So many hobbies!: The Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel

The Vatican Museum was beautiful. I wish we could have spent more time there but it was a tour and they practically ran us through to get to the Sistine Chapel, which was packed. Here are some of the pictures from the Vatican Museum that I like the best. (There are more but if you really want to see them, leave me a comment. Once I get them up on Flickr, I'll let you know.)

I just love mosaics and this was a sample of some of the ones I saw in the museum.

I also love statues. I think this is Zeus. I had to sneak away from the tour to take his picture.

And I'm partial to fountains, too. I want a fountain and a statue like Zeus, or David, in my back yard. I don't think that's too much to ask. Do you?

We weren't supposed to take pictures, or talk, in the Sistine Chapel. I snuck these anyway. Michelangelo's ceiling was even more amazing in person than I thought it would be. So beautiful! The chapel was also smaller than I was expecting - but that could have been because we were packed in like sardines. Can you believe Michelangelo was mad the entire time he painted this? He didn't think of himself as a painter, he was a sculptor, thankyouverymuch. He regularly sent nasty letters to the pope who roped him into painting the ceiling. He was truly a gifted genius. Do we still produce gifted artists like him today? I'm currently reading the book The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone which is a semi-fictional biography of Michelangelo's life. It reads like a novel and I'm really enjoying it. I wish I'd read it before leaving for Italy.

As I'd suspected I would, I greatly overestimated the amount of time I'd actually spend knitting on the trip. I thought, sure, I'll have all this time waiting in airports and riding on buses. Plenty of time! Right. The night I left, I'd been working and running around all day getting ready to leave, then we sat in the airport from 7 - 10 at night, waiting. I was tired and not in the mood to start my first lace, simple pattern or not. Then, hey, a 3.5 hour lay-over in Frankfort. What else will I do to pass the time but knit? How about try and stay awake after only getting 3 hours of sleep on the plane. Do you see the pattern forming here? All of my bus rides I was sleeping most of the time because we did a lot of walking after getting up early and I was usually tired. The only time I did any actual knitting was on the way home. I knitted almost the entire 8 hour flight from Germany to Detroit. This is where I am on the smoke ring. Except for the first three foundation rows, I knit all of this in either the Venice airport, the Frankfort airport or in the air:

I like how my home-dyed yarn is knitting up as far as the where the colors are occuring. This photo shows the blue-green color of the yarn better than photos I posted a couple of weeks ago. I'm enjoying knitting this. I think I've got about 3 or 4 inches knitted so far. The pattern is very easy and I memorized it after 2 repeats but I still have to pay attention and count or I'll get lost pretty fast. Can I handle more complicated lace knitting? Only time will tell. (Do you see those needles? They're Knitpicks new laminated birch needles. I really like them. They're nice and pointy and very glossy so the stitches slide very easily.)