One year Spain-adversary!

Ok I had big plans for this post, but they have melted away because I am going to cover for a sick colleague today and I leave for the weekend early tomorrow. So I will make this short and sweet. :)

I had written yesterday that I had not been in the US for a year, and the more astute of you might have realized that that meant that today was my Spain-adversary. (Almost every flight that I have taken to Europe gets me there the next day, due to the time change and the duration of the flight.)

So here it goes. Here is the first picture I took in Spain, I took it on May 25th 2011. I was staying near by. In this view you can see the Plaza Castilla, and the "gates to Europe".

And here following in a long line of American tradition, a top ten list.

The top 10 things I love about Spain / Madrid (in no particular order):

1.The marvelous blue skies / weather. There is so much sun here, and I love it!

2. The roses. They bloom for a good part of the year and decorate the city with their beauty and their sweet sent.

3. People watching. The fashionable, the not so fashionable. The old people that are dressed up to go for a stroll looking so dapper. It took me a long time to get used to it, but it is OK to stare openly in Spain, and it does make it easier to people watch. ;)

4. Regular people on TV. You can look like a regular person and be a TV star here, you do not have to be a modal. for example, if your teeth aren't perfect, no one seems to care.

5. The laid back attitude. There is less stress here than in the US, and I mean in general in people's attitudes. Things just aren't such a big deal. This will be good for me, once I get used to it.

6. The history as far as the gardens and buildings. I love Europe for that. I love the old regal-ness of it.

7. The ability to walk to a lot of places. I miss my car, but I love the fact that I don't feel the need to use a car.

 8. Fresh local food. A lot of the food I can get is grown with in the country, which would satisfy most loca-vores in the US. Plus I can eat Bananas grown in Spain (in the Canaries).

9. Cheap, good wine. You buy wine in Spain for less then you pay for gas. But good wine can be as little as €3-5.

10. The strong sense of tradition in the different providences. I have seen many celebrations of the many different types of Spaniards. I love that the history is being passed down the generations.

One year

Ok, so today marks the one year anniversary of when I left the US.

I was going to show the last picture I took in the US, but the last several are of our boxes we were shipping, or furniture we wanted to sell. I guess I had forgotten what a busy time it was, no time for pictures, no time for many goodbyes.

This was the last picture I took of an outside view of the US. That was the grass outside my Durham apartment as seen though a friend's wedding shawl that managed to finnish and send before I left.

I remember how frightened I was a year ago. I want to have been able to tell my past-self that it was all going to be ok, not right away, but OK. The trip was one I never want to repeat though. From having our flight canceled literally right after we threw out our mattress, to leaving on 10 minutes notice to the airport. (that was 10 minutes notice, including: medicating a cat, loading the luggage and the cats in the car, making sure we had everything, and calling a friend to beg her to come clean our mess and return the keys.) I did not have time to think about leaving my country. The rest of the trip was full of worry about my kitties and my future life.

I am so glad I never have to relive that day again.

A big hug to all of my Durham friends that made it possibile to get through those last couple of weeks. Wether it was emotional support, or helping me get rid off furniture and things. Especially to Durham Knits for cleaning up my mess as I fled the country. I miss everyone.

Blog block

Maybe it is because we have explored other cities recently, but I find that I have bloggers block. More likely this is really do to the fact that as my one year Span-aversary approches (May 24th), I find myself over whelmed.

I think about all of the things I have had to learn over this past year, and I start comparing the year to the unrealistic goals I set for myself. For example, even though I have never admitted it out loud (although some of you who know me probably guess this) I wanted to be fluent in Spanish by the first year. I am not. It is true, that I can hold more than an hour conversation in my new language with out switching to English for even one word, but I am not pretending that I am graceful at it. Plus I am pretty sure that most "real speed Spanish" passes me by.

It is also true, that as a professor of English I can not force myself to practice Spanish for hours a day. I try when I drag myself in the door at 9:30pm from a day of classes, but some nights I just do not care enough too. Plus it is really hard to switch a household language. You just forget and start talking in the default language. It takes a constant effort to keep in the other language, for both of us.

I was also expecting to know Spain more when this year was up. I do not just mean knowing where all of the providences are, although that would be nice and I am almost there, but to know the country. The more I thought about this goal over the year, the more I knew that it was unobtainable. So, I thought, I'll know Madrid. That seems to be an unobtainable goal too. Sure, I know my neighborhood fairly well but I am learning you just can not know a big city/country in one year. There is too much to learn. For example I do not drive here in Madrid (good lord a year without driving), and I never noticed that the center double line in the street is white, and not yellow. That simple fact floored me for days. How could I not know something so simple? What other details have I missed out on?

Never mind that fact that my husband lived in the States for 10 years and was still shocked by the little things, I had set higher goals for myself. HAHA So now that I have set myself up for disappointment I find that I have blogger's block.

And we will not even talk about the fact that I already feel like I need to do something big for Thursdays blog post, sigh.

Random pictures, because bloggers block extends to photos too:

The roses are blooming wilding in Madrid. They are huge!

Jamon flavored Pringles, complete with the picture of the carved pig leg.

National library / weird fashions of Madrid

So I went on a field trip to the Biblioteca National yesterday, and on the way I saw some disturbing fashion trends I would like to point out. I found these in the most "posh" area of town.

First we have machine knitted cotton sweaters (that part fine, I like sweaters), that have been painted with metallic colors. Yes I said painted, and it is just as soft to the touch as it sounds. In fact I saw these back in January in H&M and I was kind of hoping that I was hallucinating at the time, but I guess I was not.

Second, apparently snake skien is apparently all the rage. I think all of it is fake, at least I hope so. Here you see a snake skin sun hat.....yeah, that is just wrong. I also saw a lot of other snake skin objects including... paper napkins! I just can not think of a theme for a party where your guest would want to pretend to wipe their mouths on snake skin. Shudder.

This sweater was in one of the most expensive stores in Madrid. There are so many reasons I do not like it. When did drop shoulders come back?

DH and I walked around Colon for the first time, and it is a pretty area. The building with the green roof reminds me of an old fashioned battery.

Colon is home to possibly the worlds largest spanish Flag, please look at the people walking in the plaza for scale.

The statue of Columbus himself.

There are a lot of buildings in Madrid that have angels of top of them, in this picture I just managed to capture two of them at the same time. (Click to enlarge.)

I have seen the "Super Dink", a motorcycle whose name caused great hilarity, but never the "Grand Dink". That is just awesome.

So, we went to the Notional library, a very grand and picturesque place. If you go please be aware that they with not let you into the actual library (where they house all of the really old books) unless you have a valid research pass. Don't worry, I have a researcher for a husband and a plan. ;)

You can, however, go to the free exhibition on the grond floor. They also have, until the 13th of May, a special exhibit of old, mostly hebrew bibles, that are quite lovely.

Click to enlarge and look at the lamps, their shades are enlarged images of old texts! Super cool!

Afterwards, we had a reservation at an Argentinean restaurant and to get there we walked through Retiro Park. 

It was a part I have never visited before (next to Calle O'Donnell), that park is huge! There is a part with a man made mountain with waterfalls coming down (sorry no picture). It is right across from these ruins from a  church (11th century) moved here from up North.

A taste of Aranjuez

May1st is the labor day for almost everywhere in the world, a notable exception being the US, but it was periodically pouring (much like today). It has been raining on every day that I had off of work for a while, with the exception of Wednesday (May 2nd is one of Madrid many municipal holidays). So DH and I finally got to visit Aranjuez. I have been told that you can see everything in an afternoon. I have no idea where these people got their information, or what they thought was the only important thing to see because I was there an afternoon, and we only got a taste of what Aranjuez had to offer.

Aranjuez is the last stop on one of the cercanías, the local train system of Madrid. When we got to town it was the early side of lunch time, 2pm so we decided to have a Spanish lunch (lots of food and takes about an hour or more) before we started exploring. A nice thing about May 2nd is that it is only a holiday for Madrid, no other providence has it, and Aranjuez is in Castle y la Mancha so there was no crowds.

The Palace at Aranjuez. We did not go in because it was such a nice day.

Look at the color of the river. I thought that color did not exist in nature, only in Disney. 

The plaza in front of the place, was a peaceful place.

The first part of the garden look almost to perfect to be real. It really felt like we were in a theme park. Maybe that feeling was due to be cooped up inside a city for too long? Just look at the palm tree!

Most of the "garden of the island" was very French with the boxwoods in geometrical shapes and the occasional fountain.

DH saw his first Spanish squirrel (a red squirrel) in a long time. They are hard to spot in Madrid.

We got some very expensive, but fresh and ripe berries from a stall outside on of the parks. There is more than one park in Aranjuez, and we saw most of just the small one.

Everywhere there were sign about asparagus and strawberries. It was the oddest combination. The stall where we bought the berries was selling both fresh, and I picture people walking down the street and into the park eating uncooked green asparagus.

In the artsy mood

Friday I felt that needed to create, to be daring and to make something with impact out of mixed materials.

It is really rainy in Madrid these days (which is a good thing, but dreary), I had had a long week and needed some color and the meditation of creating something. So I pulled out some yarn, some wool, some wool felt, and, my watercolor crayons. I cut a piece of 100% wool felt from the Fieltro store off of Calle Mayor, and got to work.

I decided to use the gray yarn this time and just make random shapes with it. To my delight as I began to fill in the shapes with complimentary colors, the piece began to remind me of a Gaudí mosaic. After I filled in the shapes I had made I put another line of gray wool on top of the first. to make the lines more distinct. The I trimmed the edges to straight and you see what I saw in the picture below.

Then it was off to the iron to steam finish the wool. Ater that (and ironing all of my clothes, I miss dryers so much) I sat down to think how to finish this piece. Framing 2D needlefelting has always been an issue for me and I have never found a solution. I decided to cut out a bigger piece of felt, cut the same size hole as the original piece in the center, and baste the original piece onto it. I got the effect that I was hoping for, a 1mm height difference between the two pieces.

OK, now I need to do the daring part and play with mixed media. I embroidered the lines radiating out of the center piece with backstitch and the same gray yarn. (I have always loved the continuity of bring the frame into a piece.) Then I got out my water color crayons, a small glass of water with vinegar in it, in the hopes that the color would be more likely to fast, and got to work.

I do not know, I still have my doubts about this piece being finished. I think deep down in my heart I do not believe that I can make art, even though I firmly believe that everyone can make art. I think part of my thought process is that art should not be easy, and if I can do it, is it too easy?

Lately I have noticed this distinction in me and I have been pushing myself more to explore outside the box. I have the fear that if I take something a step further that instead of making something better I am going to ruin it. It upsets me, this feeling, after all, what am I really losing besides me time? What if countless artist and inventors before me had thought the same? Where would we be as a speices?

The sweater from the last post was a good example of me going ahead in spite of my fear, and designing a top out of my handspun that took my countless numbers of hours to spin, and was so thin and fragile I could not rip it out more then once. The top turned out well and I am happy with it, but still I wonder, how long will it take to trust my creativity?

The 100 gram sweater

I started spinning this yarn for the tour de Fleece 2011 on a homemade supported spindle that I had made. The spinning took forever to complete, and when I was skeining skein I knew why. I got over 800 yards of lace weight from 4oz, something I had never done before. The fiber was Faulkland wool handyed by Fat Cat Knits in the colorway "Ester". I had 4ozs.

Then I started thinking about the concept of a shawl that I could wear everywhere, including maybe the various offices I work at. I have no idea why I was thinking "socially acceptable shawl" as I live in Spain and shawls are used daily here.

I was hoping to make, maybe, a little lace vest. I had no idea how much tee I could get out of 800 yards. I would start out with the lace yoke of the vest and work my way down as far as I could go. I used the shaping of the yoke from this pattern and then worked the math to increase for the non-lacy part of the yoke.

The lace pattern was "Wings from the Swan" p.306 from Barbara Walkers 2nd treasury, which I charted by hand.

I put the lace panel running down the middle front and the middle back of the piece. I did this mostly so that I could make the yarn go further, ie a longer tee. For the front lace panel I cast on the 20 stitches (out of 23) for the lace panel in order to leave a stylized gap in the front. I might put buttons on one side of the gap. I left YO buttonholes on the other side.

I had to rip back about 4 inches to alternate the ends of the skein as a big purple stripe was happening right at my bust line. I continued alternating until I reached my hips. I did not do any waist shaping because I was aware that this pattern had negative ease. (Maybe too much negative ease.) I knit in the round using my new cubics knit pro needles until I thought that I would run out of yarn soon. I switched to garter stitch in the round for an inch and then I did some spaced increases every-other-row over the next 6 rounds.

For the sleeves I used the stitches on waist yarn and picked up 10 stitches that was provisionally cast on before and knit three rounds before switching to a K1P1 rib for 10 rounds and binding off in purl.