A Special Birthday Gift

About 10 years ago, my friend Kathy brought over her Dad's neckties, saying "I'm never going to make anything out of these. Maybe you can sometime..." And so they languished in the closet in my studio...until a few days ago. A celebration was being planned for Kathy, and the idea of contributing cash to a group gift for some reason didn't appeal to me. I noticed the ties hanging in the closet..."that's what I'll do! I'll finally make something out of those!"


Kathy's father graduated from McGill University and he was a pilot in WWII. There were two ties in the collection that I remembered had particular significance: the tie with the crests is his university tie, and the other navy tie has airplanes as the repeating motif.


I decided to try and use the only red tie to piece the big number.

I used up every scrap of red to piece the 60. And I used up every bit of the airplane and McGill ties.

Here's the final outcome--a cushion to commemorate a special birthday. And best of all, when I presented it to her, she didn't notice the 60 at first--it's subtle enough. And it looks great in their living room too!

My final post about our experiences in Spain and France

We rented this Citroen Picasso at the Barcelona Airport and drove north into the Spanish Pyrenees, then the French Pyrenees, Montpellier and back to Barcelona. Lloyd is mighty pleased with himself in this image--he has just succeeded in parallel parking on the left side of the road.

It seems that every village, town and city in southern France has avenues of plane trees. Apparently many of them were planted in Napoleon's time and so of course now they're very big trees. It wasn't unusual to see memorials attached to some of the trees indicating that there had been MVA deaths--the roads are considerably narrower in these avenues.

This was Lastours and the site of one of the last stands of the Cathars just north east of Carcassonne.

Rooftops in the village of Beget in the Spanish Pyrenees, just north of Oix and Olot.

These fabulous swirling columns are at Parc Guell, in the northern part of Barcelona city. This was designed by Gaudi. Probably a more famous image from this park is the merandering ceramic bench that is on the terrace above this "Hall of Columns". When we were in the park, it seemed like every tourist had flocked there as well, and to the ceramic bench in particular. So we beat a retreat to the less populated areas like this one...and I found it less gaudy as well...

Finally, in Monserrat (a mountain-top monastery just north of Barcelona) this is a wonderful statue of Pau Casals, world famous cellist and composer, who was very proud of his Catalan roots...and who was an inspiration to my cello-playing father. I grew up listening to a lot of his music!

Barcelona Street Scenes

I was thinking that I should label this post as "Don't you just love jet lag..." or some such thing. I've been awake since 4 AM and finally got out of bed an hour later. I'm on my second cup of tea and feel much better. Speaking of tea, Lloyd has made a note to take tea bags with him next time--the Spanish tea is insipid at best, not the robust and hearty English Breakfast type of tea that we're used to. I enjoyed the coffee however, especially "con leche".

This was one of the more ornate door knockers we came across. We saw this type several times later but never this large nor as brassy.

This is the view from our balcony at the Gat Xino hotel. I never tired of looking at the different ways that people hung their laundry. Note the street sweeper dressed in lime green. There's an army of these folk.

Here's another street sweeper--I was entranced with her "dustpan" which is like a flexible bucket.

Grocery shopping--we saw men and women pulling these carts. This is the little square kitty-corner to the front door of our hotel. There were chairs permanently fixed to the pavement, always with people sitting and visiting.

In our neighbourhood, El Raval, there are many small fruit and vegetable shops that seem to be run by Pakistani or Indian families. According to our guide book, immigrants from North Africa and the Indian sub-continent have concentrated in this area and have opened specialty food stores such as this, "Halal" butchers, and bakeries.

These are two of Barcelona's "gegants" or giants being brought out in preparation for the June 24th holiday of Dia de Sant Joan (St. John the Baptist), a Catalan holiday. You can see that these giants are huge. They're being carried by men who are wearing those belts that weight lifters wear. We were so entranced by these moving statues that we followed them to their destination (city hall) and so saw the men trade off every 100 metres of so. We left just before this holiday which might have been a good thing because it is preceeded by fireworks and firecrackers all night long.

Some memorable meals in Spain and France

We stayed at the Colours of Pays Cathare B&B in the village of Verzeille, just south of Carcassonne for two nights. Our host recommended a wonderful restaurant, Auberge de Pommayrac, for dinner. This was the "entree" of tarte de champignon or mushroom tart. (Another interesting point of language is that the French use the word "entree" where we would use "appetizer" or "starter".) There was a lovely delicate sauce probably made from Rose wine which complimented the mushrooms nicely.


I persuaded Lloyd (not too difficult a job) to have dessert at this restaurant in Carcassonne. It was billed as "Creme Catalan" and is very similar to Creme Brulee. It was delicious! And a very dramatic entry.

Lloyd and I often enjoyed a meal of tapas, small dishes served in most bars in Barcelona. The Spanish don't eat their last meal of the day until quite late--most restaurants didn't open until at least 8 PM and some even later than that. Fortunately for us, the bars are open all day and most serve tapas. Here we were enjoying a meal of Patatas Bravas (deep fried chunks of potato with a spicy mayonnaise), wild mushroom fritters, tomato bread, and a cheese tortilla (what we call an omelet). Tomato bread quickly became a favourite of ours for both lunch and dinner--simple to prepare, it's usually fresh bread spread with fresh garlic and a squeeze of fresh tomato and olive oil. At one restaurant, I was served all the fixings to do it myself...a slice of bread, a garlic clove, and a whole tomato.

Sorting images from our trip

Lloyd and I arrived home last night about 11:30 Pacific Time, after about 24 hours in transit. I was in bed within about a half hour and slept soundly until 5 AM. It's now about 4 PM and I'm feeling as though I am more or less in this time zone. It's not always this easy, but then I might feel differently tomorrow...

I am determined to sort my photos before the memories fade, and so I have actually managed to "process" all 250 of them into named folders. Interesting use of the word "process"--in this case of course meaning to sort and organize. Fortunately I don't take a lot of photos, preferring not to experience my vacation thru' my camera lens.

Herewith some images from my "yarn" folder:

Knitting after lunch at a local bar around the corner from our Barcelona hotel.

You'd think I'd never seen a yarn shop before! I was so excited to find this place, and it was a lovely shop. This is the one I wrote about previously--the co-owner is a lovely multi-lingual fellow.

And finally--yarn bombing has hit the streets of BCN! Some creative person has used the holes in a garbage can like a needlework canvas. It looks like he/she got interrupted...

Fun with Language, Part 2

We're now back in Barcelona at the same hotel (Gat Xino) as before--we successfully navigated the maze of highways to get the car back to the agency with 10 minutes to spare. We were also driving on fumes which is how it was supposed to be. For some reason we had to return the car empty. It was all a little nerve-wracking to say the least. The ride into the city on the train was a lot smoother than the first time due to our familiarity--boy, do we feel like old hands on the BCN public transit!

Yesterday was another wonderful day of communication successes. We went to the museum at the Faculty of Pharmacology where our friend teaches. The woman who showed us around did not speak much English, however she spoke slowly and clearly in French and we understood her pretty well. I thanked her at the end "Merci Madame pour a vous parlez lentement" (I am not sure if that is grammatically correct) and she replied that she appreciated not having to use her English because she had learned it while in NYC with her young children watching Sesame Street!

After this visit to the museum we drove north out of Montpellier to the town of Lodeve where there is a fabulous art gallery and a temporary exhibition of Louis Valtat who was a peer of Renoir and Matisse--one of the Fauvres (wild beasts)--the impressionists of the early 20th C. It was a fascinating show of his work in a variety of techniques and mediums, from oils and pastels to wood block prints and ceramics. I loved getting up close to see how deceptively simple brush strokes created impressions of faces, clothing, trees, flowers, rocks and so on. I got a little too close for the security guard's comfort "Ne touche pas--c'est tres risque" I think he said--I replied "Je comprends, je ne touch pas!"

We then capped off the afternoon with a tour of the Societe Roqueforte caves and had an hour long tour of caves that are the equivalent of 11 stories underground--where the famous Roqueforte cheese is made and matured. We tasted some wonderful cheese that paired beautifully with some honey cake.

I am so pleased to get over my initial reluctance to try out my French learned long ago in Miss Graham's classes at Point Grey High School some 40 years ago...and the more I tried, the more the language came back.

We leave Barcelona tomorrow June 23rd just before noon, arriving in Kelowna at 10:30 PM--about 20 hours in transit. Tonight we will take it easy--repack, make lists for customs, and maybe take a stroll thru' this city of balconies, enjoying the narrow streets and the cosmopolitan feeling.

Adios! Au revoir! Ces vacances est terminee!

Fun with language

While in north east Spain, I had a lot of fun trying to communicate with a Spanish phrase book in hand. We quickly realized that while most people do speak Spanish, their first language was likely to be Catalan. Catalan is yet another romance language and has some similarities with both French and Spanish, but is a distinct oral and written language more closely related to Romanian! While I never really grasped much Catalan, after a few days it became easier to decipher a menu and street signs... I could say Hello, ask for white wine and beer, salad and bread, and ask for the bill, but had a lot of difficulty understanding the replies. Even though I took a year of Spanish in high school, that was 40 years ago without any practice in between!

French on the other hand has been a lot easier for both of us. As soon as we crossed the border, the highway signs became easier to follow and menus are definitely easier to read. My pronunciation is appalling, however the server at our first dinner just outside Foix complemented me on my accent. I think she was just trying to make me feel good (she succeeded!) One of our best experiences was when we were trying to get to the village of Lastours where there are four remnants of Cathar towers on craggy peaks. We had to follow a detour, and the signposts weren't very good. Lloyd stopped the car opposite an old man on a bench (every village has an old guy on a bench...) and said in his best Canadian English accent: "Bonjour, monsieur! Lastours?" The man struggled up to his feet and threw his shoulders back proudly. He said, "Oui monsier! Sur le pont, a gauche, a droit, a les portes verte" or something like that...the important thing is that we knew to go over the bridge, turn left, then right at the green doors. It was so exciting to understand what he said! We think we gave him something to tell his wife too...

All this experience is making me realize how important it is to know another language and to not take English for granted. We are so privileged to travel pretty well anywhere in the world and for English to be the language in common.