Category: travel

Seville trip – from cuevas to alcazars

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As most of you will have guessed by now I love travel. Not just the being there at the destination but the planning the research and the whole of the journey. I never want to just get there I really enjoy the process, however long it takes. For me the journey is about sitting back and relaxing and savouring the moment.

I have been lucky enough to have some great views flying back from Spain when we have gone all along the coast in clear weather but especially love coach journeys like the trip to Seville.

It took 10 hours in total, 2 of which were 3 stops and made me realise just how small the UK is compared to Spain, we only travelled a short way across the country from just below Alicante, which is near the pointed part of Spain on the right of the map, to Seville which is above the Morocco label a little way inland. Such a huge and interesting country, I have so much more to explore!

spain-simple-map-large

We traveled through the Sierra Nevada which I visited about 15 years ago on a trip to Granada and saw beautiful landscapes with snowy mountains, misty peaks, amazing rock formations and little villages with monasteries and hill top castles. I would love to do that trip again and stop off and explore some of these places one day.

One of the stops was to a cave house (or cueva) that the owners have opened as a museum in Purullena, they still live there so you enter and go through their kitchen into the rooms.

They have owned the house for generations and it now consists of 24 rooms over 3 stories. There were lots of pictures of how they had dug out the rooms and made the stairway and they had filled the upstairs rooms with antiques including to my delight examples of linens, lace and stitching including the always present Singer sewing machine!

Seville Trip Cave House 5

Seville Trip Cave House 6

We were particularly interested as my brother Ben and his wife Amanda have recently bought a cave house in Spain, in the mountains about 2 hours from my house towards Granada. I have yet to visit but have seen pictures and video.

It has 4 useable rooms so far plus a kitchen and bathroom, these are on the front due to the issues of supplying water and power and as estate agents say, ‘room for improvement’ literally as there are some rough steps hewn and some part dug upstairs rooms.

The Guadix landscape around the cave house was amazing the rocks are very soft which is why there are so many cave houses in that area and they have been shaped into all sorts of formations.

Seville Trip Cave House - landscape 2

Our hotel in Seville was very lovely, we went on the trip with a local Spanish company so the hotel was included and it was very much more luxurious than our normal lovely but budget bookings.

The Hotel Alcazar is very near the gardens that border the Alcazar (Moorish palace) and as you can see from this picture very close to the cathedral, (not one of mine but from Google), taken from the roof of the hotel.

Seville trip hotel-alcazar-view

We particularly loved all the antique textiles on the walls so an excellent location with beautiful rooms, lounge and breakfast area.

I have lots more pictures for you of everything we did but am going to have an early night tonight as we have just had our first Swords of Mercia show for the year and so I have returned tired but very happy. We had great crowds and lovely weather, only a very little bit of rain which we were all very thankful for.

I love this picture from yesterday of me with the boys during the fashion talk, particularly like Alex’s very fetching pink outfit!

Bolsover 1 - Fashion Show

Until next time take care, have a good week and thanks for visiting.

Seville – a feast for eyes and palate!

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I have had an absolutely wonderful time away and not only did I get to relax and do very little except read, spend time with my lovely family and go to the beach, mainly for drinks but also an afternoon sitting in the sun, but also got to visit Lorca for the Easter celebrations and a mini break to Seville.

I saw all three of the girls and gave them the dolls, they were very pleased and Emily, Lola and Ruby- Rose, as they were named, have gone back to England with their new owners.

I will post lots more photos as I sort them but here is a little montage that sums up some of the highlights.

Unlike Budapest where sometimes our options for food were sometimes a bit limited due to me being gluten free and Mum being not eating meat there was an abundance of choice for food. We both love tapas and there were so many wonderful tapas bars and we were determined not to order the same thing twice so over 2 lunches and 3 evening meals we had 19 unique dishes and came back with some wonderful recipe ideas.

The other three pictures in the montage are of one the beautiful courtyard gardens that are such a feature of the architecture of the city,  some of the tiles in the Real Alcazar and the ceramics and tiles at the Plaza de Espana There were tiles everywhere and we could have bought so many wonderful reproductions of these designs.

I was catching up on blogs when I got back and was very inspired by a post by Crazy Mom with a Scrappy Churn Dash Block tutorial. I am not very confident with quilt blocks and this looked a bit complicated and I was going to finish off a pouch I have been stitching while I was away but my zip order has not arrived yet. So I just thought I would try one and made two on Saturday afternoon as they were very easy to do thanks to the excellent tutorial.

Churn dash block 1

 

Churn dash block 2

I have so many tiny Liberty scraps from all the hexagons I have made so used that for the scrappy parts and love the way they have come out. I decided to put borders on them as well and have turned one into a basket and the other will be used on a pouch.

Meanwhile it is back to work tomorrow and our first re-enactment of the year next weekend, Bolsover Castle for St George’s Day, the dragon will be back!

I will hopefully get a chance to post more pictures this week, hope you all have a good week ahead. Take care and thanks for visiting.

A bit of Hungarian stitching

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Don’t get too excited, this is not anything I have done, just some wonderful inspiration from our week in Budapest and another thing to add to my wish list!

I am still working on the little dolls, progress has been very slow as I got a chest infection on top of the flu so have been in bed for most of the last week and doing nothing!

I am getting a bit fed up of being ill, I really want to be young and sprightly but my body seems to have other ideas and it is seriously affecting my crafting productivity 😦

Anyway no doubt once the weather is better, and I have come back from nearly three weeks in sunny Spain things will be a lot easier and work calms down a lot after Easter as well.

We saw some beautiful vintage work in various museums, 17th and 18th century gold work and 19th and 20th century needlepoint and redwork along with some wonderful pictures and candleholders. Sadly the Ethnography Museum is closed for renovation as I would have loved to see more traditional costume.

There were some lovely historic costumes in the National Museum, these were from the late 1500s with delicate blackwork on the linen shift and shirt and embossed velvet.

Budapest embroidery 5

Budapest embroidery 4

Budapest embroidery 6

This beautiful beaded cap and embroidered bodice was from the late 1800s and the outfit below from the early 1900s, some Steampunk inspiration!

Budapest embroidery 8

Budapest embroidery 11

There was some of the traditional Hungarian embroidery in the museum as well, this beautiful cloth was about 200 years old.It was really interesting to see the Elizabethan style motifs such as the central flower, very similar to ones that I had made previously

Budapest embroidery 7

Then there was a little display case full of ‘modern embroidery’ and knitting items from the 1950s, the sort we were seeing in all of the gift shops.

 

Budapest embroidery 10

I love these kinds of displays, always makes me wonder who owned the things in them.

I have collected some beautiful inspiration from Pinterest on my Sewing Inspiration board and I am planning to do a small motif for a pouch. I love the bright colours of the traditional work, there were some lovely blouses with these on in Budapest, especially for children.

A lot of these remind me of Jacobean crewel work, there are some very similar motifs.

I am hoping to find some time this weekend to finish the dolls, have nearly finished the stuffing and sewing up, just need to make 9 little skirts as I wanted each doll to have a choice of outfits so wish me luck!

Hopefully I will have some pretty little people to show you next week, just in time to take them to Spain for all the little girls in the family.

Take care and I hope that you have a nice weekend planned, thanks for visiting.

 

 

 

 

 

Learning Hungarian

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Whenever we visit a country I always try and pick up a bit of the language, as someone who teaches about language the process fascinates me and I also love to see if I can work things out from the context of being in that situation, so much easier than learning in a classroom.

Mum and I learned quite a few words from just walking around looking at shop signs and street signs and picked up some useful words such as ‘tolni’ which means push, ‘forro bor’ which is hot wine or mulled wine which we had quite a few of, ‘etterem’ which is restaurant and our all time favourite ‘Szombat’ which means Saturday!

We visited Buda Castle on our first day which is a Baroque palace rather than a medieval castle which involved a ride up the hill in a funicular railway.

Budapest castle 2

Budapest castle 7

Next on the itinerary was the Fishermans’ Bastion next to the amazingly beautiful St Matthias church.

I am one day going to write a book of embroidery and quilting patterns based on my travels and all the wonderful patterns I have seen and this roof needs no explanation, look at those lovely hexagons!

Budapest St Matthias 2

I enjoyed taking arty shots through the Bastion windows and this reminded me very much of the cloisters we saw in Lisbon.

We also visited the Vajdahunyad Castle on the same day that we went to the fantastic Széchenyi thermal baths. These pictures are of the entrance foyer of the baths in wonderful mosaics, a real cathedral to glamourous bathing!

This is what the baths look like inside, picture from Google as we were in cossies and not carrying cameras, although there were some very silly people with their phones in plastic bags taking selfies!

It was gorgeous and wonderfully warm, the water was 28 degrees while the outside temperature was 11 degrees.

Szechenyi-Spa-Baths-Press-Photo-Outdoor-Pool

The castle was built in 1896 for the millennial exhibition and is based on lots of different architectural styles. We had a little picnic by the castle lake after our swim as it was a lovely sunny day.

Budapest H castle 1

On the way there we spotted this beautifully restored art deco house.

Budapest Art Deco House

Budapest Art Deco House 2

This one was sadly not open to the public though we did visit another art deco museum later on in the week that not only had gorgeous furniture and paintings but also gluten free cake! That was so nice after 3 days of wandering past coffee houses and bakeries just drooling over all the lovely things!

Budapest cake

A very, very lovely trip to somewhere we have wanted to visit for ages. I have some more pictures of textiles from the museums to show you in a later post, it wouldn’t be one of my holidays without a bit of textile exploration would it now 🙂

While we were away Mum and I were discussing our trip for next year. We are going to Seville at Easter but would like to visit another city next year. On the shortlist are Istanbul, Tallin, Moscow, Krakow, Dubrovnik and St Petersburg. I do love planning holidays almost as much as going on them!

Have a lovely week ahead, take care and thanks for visiting. We are in for some severe snow this week so hopefully it will not cause too much disruption, it seems to have been going on forever this winter, roll on spring!

 

Budapest, lots of snow, lots of goulash!

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We got back from Budapest late on Thursday, having been slightly delayed due to snow which we had lots of during our stay. It made for a beautiful visit, some of the time it was very clear with blue skies and thankfully the day we visited the thermal baths it was like that, others it was grey and blizzardy but it was really lovely.This one of the most famous views of the city, of the Parliament building taken from the castle area.

Budapest view

We packed so much into our 4 days and as usual I have lots to show you. We stayed in a very lovely studio apartment, Nova Apartments which was really spacious, well equipped and very warm, another great find from Expedia.

It was 20 mins walk from the centre of town and in an area full of bars, restaurants and ruin pubs so we had some really great meals out.I am gluten free and Mum is a vegetarian so main meals were easy to find but I did eat a lot of goulash for lunches which was really lovely and kept me warm for sightseeing.

Budapest tram

We spent so much time just wandering around looking at the beautiful buildings, there is lots of Art Deco there which I love, as well as Gothic architecture, amazing churches and castles, an feast of wonderful architecture.

The street where we stayed had some tailor’s shops and I loved these adverts.They reminded me of all my vintage print fabric.

Budapest Tailors adverts 1

Budapest Tailors adverts 2

Budapest Tailors adverts 3

I will be back later in the week with some more pictures for you, I am having a nice relax this weekend finishing of embroidering doll faces and am hoping to be able to make some progress with these tomorrow afternoon.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

 

 

 

Fiesta Days

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One of the things that I absolutely love about Spain is the number of fiestas they have. This is a nation that knows how to relax and have a good time! From the religious celebrations at Christmas and Easter through to all the little carnivals and local fiestas it seems that there is always something going on. Even little La Marina where Mum lives has a 3 day festival in August with live bands which is great.

I was lucky enough to visit two on my recent trip, the first the Easter Parade of icons in the tiny town of San Fulgencio, near La Marina and then the largest and most spectacular Moors and Christians celebration in Alcoy, a mountain town about an hour away, near to Barcelona.

I have been to both before but was very happy to return, particularly to the Moors and Christians one as I last went about 10 years ago, it falls on St George’s Day so I can only go in years when Easter is very late.

There is the usual lovely goldwork to look at on the icons and banners.

Aside from the two icons of Jesus and the Virgin Mary that get paraded from the church round the town, accompanied by a band and the usual gowned and tall hatted celebrants the main draw for me is seeing the beautiful Spanish women in their suits and lace mantillas. They look so stunning and I managed to get a couple of close up shots as well.

Spain Easter Fiesta 6

 

Spain Easter Fiesta 7

We went on a coach trip to Alcoy arriving just near to the end of the Christians parade so there were lots of people relaxing and refreshing themselves in the bar after their part of the parade.

The costumes are brilliant, such detail with everyone from each group dressed in the same outfit, even down to shoes and bags. there are mini versions for all the children as well, even the babies were dressed up.

We saw these lovely princesses in the parade and managed to get some close up shots as well, love that fabric!

Spain Alcoy 5 - princesses on float

Spain Alcoy 6 - princesses 2

Spain Alcoy 6 - princesses 3

We then had a couple of hours to wander, take photos of the gorgeous Art Deco buildings and then got a great spot to watch the second half of the parade when the Moors arrived.

They are a lot more flamboyant with sultans, dancing girls, camels and lots of riders on horseback showing off their skills.

There was just time for a few more pictures of the architecture on the way back to the coach.

Spain Alcoy 17 buildings

Spain Alcoy 18 buildings

I hope that you have all had a good week. Mine has been mainly full of marking and meetings as most of the teaching is over now. Saw Ellie briefly as she stayed overnight on her way to Spain, she is there now for a little break in between her busy Easter schedule and the start of her summer activities.

I have more marking and meetings ahead this week and weekend so I think it will just be a case of making a few more hexagons when I can, I am up to 47 now though so only 13 to go then I can start the process of removing all the papers and deciding on the layout.

Take care, have a good week ahead and thanks for visiting.

A tale of two villages

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Hello again

I am amusing myself after a very snowy day again earlier this week and torrential rain and flooding today thinking of happy sunny times in Spain so thought that I would add the rest of my photos from Tabarca.

At the other end of this little island from the wild rocky cost is a little village, just 4 streets at the side of the church, with some really pretty little houses, I took lots of pictures of the windows and doors.

tabarca-village-1

tabarca-village-2

This was a house that has been turned into an art gallery, lots of inspiration for arty shots.

And there was some lovely crochet in the window of this door.A beautiful place and one I would love to go back to. They do have hostels and rental properties so would love to do that one day as a mini holiday within a holiday.

tabarca-village-8

tabarca-village-9

The other little village is my growing collection of house pin cushions, have not made any for a while but have quite a few now. Not certain yet where they are ending up but for now they are just populating the craft room.

house-pincushions-all

Have really enjoyed choosing different fabric and buttons and flowers for these from my stash. Added the cute button headed pins to some as well.Apologies for shadows in the photos, the light was not good this weekend.

The fabric flowers come from some braid that I have cut into individual flowers. So cute! Have just had an order of very lovely flower buttons for the next lot of houses but those will have to wait until the ornaments have been done.

I have made the cathedral window ornament and several folded ones so will show you that next post. Ellie and I are of to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show this weekend so looking forward to that and will try to be good and not buy fabric!

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside….

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Hello everyone

I have come back very brown and happy from a lovely week in Spain with my Mum, a brilliant winding down week consisting mainly of sleeping, reading and walks along the beach with not only paddles but one actual swim in the sea.It was very warm all week, in the high 20s so I wore shorts for most of the time and now actually have brown legs for the first time ever in my life.

We went on a boat trip to the island of Tabarca on one of our days out, I have been a few times before and love it, it is a tiny island about 3 miles from the mainland which was fortified during the 1700s so has the remains of the walls and a little fort.The sea was such a wonderful colour.

It is a very different landscape to the mainland beaches with lots of rocky inlets and sea grass that has dried into huge clumps on the beach, very much like the Cornish coast and there are some great views and walks at the uninhabited end of the island.

This was the little graveyard right at the end of the island. At the other end near the village is the church, we have never been able to go in it as it has been being restored every time we have visited over the last 10 years but it makes a very imposing sight at the edge of the island and the stone looks amazing next to the sky and sea.

We stopped for a coffee so I got the chance to take an arty shot of these stools outside the bar.Love the colours against the sea.

tabarca-1

Later on we had lunch overlooking the sea with lots of cute stray cats begging for food, we saved some of our tuna for them and I got a quick picture of another  island stray for you, because there aren’t enough pictures of cats on the internet are there 😉

tabarca-8

We walked along the restored fortified wall to the other end of the island to peek through one of the defensive towers.

tabarca-15

It was such a lovely day with the sun sparkling on the sea, hard to believe that in the UK it was Autumn and it has been a bit of a shock to find myself back in winter time zones with it now getting dark at 5pm. Luckily the festive season is fast approaching, so I seriously need to get my act together with ornament making and I am very glad I have mulled wine and candles to keep me sane 🙂

Also I have all the Christmas events to attend, am really looking forward to spending Christmas with Ellie in Worksop as she has to work on Christmas Day so I get to go to the church service at Clumber Park chapel.

It will be the first time we have been to a Christmas Day service since our trip to Prague in about 2006 when I, ‘persuaded’, the kids to come to Mass with me on Christmas morning. It was a very cold cathedral and the hour and a half service was all in Latin, for some reason they were not inspired to ever let me repeat that experience. I call it character building!

I did sneak a Christmas Eve service in last year in Oslo cathedral which was lovely. Ellie is now quite happy to attend any church service in any country but Jake is still not amused by trying to sing hymns or carols in other languages.

Hope that you all have a very nice week, will be back soon with the Liverpool goldwork pictures and more lovely pincushions! Take care and thanks for visiting.

 

 

Probably the best cloisters in the world..

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As you may know I do love cloisters and I have seen lots of really beautiful ones in my time. However the ones at the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon were absolutely breath-taking in their splendour.

The decorations carved on the pillars were amazing and all unique, I couldn’t stop taking photos of the way that the sunlight and shadows made contrasts. Just amazing.

Lisbon - cloisters 1

Lisbon - cloisters 2

Lisbon - cloisters 3

Lisbon - cloisters 5

Lisbon - cloisters 4

Lisbon - cloisters 6

The monastery itself is wonderful, my camera was playing up at this point, previous pictures are from my tablet, so here are a couple from the miracles of the internet to show you what I mean.

Lisbon jeronimos_monastery_2

Lisbon jeronimos-monastery

There are other monasteries in Lisbon that we did not have time to visit so will have to go back as well, it is just there are so many other places that I want to go as well, just not enough time for all the loveliness there is in the world!

One of the last places we visited was the Belem Tower, built to defend Lisbon in the 1500s and just gorgeous, beautiful stone carvings and very ornately decorated for a defensive structure.

Lisbon - Torre 1

Lisbon - Torre 2

Lisbon - Torre 3

A really great holiday again and wonderful to spend time with my mum who like my lovely daughter is very happy wandering round churches and historic monuments, so glad to have travelling companions who like the same things that I do.

Have another re-enactment event coming up this weekend, we will be at Peveril CastlePeveril Castle, fingers crossed for fine weather as it is right on the top of the hill with a very long, steep climb up and down. Last year was brilliant weather on Saturday and raining all day Sunday so am praying for sun all weekend.

I am then off to Spain for a bit to see the family, not planning to do much due to the fact that it will be very hot, just lots of reading, going to the pool and spending time with my cousins and my god – daughter.

See you when I get back, thanks for visiting.

 

 

Tiles , sardines and another wonderful and wacky palace

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Hello everyone

Mum and I really enjoyed our first trip to Portugal a couple of weeks ago, I came back with so many beautiful postcards of tiles as inspiration for quilt designs and some beautifully wrapped fish. Sardines are a big feature of Portuguese cuisine and there were tins of fish for sale everywhere.

Lisbon - sardines

I could have bought loads of these as they were in all of the gift shops and I love the vintage designs.

The city was lovely with lots of beautiful buildings, many art deco in style and the best railway station I have ever seen, the bottom two pictures in this mosaic.

The tiles on the postcards below come from the many tiled buildings that are in the city, some amazing pattern inspiration, if you want to see more look at this link.

Lisbon -tile postcards 1

I have framed this beautiful postcard and put it in my kitchen, lovely windows!

Lisbon - tile postcards 6

The main reason for choosing Portugal for our trip was a blog post last year from Gillian Travis  , one of my favourite textile artists, who had visited Sintra, an area where the Portuguese royal family had their winter retreat and built lots of wonderful palaces. She has made some lovely journal quilts based on her trip including one with sardine tins, pictures at the bottom of this post.

Sadly my camera malfunctioned while we were away and though I thought I had taken lots of gorgeous pictures they were all corrupted so have had to resort to finding others from the internet to show you the wonderful Pena Palace  that we visited on my birthday.

Lisbon pena palace 2

I love bizarre palaces, we visited Neuschwanstein a few years ago and this is similar in its wonderful over the top architecture, this time with a Moorish influence.The whole area is so beautiful with rocky outcrops amongst the trees and views out to sea.

Lisbon pena-national-palace 1

I love this picture of it in the clouds, it looks like something from an epic film like a Lord of the Rings movie, amazing to think that this was actually built on the site of an original monastery as a family home.

Lisbon pena palace 3 clouds

We had a brilliant day exploring the palace and the beautiful grounds topped off by a ride down from the palace in a jeep which was very exciting! We had bought round trip bus tickets but the queues were really long for the return bus and there were lots of vehicles dropping people off at the palace and offering return trips. We narrowly missed getting a tuk tuk but were very happy with a cool ride down in the jeep.

We ended the day with a drinks on the terrace of a bar overlooking Lisbon and tapas at a very cute little place where we were the only customers, possibly something to do with the fact that Portugal were playing Germany in the Euro 16.Happily they won so we came back to the hotel accompanied by the cheers and honking horns of a lot of very happy Portuguese. A very memorable day!

We also visited an a great art museum and some found some absolutely amazing cloisters in the monastery, even better than Laycock Abbey so I will be posting pictures of those soon.

Take care and thanks for visiting.