Valencia - Oceanografico

Let's go to the City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia, to the Oceanografic park.

We spent half a day in the Aquarium. Sadly, my camera would not work properly inside. That is a shame because they have several huge aquariums, with tunnels there. If you happen to go to Valencia, you must visit it.
Anyway, the outdoor buildings are worth the sight:

This is the aviary:


The following pictures are from the park

More pictures here.

Valencia - Ciudad

Picture heavy!
Here are a few pictures from the "old" Valencia.

Post office

Ayutamento

Plaza de la Virgen

Cathedral

The market

and the roof inside

In front of the market

All my pictures of the Ciudad are here.

If you want to see more about the traditional dresses, go here.

Giggles hat

Thank you for your comments on Valencia pictures. I've prepared some more posts for this week. It is so much fun to share this with you: in the first place, I wanted to go there after reading a post in another blog. So it is a kind of pass along :-)



Since the beginning of 2009, and especialy during the snow fall, I've had some time to do long postponed knitting. I had seen this pattern a few months ago. I had some left over of the Noro knittings I made recently, and did not want to keep them unused for ages. On the other hand, I had only a few yards of each left. So this was the perfect project, as it requires variegated thread.

It is a pattern by Terry Liann Morris, a sailing knitter. She has a yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/holidaymysterygifts/ and a web site http://www.liannoriginals.com/

Valencia - Botanic Garden

This post is picture-heavy...
The botanic garden is in the middle of Valencia. For us, it looked quite exotic. We have been wondering all the plants there. Mainly because they grow taller here than in France.

More pictures here.

Valencia

So, I spent the last weekend in Spain. I first went by coach to Barcelona, where my daughter was waiting for me at the station. Then we took the train to Valencia.
It was an Euromed train, a high speed train traveling from Barcelona to Alicante. It was very much like boarding on a plane, same safety rules, boarding cards, dedicated plateforms, stewards in each car, videos and in the upper classes, you can also order special meals.
I could no see the surrounding of Barcelona, as it was still dark. As we were nearing Valencia, we were surrounded with citrus trees, every single spot had a tree on it. Very impressive.

Even closer to Valencia, the citrus trees were replaced with vegetables. The landscape turned into a huge vegetable garden, with some concrete or ceramics plants in between.

The first surprise were those ladies wearing traditional dresses:

We saw several shops selling either the dresses or the fabrics to make them, and saw other ladies an the following day. I fell in love with that dress:

More pictures to come soon!

Amaryllis

I've purchased two really big amaryllis bulbs in early December, and wondered how they would be like. Here is the first one. The first stem has 6 flowers. The first time I see so many flowers on one single stem (I mean on mine!). The second stem will bloom very soon too. The orchid is from Xmas.

Yarn

Thank you for the comment on the scard. I can tell you it is very comfy.

The yarn I used is by is Big Ball Funny by Schöller+Sthahl.

And yesterday I found a similar one in my Phildar shop: Flocon
Apparently, they no longer make it. It is replaced by Phil Pop that you can see on the second page of the new yarn presentation here.

I hope I did help :-)

Oh I'm away for the weekend, bound southwards to Valencia in Spain.
See you next week !

Scarf

Forced vacations are over, I went back to work yesterday. A neighbour had to help me get my car from the garage to the wheel tracks on the road, and then, I could drive to the office.
While I was home, I did some embroidery I'll show you later, and also some knitting.
I saw once my friend Raymonde and her sister knitt that funny yarn: I found some in a local shop, and could not resist the fun. One skein makes one scarf

in one evening: I'll try it in the afternoon when I'll go and do some shopping.

Have a nice weekend all!

Misc...

Update at 15:00. The 10" of snow they promised are are, and a couple more.
As soon as the snow seemed to stop, all the neighbors came outside to try to clean in front of the houses. We soon realized this would lead us nowhere: the street won't be cleaned, so we won't be able to reach the main road, even if we can get our cars out of the garage. And even if we can reach this road, there are two tree lying across the road at the end of the village. I'm not sure I'll be working tomorrow... We had not have this amount of snow since 1985...

First, thank you very much for your comments on the book cover. The friend likes it a lot.

It was hard going back to work after a 10 days break. But this morning, I woke up full of energy... Ready to go to work... but this is what I found when I opened the window: Same garden, one hour later, and the snow won't stop before the night, so the weatherman says.

Driving with a thin layer of snow is a total chaos here, as we are not used to it. I personally can't drive with snow. So I listened to the advice broadcast on the radio, and I'm staying home instead. I went out to fill the bird feeders, and believe me, I have a flock of fans outside. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time wachting them today.
I'm not the only one:

My other assistant is practising her favourite exercise, drinking from the most inadequate dishes, here the bird bath I was going to put back into the cage... Every morning she does the same, although she's got at least three drinking dishes ...

I'm going to enjoy this day home, provided they don't cut the electricity.

Have a nice day!

Book cover

I've borrowed two books from a friend, many months ago. I did not forget about them, it just took me a long time to read them.
Anyway, I think it would be nice to give her books back with a little compensation.
The backgroung is commercial felt, the leaves are needlefelted into it. The flowers are cut commercial felt, applied with the embellisher. Then a few stem stitches and beads, and here it is:

scarf

I needed a gift for a friend.
Found anything I needed in my stash and played with the embellisher. Here is the result: