Cañada

So there is this restaurant in my neighborhood called Cañada. It is a quaint no thrills restaurant. The type of Spanish restaurant where you picture that all of the regulars are used to sitting at there own table, everyday. There is a big screen TV playing either the news or the Simpsons that keeps the solo diners company.

In this place, the conversation stops when they hear English and resumes again when I switch to Spanish. The room is all white washed walls, dark wooden beams and a swath of mosaic tile on the wall. The food is good, cheap and comforting, and the staff are friendly. 

I have always translated the word "Cañada" into a more familiar "Canada" in my head. I laugh to myself or my husband about the name "The Canada", how silly is that?

 I do not know why I do this, maybe I am trying to find the familiar in the unfamiliar environs? I think that my husband has told me 100 times that "Cañada" means the "trail that sheep follow". You would think, given how obsessed with sheep I am, that I could remember that. So this last time we ate there (our second time dining there) I had my husband snap a few pictures of the goodies on the wall. I had forgotten that they were there too!

This next picture is of a "rueca" which means both distaff and spinning wheel in Spanish. It is a very traditional one. (I have seen one simular in museums here.) The wool is wrapped around that little bit of basket weave at the top end. They would have probably tucked the long end under their arm and spun with a hand held spindle on the oposite side.

Like in this painting I found on the internet (not in the restaurant).

Source

There are also other sheep-y items. Like one of this lovely hay forks that are carved out of one tree.

And hiding above the rueca? A shepherd's crook!

Speaking of sheep, I have been doing some dying and playing around with gradients. These are not as dark as I would like them to be. These are more water color than vibrant. Perhaps I should spin one, just to...test it out?

Madrid food tour take two

I was lucky enough to go on another Madrid Food Tour this past Saturday. This time the tour was History, Tapas, and Taverns.

You can read about my first Madrid food tour, complete with pictures of food here. "Complete with pictures of food" you think, "why would a blog post about a food tour not have photos of the delicacies?" Simple enough, this blogger forgot to take pictures of the food. I was so enthralled by the history on the tour and the company, I simply forgot.

If you want to see some really wonderful pictures of Spanish food, I recommend that you go to the Spanish Sabores blog.

So lets talk about my night. I do not go downtown very often, and every time that I do I wonder why I do not go more. However, I have been downtown since I have moved to my new apartment, and when I go downtown I get off at the

Ópera metro station. I have never noticed that there is a small museum in the station!

It is the Museo de Caños de Peral (Spanish link) and it is pieces of a 16th century Aquaduct. At the time the museum was closed and we had a tour to go to, so my photos are through the glass. I definitely want to go back soon to see it, and I will report back on my findings. 

We met up with our tour guide, James, in the Plaza Isabel II. Here is a photo of the back of that queen dramatically backlit against the Madrid skyline.

I took some more photos of the views around the plaza. It really is one of the most beautiful plazas in the city.

If you are wondering what those little buildings are, there was a little market going on in the plaza. They were selling: cheese, baked goods, roasted nuts, wine, crafts, and clothing. These little markets pop up in Madrid all of the time, and I love them.

But we were not here to buy, we were here to tour.

As mentioned before, I was not really taking photos that night. To see all of the sights and to hear all of the history you really have to try the tour yourself. But I remember a couple gems that I will share with you. Below is a statue of Phillip the IV made in the 16th century. It is the first bronze statue, in the world, of a rearing horse. Galileo was asked helped to design it as they wanted the horse to rear, but it was not very stable on just the two legs. Galileo solution: the horse is also supported by it's tail which you can not see from the ground.

This beautiful building, located in Plaza Villa, was at one time the town hall of Madrid. It still serves as government offices.

If you walk around the corner, ok across the plaza and down Calle de Codo you will come to this door.

One day, I am going to do this (it was closed at the time of the tour). Here you can buy cookies from cloistered nuns. You ring the buzzer (ring the correct one as the others call the (non-cookie) nuns or the priests to come and consult with you about spiritual matters). Apparently you go in, and travel down a hall to arrive at a sort of wooden lazy susan in the wall. You talk with the nun about your cookie order, they are cloistered so you can not see them, and then you put the money in your half of the lazy susan and they turn it to take it and turn it back to give you your cookies and your change. I heard about this way before I moved to Madrid, and it did not think that it existed anymore. I will try this out too, and report back to you.

A small plaza across from the nuns a quiet and beautiful area of Madrid.

I leave you with an image of Federico García Lorca in the literary quarter. I am told his a wonderful poet and a good illustrator too. Read his history, if you dare, but I warn you it has a sad ending.

Have you heard of Vine?

Vine is an App that is an off-shot of Twitter. If you already have a Twitter account, setting up a Vine account is a snap. Instead of 140 characters you can record 6 seconds of video! The trick is you are only recording when your finger is on the screen. This means that you can put in as many frames as you want! Your video will also endlessly loop. Right now Vine is full of teenagers that are not sure how to use it, but there are a few of the crafty and creative there as well. Just think of the possibilities for really short tutorials and art pieces! I am going to open my new online shop "Mosaics in Fiber" at the end of this month. For the past month and a half I have been making these little videos for three reasons: to practice, to bring a higher maturity content to vine and to show my product to the world. The only down side is that there does not seem to be a way to change orientation. There are more Vines from me on Vine as "kaystir". For those of you curious about what my shop might offer. I have started a Facebook page that should give you an idea.





 
 The above shows some "stained glass monsters" that I am thinking of making a kit for in my shop. A nice easy kit for a beginner needle-felter.














 More Stained glass monster antics.











 
 "This is Your Brain on Wool" OR "Yarn Brain" OR "Wool Brain" OR "Wooly Thoughts".

















  Other needle felted figures of mine, made before I have a tripods for my Iphone.

June

Not too much to report on here in Madrid. I am counting down the days to the end of the "school year". (The semester I teach ends on June 28th.) I am really busy getting things together behind the scenes for my little store that I will open in July.

Whenever I have a free moment I try and enjoy the flowers. We have had a very wet and cold Spring here and very little warmth and sunshine. But, the best part? We are having a Spring! The flowers are blooming slowly and with style.

 We even have days of Simpsons clouds.

I have added to my own little container garden too.

Wool brain

I had the awesome idea to make a picture of a brain, with the different areas done in different colors of yarn. So I go where I normally go for images to work from...Google search images.

My favorite was this one:

Source here

The more I thought about it the more I realized that maybe I was making the project to complicated for the medium of needle felting. I wanted to make a yarn brain, but the multiple colors might not make sense without a lot of detail. So I went on a hunt for brain colored wool in my stash. (OK I know that brains are not pink until exposed to air, but I wanted a pink-ish brain.)

I quickly discovered that I had some yarn the color that I wanted, but it was too tightly plied and the grist was too small to make the cerebrum's folds at the scale that I wanted. So I pulled out three colors of wool, carded them together, and spun a thick and thin single. Perfect color, perfect thickness.

Here it is on the spindle with the hand-dyed yarn I used for the crevices of the cerebrum.

As with all art projects, you tend to go where the work takes you, that is half of the fun.

I ended up trying some things and ripping them out. The best thing about needle felting is that it is really easy to rip out the wool and to try again if the shape or scale is off. 

At first I was using some handspun for the cerebellum, but the color, shape and texture was off. I ended up ripping it out and using the same color of wool that I was using in the crevices of the cerebrum. I added some dark red to the bottom, to add more depth to the section, and put as many white branches as possible in this scale to make the Arbor vitae.

I also ended up redoing a lot of the posterior folds.

I put an outline around everything so that it would stand out. I left off the face portion, because doing faces is not where my talent lies.

I really like how it turned out. A brain made of yarn. Yarn Brain. Wool Brain. This is Your Brain on Wool.

And that is why I really wanted to finish it, to play with the title. Well that and we need more science based art. 

Which title is best?

Adventures in Spanish

 So There is a local fruit store that is on the way home from the metro, and they have very good produce. Usually, I get in and out without any real spoken interaction. This, sadly, is my goal because although I speak Spanish, when I get nervous the weirdest stuff comes out and I make no sense at all. 

Spanish has two things that English doesn't really have: A sex for every object (ex: table is female), and a complex grammer system. There is different ending to a verb for almost every person (I, you informal, you formal, we, they), a lot of irregular verbs, and many different future and past tenses. I will not get started on the slang and idioms.

OK, so I am at the fruit stand where Paco has recently discovered that I am an English teacher and he wants to learn English. He is being a friendly business man and likes to talk about our "shared" interest, or he is flirting, or he wants me to teach English for free, OR a combo of all above. We never, however, talk in English. This is good practice for me as most of my life, even in Spain, is in English.

I do not speak Spanish well when I am nervous. I get even more nervous when strangers can hear me (I kind of know Paco). Spanish people like to listen to me speak Spanish and have no qualms about openly listening/staring. This phenomenon leads to my husband and I speaking mostly English in public. If we speak English, we are less likely to be impeded by the people trying to listen to us (they literally get in your way or slow down to listen). I have many theories about this: it could be that my accent is drop dead sexy in Spanish, or it could be that my grammar mistakes are too hilarious to miss. Like this one:

Paco: Did you bring your own bag as usual?

Me: Yes I brought my own bag, but I bought a lot of fruit. I weigh a lot, may I have two bags?

Paco gives me a look but continues to pack the fruit in one bag. It is important to note that there is a woman behind me in line buying three bananas. I am buying a lot of produce. I have never felt glutinous buying produce before.

Me: Can I have another bag for these two things? I weight a lot and I have to walk a bit far. 

I hear the giggle from the woman behind me, and who can blame her. At this point my brain wakes up, gives me the correct grammatical version of the verb and I mutter it. "it weighs" Spanish people do not mutter, they well have never heard me.

Ahhh, adventures in another language. It does help to have sense of humor about your mistakes. I hope mine made you smile. Do you havelanguage mishaps to share?

Two year Spain-iversary

Sunny Spain is finally here!

 Also sometime after I was coming home from work I realized that today is the date that two years ago we flew into Madrid to begin our life here.

I have only taken two photos so far today. Looking back at my first anniversary post I realize that the top two things I love about Spain is the Sun and the roses! How appropriate! I have looked back at the list of the top 10 things I love about Spain, and I still agree with myself on every point, go and have a look.

I bought myself Hydrangeas, Basil (not shown) and potting soil on the way home and indulged myself in some gardening. The weather has just gotten warmish again and it feels marvelous! It is finally warm enough to sit out on my terraza while I work. The container plants really set off the white walls and the tile. Did  mention that we live across from a park?

I might have tried to photo shop the wrinkles out of my table cloth. Domestic goddess I am not.

Ok now for the serious journal entry.

I am so much happier this year than last year. Don't get me wrong, but I know that I don't "fit in" in Spain, and I am beginning to wonder if I ever will. The fact that my husband is starting to look for work outside of Spain comes as a little bit of a relief. It is not that people are unfriendly to me. Spaniards are a fairly friendly people. 

What I think it is, is a combination of things: My Spanish family lives really far way (Barcelona) and I just do not have as many Spanish friends as I thought that I would. In fact, I seriously surprised myself by jumping feet first into the ex-pat community. I used to judge people a little bit when they clung to an ex-pat community when they moved to a new country. Boy did moving here ever open my eyes! 

Other people have written this far better than I have, but here is my go at explaining the ex-pat feeling. There is something about being an ex-pat that only another ex-pat can understand. It does not even have to be somebody from your country or culture. You are "transplanted" people and that is enough to start the bond. If you are a crafter, you know that when someone shares your hobby there is always something to talk about even if you have nothing else in common with them other than the hobby. The ex-pat community is so much more than that. Moving to a different country and culture changes you. It changes you in big ways and in small ways. It changes you in so many different ways it is not even possible to measure the change.

There is homesickness sometimes, and that can hurt like a physical pain. But there is something beyond homesickness is the real obstacle (for me, at least). That is the point when you come to terms with the fact that you are never going to be the same. OK change is a way of life, but this is more. You have pasted the point when you are ever going to "fit in" to either culture. You are too much a part of each culture to ever go completely back into the other culture. There is never going to be one home. You are never going to know all of the slang and the jokes and the cultural references. You will always be a little on the outside.

Some people handle this observation with grace and eagerness. I, however, have not. It is still something I struggle with. It is something that scares me down to the bone when I think about potentially moving to a third country and possibly learning a third langage. (Fit in even less!) If I let it, the fear could paralyze me. However, I am slowly coming to terms with this. I am finally beginning to make my peace with the fact that I am unique, and that is a good thing.

 Ok so back to why I am happier this year:
I am finally mastering the Spanish language (which is still as big struggle as most of my life is in English and I have to make time to practice). I am no longer in terror of going out to do day-to-day interactions. 

I finally live in an apartment with enough space that both my husband and I can work from home if we needed to. I can see tress from every window, and I have a little container garden started on my terraza that is big enough for more than a table and four chairs. This is very important to me, as living in such a big city is something I am not sure I will ever like. I have my oasis here.

For the first time in months I have hope for my business that I am trying to get off the ground, and hope that my husband can finally find a job (and a country to settle down in). I do not know how nomadic people do it (besides take their family and friends with them).

So spring is here and life is good.