catching up

busy week.... Kate came down tuesday and i didn't go to the fiber-heaven warehouse with her, showing amazing restraint! Wed. we went to NW Wools so she could talk to Linda about a custom dyeing order, then to lunch, then to clinic to take care of my headcold which went rogue and became pneumonia.... better living thru chemistry with antibiotics and prednisone and oh, yeah, the cough syrup! then Chris and kids came down and we had bd dinner for Kate at the chinese restaurant in Banks, with her family joining in! tgiving feast at Jen and Maggie's with most of the tribe there... great dinner and amazing desserts! Kate went back on friday with the kids and Chris stayed to make raki with Jim... good job! i just laid around and coughed... and behold... today on day 5 of prednisone, it has finally kicked in and i'm now at last feeling way much better than a sack o' dog mess. in fact, headed out soon for a round of shopping (not for gifts... this is household essentials like coffee, bread and juice)

while in Crete, Kate and i found a wonderful shop with linens and i got this table runner. it's linen with embroidered ribbon flowers and is really beautiful. nice thing about a table runner is it's less likely to get food and wine spilled on it, thus avoiding frequent washings... a good thing.

a couple of weeks ago, i picked these flowers from my garden. gotta love the mild PNW weather. not much left now tho... too much rain. but here's the photos to keep the vision alive!

the pitcher is one of my faves and was a huge bargain at good will... like $5.

mitts for Zylie

i did manage to do a little (very little) knitting while in Crete. happened to have some bright and pretty BFL yarn and decided to knit mitts for Zylie and used a different approach since i wasn't sure how many sts. to cast on. made 'em flat, then made a gusset thing from wrist to thumb to make them fit, left a place for the thumb and grafted above that for the hand portion. picked up around the opening and made a thumb. worked out great... and she loved 'em! considering the amount of yarn that went with me, i could have made at least 6 pairs of socks, a scarf and maybe another pair of mitts. but where yarn is concerned... it's always good to have lots!!

playing catch-upf

the last week we were in Crete, there was a raki-making party. Tracy (from pdx) was with us for a week that Chris and Kate were there, so she got in on this event. they were distilling the grapes that we helped "smash" the 2nd night we were in Vamos.

this is the still, outside of a large and quite nice taverna. the fermented grapes go in the kettle (the dome-shaped thing on the right), the steam goes thru tubing which is submerged in the water tank (behind the ladder), and the raki comes out thru a pipe... it's down low on the left in front of the tree. and that's the making of fire water lesson for this evening.

Aristotles was intrigued by the fire.... and stayed back a respectable distance from it.

the decor inside the taverna was interesting! this is the head of a critter which i think was a goat hanging on the post in the corner. (ummm.... rustic!)

on the wall beside the fireplace. fascinating... and i wish i could have found out something about it.

and the cozy fireplace. above it is a wood cut-out of the island

Crete. and then the ever handy rifle used to shoot into the

air as part of the evening celebration... late evening ....after lots of wine and raki!

we had a nice Greek dinner while the distilling was going on,

and it was an ok evening, but not at all like other raki parties

we have been to.... mostly Brits and Dutch. nothing wrong with

that, but missing the authentic Greek flavor we've enjoyed

previously. and no gun shots!!

the kitten

the stray kitten - Hercules.... well, turns out that it's a she-kitten, so i changed the name to Herculina. She still needed the power of the big name. By the time i left, she had become so tame that she'd crawl up on the chair with me when i was sitting on the patio! and she had fattened up (that's a relative term as she wasn't really fat, but had added enough weight that she wasn't just skin and bones any more!) on milk, yoghurt, cheese and meat scraps! and i miss her and hope she's gotten enough of a start that she can survive. Xanthippi said she'd go by and feed her when she was on her rounds to feed other strays around Vamos.

fiber news

Kate has opened her Etsy shop and has some really lovely handdyed spinning fibers and yarns for sale. I know you will love her work... I sure do. and i'm delighted that she will keep Woolgatherings going while i enjoy being retired. I hope she'll have as much fun as I did!

home sweet home!!

and happy to be sleepin' in my own bed, loving on my sweet dogs and trying to find "normal" again. the journey took almost 30 hours this time, details later... maybe. went to bed at 4a.m., dragged out of bed at 4p.m. and kind of fumbled around til now. will see if i can find my benedryl and take one and go to bed again. as hellish as this trip is, it's still worth it for the time in Crete and i plan to go again in the spring.

ttfn and toddlin' off to bed! i do have more stories and photos which i hope to get to soon....

Greek night at Liakoto

Jim and i had a really special evening at Liakoto Art Cafe. It was an evening devoted to the music of a well-known song-writer and singer in Greece. at the cafe that night there was live music and singing... and we seemed to be the only non-Greek people there. it wasn't long before the spontaneous dancing began and the whole atmosphere was awesome! it's the first time we've seen this happen in Crete and i loved every minute of it! everyone seems to dance with a kind of wild abandon, including dancing on chairs and tables! and, no, we didn't do any dancing... it seemed to be a totally Greek affair.

top photo is Nikos, who we've known for several years. he is also a fine photographer and had an exhibit in the gallery a couple of years ago.