Susan's Blog

showing Bette about blogs

Howdy all - I am demonstrating blogs to Bette.

XXOO

segovia la catedral

segovia la catedral
Originally uploaded by slongyah

This is a view of the Cathedral from the plaza mayor. It is "late gothic" which is interesting since it looks to me like a combination of romanesque and gothic. It is kind of squat, compared to other gothic churches, but massive and spread out. I think it looks very pleasing.

segovia la banda en la plaza mayor

segovia la banda en la plaza mayor
Originally uploaded by slongyah

We were sitting in the plaza mayor this morning, chilling, and we heard band music approaching - and a group of young people in white shirts and black pants approached playing... something I recognized but couldn't tell you what it was... later they regrouped and set up in the bandstand and gave us all a concert. They played a medley of Abba hits!

segovia vista del alcazar

segovia vista del alcazar
Originally uploaded by slongyah

This is the Alcazar in Segovia, a palace cum fortress. Apparently this castle was used as the model for the castle in Disney's Sleeping Beauty - so it looks just like we would expect a castle to look! We went through it and it has an interesting collection of medieval armor, among the beautifully decorated rooms.

segovia las dos otra vez

segovia las dos otra vez
Originally uploaded by slongyah

Donna and me at the top of the aquaduct in Segovia - it was a beautiful day today! We walked all through the Casco Viejo, seeing the Cathedral, Plaza Mayor and the Alcazar.

Detour to Segovia

segovia view of aqueduct from our hotel
Originally uploaded by slongyah

We are in Segovia. This morning we got on the train with tickets to Burgos, but when the stop came, we were not quick enough on our feet and didn't get to the exit door in time. I started looking on the web with my iPhone and we established that the next stop was Valladolid, an hour away, and we could get back to Burgos from there but we would have to wait over 3 hours for the next train back. Then Donna suggested that we just go on to Segovia since we had planned to visit there in a few days anyway. So we managed to cancel the Burgos reservations, the original Segovia reservations, and make new Segovia reservations, all on the train with my iPhone! And we jumped off the train at Segovia.

The "main" thing in Segovia is this humongous aquaduct, which is one of the oldest and best preserved (if not THE) aquaducts in the world. We had seen a roman aquaduct in Sevilla, but the remains are much smaller than this.

We had a DELICIOUS lunch at the hotel restaurant, sitting outside in the beautiful sunny but not hot weather. I had gazpacho and a langostino salad, and Donna had a special salad with goat cheese and pulpo - that makes two days in a row with pulpo for her.

We are back in the hotel room after having gathered various tourist materials and studying up. We will be here two full days and then on Tuesday we will go on to Salamanca. Tomorrow we will be taking a walking tour of the old quarter, among other things.

We are actually quite pleased that things turned out this way!

Day 2 in Bilbao

Bilbao has got to be one of the nicest cities I have ever been in. It is a nice small city, very walkable. The weather has been clear and sunny, in the 80's. Everywhere you look there are treasures. The footbridge by Calatrava:

The train station:

The Guggenheim, of course, fabulous on the outside. Its right on the river in a beautiful setting. These pictures do  not do it justice at all because I wasn't able to get far enough away to take it all in, but everyplace you look is interesting:

At the entrance is this precious puppy, with multicolored flowers for fur, by Jeff Koons (that is me in the yellow t-shirt):

A better picture of the puppy:

El Escorial

¡Hola desde España! Donna and I got here Sunday, chilled Monday, and Tuesday we took the train to El Escorial, a monastery in the mountains outside of Madrid. It is both a royal palace and a monastery. Felipe II commissioned it to serve as a resting place for himself and his family members, and now most of the Spanish kings and queens and other royal family are here. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures!

The town was very charming, and the weather was great!

triinu shawl spreadsheet

For those who are knitting Triinu's shawl (Ravelry link), here is a link to the spreadsheet I put together clarifying the charts for the main body of the shawl. You have to have bought Triinu's pattern to use these.

Download triinu1.pdf (84.1K)

I myself haven't finished yet - I am on the last few rows of the border!

toe up socks, two at a time

I have been working like a fiend on these socks - my first toe up socks, and my first done two at a time, on circular needles. I am an old hand at top down socks on circular needles, but with these I am adding two complications, not to mention the fiddly cables. These are using WendyKnit's pattern for Asparagus Socks - exact same yarn from SockPixie. The yarn is really nice and the colors are so pretty - I notice she doesn't have that color for sale right now (I bought the yarn right after Wendy posted the socks on her blog). 

Anyway, I love how the toes go, because my least favorite part of top down socks is figuring out what to do with the toes, since I haven't figured out to do a good Kitchener yet. The heel turn and gussets were really cool, although it was strange just following the pattern blindly without really understanding what I was doing. Hopefully the next ones I do I will be able to follow the pattern better. I did wind up with holes on each side after I finished the heel flap and started working in the round again - not sure exactly why.

Also I have made errors here and there in the cables but not enough to make me stop.

The two at a time business - took a while for me to make my piece with all the yarn ends going every which way but I like it and I'm glad I will finish them both at the same time, more or less equivalent.