if it had been erased, along with its heavy turbines." "Industry was brought to a standstill", due to the "electrical installations being soaked and muddied." Three other reservoirs were still intact, though the largest, the Sorpe Dam, did have a hole, but it was above the water line. Another destroyed dam, the Edersee Dam, "had nothing to do with the supply of water to the Ruhr." The Mohne Dam was repaired by 23 September 1943, in time to collect water for needs the following summer, when the British failed to follow up with additional raids to hamper reconstruction.


The other postcard is unusual and also comes from Germany. It is the front of a book by Friedrich Wessel and the title translates: 'Sometimes also in underpants'. 

The book is collection of stories about the life of people along the Rhein-Herne canal in the Ruhr area of Germany.

The stamp has a beautiful yellow flower. I think we call it St John's Wort and in herbal medicin it is used for depression and low mood.

The weather has been glorious this week. We have eaten out on the terrace every day. I have a beautiful dining table on the terrace (you can see the shadow of it in the bottom left hand corner) but it has a glass top, which we have taken off because of the frost at night. So we eat at the little old rickety table in the corner... Here I am last Friday with a slimming version of fish and chips (both chips and fish cooked in the air fryer). I think the drinks on the table qualify me for the T-Party.

The almond trees are starting to blossom and they are so beautiful. Most are pink, but there are also white blossoms. This is a photo taken by one of my mates at the photoclub, Maria Gallardo Lopez.

Remember I mentioned shampoo in a bar?  

Well, I have started using it and it is absolutely fabulous! As soon as the bar touches wet hair, it starts to lather. I have asked my hubby to take a picture. I can recommend it .

And I have been scrapbooking. These two lay-outs I did on Thursday (which is my 'play day').

I have used cluster collages on both of them (I had made those collages after Halle inspired me to do them.)
The above photo is hubby with our cat two years ago. Yes, I'm a bit behind with my photos.
The next lay out is hubby on his 70th birthday (14th December) two years ago. We were in Madrid to sort out my passport, when we chanced upon a Lindt chocolate shop. There were rows and rows of these 'bins' full of individually wrapped chocolate balls. Those famous Lindt ones. Hubby loves those and I could not have given him a better birthday present!

That is it from me today. We are actually away from home at the moment, enjoying a short vacation in Almeria on the Mediterranean coast. It is only an hour and a half drive from where we live but we had never visited the city. We should be home later tonight, so i won't be able to do much commenting until Wednesday.

Happy T-Day all,
Hugs,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 8 February 2019 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely ladies,

Happy Friday! For those of you that work: It's nearly weekend! 

There is lots to smile about for all of us. We can all find the silver lining even if the week has not been so good.

Well my week has been good. But not very spectacular. I still go to the gym three times a week and cook lovely meals. I have visited one of my neighbours who has broken a leg and has to stay at home with her leg in a cast. We had coffee and a natter but I forgot to take pictures. So there really is not a lot to report this week.

Let me show you some cards. This one I sent to an animal lover in Belarus:

And this card was sent to a ballerina in Germany :

Yesterday I did some scrapbooking and made two lay-outs with photos of dear hubby. But I haven't photographed them yet so I will post them on my blog on Tuesday. The other thing I did yesterday was have my hair cut. I didn't want it too short as it is still winter, but the girl cut the back nicely, exactly the way I wanted.

And I made a cake last weekend as we had our Intercambio Spanish/English group at our house. A pineapple up-side-down cake. An all time favorite!

That was my week: short but sweet. I'm going to link up with Virginia at Rocking Your Week Friday to see what her week has been like, and with Annie at A Stitch In Time for Friday Smiles.

I will add some funnies at the end. Have a lovely weekend and a good week ahead,

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 5 February 2019 - T for copycat, hiding cat and stout

Hello lovely girls, It's Tuesday again! (Even though I am writing this on Monday night). The weather is so awful (rain and storm) that I am quite happy to spend an evening behind the computer. I am lucky enough to have a nice desktop computer in the living area. It has a huge screen and I love it. But I find myself using my iPad a lot too. I have noticed that my comments don't come through when I use my ipad, so I hereby apologise and I will try to use my desktop as much as possible.

First off are my postcards. The first one is from....ta-da....Valerie! My name was one of those chosen out of the hat. I got lucky and received the postcard of one of the installations that Valerie visited recently.

 She'll be able to tell much more about it, but this particular one is called Dark Pool and visiters are invited to sit at the desk which then triggers a sound track.
I managed to peel off the address sticker so we can all read what it says on the back. (I hope you can read it)

The second one is a postcard i received as a 'thank you' from someone in Holland that I had sent a postcard too. The card has no artist info, it just reads: 'Boomerang supports Kingsday'. I looked up Boomerang and it is one of the largest croud sourcing platforms in the Netherlands (Don't ask, I have no idea what that might be)

Anyway, the stamp is nice and the sender said it was about the Netherlands giving back some pieces of land to Belgium.

"Belgium and Netherlands agree to swap land to simplify border. While Belgium will be losing a splendid piece of nature that juts into the Meuse River dividing the two nations, it will also unburden itself of a jurisdictional nightmare that developed over time as the river meandered to turn the portion of land belonging to Belgium — about 15 soccer fields worth — into a peninsula linked only to the Netherlands. Over time, the area was rumoured to be increasingly lawless, a haven for drug dealers and illicit sexual escapades. Then, some three years ago, passers-by stumbled onto a headless body. “They alerted Dutch authorities, who told them it was Belgian territory,” said Jean-Francois Duchesne, police Commissaire of the Lower Meuse region.

In short, the Dutch could not go there because it was Belgian territory, and Belgian police and judicial authorities found it extremely tough to get there. They are not allowed to cross into the Netherlands without special permission and the peninsula had no proper landing zone for boats or equipment coming in by water.

“So we had to go there by boat with all that was needed — the prosecutor, the legal doctor, the judicial lab — we had to do round trips over the water. It really was not very practical,” Duchesne said.

And beyond that, Mr Neven remembered: “You had to jump from the boat onto the shore. You needed to be in shape for this.”

This week I finally finished my jigsaw puzzle. 

It is my favorite illustrator Colin Thompson. This one is called The Bizarre Bookshop 2. I already have done his Higgeldy-piggeldy House:

I love doing jigsaws. But this week I have also done some crafting. I'm afraid I have been a copycat. After seeing Halle's little collages, I got out the sewing machine and had a go! Wondeful! So theraputic! Thank you Halle for this great suggestion.

I started with blue as I had a strip of blue fabric. I don't have reams of it like some of you have. And I have no scraps at all as I don't sew. Then I found some ribbons and i did some other colours. It is very addictive i must say.

 While I was doing this, I somehow seemed to have 'lost' the cat. I found him hiding behind the stove in the corner.

I managed to photograph him in his hidyhole.

 Now for my beverage. I will be linking up with Elizabeth and Bluebeard for T for Tuesday. To join the T-Party we contribute a beverage. Mine is an alcolholic one this time. We are not great beer drinkers as in this part of Spain people only seem to drink lager. Anyway, we were at Lidls (German supermarket) and they were selling stout. We both love stout, so we treated ourselves to a bottle. It's probably not high quality stuff like Jo is used to drinking at the festivals she goes to (OK, I am slightly envious), but we thouroughly enjoyed this bottle.

That is it from me today,
Happy T-Day all of you,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - 2 february 2019 - Second on the second

Good morning all!
Today I am going to re-publish a post from Febraury 2015 and then link it up with Elizabeth and Bluebeard's Second on the second.

First a postcard of course: 

The writing reads: “ An eine altbekannte Tur klopfen,

Erinnerungen vom Staub befreien, Den Garten neu bepflanzen."

Translated that would be: To knock on a familiar door, to dust off memories and to re-plant the garden. (I’m doing this off the top of my head but someone will correct me I’m sure, if it’s not right.)

Saturday I went to our nearby town to do a beginner’s course in Patchwork. I’ve always wanted to do this.

In the morning we made a cushion cover with strips of material. (Log Cabin I think she called it) We sewed (by hand) onto a backing that had a pattern on it. Every piece on the backing was numbered to make it easy, and it felt a bit like ‘painting by numbers’. It really was easy.

This little chicken sat on the work table. 

We were given the pattern so we can have a go at home with whatever scraps we have. She looks cute doesn’t she?

Here are a few action shots.

This is a shot of the shop. I was like a kid in a sweet shop! All those gorgeous fabrics! Lovely! 

In the afternoon we started on the hexagons. That's very pretty but very labour intensive. In fact I haven't finished this project yet. It will be a cushion cover matching the one we made in the morning.

I shall definitely come back to this shop to buy more of these gorgeous fabrics and perhaps make a tote or a zipper bag. There are so many tutorials on the internet. I'm going to have some fun!

I'm looking forward to seeing your blogs from way back,

Enjoy your weekend,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 1 February 2019 - Friday Smiles

Good morning lovely ladies! How are you? I am here again to share my smiles for this week and a few postcards plus, as per usual, a few funnies at the end.

My first postcard comes from the Netherlands. It was sent to me by Igor, who comes from the Ukraine but is living in the Netherlands at the moment. He commented how surprised he was that the Dutch don't draw their curtains in the evening, so that one can see inside each living room.
The card pictures Nijmegen, a town I am not very familiar with. It is in the east of the Netherlands and I am ashamed to say I have never been there. The church on the photo is the st Stevens church.

The next card comes from Italy, sent to me by Renato, a retired gentleman from Torino. The card represents the sleeve of a book about a part of Torino.

The stamp is a Christmas stamp. 'Buon Natale' means 'Happy Christmas' in Italian.

What have I been up to this week? I tried to make my own pizza dough. The result was an odd shaped pizza but it tasted just as I like it: thin and crispy. The dough was enough for two pizzas, so I left the dough in the fridge and two days later we had another pizza. 

Just to stay in the theme of pizza: I made a scrapbook lay-out this week. (I try to do one a week). These photos are taken at a 'pizza party' at friends of ours here in Spain. They have a pizza oven in the garden and we all made our own pizza. Great fun.

 The hightlight this week for me (and many many smiles) was the arrival of our new fridge. The courier brought it to our door, so hubby and I gently lowered it down the stairs to our flat and then up 7 steps again into the kitchen. It was not too difficult as we left it in the box.

 The big reveal!

 It is a combi. Before I had a fridge with a freezer compartment on top. That was getting too small and my big freezer is downstairs (56 steps down and back up again should I need anything). 

 But as the fridge is at the end of the kitchen, I needed the door to open to the other side. Here is hubby tackling the job.

And here we are.What a luxury! I feel like a child with a new toy! 

Now let's link up with Annie at A Stitch In Time to see what smiles she has for us and with Virginia at Rocking Your Week Friday to see what she has been up to.

Have a lovely weekend all of you. Stay safe those of you who are suffering snow and ice.
Here are some funnies to make you smile.

Hugs,
Lisca