5 Terre

The awesome Hubby and I have now been married 35 years. How did that happen anyway?

To celebrate, we started our vacation in Cinque Terre, Italy.
After a quick visit to the leaning tower of Pisa .....

 (I made John try to straighten it up a bit.)

(Here it is, peaking out from behind the big basilica next to it.)

we hopped a train to La Spezia and then got on the "Milk Train" to the Cinque Terre. Don't ask me why they call it a milk train, but it is basically the local train and we got tickets for on/off  to use while we were there, and then didn't have to worry anymore about how to get around.

Staying at the second most southern of the "Five Terraced" villages, an adorable hilled assembly of colorful houses and various buildings called Manarola, was a really good choice on our part. This picture was our window view from out rented room. About as perfect of a location as we could have possibly dreamed. At least 2 of the other villages would have been great choices too, but it seemed that we couldn't have lucked into a better view/building to stay.

 From the same window in our little "hotel" room, we could take this shot to the right. These terraces have been maintained and farmed for 500 years, and are located all over these hillsides on the coast. They grow grapes, beans, grapes, squash, grapes, figs, citrus, and most anything that we grow in Northern California.

Walking along the village paths we find all sorts of alcoves and treasures for photo opps.

There are also paths connecting the five villages and although one trail was closed due to land slides into the Mediterranean, we were able to successfully hike the "easy" treks.

 Staring off from Monterossa this was one of the most built up areas of the trail.

John is in his photographer mode and we are always lucky when that happens.

Honestly, the guide books say they are easy, but we did not agree. If I can walk a mile in 15 minutes, that is what I consider easy. If it takes me 1 hour and 30 minutes to walk 2 miles, I think it must be a little more difficult. It is not that we had to crawl up any sheer cliffs, but there were thousands of rocky stairs of varying levels and widths, as well as narrow ledges and creeks to ford.

 The mountains go right to the sea. This reminds me a little bit of Big Sur.  We should really take more advantage of living as close to Big Sur as we do. I'll put that into the mind catalog for future use.

 Looking back at Monterosso, which is the most be beachy of the villages with crowded pebbled beaches and wall to wall bodies lying on them.

The next village was only 4 km away and yet it took us 1.5 hours.

This is Vernazza and is also just so quaint and cute. All villages have a church with ringing bell tower in the middle of the town. I'm sure it used to be the most important building for the people so they made each church accessible to everyone.

One thing we always like to do is check out the inside of the churches. Some were fairly simple, but most had some pretty fancy ornate decorations reserved for the best building in town.

 After a nice breakfast of eggs and vegetables, we headed out to the next town of Corniglia. I'm kind of a shiny sweaty girl here.

Another building that each town seemed to have in common was an old walled castle at a high point. Romanesque in nature, they were the lookouts for passers by.

The wild flowers along the way were mentionable. Poppies, scotch broom, all sorts of pretty things.

Here we are approaching the tiny town. This one is up higher on the hill than the other 4, so you have to climb down stairs to get to the beach or the train station. We did notice there was a small shuttle bus between the station and the main area of town, but we of course didn't take that.

 In Corniglia we had lemon granite. Like a slushy but better. What we call granita's I think.

 Finally to the last town of Riomaggiore, where we ate again. I'm seeing a theme here.

 The train between towns is in tunnels most of the way, so the scenery is not part of the ride.

To walk to the train stations you also have to walk through tunnels. This particular pedestrian tunnel is in Riomaggiore.

John, sitting down for a wonderful meal where we just ordered antipasti. We had 12 different types of antipasti - including about 10 different fish dishes. Really unique sea food. And of course lemon gelato to finish it off.

One of the days we took a boat from the 5th town back to the 1st town stopping at each (except Corniglia) as we went.

View from the sea.

Our town of Manarola had some huge rocks that people jumped into the sea from. The girl in the black suit up there could never quite get the courage to take the plunge. She had quite a crowd cheering her on.

 Looking back onto Manarola from the path which is closed up ahead.

Another fun thing about Italy in general is their lack of clothes dryers, or rather their proliferation of clothes lines. This man here is adjusting the laundry from his balcony. We had a line from our window, and it made me want to have one even more in California. The clothes become so fresh and white when hung out in the sun to dry. I've been considering a line since before we redid the back yard at our house. Just can't quite come up with a cool solution in this small brain of mine.

My camera has some really cool settings and this is John experimenting with it.
Such a cool sketch of our little vacation town.

Overall one of the best vacation spots we have ever been too.

LOVED IT!!

Chuck Taylor

Apparently Chuck Taylor started wearing All-Stars by Converse in 1917 when he was playing basketball in high school. After working as a shoe salesman thereafter, he suggested adding a round protective patch over the ankle and changing some other aspects of the design for comfort and support. The company hired him to help with the design and that was followed by the addition of his name on that ankle patch.
These shoes are all the rage again for little girls and boys alike, and I ordered some to make my version of "altered shoes" for a couple of the granddaughters.

 The first ones are orange low tops that we just glued some crystals to.
I know that sounds a little simplistic, but it really was a super easy project and my cute little granddaughter who was just short of 6 helped me decide which colors to go with. I let her work with some less expensive sticker crystals while I did this and that worked out well.

I bought some nice Swarovski type crystals at Michaels and then just used E6000 Industrial Strength Adhesive to put them onto the plastic toe of the shoe.

I should ask if they are staying tight to find out if it is the right combination of materials. She's been wearing them for a couple months now, so I'll try to find out how it's working out, and report back.

We also added some colorful laces to the shoes in the form of ruffled ¼" ribbon and shoelace plastic end pieces that I purchased from ribbon and bows oh my. They have a crazy assortment of ribbon at this place.

Okay.... onto the next shoe. After I completed the orange shoes I found out I'd ordered too big of sizes for the girls so I've just been dragging my feet on the next project for her big sis. I finally got to them this last week and here's the result.

 Starting with high top "Chuck's" in a bright fuchsia color I hand sewed woolen yarn to these shoes with crazy embroidery stitches.
Using a large and strong needle and metal thimble was key to this project, and I learned as I went. (I always do that, 'cause I always just do one or a few of a project before giving it up for another.)

 These heavy canvas shoes are lined with a lighter weight natural cotton canvas and I pretty much stayed under the lining with my stitches so they don't show through to the inside of the shoe too much. Obviously I have some knots in there that I couldn't avoid showing, but most are actually hidden in other stitching, under seams, or behind the tongue of the shoe.

 I used feather stitch, french knots, stem stitch, and a couple that were new to me.

Some of the stitches I used needed some review as I hadn't done them for several years. I found a lot of great stitch tutorials on this blog here. There are several types of stitches listed on the left side of the blog. The directions were easy and doable making the project easier, and I was happy with the results.

Aren't they SO CUTE!
Hope the girls like them.

Flow It, Show It, Long as God Can Grow It HAIR

Give me a head with hair,
Long beautiful hair.

Anyone remember this song from the 60's?

I have always had some crazy amount of hair on my head, perhaps 2-3 times a normal amount for a person. My entire family of siblings also has a ton of hair and my husband too, therefore my children have twice as much as a normal human being.

A few times during my life I have lost somebodies full head of hair because of hormonal imbalance such as pregnancy and child birth. Yes, 6 months or so after I gave birth I started loosing a lot of hair.

Now I am in a down time probably because of a weight loss in my life. I have lost about 35 pounds in the past 5 months and now I am losing my hair.

I've lost hair in the shower, in my brush, all over the house and especially noticed in the vacuum cleaner. So here is a nasty picture of what I pulled out of my vacuum roller the other day. Don't look if you are going to be grossed out.

 This picture was taken when I had most of the hair removed and I thought, "Oh, my. I should really take a picture of this nastiness." Originally the entire length of the roller was completely covered.

There is some thread in there with all the hair. I am a seamstress you know, but the hair is out of control.
Completely.
I still have some on my head though, so I'm not going to start worrying ….. yet.