How about a little of both sewing and knitting today? Not that I knit anything but I still have lots of knitterly pictures to share from Shetland. I kind of feel like that person that you go to visit and they pull out all their vacation photos and make you sit there looking at them for hours. At least here you can just scroll by if you want to and I’d never know it. 🙂
Back to Shetland….What we thought was wool all stuck to the grass was actually a common plant in Scotland called “Cotton Grass”. We didn’t realize it wasn’t wool until we saw a bookmark with a photo of it. I took the picture above with full intentions of posting all about the wool everywhere:
There actually was quite a bit of wool all over. There was quite a bit of something else the sheep left everywhere that Daniel had a very hard time not gagging over. lol Sheep poop everywhere was not easy on him. Nothing like ruining a perfectly beautiful photo by talking about poop, huh? You’re welcome.
Vest outside of the “Croft House” at the Isleburgh Exhibit:
Sheep on Fair Isle near the Bird Observatory:
Everyone is friendly in Shetland. Shetland Pony saying howdy near Eshaness.
Hap shawls at the Crofthouse Museum:
I did more sewing last night and today. Joseph’s kindergarten teacher moved away while he was in 1st grade and had a baby last year. I promised a quilt. You know my motto: Better late than never. Perfect timing for the first birthday actually! I finally finished it today. Yeah! The kit came from one of my favorite quilting sources who happens to be in cahoots with one of my favorite knitting sources. You guessed it… Connecting Threads and Knit Picks. See… my knitting sort of lead to my quilting. That counts for something doesn’t it? The kit was called Daisies, Ducks and Dogs.Â
How long do you think I can milk these photos for? lol
Obviously, the highlight of our Shetland trip was our visit to Fair Isle. I knew the plane would be small, but holy cow! Where’s it’s mother? When you have to flip the seat up, like getting into the back of a car… well…. I’m just sayin’… it was small.
I could reach out and tap the pilot, John (who was very friendly… very young, but friendly), on the shoulder… and I was in the 2nd seat. I was just glad Joe didn’t keep asking, “Are we there yet?” like he usually does. It would have caused John great angst and we couldn’t have that. To tell you the truth, we didn’t talk much because you couldn’t hear over the engine anyway. For the first time in my life I was nervous in a plane. I love to fly. In real planes.
I forgot all about it the second we landed though. As I was getting off the plane a woman approached me, “Jean?” I assumed it was Florrie, the woman we were renting a car from (the island is small and walk-able but with two kids and unpredictable weather we wanted to be sure to see the whole island and have shelter from rain). Nope. It was a Kathy Coull whom I’d met online through the group that I went to Mull with a couple of years ago. I hadn’t emailed with her in months. She handed me a map of the island (don’t laugh – it actually came in handy for the two roads) and invited us to lunch! She’d spoken with Liz Lovick (one of the Mull group) in Orkney the day before and Liz had reminded her that we were coming in. I was very pleasantly surprised. She put out a very nice spread of breads, cheeses and tomato soup which was perfect for a misty, windy day. If you get the chance to go to Fair Isle, she does run the only B&B on the island so if you google her name and Fair Isle you can contact her. She’d just moved into the house she’s in now from another one on the island. There were a couple of nice young men staying at her B&B who had lunch with us. They were doing research on the social aspects of living in such a small community. I’d love to read the paper when it’s finished. The boys fell in love with Kathy’s dog. Another picture I forgot to take. I need to send her a thank you gift for her kindness.
I love this little photo from the war. It’s was meant to show how the soldiers built relationships with the islanders. Sappy, but cute. For such a tiny place, it actually saw a bit of action. The South Lighthouse was actually bombed a couple of times in WWII. You can read about it here.
What I can’t seem to get my head around is that this teensy little speck in the sea is known the world over for it’s knitting of all things. It’s incredible. They have a little museum that was open during the afternoon we were there. If you click on the thumbnail of the knitting display, you’ll get a bigger view.
If you look up in the right-hand corner of the museum photo and squint really hard, you can see a long knitted sampler. I’m a dork. I forgot to take a picture of it. I didn’t even get it in the video. But you can stop squinting. I tried cropping down to it from the museum picture for you:
You can also see part of a sign off of one of the older Good Shepherds. That’s the boat that brings mail and supplies to the island from Shetland. We thought about going this way instead of the plane but we heard it’s a very rough ride and it’s longer. We didn’t have the time this trip. I’d like to try it next time though and actually stay on Fair Isle for at least a week.
Here are more croppings from that museum photo:
I forgot one of the sheep pictures in the last post. We always try to hit Science Centers in cities we visit because the boys love them. This special sheep was at the Science Center in Aberdeen. You push a button and watch as the sheep eats some hay and then it either poops or pees. Sometimes you get lucky and it does both! 🙂 You could hear people yell, “Jackpot!” when that happened. Okay. I’m lying. Would have been funny though.
Some of you may read tea leaves or tarot cards but in our house we read milk spills. Okay… that’d be ridiculous but…. one morning a few months ago I poured the boys’ cereal. When I was putting the milk back in the fridge Joseph got all excited saying we had our own lamb. ???? I turned around and saw what he was talking about. Turns out that I spill milk in shapes. You be the judge:
In keeping with the theme here are some of the gazillion many sheep pics I took in in Shetland:
This shot was taken on Fair Isle. That’s one of the two little churches. They are really close to each other and apparently the islanders use both.
I watched a dog for some friends at church this past weekend. Her name is Charley, she’s old, very sweet but she does not like Aggie very much. Charley doesn’t get that the young whipper snapper just wants to play… really bad. And Aggie doesn’t get why the old woman snaps at her whenever she tries to get to know her better. I think they finally came to an agreement though because I found them somewhat close together for the first time in three days:
Aggie has that innocent “What?” look on her face and Charley just wishes she’d go away.
The Tooth Fairy visited our house Sunday night. We took this picture for Dan because the tooth was quite the topic most of the time he was home for R&R.
At bedtime it went something like this:
Joe: Mom… do you put the money under my pillow?
Me: WHAT?! Who told you *that*? I wouldn’t say that too loud, you’ll offend the Tooth Fairy.
Joe: Okay. I was just asking.
Santa, Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny all exist in our house until the day I’m pushin’ up daisies. If you don’t believe, you don’t receive. Daniel’s known for quite a while but he won’t admit it. Not to me anyway. I think he thinks I actually believe or he’s just smart enough to not want to ruin my fun. I’m pretty sure he’s had a talk with Joe, “Mom still believes in them so don’t tell her”.
So the Tooth Fairy must have heard Joe because she left him a note telling him how great the tooth looked and how if he brushed really well, he’d get more money because the better the teeth look, the more she pays. Yeesh. She never left me a note. Joe is one lucky kid. He’s also easily bought off so I’m hoping the promise of extra cash will get him to brush better.
One of my favorite things from both of our trips to Shetland was the Jamieson’s Spinning Mill in Sandness on the West side of the main island. You can just walk around and watch the tons and tons of wool become yarn,
sweaters:
and woven fabric:
I love how cleverly they can weave several different color ways on one warp. This is only three of the several color ways of scarves that were on this particular loom. They just slightly felt the fabric and then cut along the yellow lines in strips and then cut the strips into scarves. Amazing how the weft works through all the warp colors. They had bolts of warps ready to go onto the looms. I was sad that the weaver(s) weren’t there when we visited. I did get to watch the women doing the joining on the knitwear though. Very cool.
The staff are very kind and don’t seem to mind visitors. Even small, curious boys who make the knitting machines stop by accident. :-O
When we went there in ’97 Daniel was only three but he loved it and cried when it was time to go. On this visit we gave the boys their choice of where to go on the last day. Even though we’d spent about three hours at the mill the day before, that’s where they chose to go back to. The staff greeted us with smiles and ran the boys around showing them different things that we’d missed… somehow… the day before.
Well, tonight’s the big night. First school night of the year. Good thing next weekend is already a long one. I think we’ll need it. Both boys are really excited. I’m actually not ready yet. The last month has been a blur so it kind of snuck up on me.
We made it through the halfway point of the deployment! The rough patch is behind us and everything is looking up now. The boys and I took Dan back to the airport on Wednesday morning for his flight back to Afghanistan. There were lots of tears but we’re back to “normal” deployment routine and ready for the next five months or so to fly by. This picture was taken last week on Fair Isle. One of the local dogs greeted us as we walked North from the South Lighthouse.
School starts on Monday. Joe starts soccer practice the same day and Daniel starts Tae Kwon Do in a month. It’ll start looking like Fall in a couple of weeks, the Holidays will soon be upon us and before you know it, Dan will be home again.
The new Agent taking Dan’s place here at the office has finally arrived. He and Dan were in Warrant Officer school together and have been good friends since. I met his wife at their graduation but didn’t really remember her. She’s terrific. So are their three boys who are all around Daniel and Joe’s ages. Their oldest and Daniel will be in class together. Yes, things are definitely looking up. I’m in much better spirits than I was a few months ago when I had the wind knocked out of me and my self confidence took a nose dive. Dan sat me down when he got home and made me remember who I am. He tried over the phone but it was a lot different and much more convincing with his arms around me. No wonder I like that guy. 😉
Dan came home five days after the family left. He was a day late because he got held up in Kuwait but they extended his leave by a day so that was okay. He was home for a few days before we left for Shetland.  What a great trip that was. I’ll share pictures bit by bit. I took about 300 of them so it’s going to be tough choosing. Fair Isle was magical. We just flew in for the day on an itty bitty eight-seater plane. You could see the whole island as we approached the tiny little runway. I’ll fill you in on everything as I share the pictures. Here are a few to keep you in suspense for a couple of days:
The boys and I on Fair Isle
Fair Isle as we flew in. The big white spot on the tip closest to us is the North Lighthouse
Here you can see the houses on the southern part of the island, the South Lighthouse and the big rock in the foreground is Sheep Rock
I have to say this was my favorite trip to London. The hotel was perfect (Premiere Inn). Budget (for London), in a quiet neighborhood (Southwark – near London Bridge Station) and CLEAN! Breakfast was terrific in the attached pub. Across the street was a great restaurant called Nando’s. Terrific, filling chicken meals for about $50 for the four of us. That includes the pints of African cider Dan and I had. Nummy. The hotel is right on the river. The first night we got in and threw our bags down so we could go find something to eat. We saw Nando’s but thought it looked expensive so kept going. The first thing we saw on the river was Tower Bridge. Beautiful all lit up at night. We also saw the dome of St. Paul’s.
As you know we were going to see The Lion King. I’m telling you. Where ever you are…. GO SEE IT!!! I bawled during the opening it was so beautiful. We had an aisle seat in row L, so they were great seats. During the opening song an elephant (huge puppet with people inside) brushed right past Joseph. All of our mouths were just hanging open. Dan turned to me after the opening and said, “We could leave right now and I’d be satisfied”! Seriously, it was that good.
The next day we went to see if we could get tickets to see Stomp but it didn’t run on Monday nights. We went to see Mary Poppins instead. It was Supercali… well, you know. While Lion King was more about the special effects, Mary Poppins was more about the singing and dancing (they had a few special effect tricks up their sleeves too). Because we didn’t buy the tickets until that day we ended up in the first balcony, 2nd row. Wouldn’t have been bad if Bouffant Hair Lady in front of me would have stayed sitting back in her seat instead of leaning forward. I didn’t want to get in the way of those behind me and there were side balcony seats open. At intermission I asked if we could move into one of them. They let us so we had an unobstructed view for the 2nd half. At the end Mary Poppins flies across the stage and then comes out over the audience. I wish you could have seen the boys’ faces (probably ours too) as she came straight for us. She went up just as she got to our balcony. We could have reached out and touched her foot.
Before we went to find the tickets on Monday we went to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards. The boys didn’t get to see it last time we went and Daniel doesn’t remember when he went the first time. I hope that’s the last time we have to do that one! lol. The crowds were bad enough in January. I can only imagine what it’s like in the Summer.
It was a fantastic trip.
I’ll give you a sneak preview of the baby sweater:
I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. It never ceases to amaze me how the blogging world can be so very supportive. I’d like to collectively thank everyone for your support, prayers and well wishes about Bailey. She was a very sweet and loving dog and she’ll be missed. Aggie still looks for her and they only had about six full weeks together.
Because it was drawn out over several days we were prepared for it. In fact, since about the second day I just wanted her out of her misery. She was obviously suffering and I couldn’t take it. So to see her peaceful face in the end was actually a relief. Hard to accept we’ll never see her again but it’s part of having pets as part of the family. It’s a good thing we already have Aggie or I think it’d be a very long time before we got another dog. It’s just too hard to say goodbye but a relief that she isn’t suffering any more.
Onward…
As you all know, we went to Italy over Christmas. It was a bus trip through the Army MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation). We got on the bus in the evening and arrived in Pisa the next morning. You can imagine how pretty we all looked. Note that you don’t see me in the photo.
We were only there for about two hours (not much to see in Pisa) and then headed further south to Florence. Beautiful city. We saw the church of Santa Croce where Galileo and Michelangelo are buried. We saw the statues of David and Neptune and pet the lucky pig in front of the market place.
The tired travelers boarded the bus again that afternoon and headed for Rome. We arrived at the hotel late that night. We were one of the last families to check in and they didn’t have a room for us. That was actually a lucky break because they gave us two adjoining rooms so we now had two showers to help out with the rush in the morning.
The main reason we went on this trip was to go to Midnight Mass at the Vatican. We’d always planned to do it our last Christmas so the boys would be older and hopefully remember. Obviously, Dan won’t be here next Christmas so we did it this year.
After visiting the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum our guide informed us that they didn’t have the tickets to Midnight Mass that they’d promised and because it’s the Pope’s first Christmas, they’d been gone since early December. Decision time. Most of our group decided to go anyway. They went to dinner first and then stood out in St. Peter’s Square for about six hours. It was freezing and they watched the Mass on huge screens. We decided to just go to Mass in the morning. It’s probably one of the best choices we’ve ever made. We had the best Christmas ever.
We thought Mass was at 9:30 and I was freaking out a bit because we didn’t get there until about 9:00. Our guide and a couple of people that go to church with us here went with us. We were in jeans and travel gear because we fully expected to be out in the rain in the square. We walked right into St. Peter’s Basilica and it was virtually empty. We were stunned. Suddenly all the disappointments of the night before were gone. We were in the Vatican for Christmas Mass! Come to find out, we were early. Mass didn’t start until 10:30. So we waited for them to move the rope so we could sit down. We’re were right up front of the line. Actually there was no line but by the time it was 10:15, there were a few hundred people behind us.
A priest standing next to me warned me to hold onto the boys when the opened the ropes. He wasn’t kidding. Daniel was immediately squished between me and the woman in front of me. We grabbed the first seat we came to (in the back) to get out of the mob. The man handing out the leaflets in Latin ran out just as he got to our pew. He shrugged an apology and I shrugged a “that’s okay” back. He made his way down the pew and said something to us in Italian. Dan told him we were American and asked if he spoke English. He asked if we’d like to bring up the gifts! Is the Pope Catholic?!
So he tells us that we must wear our jackets (we were a little embarrassed at the way we were dressed, but we didn’t think we’d get in). When he saw my bright red coat he said that he was sorry but that was too bright. An American woman a few pews over was already ripping off her black coat and saying, “Take mine! Your boys can’t miss this!” He took us up to show us exactly what to do (we’ve done it in our own parish, but it’s a little fancier at St. Peter’s). He was worried about Joe. He joked with him not to mess up because the Pope would be watching. lol. We got to sit in the very first pew and when the choir starting singing, I started bawling. The whole service was a beautiful experience that we will never forget.
After wards we went out to the square to watch the Pope’s Blessing. Oye! The people! For as far as you could see. Tens of thousands of people. Just as we were trying to figure out how we were going to get through them we were guided to a spot corded off for those that had been in Mass. We ended up right under the balcony! This day couldn’t get any better. Why.. oh… why didn’t I bring the telephoto lens?!
Dan called his mother in Texas on our cell phone to tell her what had happened and where we were. It was hilarious because I was trying to explain to the boys how special this was and Joe said, “But can he make it stop raining?” I know. I laughed too. But it stopped raining the minute that man came out and it started pouring the minute he went back in.
What a lucky day, but it wasn’t over. We were walking by the Spanish Steps and the Kinder Chocolate (big chocolate company here in Europe) people had a Christmas tree lit up and were playing music with their little Kinderegg guy running around. Then a Santa came over and gave each of the boys a huge red bag filled with their chocolate products. It was about six pounds of chocolate each! Don’t ask me why we didn’t buy a lotto ticket that day. lol. It poured all day and the rest of our group was miserable. The four of us couldn’t be brought down from our cloud for anything. Smiles all day.
The next morning we checked out of the hotel and headed to Naples, Pompeii and the Island of Capri. We could have spent days at Pompeii. Incredible. I had no idea how large that city had been. It was very interesting to see how advanced the people were. We took the train to Sorrento so that we could catch a boat to Capri. It got dark less than half an hour after we arrived on the Island, but we were able to get a quick photo:
After all the miles we traveled, it was time to head back up through Italy to Germany. As we got closer to Venice the weather turned pretty ugly.  For the fourth time in my life I was within an hour of Venice and didn’t get to go. No worries. The guy that will be Dan’s Detachment Sgt. in Afghanistan lives in nearby Vicenza.  We’ve already made plans to visit each other while the guys are gone. We stopped instead in Innsbruck, Austria and visited their Christkindlmarkt. We found a great little cafe and had a cup of cocoa to chase away the cold before making our way back to the bus and back home.Â
So that was our Italian journey. It was a lot of time on the bus time.  You’d think I’d have gotten a lot of knitting done, but I didn’t. It was dark most of the time and I didn’t want to bother my fellow passengers with the light. I managed to finish Chick Knits Felted Bucket Hat for Ann at Elann. She collects them each December 29th (I know I’m late) for cancer patients in memory of her dear mother. I’ll share photos in the next post. I still have to felt it.
Next week is our last journey before Dan leaves.  We’re headed to London to see The Lion King (click the link and check out the video clips in the top right). The boys are so excited… okay… so are we.
How is it that it’s already January 2006? For our family it means we’re just a few weeks from Dan’s deployment. Counting the time he’ll be away for training, we have about three weeks left. I’m trying to stay positive but I gotta admit… it ain’t easy. I’ve had a couple of breakdowns. Usually when I wake up in the middle of the night and have nothing else to think about. This too shall pass. We’ve been through it before, we’ll get through it this time. It’s just not an easy thing and I’m looking forward to it about as much as someone looks forward to a root canal. In fact, I’d rather have a root canal. 😉 Pfft. I jinxed myself.
Like I said, we’re trying to remain positive and make the best of the time we have. How do we do that? By cramming 2 1/2 years worth of travel into a few weeks. We came home a few days after Christmas. Look what was waiting in the mail for me from my friend, Jessica!
Isn’t it beautiful? I wish you could feel how soft it is. Thank you so much, Jess! There was also a Texas A&M fleece blanket from my Elann pal, Bets. Thank you, Bets!! I’ve met some wonderful friends via the net.
Speaking of A&M… I haven’t shown you a picture of Aggie lately. Here she is at 15 weeks. Tell me how anyone could not love that face? I think you can tell a lot about a person, dog lover or not, who doesn’t at least smile at that. Seriously.
Please say a little prayer for Bailey. She isn’t doing very well. She’s going to the vet today. She’s been really out of it and throwing up for the past two days and today doesn’t seem to be any better. Hopefully it’s nothing a little antibiotics won’t take care of and she’ll be rolling around the floor with Aggie again soon.
Okay… I know you’re dying to hear about our trips. I’ll start with Ireland. Dublin was fun, but it was very busy with the Christmas shoppers and all. I was feeling guilty about not bringing the boys at first, but we would have lost them for sure in all the crowds. They had much more fun staying with our long-time friends than they would have had being dragged around Dublin anyway.
The hotel, The Westbury, was FANTASTIC! We felt very pampered. Everyone should treat themselves to this kind of hotel once in a while. Evening turn-down service complete with complimentary slippers, robes and Godiva chocolates… Aveda (my personal fave) products in the bathroom, beautiful warm decor and a fantastic full Irish breakfast on china and silver with waiters in uniform ready to whisk away your empty plates so you can have room for more. Pure luxury. If you get on-line you can get some great deals. We paid about the same price for this as we are going to pay to stay at a budget hotel in London! Yes… I said London. I’ll get to that later….
The highlight of the trip for Dan was the Guinness Brewery tour and the bus trip to the Wicklow Mountains. Dan’s been a long time fan of Guinness so it was great for him, but I have to admit, I enjoyed the tour also. Very interesting. My favorite part of the trip was the visit to Avoca Handweavers:
You can’t see it in the shot above, but the weaver’s sweater is beautiful. Of course I knew you’d all like to see it so I took a close up.
It’s Ireland so we saw a lot of sheep. I managed to get a few good shots. Even had some made into pretty note cards by Shutterfly. On the last day I got to meet up with my friends, Janet and Ian, from the Spinning Retreat in Scotland a couple of years ago. I wish we could have spent more time together but I’m glad we got to at least meet over coffee at Bewley’s Cafe.
If you’re ever in Dublin and want the best scones ever… just around the corner from the main tourist info in the old church… go to the Keogh’s Cafe on Trinity St (almost on the corner of Dame St). It’s right across the street from the Banker’s Pub. We went back a few times and even grabbed a couple to take on the plane ride back to Germany.
Okay… before I bore you all to death, that’s enough for today. In the next post I’ll tell you about our awesome Christmas surprise in Rome and our upcoming trip to London.
UPDATE: Dan just called from the vet. It’s Bailey’s liver. They took some blood tests but they won’t be back for about a week. They think it’s either cancer or hepititis. My poor girl. Please say a little prayer for her.
This is Joseph at about seven months old. I wish you could see the whole outfit. It’s from Debbie Bliss’s Nursery Knits. The hat is underneath was probably just a little plain vanilla in-the-round pattern (I made a lot of them for the boys when they were little) and the shawl is the beginning of the Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Stonington Shawl from Knitting Workshop.
I also keep forgetting to mention that a photo I sent in to Knitter’s over a year ago finally made it into the Fall 2005 issue (Where In The World section). It’s a group shot of everyone that went on the Mull Island Spinning Retreat in Scotland a year and a half ago. That’s where I met Nilda (Waltzing Natilda) and several other awesome knitters and spinners. You can read more about that trip back in my archives.
France: The only disappointment of the whole trip is that I didn’t get to see Mont St. Michel. Well, okay… I got to see the the silhouette of it from the auto route for about 30 seconds. I yelled, “Look boys! There it is!” By the time they looked it was gone behind the bushes and we didn’t get another glimpse. It would have cost us about another hour and a half to go see it and it was already about 6pm. We still had another couple of hours until we got to Nilda’s (Waltzing Natilda) in Brittany.
We had an interesting arrival. I’d been trying to call Nilda for about an hour or so before we arrived. Yea. Helps if you write the number down correctly. Funny what trouble being off just one little number can cause. Luckily, I knew what the place looked like where we were staying. The town takes about five min. to walk from one end to the other. Needless to say we saw our “hotel” (really, two rooms in a cottage) within a minute of our arrival in town. We were starving. Where do we choose to eat? At the Armenian drug guy’s pizza place that Nilda has talked about on her blog! lol. It was two boys and the Pizza sign that made us do it. That and it was right next to our room and had a table for us. We didn’t realize it was because no one else in town would eat there. No wonder the guy was so damn happy to see us. I have mentioned that my husband is a federal law enforcement agent, haven’t I? You’d think he’d have a nose for that stuff. Thanks, Dan. We could have been killed in the crossfire. 😉 Nilda and I had a great guffaw over it the next day.
So we knew Nilda had a dinner to attend that night. The owner of the room we were staying in gave me the correct phone number. We left a message with the babysitter that we had arrived and were in our room. After a while the long day had caught up with us so we went to bed. I’m just about off in dreamland and I think I hear, “Jean! Jean!” I open my eyes and Daniel’s face is about two inches from mine, “Mom, I think someone is calling you outside”. lol. I look out the big window and down into the road and I see a flashlight. “Nilda?” Yep. Nilda. All dolled up for her dinner engagement. She looks up and loudly whispers, “I have a key and a walkie-talkie for you!” lol. I go let her in. She comes up and meets Dan while I throw some jeans on. Daniel and I go with her up through the gate to the Chateau grounds. We get to meet her girls and make arrangements to turn the walkie talkies on at 9am to get the party started.
This is our cottage where we stayed on the top floor:
That’s Daniel looking down from one of the ramparts. Ours was the one with the green shutters. The window in the roof right above them is the one Nilda was calling through. That road used to be the moat for the Chateau. Wild, huh?
Right on the other side of the street from our door is the gate Nilda gave us the key to.
We arrived Saturday night and Sunday just happened to be the day the town had their procession of a statue of Mary. We processed through the town to a chapel at the beginning of a small wood. The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is that no matter where you go on this planet, Catholic Mass is always the same. Except for understanding the homily, you can follow right along. The setting was absolutely beautiful.
The town square. Beautiful, right? Right out of Beauty and the Beast.
And finally a little fiber-related news. Remember I told you about my little treasure? Nilda took me to one of the local Antique dealers. What did I buy?
Obviously, this tin isn’t antique but it’s pretty dang cute, ain’t it? It also makes a great container for my little treasure. Okay… okay… here it is:
Isn’t it beautiful?! The dealer says it’s about 100 years old and from that area of Brittany. I swear I did a little happy dance when he brought it out to us. Nilda had seen him at the reception after the church procession and let him know we’d be coming by. He had a beautiful old wheel also. If I could have figured out how it worked, I probably would have bought it too. Of course, it would have had to ride on top of our Jeep all the way back to Germany.
I’m perfectly content with my little spindle. She’s a tiny little thing. Only about 8 1/2″ from tip to tip. Good thing Nilda was there or I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to anchor a leader onto it. You make a half-hitch on the bottom and then on the top and spin away.
I love holding it in my hand and thinking of the women that must have used it in all the years since it was lovingly hand carved. Thank you, Nilda. I would never have gotten it without you.
And so, our journey was a quick one but we had SO much fun. I totally plan on returning next year. Hopefully Dan will be home on his R&R from Afghanistan by then so he can join us. The boys loved it there. They got along great with Nilda’s girls. We knew they would. The girls are an absolute delight and Nilda, I was only half kidding about the pre-arranged marriage idea. Think of how well dressed our grandchildren would be!! 😉 We left a couple of days early because we felt totally guilty with them trying to pack up to leave for the States. We said our farewells and headed back to Germany where we spent a couple of nights with old friends to break up the trip.
Thank you, Nilda and family (even the girls for the readings and dancing!). We had a FABulous time. Note the sweater Nilda is wearing… she designed it. Trust me. It’s stunning in person.
