Continuing with Rome

Falling behind a bit as so much is going on here.
To continue with Rome; the city has amazing trees. Cedar, but cut back into a fantastic umbrella shape. As seen here (below) at the Vatican City. For centuries the trees have been pruned like this. One only has to look at old paintings to see them as they are today.

and here is the Borhgese Gardens:

Second daughter and I did a series of 'looking up into trees':

and

and

One spends a lot of time looking up in Rome. In the Sistine Chapel, our necks ached as we identified those most famous scenes, God putting the spark of life into Adam's finger and The Last Supper. I liked the Delphic Sibyl:

The Pantheon was another place, so beautiful and calm in side.

The ocular in the Pantheon allows light, rain and snow in. The floor slopes to allow run off. The sun's light walks up or down the dome depending on the time of day.

There were helpful signs all over the city. This one tickled the girl's no end.
"No Levitating"

It actually means no lying down, both odd things to do in a historic temple!
In my last Rome installment I will show some of my sister's work. Her exhibition is at the end of this week and we are all hoping it is a roaring success.

I have got my baby back

BJ has been using my laptop as his was being seen to in the shop. I don't mind sharing, but did miss being able to hop onto it anytime I liked. It is now Monday night and we have had some budget talks.....dull but essential and all I want to do now is crochet. Need to chill a little after a crazy day.
More Rome snaps to come and a look at my current WIP.
Inspired by Attic24 and this blog I feel calm when I crochet.

Remembering Rome...

We have been back a few days and it has been hard to find time to absorb how wonderful the trip was. My sister is a fantastic person anyway, but was so lovely with the girls. It was good see their relationship with their aunt grow. I thought I would put some pictures up and add comments rather than write in detail.

She is doing a drawing residency at The British School at Rome. Mentioned here before.

She has a studio/room with brilliant lighting and here are the girls in it, on the computer and reading.

We ate a meal with the artists and academics after touring the school. Silver service, a little formal and with a tiny hint of Hogwarts! A challenge was made between Barbie, another Australian artist, and Antonio, staff member, to a game of table-tennis in the common room after dinner. Em played with Barbie to warm her up, but Antonio won, and then played and beat Em! It was a lot of fun.

Apart from siblings, Rome has many old and ancient buildings. The girls and I went to the Colosseum.

We visited the Forum, Pantheon, the Vatican City and saw the Sistine Chapel. We also went to markets, one selling cashmere, leather, vintage clothes and tat....everyone bought something there. Another was a pretty cool flea market with old Jimmy Choo bags, other designer gear, nic naks, clothes and jewellry. The shopping is lovely because everything is not the same as the high street here...and it is nice not to be one of the mob.

The food was fabulous. It was artichoke season

We ate paninis,

pizza

guinea fowl, pork, steaks, antipasti and pasta and of course

gelato

The coffee was superb and pretty too at times!

The other things we loved were the trees and these will be on the next post.

Help Queenslanders who lost so much

We are in Rome in a fabulous B&B and apart from it being spotless, friendly, evironmentally friendly, central and in-expensive, we have access to the owner's laptop.
On it tonight I discovered this site Crochet a rainbow
Seriously, if any of you feel like it, a small square or two could go a long way.
If I had a crochet hook here with me I would go mad.
What a fabulous project.

Twas the night before holidays

We are off late morning tomorrow to Rome and here I sit surrounded by 'things that I need to do before we go away'...
But that can wait a few minutes for me to blog. BJ and Step son are off to Whitley Bay at about 5:30 in the morning, so they have things to get ready as well.
Have to make sure that we have cameras ready so I am about to clear the memorystick to make room for the Italian pictures. Watch this space.
A friend is cat/fish sitting so that is great as well.

Where do you go when you are alone in your head?

But where do you go to my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes I do

Peter Sarstedt 1969

I was telling BJ about a night of dreams that left me feeling somewhat limp and wilted. In them there were crocodiles, (baddies in my dream world...don't like them a bit in dreams and am very scared of them in life,) tigers, leopards, dogs, a dinner party into which a huge tiger appeared and I rather cruelly burnt its nose with my handy steam iron...(yep, at the table, I was ready with a steaming iron and ironing is a bugbear of mine!!) In my defence however, this was a completely wild animal and we were all at risk of becoming his meal at our dinner party! There was a bus trip to observe nature and we all accepted that a rather thin dog that got onto the bus was in fact a leopard!! Then a boat trip over a stretch of water full of manatees...

They did not seem to be bothered by the boat powering over them even though they were on the surface.
Where all these creatures came from no one knows, but my head is a busy place at the best of times.
After telling BJ all about it, he quoted to me the song

'where do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed, although I think 'alone in your head' are better words.

But to end on a lighter note...when I said I dreamt of a pod of manatees ( is that the counter or is it a herd?) BJ asked if one of them was named Hugh.

Hugh Manatee.

For 7am, not bad!!

Indulgences

These red shoes were calling out from the window of the charity shop this morning. I love red shoes and when they fit, that was it. Now, what to wear them with? That in time, will become clear. These are an indulgence, there is something party-like about red shoes.

Another indulgence is time for crochet and this is what I have been working on this week:

I followed the tutorial on Attic24's blog and have made some hexagons. I find working with colour difficult as there is always some straightlaced voice in my head telling me that only certain colours go with others. I have decided to experiment with the yarn I have to see what kind of patterns develop and to remember the only rules are my rules. You can see that the bits are sitting in my crochet box, all lined now...all though not completely stitched up yet.

The last indulgence is HERSHEY'S KISSES, which BJ brought back from New York. Nice.