Month: January 2023

A clear blue sea

stitchesoftime2 Comments

One of the things that has really struck me about the coastline here is how blue the sea is. We do have this in Spain, as sea colour is a reflection of the sky, but here it is a really intense blue, which I think must be due to how clear the water is. Most of the coast is rocky, rather than sandy, and there is little in the way of seaweed, so the sea is very clear and so beautiful.

I was staying only 10 minutes walk from the beach, just outside the centre of Aiya Napa, in a lovely studio apartment, River View Boutique Apartments. I can highly recommend this, if you come here. The apartment is beautiful. It has a little kitchenette, and an all important sunset over the sea view.

The sunsets here have been so gorgeous, a free show every evening.

Because of the excellent weather, most of my time has been spent at the coast, walking the stunning coastal path and sitting on the beach reading. It has been warm enough for lots of paddling, many people were swimming, and the sky has been a glorious blue all week.

There is lots of sculpture around Aiya Napa generally, the town obviously prides itself on the promotion of public art.

Many even come with added furry friends, all of these cats seem very well fed and happy. I saw lots of bowls of food and water around for them, but I think most are strays.

I also visited the outdoor sculpture park, which is just beside the coastal path. It is also a cactus park, and there were some wonderful displays of cactuses. I appreciate the effort that goes in to sculpture, and really liked some of them, especially the Argonauts bridge which was very cleverly done.

However I think the cactuses were my favourite bits of the park 😉

There is also an underwater sculpture museum, but I am not a good diver. It does seem a brilliant concept for those who are though.

There were so many amazing houses beside the coastal path, if I had a spare few million I would love something like this!

I also had my first encounter with a squid, sadly dead on the beach.

Such a truly beautiful place, I am so glad that I came to this end of the island. I wondered if it would be too far to get to, and nearly left it off the plan, but I am so glad I have been able to visit this area as well. These two pictures are going to be on the photo wall at home to remind me of this trip.

Next post it will be the turn of all of the incredible churches I have seen so far. I have only bought one icon, but I can see there may be other purchases needed. They are only very small ones though. Until then have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

An exile abroad, my first week in Cyprus

stitchesoftime1 Comment

There are many reasons why I chose Cyprus as the first of my winter exiles. The main one was to see my friend, as I had been promising for years to visit him since he moved away from Huddersfield after college, all those many years ago.

He was one of the inspirations for moving to Marsden, my last home in the UK, as many years previously, when he worked in the Middle East, he bought a house there as a base in the UK. We had many lovely visits to the village and so it was top of my list when I moved from Huddersfield.

I am going to spend just over five weeks here and have lots of exploring planned. I have never visited the country before and am really excited to be in a new place. I am even making a little bit of an attempt to learn the language, however the different alphabet is a challenge! Everything here is in English as well though, as the English occupied Cyprus for many years. They drive on the left and have the same electric plugs as the UK. There are some other reasons why I wanted to visit, which I will write about in a separate post.

Dave now lives here full time, in a large village at the western end of Cyprus called Peiya. The views from his house are stunning, all along the coastline towards Paphos.

The village is on the side of a hill, and is very steep in places, with a mix of older properties at the top and lots of gorgeous new developments all down to the coast.

As with La Marina, there are lots of English people who have moved here and it was lovely spending time with Dave’s friends and partner Jo, and getting to know them. Although I said I would only visit each country once from now on, as there are so many I want to visit, they are having an amazing new house built further up the hill, so I will have to come back and see that at some point.

We went out to the Akamos Point and the gorge on the first day, an incredible drive on some of the bumpiest roads that I have been on since my trip to Nepal. This is where the turtles come in to nest and is a protected area.

I also visited a few churches, this is one of the things that I was most excited about coming to Cyprus for as I have not really seen any Greek Orthodox churches, and you know how I love a good church 😉 This first one was by the harbour in Peiya.

There was also a very tiny chapel just outside the village centre.

The village centre had a much larger church and down below a pergola where brides go to have their pictures taken. It was next to the original village water source, I think these were used for laundry, as are still found in many Spanish villages.

I love all the limestone here, it is such a beautiful stone and looks amazing next to the blue skies.

We also had a trip to Paphos, where I will be spending more time later in the trip, to one of the areas where a lot of Muslims used to live, before Cyprus was divided. One of the churches there had been turned into a mosque at some point, then abandoned post 1974, except for a lot of cute cats who lived in the churchyard.

At the end of the first week I caught the bus to Aiya Napa, via Nicosia. Cyprus has no trains, but a very good network of buses so 3 and a half hours later I was nearly at the other end of the Greek part of the island, as you can see from the map below.

I have had a brilliant week here, the weather has been amazing, 19 degrees all week, so there has been lots of walking along the coast which I will post about in the next update. Hope you are all ok, not too cold and enjoying your lives. Have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

New York, the iconic bits

stitchesoftime2 Comments

As Ellen said before our visit, New York is the sort of place that you feel that you know before you get there. So many movies and tv shows feature parts of the city that they are all so iconic.

We did have a list of things that we wanted to visit, and it was very exciting to see things in real life that we have only seen on film. Although I visited New York about 18 years ago, that was only for a weekend, and being so near to 9/11 many things still weren’t open.

We stayed in a very lovely hotel, near to Grand Central Station, which is just as beautiful as it looks, even the ticket booths are masterpieces of art.

Our hotel was called Pod 39, and is similar to ones that I have stayed in before for city breaks, with a bunk bed layout and a small bathroom.

However the beds were very comfortable and the location was excellent. We weren’t really in the room much anyway, and the hotel had a lovely comfortable lounge with games and free hot drinks and water available so we spent some time there as well.

Our first day out was to the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum and we could not have had a better day for it. Although it was cold, the sky was a wonderful blue which made for excellent shots of Manhattan from the ferry.

The Statue did not disappoint and the accompanying museum was excellent with really good interpretation, not only of the story of the build, but also looking at how the statue has been portrayed in all sorts of different ways since it was built.

There was a lovely quilt and a Barbie dressed as the statue, which Ellen suggested should be one of my next makes.

They had used the restoration in the late 1990s as a chance to show how the statue was made, with recreations of the moulds that were built for the casting, including a recreation of the statue’s foot.

I didn’t realise that she was bronze coloured to start off with and the green is the patina that has built up on the metal over time. I think it looks a lot better green, especially against the blue sky. We also saw the original torch, which had to be replaced due to its collapsing on itself.

The Ellis Island Museum was equally well interpreted, with lots of the stories of the migrants and their many reasons for coming to America. It was very poignant seeing the large hall where they would wait to be assessed before entry, and the postcards of the numerous ships that brought them from all over the world.

I have always had a huge interest in migration and people’s stories of why they leave their homes and having visited other museums, such as those in Oslo, that tell the story of those who left, it was fascinating to see where they arrived. Being part of a family who have migrated, and who now live all over the world, it is always really interesting to me to hear these histories.

Our second day was to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum. Central Park is somewhere that I have been to before, and it never ceases to amaze me how large it is, and how great it is to have that space in the city. They also have the fattest squirrels I have ever seen!

The Met Museum was stunning, as we knew it would be. The scale of the collections is amazing, whole Egyptian temples, courtyards of castles from Spain, Tiffany loggias and windows and so much wonderful medieval art.

There were also some gorgeous early 18th century samplers.

However, the most stunning piece in the collection for me was this store of linen, buried with one of the Egyptian queens for the afterlife.

The fact that it is still around, thousands of years after being woven, such simple textiles but amazing that all that work of the weavers centuries ago still exists.

We also spent a lot of time just marvelling at all of the wonderful buildings, the Chrysler Building is a real favourite of mine, but I also loved Penn Station.

This beautiful building that was one of the ones represented by brass plaques in the pavement. I think it looks like it came from a Lord of the Rings film.

New York still had the skating rinks at the Rockerfeller Centre and Bryant Park, and trees and decorations everywhere, so it still looked very Christmassy.

We managed to tick off our food bucket list as well with pizza, bagels, pancakes, hot dogs and burgers, only failing to find a gluten free pretzel.

A brilliant trip and I am so glad that we were finally able to get there. These next few months are hopefully going to be full of us doing things that we have been planning for a long time.

I am loving my winter sojourn in Cyprus so far and shall be sharing the first set of pictures with you later in the week. I have been so lucky with the weather, so have been out enjoying the stunning coastline here.

Until then have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

Finding haberdashery heaven

stitchesoftime2 Comments

Well dear readers, the travel gods smiled upon us and Ellen and I were able to go on our very long awaited trip to New York in the second week of January. We had been planning this trip since about 2018, when we watched a series called Project Runway. This was set in one of the Fashion Institutes there, and featured regular visits by the contestants to the Garment District, in particular a shop there called Mood.

We had originally planned to go 2 years ago, for Ellen’s 30th birthday but as we know the world got a little crazy and so we put that trip on hold. We had not finally decided to go until just before Christmas, as we were waiting to see if anything changed with restrictions but sorted it all out and had a fantastic time. I had visited many years ago but it was Ellen’s first trip.

As well as buying fabric and haberdashery we wanted to visit some fashion collections and museums, as well as see all the tourist highlights. I will post later about those, this post is just all about the wonder that is the Garment District. It really is amazing how many shops there are, and how much there is available, we were at points quite overwhelmed with what to buy.

We were guided by a particular vlog from someone I have watched a lot over the years, Bernadette Banner, who did a New York Garment District vlog three years ago. I don’t remember the name of every shop we went it but we did visit B and Q trimmings, M and J Trimmings, Pacific Coast Haberdashery, and of course Mood!

This was just a tiny selection of what was in one shop, they had four aisles just of zips!

Ellen was looking for sparkly fabric for a night sky inspired project and had a hard time choosing from all the loveliness, though the $450 dollars a yard fabric got put back straight away! The Garment District is right next to Broadway, so as well as fashion fabric there are endless sequins, lace and feathers available such as these beauties.

We were both very restrained, even though a small fortune could have been spent. I just bought things for very specific Barbie couture projects as it was wonderful to have very small scale braid and trimmings available. I will do a specific post about that and my plans for the purchases later.

Before the shopping we spent some time at the Fashion Institute of Technology, looking both at the display of students’ work and at their current exhibition. The student work exhibition was really interesting, as much for the design boards as for the final creations.

The current exhibition at the museum looks at the interior spaces that many of the world’s greatest women designers lived and worked in. As well as showcasing their designs there were pictures of their salons, many of which no longer exist. It was a fascinating look at these creative spaces. The gowns on display were a very varied selection, and all stunning.

I am going to be working on more Barbie couture when I get back to Spain so wanted to choose two garments from the trip to make in Barbie size. I have chosen this gold one from the museum collection as I love the beaded detail on the neckline. I may not do anything as elaborate as this but it will be the inspiration.

The other dress I have chosen is this one from the film, ‘Mrs Harris goes to Paris’, which I watched on the plane. I love this and was able to get some gorgeous fabric in New York for it. There are so many amazing dresses in that film so may make others in the future, Barbie scale only though! Picture from the above link.

We also saw a great exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all about the history of the kimono, and how it became transformed once Japan opened up to Western fashion, and in turn how kimonos inspired other designers. Very interesting with some beautiful garments.

I am now actually in the Greek part of Cyprus where I am spending some of my winter months of exile from Spain. I am only allowed to stay there for 90 days post Brexit, but that gives me a great excuse to travel 😉

I have a friend who lives here so came to see him, to travel around, and indulge my passion for church architecture with lots and lots of visits to Greek Orthodox churches. There are also stunning coastal walks where I am now so lots of posts of all that coming up.

I finished the blackwork just before leaving Spain and am so pleased with it. Excuse the rather odd blue tint in the first picture, but I am so happy with how it all looks and plan to do some more of these on my return to Spain. It was a very quick stitch, the border took the longest but really finishes off the pieces.

I have also started and finished a mandala for my van. The design comes from a book of embroidery I bought my Mum a few years ago, and it is stitched with perle thread. It has been a very international stitch, started in Spain, worked on in England and the USA and finished in Cyprus. It just needs the felt backing attaching and it can hang in Katy.

I hope that you are all well and happy wherever you are, and if in the UK have not suffered too badly with the extreme weather. I am very lucky to still be in 19 degrees and am making the most of it.

I will be back soon with the other New York post and will update you on my Cyprus adventures as soon as I can. I am staying in a mixture of apartments and hotels so will be dependant on the quality of the wifi. Until next time, have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.