So many hobbies!

I'm home

Cancun was lovely and we had a great time.  I was ready to come home and see my babies but sooo not ready to go back to work.  Oh, well.  Here's some pics:

This was the view out our livingroom windows:
 

The water is even bluer than this picture shows.  It was gorgeous!  The hotel we stayed at, The Royal Cancun, had the world's best lemonade and they had fantastic nachos grande.  So very yummy:

 

I could have eaten these every night for dinner... and lunch, they were that good.  I might even go so far as to say they were the best nachos I've ever had.

On Thursday, my dad and I hopped on a tour bus for the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza.  The ruins were amazing but they got us there at the absolute hottest part of the day.  It was 90 in the shade and 90% humidity.  The only thing that kept me from melting in a puddle was the occasional cloud that blew by and an intermittent breeze.  I quickly abandoned the tour portion, which is too bad because it was fascinating, and wandered around taking pictures.  I never would have made it had I stayed with the tour.  Heat exhaustion was a concern although I made it back to the Maya Land Hotel sweaty but okay.

One of the first things you see is El Castillo (there's a Mayan name for the structure but for the life of me, I can't remember what it is - the Spaniards named it El Castillo and that's the one I remember).  It's rather impressive:

 

You used to be able to climb everything but they closed them a few years ago.  Apparently, people would climb to the top and then chisel off the carvings to take as souvenirs.  It blows my mind how stupid and selfish people can be and how it never occurred to them that taking away carvings nearly 2000 years old might be a bad thing.  These people ruined it for the rest of us.  It would have been cool to climb to the top and look out, seeing things the way the Mayan people saw them so long ago. 

This is one of the detail carvings from the Ball Court:

 

I don't know what it means but it's pretty cool.

On the way to Chichen Itza, we stopped at a rest area that doubled as a spot to buy lots of tourist stuff (I bought a t-shirt).  There was a young guy working a loom like a pro:

 

He had this system set up that shot the shuttle back and forth while he worked the foot pedals that moved the __________ up and down (sorry, can't remember the word...).  Naturally, I forgot to take a picture of some of his finished work.  Oh, wait, I've got another pic of him, I just need to go find it...

 

It's a better shot of the loom and you can see some of his blankets behind him.  I'm assuming he wove them but I'm not a weaver myself and I can't tell if the blankets are possible with this loom.  They're gorgeous regardless.  Sorry I don't have a better picture of the blankets for those of you who are interested in such things.

I managed to finish sewing the binding on the green/copper quilt - picture later this week - and it got a bath today.  Yes, it fit just fine in my suitcase since it isn't that big a quilt.  And I got about 3/4 of an inch knitted on one of my pairs of socks, mostly on airplanes.  The socks will be coming to work with me so I can work on them during breaks and lunch.

Now I have to scrounge up something for dinner.  I wish I had some nachos...

I would love...

to travel to Rome or Paris or Cardiff, etc. and live there for a month.  Rome and Paris, for example, are huge and there's so much to explore, you couldn't do it in just a week, or even two.  Most big European cities have great public transportation so getting around wouldn't be a problem.  I admit, renting a car in Great Britain or Australia would make me nervous because, well, they drive on the wrong side of the road (sorry, Val, but it's true :-).  I'd be terrified that I'd forget to stay to the left and end up hurting someone.  A car would be very helpful, though, because there's so much to see off the beaten path.  Did you know there are prehistoric ruins all over England and Wales?  My brother was in the Air Force and was stationed in England for a couple of years.  The atlas he bought was marked with dozens of ruins and most of them are just sitting out in a field where anyone can explore them.  But in addition to the sites and the exploration, getting to know the locals would be just as much fun.  Being a knitter and spinner, I have an easy in:  just find the local groups.  I have yet to meet a knitter or spinner who wasn't generous and friendly.  There's so much so see and explore, sometimes it makes me sad to just sit in my little corner of the world.  I guess I'd better start saving.

It's good to be home?

As much as I missed Seli, I could have happily stayed another month on beautiful Sanibel Island.  It was warm and sunny all week.  Every morning, my sister and I were on the beach shelling.  Sanibel Island has the second best shelling in the world (the Great Barrier Reef is #1 and the Phillipines is #3).  I always have a project I work on when I'm on Sanibel.  Besides my knitting and spinning, this time I put together a few specimen boxes of Coquina shells:  one for home, a small one to take to work, and one as a thank you for my Seli Sitter.  The trick is to find them still paired:

I wasn't sure if I was going to take my drop spindle with me.  I haven't used it much since I learned to use my wheel.  Friday night before I left, I decided to practice a bit  with it to see it how it felt.  When I couldn't put it down even though I still wasn't packed, I knew it would be coming with me.  I even dug through my stash for another length of roving in another colorway.  Between the shelling, knitting and spinning the first 4 oz. of roving, I never got to the second but it was so much fun, I'll be taking my spindle with me whenever I travel. 

The roving split fairly evenly into three sections (BFL I dyed in the crockpot).  With each successive third, my spinning got finer and more even.  The first skein is on the left and the last on the right:

The best part of my trip was meeting my second and third cousins.  They live in Texas and while I'd met Lynne (who's around my age) once about 20 years ago, I don't remember it.  Her three girls, my 3rd cousins, I'd never met before.  The oldest, Lucy (Hi, Lucy!) has been knitting since she was six and she's 14 now.  She can knit circles around me!  Blindfolded!  Lucy also spins and the two of us, and sometimes Lynne, would get to talking about knitting and spinning and fiber, etc. and my mom would have to give me the cut-it-short-it's-time-to-eat-dinner sign.  It was so much fun to talk to people who understood what I was talking about and even more fun when it was my family.  I'm going to have to plan a trip to Houston to see them.  (Fall, winter or spring guys.  I don't think I could handle summer in Houston.  :-)  When is the big quilt show?  I might be able to get Marianna to come, too.)  Lucy knit this adorable kitten for me.  I think he's all kinds of cute:

   

Before I left for Florida, it felt like I'd been cold for weeks.  I was cold when I went to bed and cold when I woke up.  Cold!  I was warm for a whole week.  It was glorious!  Now I'm back, cold again, and I cast on for a wool wrap.  I don't have a pattern.  I cast on two stitches and I've been increasing one stitch at the end of each row.  I'm using 3 skeins of my handspun and knitting it in garter stitch.  I have no idea if I have enough to knit the wrap.  I'm switching randomly between the three different colorways and if it looks like I'm not going to have enough, I'll dye something that hopefully will match.  I don't have a picture tonight but I'll post tomorrow on what I have done on the wrap, the fingerless mitt I worked on last week and the Embers sock I've finally finished.  Right now, I'm going to go put a down comforter on my bed.

I rest my case!

A while back I dyed some roving in the crockpot that I thought was ugly (hey, even the best of us produce some clunkers).  I never showed you the ugly roving because I was going use it to prove a theory of mine that even the ugliest roving will produce beautiful yarn.  Here's the roving:

I was fine with the two greens and the purple, but adding in the spiced pumpkin turn a nice color combo into something repulsive, at least to me.  Here's the finished yarn:

This is my finest yarn yet and after washing, it's got a good twist but it's still nice and squishy.  I ended up with about 400 yards of DK weight.  To be honest, this isn't my kind of sock yarn - it's too dark - so I'm going to put it up on my Etsy store for someone who will love it more than me.

Here's the last of the Italy pictures.  Everywhere in Italy there are fountains and pigeons.  Sometimes the two combine to make some nice pictures.  Enjoy.

Venice was my favorite

I think mostly because there aren't any cars or motorcycles in Venice city.  To get around, you either walk or take a water bus.  I found Venice to be very relaxing and lots of fun to explore.  You'd be wandering around (it's very easy to get lost!) and you turn a corner and you're in a large square with benches and a public water spigot.  The spigots are always on and occasionally the pigeons will feel they need a shower and will hang out under the spigot.  In one square I was about to take a photo of a pigeon taking a shower when a kid chased him off.  Darn kids!  Anyway, here's a photo of Ginny with a friend in San Marco's square:

They sell birdseed so you can feed the pigeons but anyone walking into the mass of begging birds will soon be festooned with hopeful birds.  This pigeon sat on Ginny's shoulder for a good five minutes, cooing in her ear.  It was very cute.  Did I mention that a seagull pooped on my head while we were waiting for the boot to take us to the city?  Our tour guide tried to tell me it was considered good luck but all I could think of was I had bird crap on my head.  Ginny is a wonderful friend and, using a WetWipe, got it off my head in one neat, clean wipe.  Despite all of that, I still walked to the center of San Marco's square and allowed pigeons to sit on my head and shoulders.  It was rather cool.

This is San Marco's Basilica.  Isn't it beautiful?  Try and ignore the scafolding; it seems everywhere we went, they were doing some kind of repairs so you couldn't get a clean shot.  I bought a number of postcards for that reason.

A close-up of the fresco above the front door.  It was hard to get a good shot because the sun was shining on all the gold and I kept getting a lot of glare.  You can see some of that on the lower left side.

The Basilica was one side of the square and the other three sides were made up of these buildings - or one huge U-shaped building, I don't recall which.  The bottoms are stores and I assume people live on the upper two floors.

The Grand Canal.  This is what I picture when I think of Venice.  The water bus is on the lower, left side of the photo.  It cost 12 Euro to ride one way - that's about $18.  Ginny and I walked.

Of the three cities, I liked Rome the least and Venice the most.  I found Rome to be dirty, packed with people and crazy with cars.  I will admit, though that we were in all the high-tourist areas.  The afternoon we spent in the Piazza Navona was my favorite part of the entire trip.  Of the cities, I was most comfortable in Venice.  The pace just seemed slower and more relaxing.  Oh, BTW, Ginny and I tried to find the Venice public library to see if X marked the spot (a true geek, I'm referring to "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade") but we couldn't find one.  Bummer!

Tomorrow I'll have some finished sock yarn to show you.

Ah, Florence!

The three things I remember about Florence is the Duomo (their MASSIVE cathedral), the Ponte Vecchio and finally getting to see Michelangelo's David.  I'll start with David because I don't have any pictures - they wouldn't let you take any.  We had to go to the Galeria dell'Academia on our own to see the David and it was well worth the effort to get there.  I can't express just how magnificent the statue is.  Any photograph you've seen is a poor, poor substitute for the real thing.  I sat on the floor for about 20-25 minutes and just looked at him.  It was almost a spiritual experience - I've never said that before in my life.

Next was the Duomo, another incredibly huge cathedral.  The outside is covered in white, green and pink marble with beautiful details just about everywhere you look.

 

These would be the front doors.  Yowza!

I think this is supposed to be Daedalus.  I just liked him so I took his picture.

This is the side of the Duomo.  Gorgeous!

This is a shot of the Ponte Vecchio.  It looks like a street but it's a bridge with buildings build along the sides.  It's one of those tourist spots that every seems to visit.  As far as I could tell, every single one is a very expensive jewelry store.  No jewelry for me!

Dealing with the aftermath of my stupid email was much less painful than I thought it would be.  It will be a long time before I fire off an email without thinking it through first.  I'd like to say it'll never happen again but at some point I'll get complacent and will inevitably do something boneheaded.  Gah!  Sometimes I need a keeper!

The leaning tower of Pisa... and some advice

Tomorrow at work I'm going to get chewed out by my supervisor for an email I sent that she misinterpreted very wrongly.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered how mad she was for something I didn't think I'd written.  I KNOW that it's easy to misinterpret the written word and yet I still forgot and now I look forward to the fun of trying to explain what I really meant.  So, this a friendly reminder, since I'm proof that it's easy to forget, either pick up the phone instead of sending an email, add lots of smiley faces so they know you're kidding or have someone read the email before you hit "send."  You'll save yourself a lot of grief.

On to fun things... the leaning tower of Pisa!  I didn't feel like climbing the 300 steps, or paying the 20 Euro (approx. $30) to climb to the top of the tower, so I took my photos from the safety of the ground.

This one shows you just how far this thing is leaning.  There are no goofy, tourist pictures of me trying to hold it up.  Sorry.

This a carving from the tower.  I don't know what it means, I just really liked it.

Does this photo give you an idea of how big Pisa's Basilica is?  Everywhere we went in Italy, the cathedrals and basilicas were massive!  And absolutely beautiful inside...

This would be the ceiling.  Yes, that's real gold.  Can you imagine going to church in there every Sunday? 

This is on the inside of the basilica's dome.  I'm speechless.

I spent the weekend spinning up the ugly roving I dyed a while back.  I finished plying it this afternoon but I did a lousy job of plying with many spots that don't have enough twist.  So, tomorrow I'll by "plying" it again to put more twist in the spots that need it.  This time, my spinning was very even and fine enough to produce a fingering weight sock yarn after plying.  I don't know if I needed a spinning break or all the advice Beth had been giving me had a chance to sink in while I was on vacation but this weekend's spinning made me feel like I finally know what I'm doing.  I'll post a picture when the yarn is all done.

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.)

I'm back! Finally!

Sorry I missed posting yesterday.  We were supposed to fly in Monday night but our flight was late leaving Venice and we missed our connecting flight.  This meant spending the night in Frankfort, Ger. and leaving the next morning.  As mad as I was about missing our flight (there was much swearing I'm ashamed to say) the airport hotel they put us up in was really nice and the food was the best I'd had the entire trip.  Anyway, I didn't get home until yesterday afternoon and I was too wasted to do much but cuddle with Seli.

I have to go to bed soon but I'll give you some of my pictures of the Colleseum and the Piazza Novona in Rome.

This side is the best preserved section of the Colleseum.

The Colleseum was originally covered in marble but it was stripped off later to be used in new buildings around Rome.  The holes you see in the columns above were left when the copper bolts that held the marble to the building were ripped out.  As a result of loosing it's protective coat of marble (and time), the Colleseum deteriorated.  This photo shows how the Colleseum was built originally of three rings, one inside the other.  The Colleseum was designed so well in the movement of people, even when full, it could be emptied in 15 minutes.

This is a shot from one end of the Piazza Navona.  This was my favorite time spent in Rome.  This piazza is very typical of a European square:  around the edges are restaurants with open-air seating and in the center, artists have set up and are selling their artwork.  I bought my first oil painting here.

This is a view from the table where we had dinner.  I had some really good gnocchi.  It took us forever to find the piazza.  We were on the right bus but had no idea which stop to get off on and the bus driver was less than helpful.  Eventually, a nice Italian man told us we should have gotten off several stops back.  We got off and then began asking people directions to the Piazza Navona.  I must have asked 4 or 5 people for directions before we found it.  Once there, it was everything I was looking for.  We had a nice dinner, watching the artists and the people, I bought a painting and we wandered around the piazza looking at the sights.   I enjoyed this afternoon in Rome more than all the rest of our time there.

This fountain in the piazza is one of the most famous in Rome.  It's Neptune with dolphins and hippocampuses.  If you look close, you'll see there's a pigeon on Neptune's head.  Pigeons aren't very respectful.

That's it for now.  I really have to go to bed.  Jetlag sucks!

I'm on vacation!!

I'll be back late Monday, October 1st.  Until then, enjoy looking at the tall, handsome man I'm looking forward to meeting in Florence: