We’re back from our week at Hilton Head, and we had a great time. It’s been one of those usual rainy springs around the Pacific NW, so it was good to see some sunshine. Of course, now that we’re back home, it’s gotten distinctly spring-like here finally, with the lilacs blooming, and a few baby ducks showing off on the lake. No pictures of them yet, but so far I’ve counted five new arrivals.
Here are a few photos of the trip, giving you an idea of just how much fun we had.
Since we had a two-bedroom condo, John’s sister, Ena, came along to spend the week with us.
We took a short bus tour of Charleston, which I’m pretty sure that John planned out so we wouldn’t have time to hit the yarn shops.
I did have time to meet another knit-blogger, Vera, of Vera’s Crafty Blog. We met after the tour for lunch.
Here are our current socks-in-progress:
We dipped our feet in the Atlantic Ocean:
And we knit. Ena is learning how to knit, and when I saw that she was in dire need of some new yarn for a project, what could a sister do? We found the local yarn shops (which were a little less than inspiring, by the way–I’m pretty sure I have more yarn in the stash at home than either one that we went to), and she stocked up on some yarn for pretty scarves.
We played Mexican Train. While John and I are old pros, this was the first time Ena had played.
We finally ran out of booze and had to come home:
This was the first time I had been to Hilton Head, but I could definitely see going back.
Here are more vacation photos. See the previous few posts for details of where we were, in case you haven’t been hanging on every word that I post.
Yet another sunset from our condo. In weeding through the photos, it appears that we took at least 50 sunset photos from our balcony on the various evenings that we were there at sunset. Thank heavens for digital, is all I can say.
We did make it out to Catalina Island. I had that silly song in my head for the whole trip, by the way. We took the Catalina Flyer over, and spent the whole day, taking a bus trip inland to check the place out.
Here’s the bus:
And more beach/knitting shots.
We stopped at the Wrigley ranch for refreshments part-way through the tour. I took a knitting break with this fine fellow.
There were cute horses, and a cute real cowboy.
There were buffalo:
And the ferry ride back to the mainland, at yet another sunset.
We met our Germany friends for breakfast Sunday morning before we took off for home. We discovered the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages during our trip. This was a thriving beach community from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, and subsequently fell into disrepair. It has been turned into a historic district and is slowly being restored as rental cottages. The restaurant on the property, the Beachcomber, is just a hoot. I want their martini flag for our dock. We didn’t get any photos, as it was drizzly that morning, but someday intend to go back there for a vacation.
On to knitting. I worked on the Laurel Hill sweater during the trip, and finished both the front and back. Now it’s on to Sleeve Island, nothing like Catalina Island, I’m sure. Maybe playing that song would make it go faster. Then again, maybe not.
I also got quite a bit done on the first of the Solar Energy socks. I wasn’t quite certain that I liked this color once I started knitting, but it’s growing on me. It’s striping in a rather interesting fashion.
It’s actually not quite that…yellow. It’s more maize and khaki, with light purple and orange in the stripey part. I’ll try to get the color better with the next, hopefully daylight, photo.
I’m also still working on a lace project, but it’s gotten to that point where it just can’t be photographed without looking like a blob. The last photo I took of the Forest Canopy shawl was way back in September. It’s bigger than that now, but too big to spread out and get a decent photo. You’ll just have to wait.
This week is a work week, so stay tuned for another post. Who knows if I’ll get any knitting, or posting, done this week. All I have to say, is that it’s cocktail hour here, with or without the martini flag.
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An addendum: One of my new favorite knitting blogs: TECHknitting; check it out!
We’re back from the Great California Train trip of 2007, and boy, do I have pictures. The trip was a blast, and I’d definitely do Amtrak again. We took the Coast Starlight from Tacoma to Los Angeles, then drove to Newport Beach, where we had a condo a little ways from the water. We flew home yesterday, and I finally sort of have my act together to post a few photos. We booked a “roomette” for the trip, which is two seats facing each other in a compartment that has a big window and a sliding door to the train corridor. At night, the two seats fold down for a single bed, and a bunk folds down from above for the second bed. We slept in this type of room the last time we were on Amtrak several years ago, and it is cramped but better than sleeping sitting up in a chair. The bathroom and shower are down the hall, and shared.
After we got on the train, we asked about upgrading to a larger compartment. Just as a tip, if you do this, you are definitely risking that there won’t be a larger room available, especially during the busier travel seasons, but they quite frequently will upgrade you for much less than you would pay by booking it directly. Fortunately, they had one “luxury” compartment available all the way to LA, and we were first to ask. These rooms still have bunk beds, but the compartment is about twice the size, and has a bathroom/shower combo that is just barely big enough to stand up in and turn around to rinse off. It works, though. Here’s the train pulling in to the Tacoma station:
The Coast Starlight route goes by the water through Tacoma, then cuts inland for awhile until you get into California. Much of the route through CA goes right by the water. Here’s a view of both the new and old Tacoma Narrows Bridges. The one on the left is the new one, in the process of being built.
Here I am, settling in to the compartment for the long trip.
Of course, Sweetpea got to go along. That’s John in the mirror of our compartment.
I did a little knitting in the observation car, along the coast.
The “first class” compartments (the cars with the sleepers) normally have a separate parlor car, which is supposedly pretty fancy, but they are all offline for renovation. We’ll just have to plan another trip, I guess. They do have wine tasting on this route, every afternoon, for the “sleeper people”. Here we are enjoying a glass.
All your meals are included when you book a sleeper. You get to share the table with another couple while you are eating, so we met some interesting people on the route. The Coast Starlight is notorious for being late, but it seems to be getting better. We were only about 90 minutes late getting into LA, but as this was strictly a pleasure jaunt, the time issue didn’t bother us.
Here’s a photo of the first sunset from the balcony of our condo.
Our first lunch was at the Crab Cooker, which is sort of an institution in Newport. Fortunately, it wasn’t very busy when we were there.
We met up with friends from Germany that just happened to be in Newport on family business. It was purely coincidence, and we only found out that they were going to be there a week before we left home. Strange, indeed. They spent one night at our condo, and we had a couple of lunches together as well. We played a killer game of Mexican Train the night they stayed with us. Here’s me concentrating.
I still lost. And don’t let that water bottle worry you. The bourbon glass just didn’t make it into the photo.
I’ll post the rest of the pictures later this week when I get them sorted out. There might also be a knitting update photo or two! How exciting!
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In even more exciting news, my friend Kris, the Knitting Wannabe, and her husband Dana have opened up an online yarn shop, Sonny and Shear.
Go, shop! I am on this crazy yarn fast, and can’t shop again until the 15th, but I’ve got my credit card number memorized and I’m ready. Buy enough yarn to keep her in business. I am overjoyed to no end to have a friend who owns a real yarn shop. I need to get a sign that says “will work for yarn”.
Well, not really more cruising, just more cruise pictures. Yes, there are more. In my last post, I left you on the coast of Africa. We sailed from there to the Canary Islands, to Lanzarote. We were just there long enough for a short tour of the island, and a camel ride. Touristy, yes, but it was worth a lot of laughs. I will admit that it was a bit like the pony rides at the carnival, but good for a few photos.
Doesn’t everybody knit socks on the back of a camel?
John made friends with the girl camel behind us. At least we think she was a girl.
We also made friends with the couple on the camel behind us, Bert and Suzie.
That photo also shows a little of the landscape of Lanzarote, which is more or less a volcanic rock pile. For the record, these animals are actually dromedaries. Check out the link for an explanation of what makes a dromedary a dromedary.
Our next stop was Funchal, on the island of Madeira. This was probably one of my favorite places on the trip, and we actually plan to go back (hopefully next year!). We took a little tour by bus up into the mountains for the day.
I even met another knitter. We didn’t share more than about three words in common (Madeira is Portuguese), but we spoke the universal language of the world, knitting.
She knits those hats on long double points, with the working yarn looped around her neck. The wool is from local sheep. We had a short stitch-n-bitch session together.
Of course, she wasn’t just standing there knitting. She was selling those hats, and I had to buy one as the price of the photos. It was worth it.
I didn’t have time to find a yarn shop in Funchal before we had to board the ship, but I know there must be one. Of course, that’s not the only reason I want to go back. They make wine there, too. Our last stop at the end of the tour was at the Old Blandy Wine Lodge, to taste some fine Madeira. Here I am with a couple of my cruise buddies, enjoying some of the local agricultural products.
Next up on the cruise: we set sail for America!
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And to prove that this is indeed a knitting blog, here are a couple photos of the finished Pippa sweater. I got the buttons sewn on this morning, and did one of those flash-in-the-mirror photos. I’ll try to get a better one when my photographer gets home. For now this will have to do.
It’s currently in the washing machine getting a much needed wash. I decided that this didn’t need blocking prior to seaming, so I didn’t wash the pieces before putting them together. Since this one got dragged all over Europe and parts of Africa, it really needed a good soak. Once it’s dry, I’ll get John to get a better modeling shot. Though I kind of like the flash over the face look. It hides the fact that I didn’t bother with makeup this morning.
The knitting photos are at the bottom of the post, for those of you that are sick of the cruise photos.
In case you hadn’t guessed, the final photo in the last post was of Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca (there are actually two, neither of them authentic). We didn’t stop there, but drove by, and got one of those lovely out-the-bus-window photos. Casablanca was something of a letdown. It’s mostly a dirty, underdeveloped mess of a city, with a few exceptions. The new mosque is huge, probably one of the largest in the world (third-largest, actually, I just checked). We weren’t allowed to go in, but the next couple of photos give you an idea.
This out-the-bus-window photo gives you an idea of the contrasts in Morocco. It’s definitely a Muslim country, but one of the most liberal and diverse. There is extreme poverty, and later on we saw some of the poshest seaside resorts you can imagine. The three women on the street under that billboard made me giggle, for some reason.
We took a bus tour to Rabat, which took us through part of the Morocco countryside. I saw lots of sheep and goats, but no yarn shops. This handsome guy standing guard outside one of the local sights let us get photos, for a fee of course. I’d have handed him my sock for a photo, but I think he would have charged extra for that.
This one proves that we were in Morocco together. The royal palace is in the background.
The Hassan tower:
The next two photos are at the Mohammed V mausoleum.
And another whizzing-by-in-the-bus photo. The billboards here just cracked me up.
The next day we were in port at Agadir, a bit south of Casablanca. Agadir was destroyed by a tsunami in 1960, and has been completely rebuilt. It has very little local character, and mostly looks like a seaside playground for wealthy tourists. We took a little side tour to a smaller village, Taroudant, with a more traditional flavor, and got to see goats in trees on the way.
No yarn shops there, either.
On the way to the market we got to watch of couple of fine fellows playing and dancing. The guy in the red hat is our tour guide, Ahmed. You’ll see more of him later.
The market was fascinating. You can buy almost anything here, and bargaining is the order of the day. Taroudant is called “Little Marrakesh”; lots of shopping, less hectic than Marrakesh, which was too far to travel on a day-trip from the boat.
Here’s the seaside part of the bus drive.
When we got off our bus back “home” at our ship, I handed my sock to Ahmed for a photo. He reached up and took John’s hat, and put his on John’s head. Then he proceeded to put on a great show of knitting, wrapping the yarn around and around the needles. I was a bit worried about that sock and its survival, but figured the photo would be worth it. This is one of the few times that I wished I had a video feature on my camera.
And another sunset for all you sunset-lovers out there.
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Finally, the knitting part. There has been no button-sewing going on around here. I just want to knit warm wool sweaters, and have them done now. It has been just freaking cold here, with this stuff on the ground.
You’d think that I’d be able to handle a bit of snow and cold, given that I’m from one of those deep-freeze prairie states originally. Yesterday I had to put on two pairs of heavy wool socks just to get warm.
I grabbed an orphan ball of Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran out of the stash and started a hat. Yes, that’s homemade bread. Sometimes I’m so domestic that I can’t stand it.
After a few inches, I decided it wasn’t warm enough, so I ripped it out and started over, adding more yarn. I am knitting it together with a strand of King Cole mohair from a past project. This will fit an adult with a small head, or better yet, a cold kid someplace. I have three more skeins of that mohair stuff in the stash, so I’m going to see what else I have in the orphan ball stash to combine it with.
Last but not least, is the Jo Sharp sweater that’s been in time-out for months. This is the back. Or the front. It’s a boxy sweater with no shaping, so it doesn’t matter, as long as I remember to knit two of them.
Miss Pearl would like to thank everyone who voted for her in the 2006 Midterm Button Elections. It wasn’t even a close race, and she graciously concedes to the jubilant winner, Ms. Rosie, who never quite got around to getting a good campaign photo taken.
The Roses will be stitched on very soon, and the Inaugural Ball will be photographed shortly thereafter. Miss Pearl promises to run for reelection in the near future.
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And now, what you really came for, more travelogue photos. After Barcelona, we had a short (half-day) stop in Valencia. I was feeling the severe effects of jetlag, and didn’t even bother to get off the ship that day. After another night at sea, we arrived in Malaga, on the southern coast of Spain. Although we had been to Granada, and the Alhambra, on our last Spain trip, we couldn’t pass up a bus tour that was offered by the cruise line. Here are just a couple of photos. The Alhambra, a 13th-14th century fortress and palace built by the Moorish rulers of Spain, is just exquisite, and well-worth a second trip.
The long bus ride home provided ample opportunity for sock knitting.
More on those socks in a future post. I promised a bear tale a few posts ago. Sweetpea is a rather unadventurous bear, at least up until now. Generally, she’s been satisfied to hang out in hotel rooms and ship cabins. Occasionally we get a room/cabin attendant with a sense of humor, and we find her perched in different places in our room when we get “home” at the end of the day. But that’s about as much fun as she usually has.
Until now. One day on the cruise we came back to our cabin after being out and around the ship, and found our room all cleaned up, as usual. Don’t ask me how, but the cabin attendants unerringly know when you’ve left the room, and whiz right in to tidy up and make the bed. This particular day I was rummaging around to find my knitting, and noticed that Sweetpea was gone. She was nowhere to be found. I rather frantically called the number listed on the card that our attendant had left. I found that she was on a break, and I had reached room service. They listened quite patiently to my rather lunatic-sounding story of the missing teddy bear, and I could almost hear the eye-rolling and snickering in the background, though the man on the phone was well-trained enough to not laugh out loud. He said he would look into it.
Not five minutes later there was a knock on the door. A young woman had rescued Sweetpea from the laundry, where she had apparently arrived wrapped up in our sheets. She was very happy to be home, and did not even think about having any more adventures for the entire rest of the trip.
This handy landmark stands right at the harbor in Barcelona. Good old Chris pointed the way back to our ship so we didn’t get lost while wandering the city. Unfortunately, the main problem with cruises is that you don’t get to spend much time in any one city. Of all the stops on the trip, Barcelona was one of the places that I would love to revisit.
While wandering the warren of city streets, we found these cool guys.
We did the required ramble down the main pedestrian walkway, La Rambla. This is not for the claustrophobic, or for those paranoid about pickpockets.
The next day (we spent the night in harbor on the ship), we went back into the city for a cooking class. There were a dozen of us that learned how to make gazpacho, potato tortilla, and paella, as well as a custard dessert. Here’s John showing off in the kitchen.
And the finished paella. If it seems like none of us look very excited in this photo, we’d already eaten two courses, and had several glasses of wine.
Back on the ship, I’d been on vacation long enough to have to wash socks. Fortunately, there was a clothesline in our bathroom.
And sunset as we sailed back out into the Mediterranean.
On to knitting content. The buttons came! And the neckband is finished!
Closer….
Finally, you can actually see them.
Here’s where you all can help. Vote on which ones you like better. I’m partial to the middle one, though those sharp little edges aren’t going to work very well with the buttonholes I made. So which is it, the pearl ones, or the gold roses?
Edited later: I removed the poll, as it was screwing with my blog colors. If you’re reading this after the fact, the antique rose buttons won, by a landslide.
I promised these photos a few at a time. We spent a couple of nights in Nice, which has a lovely old-town with a multitude of little shops and sidewalk restaurants. Of course we had to try out some of those little restaurants.
And we enjoyed the beach.
More eating.
Here’s our ship from a nice Nice vantage point. It’s the one on the left.
After wandering around Nice some more, it was time to get on board.
Sweetpea settled right in for a nap. Must have been the glass of champagne we were handed when we stepped off the gangplank.
Actually I’ve been back for a week from our cruise. Life sort of got in the way of posting, not an unusual occurrence around here. I’ve decided to declare a blanket blog amnesty around here. I revved up the computer on our return, to find that you all left me about 900 posts to read on Bloglines. I finally gave up even trying to catch up today, and hit the “mark all read” button this morning. It didn’t help that we got home late Monday night and I had to be at work at 7 AM the next morning. Then I got sick with some deadly variant of a stomach virus that I believe was the “cruise ship” bug*. I ended up taking three days off last week, and only went back to work under some protest. I’m mostly recovered at present, and off work for the holiday week (hooray!), so time to dig out the knitting, take some pictures, and sort through the trip photos.
Our trip was wonderful, and we have hundreds of photos to prove it. We flew to Nice, France, where we spent a couple of days before boarding the cruise ship, where we lived for the next sixteen days. We wandered around Nice on our last day there, and came upon this shop.
If you can’t tell, that’s a yarn shop. And an Anny Blatt yarn shop, not just any ordinary yarn shop. Really, I didn’t plan that, though my husband remains suspicious. Of course we went in.
That would be a yarn purchase on the counter. I only bought a few little skeins of yarn, but only because luggage space was a bit tight. This will probably be a pretty scarf someday.
Later on, as we wandered the same street, we happened upon the Nice version of La Drogerie. Two yarn shops on one street! Did I mention that I love Nice? I didn’t buy anything there, though John managed to shoot this photo before a stern clerk came over and wagged her finger at him. Apparently they haven’t figured out the power of free advertising via knitting blogs, and don’t allow photos.
I do have several photos that proved that I got some knitting done on vacation, but I’m going to dole them out a little at a time. Otherwise the excitement might be too much for some of you. Here’s one.
That’s in the airport lounge, waiting for our flight. Note that Sweetpea got to go on the trip. Doesn’t she look happy holding my yarn ball for me? Sweetpea had a few adventures of her own on the trip that I’ll tell you about in a later post.
Jump ahead to our return home. I have finished all the major knitting on that orange Pippa sweater, and have it all sewn together. I am just a couple rows from finishing the neck band, but I’m planning on ripping that and reknitting it, as I don’t like the way it looks, but it won’t take long for that. I have buttons on the way via online ordering. Please don’t tell me that it would be far easier, and faster, to go to the local fabric/sewing store and buy buttons. That would ruin my satisfaction at finding the perfect set of buttons online (okay, three sets of buttons, I couldn’t decide). I’ll show them to you when they get here. Here’s a bad picture of the sweater. It’s way more coppery and less like a ripe tomato than this. This one needs daylight, I think, to get the color right. That means you’ll have to wait until May, since I live in western Washington.
Last but not least, I was the first one up this morning, and got a couple photos of my housemates.
Yes, that’s where Lucy usually sleeps, generally plastered up against me as close as she can get. And yes, she likes hiding under the covers.
Riley got in bed with the other two after I got up, and didn’t get out again until about 10 AM.
I’m off to rip that neckband out. Hopefully there will be a finished sweater soon, with or without buttons. There might even be a button election, if I can’t make a decision.
* This wasn’t our ship, we were on the Regent Seven Seas Navigator, but I swear this is the same bug that I had.
First, the Ugly. As the ticker shows, the Volkswagon went in reverse this week. I got all rebellious on the point-tracking system this week. “Points?? I don’t need to count no stinking points!” And it showed on the scale. I think part of the gain was a major hormonal fluid-shift-salt-binge attack. All I can say is that it’s just not fair to have hot flashes and PMS at the same time. The Good news is that I went to that meeting even knowing I’d probably gained, sat through the meeting, and came away knowing what I need to do to fix it. We’ll see what happens next week.
The Good? We’re at a bluegrass festival this weekend. The same folks that do Wintergrass do a summer festival in Stevenson, WA, called Adventure Bluegrass. Stevenson is located on the southern border of Washington, on the Columbia Gorge. If you want to know what heaven looks like, drive along the Gorge from I-5 east. The river is spectacular, the mountains are lovely, and it is a perfect setting for a weekend of fine bluegrass, including my favorite bluegrass band, the US Navy Band, Country Current. We arrived yesterday, and the first evening of bluegrass was as fine as it gets. Early in the evening it was sunny and warm, then it got cool as the sun went down. Cool enough, in fact, for me to wear Rogue. Yes, an Aran weight wool cabled sweater with a hood. In late July. That’s the beauty of the weather here; it can be shorts-and-sandals hot during the day, and wool-sweater cold at night.
Our cabin is right on the Gorge, and here is my Saturday Sky:
One really Good thing about bluegrass festivals is all the free knitting time. I finished the first STR Rainforest Jasper sock last night, and started the second.
I only saw one other knitter last night, though she wasn’t actually knitting. She had a t-shirt on that said “Knitters Have Balls”. Let me tell you, I was tempted to hit her upside the head with my knitting bag when I ran into her by herself in the bathroom, just so I could steal that shirt. She better not show up anywhere unaccompanied today.
The Bad? A big old Douglas fir had to be taken out of our back yard this past week. I’ll post some pictures later when I’ve had a chance to sort through the ten thousand photos we took to document its demise, but I’ll leave you with a couple of Good pictures. Doug and Zeb are our new “foresters”, and they were in my backyard all day, which is not necessarily a Bad thing.
I cast on for the second sock late last night, so I’m ready for the Yankee’s game today, assuming it quits raining. And yes, I was the only person knitting in the line waiting for a table at the Carnegie Deli.
And yes, Sweet Pea is enjoying NYC very much, thank you.
We’re off again on another jaunt! No pictures this time, as I left the camera at home, but I figured that I was way overdue for a post.
This was a spur-of-the-moment trip, planned around Tom Jones tickets. That’s right, Tom Jones. He’s performing at the MGM for the next few weeks, and I figured that he’s just going to get older and fatter from here on out, so I better go to see him soon. We have tickets for tonight, and flew down for a few days of total decadence. Last night we went to see “Avenue Q”, which was hilarious. We are going to Cirque du Soleil “O” tomorrow night, then home on Thursday. Four days in Las Vegas is about all I can stand. I’ve already lost the requisite twenty bucks in the slots, which is about all I have patience for.
Once I finish this post, we’re off to In-N-Out Burger for lunch, which is a reason to come to Las Vegas all by itself. This used to be a great town to eat cheaply in, not anymore. A plain Americano at the MGM Starbucks was almost 5 bucks this morning. The flip side is that there are some marvelous restaurants here. We ate at an Italian seafood place at the new Wynn resort last night, Bartolotta. “Yum” is all I have to say. They specialize in great fish flown in daily, presented whole to your tableside, then oven roasted and served with a wonderful garlic-parsley pesto. We started with a warm seafood salad for an antipasto, then a vegetable risotto for our first course, followed by an impeccably fresh sea bream served with roasted peppers, zucchini, and roasted fingerling potatoes. I want to go back tonight, but we have reservations at Nob Hill at the MGM so we can make it to TJ on time!
In knitting news, I am just a few rows away from completing that blue cashmere lace scarf. I nearly finished it on the plane, and will probably get it done later today. Then it will be blocked once I get home, and mailed off to the lucky recipient (not named here, as she may occasionally check out the blog!). No pictures until I get home though!
Finally, the last of the Spain travelogue photos. There were lots of them, but I’m getting tired of putting them up, so here are all the rest of them, in one big post. The knitting content is at the end of this post, so if you’re getting tired of them too, just scroll on down.
Your fearless Spain adventurers left you on the road to Arcos the last time. We stopped along the way at one of the little white hill towns, Grazilema. We took the very scenic route off the main road to Grazilema, with miles of twisty, hairpin-turning roads.
I didn’t get much knitting done on this leg of the trip, as I wasn’t about to pry my hands off the dashboard to take up the sock. I did get one shot of the sock over the valley, though.
And here a a couple of pictures of the town of Grazilema. This was the cutest little town; I’d go back here for a longer stay next time.
After a lovely lunch, we continued on to Arcos. We stayed in one of my favorite hotels of the trip while there, La Casa Grande. If you have a few minutes, go to their website and check out the photos; they are better than mine. The house is almost 300 years old, and very charming. We had one of the rooftop rooms, next to the terrace with a spectacular view. The only drawback to the place is that it is on a tiny street too narrow for a car or taxi, so we parked and walked, lugging our luggage the last few blocks.
Arcos is only a short drive to Jerez, so we drove there the following day for a little horse-watching and sherry-tasting. Unfortunately, Jerez is one of the worst places in the entire world that I’ve ever navigated. There are absolutely no street signs, so a map is next to useless. We got hopelessly lost, though finally found our way after stopping several times and getting help from mostly non-English speaking locals. They couldn’t read the map, either, so I didn’t feel so bad. We missed the horse show at the Equestrian center, but made it to the Gonzales-Byass (the Tio Pepe people) sherry bodega with plenty of time to spare for our tour there.
That last photo is part of a display of some of their original bottles and barrels. The new ones weren’t quite that dusty.
After the tour, we got to have a little tasting and eating, our favorite part.
That tapas platter (and the bottle of sherry) was just for the two of us. They don’t believe in letting you go home hungry in Jerez. Probably this is because they know you will get lost and spend hours wandering around Jerez trying to get out.
We were back in Arcos for another night:
Those two photos really give you an idea of how narrow those streets are. And here is our private terrace:
After Arcos, we headed for Sevilla, another one of my favorite places in Spain. We had a walking tour of the old part of the city our first day, including a tour of the Cathedral, one of the largest in Europe. It’s hard to take a photo of it, as it is so huge. I didn’t get many good interior shots because of the vastness of the space.
We also toured another Moorish palace/fortress, the Alcazar. Here are a few photos:
And a fine example of rococo excess:
This is one of my favorite photos of the trip. It was in a cave-like lower room, with a ground level pool. The arched ceiling reflects in the pool below.
And a couple more Sevilla street shots:
We stayed at the Convento La Gloria Hotel in Sevilla, another one of my favorite sleeping-places on the trip. As the name suggests, it is an old convent that has been converted to a hotel. The rooms were small, but the service was wonderful, and the family run restaurant downstairs was fabulous. There were dozens of paintings on the walls of the hotel, but this is the photo I found the most amusing. This is the fire-extinguisher box outside our room.
I believe that was a commentary on the narrow streets of Sevilla. If there were to be a fire, there is just no way a fire truck would get here, so you might as well pray.
There was a little sitting area outside our room. I took advantage of it for a quiet knitting space.
We ate at the hotel restaurant our last night in Sevilla. I think they must have heard about us.
Sevilla was home to many more Don Quixote statues. Here are a few.
There were several more in the train station:
While we waited for our train back to Madrid, I did the usual:
We took the fast (Ave) train from Sevilla back to Madrid:
After our arrival in Madrid, we checked back into our original hotel for one more night before our flight home. We did a whirlwind tour of the Museo Del Prado and the Thyssen Museum. Without a doubt, my favorite museum of all time is the Thyssen. It would be worth a trip back to Madrid just to get a longer visit there.
Here is Sweetpea after a long journey. Sweetpea loved Spain, too.
And last but not least, the last photo of the trip, from the plane over the coast:
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Knitting Content
The Jo Sharp sweater is still in time-out. I’ll get back to it later this week, as I’ve decided that I don’t hate the details of the pattern as much as I love the look of the finished sweater. I’ve gotten caught up in two-colored knitting this week. First is the latest sock pattern that I started.
The pattern is from Sensational Knitted Socks, by Charlene Schurch. This is a great book, for all you sock-knitters out there.
The other one is a Bea Ellis hat pattern, using two-color Norwegian style knitting.
The pattern is rather ingenious. Because it is relatively itchy wool, the first two inches or so of the hat are knit in a soft sport-weight cotton. Then you change to the wool, purl a turning row, and start the hat pattern. When you’re done, you turn up the cotton lining and hem it, so you have the soft cotton over your delicate little ears. I am a right handed thrower, so I’m learning how to knit continental style, so I can have one color in each hand and not have to stop and change yarns every couple of stitches. I’ve learned that I actually do continental much faster than the way I’ve always knit, though I’ve not been able to master purling and picking at the same time.
I’m also still working on that blue lace scarf. I hope to finish that one soon, so I can get some wear out of it this winter!
This time we’re off to Granada, city of the Alhambra. This stronghold of the Moors was the last city in Spain to fall to the Christians in 1492. You simply can’t go to Spain, or at least certainly not to Andalucia, and not see this place.
We stayed at the Parador here, which is one of the state-run hotels. The Granada Parador is built in a 15th-century convent, and sits right in the middle of the Alhambra itself. It was the only Parador we stayed in on our trip, and though expensive, was well worth the money. Here I am knitting on the terrace in the afternoon.
The day after we arrived, we had a guided tour of the Alhambra. Again, the pictures just don’t begin to show what this place is like. Here are a few though:
Simply splendid. As a sidenote, listening to a recording of Julian Bream playing “Recuerdos de la Alhambra”, while hanging out in your Parador room inside the Alhambra, is one of the highlights of the trip for me. What can I say, I’m easily amused.
We also spent an afternoon wandering through the Albaicin, the oldest section of Granada, which dates as far back as the 11th century. This is a labyrinth of tiny streets that is a hoot to get lost in. We hung out at a Plaza overlooking the city for sunset. Here are a few of the natives, doing what they do.
This is a knitting blog, after all. The woman with the yarn was selling the paintings in the foreground, and while she was waiting she knitted. The guys were part of an impromptu street concert. Here’s the sunset we waited for.
First, the knitting content. I’ve finished all the pieces to the Not-Really-An-Everyday Cardigan. There was a little sleeve mishap in the process. I finished the body pieces before we went to Spain, but didn’t take it along to work on, as it was a little bulky for the carry-on bag. After I got home and recovered from my jet lag, I pulled out the sleeve that I had started, and went back to work. I was about a third done with the sleeve, and decided to go ahead and block the body pieces and the first sleeve that I was certain that I had finished, so they would be dry and ready to start seaming when I finished that last sleeve.
The only problem was that I couldn’t find the first sleeve. I was quite certain that I had done it before we left for the trip; so certain that I tore up the house looking for it, and even considered the possibility of a sleeve thief in the neighborhood. After digging around for days and losing sleep over where it might be, I reviewed previous blog posts, counted up the balls of yarn remaining, and determined that I indeed had not ever knit the first sleeve. I do occasionally dream about knitting (OK, I frequently dream about knitting), but I’ve never actually hallucinated finishing a whole garment piece that I have in fact never started.
After some judicious swearing, I have now finished both sleeves, and it’s all blocked, ready for the sewing party, then the neck and band finishing. Here are the pictures:
Now for the Spain pictures. Today, we travel to Gibraltor. We drove from Marbella along the coast to get there, but then parked our car on the Spain side and walked across the border, thereby avoiding the hour-long line of cars trying to get over. Here’s the Rock from the Spanish side:
And walking in:
We took a guided driving tour of the city, which took us to all the major sites. It’s not that difficult to walk the whole area, but as we only had a few hours, we opted for the more expeditious way to see everything. Part of the Rock is a nature preserve, and is home to the famous “Barbery apes”, which are anything but wild at this point. Here’s one fine example:
And a few more:
A word of warning to any other Barbery ape visitors: these monkeys are little thieves (maybe that’s where that sleeve went). That cute little fellow on my shoulder snatched my reading glasses off my bag on his way down and scampered off with them. Our guide had to bribe him with a whole bag of cheetos to get them back.
This photo is a reminder of what Gibraltor meant to the British in past years:
They wouldn’t let John fire the cannon, for some reason.
We toured the Siege Tunnels that were built by the British. Here are a couple of photos from inside the Rock:
Yes, the road in and out of town goes right across the runway.
That would be the shadow of the Rock, from inside the Rock.
After a busy day of touring, we stopped at a pub in town for some very British pub food and a pint to tide us over.
Ahhhhh. And no, I was not the designated driver.
Here’s another view of that runway, from ground level as we were leaving.
I hope they don’t make any unscheduled landings here.
Back in our condo, here is John reading up on the history of Spain, with a visiting feral cat that seemed to like our hospitality. Note: if you happen to be the owner of this condo, move along. There’s nothing for you to see here. We certainly weren’t the ones who let that cat in.
That’s enough of the travelogue for today. I swear, I’ll finish these soon! I’ll leave you with a puppy photo from earlier today. Riley likes to sleep in on cold mornings. Actually she likes to sleep in every morning; she’s not much of a morning puppy.
