summer...

is arriving in dribs and drabs here in Algeria, we've had some gloriously hot days interspersed with rainy days that have seemed like they would never stop. Rain here is relentless, in the past week we have had our whole top floor flooded and had to all camp out in the salon dowstairs and wait for the sun to come back and dry us out. Things like that used to frustrate me, would have had me in tears and pledging to return home on the next boat out.  Now however, I just put down towels, close off the rooms and wait for a drier spell to sort it all out... almost everyone I know has the same problem so railing against it, now seems incredibly futile. It's now just a case of hunkering down while it lasts and then clearing away the debris when it's done with us.

Apart from rain, I've been crafting Algerian style... learning how to make crocheted collars for house dresses. They are very sought after here and cost about 1500 Algerian Dinars for a basic collar, so it's a good money making oppertunity, non-labour intensive, and enjoyable into the bargain.
Ladies here buy collars as seperate pieces and have a dress made around it, and because I sew my Algerian friends have been encouraging me for ages to sell what I make..
I however, have been resistant.... mostly due to laziness if  I'm honest but with a whole summer (children won't go back to school now till after Eid in September!) to play with I'm just going to dive right in and see what happens inshaallah.

DD19 and I have also been busy in my aunt-in-laws kitchen over the past week or so... learning how to make osban, a traditional Algerian dish of stomach stuffed with lungs, onions, rice, spices, intestines and a whole host of other wonderful ingredients. It sounds a bit yuck but tastes delicious... the downside is that it takes an awfully long time to clean out the guts, clean and cut the stomach..sew it up  and stuff it... the company however was glorious and we had a great time listening to my husbands aunty telling stories, in an attempt to distract us from the pain we were feeling from stabbing our fingers so often trying to get our sewing needles through slippery, stuffed douara.
My dh is a butcher, and we were making up osban for his shop, so it may very well become our regular pre-weekend chore.

Today, we're taking a walk out to get some yarn for a project that dd19 has been working on and wants to get finished,and then it's back home to get some cleaning and laundry done before the weekend. I had intended to have a slow restful weekend last week and somehow it just didn't happen, this weekend however I really need to set aside some time to plan my next month of housekeeping, possibly a menu plan and dd19 and I are busy planning a  new blog project, and it would be nice to be able to find the time to get some of that done. So apart from going for Salat-al-Jumuah with my aunty and dh's cousins tomorrow, I'm not planning anything more strenuous, lets just see if it works out that way this week...