Camping Out

I am still waiting for my household goods to arrive. Rumor has it they have been in Venice for about a week and are tied up in Customs. In the meantime we are still in the camping out phase. Last night I cooked and this is what the table looked like:

Baking sheet with ribs, saucepan with Baked Beans, and Folgers container with Broccolli salad. Plates borrowed from the restaurant across the street. Yep, we live like kings ... what can I say. LOL.

All of this was prepared in or on my new 1,000 euro range. That would be the one in the basement summer kitchen because that was the only place it would fit.

I am going to have to find a way to take this stove back with me ... I love it!

Still no way to dye yarn ... but there is no shortage of yarn for me to knit so I am plugging away on several pairs of socks. I decided that I should start knitting up some of the colourways that I dye that I haven't taken the time to knit with and so far I am really pleased with the results. These are knit in the "Driftwood" colourway:

I have started reading books about life in Italy and found a really good one that is actually set in the Veneto region where I live. It is about an American couple who buy a Palladian villa and what they discovered on moving here.  

Two of my favorite parts relate to driving here. One of them is where they come to the realization that just because there is a sign that says your destination is off to the right doesn't actually mean that the next road is the one you want. It just means that somewhere in the next 5 kl. or so will be a road that will take you roughly in the direction that you want in the general area of the town that you are looking for. The other compares the driving here to an Olympic sport where style points can make or break your score. Very funny ... and also very true. An interesting rule of the road here is that if someone is passing and there is oncoming traffic that he runs the risk of hitting head-on ... the passing driver has the right of way ... yep that's right. The dumbest driver wins.

Above the nests edge

Tiny yellow trumpets

open wide, crying.

The Night Visitor

We have finally decided to move into the new house and "camp out" till our household goods arrive. Yes, those would be the ones that were due here a month ago and still have not shown up. In the mean time, we have had fun wandering our new neighborhood and being stared at by our new neighbors. The other night, however, JennietheDog went out and stopped suddenly at the bottom of the stairs and began stalking the garden wall. Finally curiosity got the best of me and I went down to see what had occasioned all of the stalking and jumping back and here is what I found:

A Euopean Hedgehog (riccio in Italian). He was much bigger than I had thought they would be and very very cute. My landlord says he is very old and they seemed happy that I had seen him. They rely on them for bug and snake control in their gardens.

We have had an amazing amount of torrential rain in the last month but yesterday and today started out sunny so I took some pictures of the new house. The locals say that the last time the volcano erupted they went without a summer and instead had a long rainy cold Spring followed by a cold rainy early Autumn. Imagine my joy.This is the front of the house (as seen from the back).

And this is part of the back of the property to incude my outdoor pizza oven. I cannot wait to try it out. We did set up a summer kitchen in the downstairs for when it gets hot (here's hoping ... LOL) and now all we need is furniture, and dishes, and stuff. If it stays nice today I will take more pictures and try to get them up tonight or tomrrow.

On the knitting front I have not gotten past the 9th repeat of the shawl I was working on but that is because I have been desperately trying to finish one of the three sets of socks that I have on the needles. Knitting is still slow work and my shoulder will only tolerate so much of it but I am getting more comfortable with Continental style knitting although my old way is still the fastest for me. The dates are out for the next Sock Summit and I am trying to figure out if I will be able to go or not. It was a ton of fun last year.

A south wind carries

Rain and the song of the wren

Down the arrows path.