The Last of the Christmas Holidays

Here in the part of Italy where I live there is a big celebration the night before Epiphany called the Bufana. This is based around a legend of the Three Wise Men ... who, like most men, were able to become so lost on their way to adore the Christ child that they ended up here in northern Italy instead of Bethlehem. Finally a miracle occured and they stopped to ask directions at a small cottage ( I know I know ... go figure). When the old woman answered the door they offered to take her with them to Bethlehem. She showed them her broom and told them she had too much housework to do to go wondering off (with three King who were obviously directionally challeged) but she gave them directions and sent them on their way. A few days later she realized that she had missed an amazing opportunity and so she left her home in search of the Christ child herself. Not knowing how she would be able recognize him she gave gifts and candy to every child she met in the hopes that they would turn out to be the Child she was searching for.

Here she is still giving candy and gifts to the children in the village. But wait! There's more! Here in the Friuli region where I live every village and farm builds the biggest bonfire they can (it's a bit of a competition) with either a cross or ... get this ... a witch on top. Why they want to burn the person bringing the gifts is beyond me but anyway about half of them do. The bonfire comes from the old pagan ritual meant to remind the sun to return but this being a Catholic country they have a priest come out and say a prayer and bless the pile of debris with holy water and voila! it is all ok. Then, while what looks like half the village is burning, the spectators set off firecrackers and drink vin brulee (hot spiced wine) and eat roast pork and a special cake that is a combination pumpkin bread/fruit cake.

It was an amazing amount of fun going out and seeing all of this with my friends. And on the drive home we all kept pointing out the fires along the way. Next year I will have to go and do this again!

Midwinter whiteout

Only the sound of the birds

Hidden in the trees.

Happy New Year Everyone!

It's that time of year again. Usually New Year's Day comes without my seeing it "in" but this year we have been invited to some friends for dinner and I know from past experience that this means that I will be out past midnight. The Italians love to sit and eat and talk and drink and eat and talk and talk ... well I am sure that you can see where this is headed. So tonight for the first time since the year 2000 rolled in I will be up to see it. Then, in a week or so, the village where I live will burn a witch to determine how the weather will play out over the next few months. Yep ... that's right ... they burn a witch. Not a weatherman which I could almost see because they are as bad here as anywhere else that I have ever lived. Nope, they burn a witch.
Christmas here was dismal and rainy. The Son came home for a week and that was the bright spot for me. He made a host of friends downtown and we are already planning his next trip back this summer. He was a huge hit with our friends here and they cannot wait for him to come back.
Prior to Christmas we had snow which is a fairly rare occurrence here:

Not much as you can see but as they do not plow and there is not much sanding either so it was a risky thing to go out driving. This was followed by fog and then a few days of sun melted it off. Pretty while it lasted and JennietheDog had a great time sliding down the drive on the ice ... her favorite part of winter.
An interesting, and tasty, thing about living here is that I can go to a local farm and by raw milk (latte crudo) from a vending machine. It is the best milk I have ever had and it is all we drink now. I wish we had this kind of freedom in our food choices in the US. I just take my own bottles and fill them up:

This year I am going to ramp up the cooking that goes on here and really explore Italian food. Any and all success will be posted here so everyone else can try them too. Sort of a Julie/Julia type thing only with a variety of food styles. I figure cooking and knitting should keep me busy and off the streets and out of jail.
And speaking of knitting, I have several patterns coming out in the new book being released by CraftLit called "What Would Madame Defarge Knit?" It comes out in the first week in February and has some wonderful patterns and essay along with brilliant illustrations. I am having to phase out of my yarn business as I am not allowed to run a business from here and so am hoping to do more pattern design to keep my morale up and my mind busy. Here's hoping ... LOL
This year JennietheDog turned 2 years old and so I will leave you with pictures of her ... mostly 'cause she is just so darned cute! Have a great New Year!

See ... isn't she a beauty?

Hailstones on the roof

The sound of horses running

In far away fields.

It Always Seems Like A Good Idea

Stay in bed and rest. Two weeks for sure.
I always think that this will work out ok. I will get some books read, some DVD's watched and a lot of knitting done. And about 24 hours later housework is sounding like it might be fun.
As mentioned, I finished my Faroe Shawl that I started with Myrna Stahman at a workshop she gave here in Italy at the end of August. I love it and it is perfect for the weather here.

Not the best picture but it looked even worse on JennietheDog. And besides, there was sun!
There is a shortage of Christmas knitting this year as I have been working on patterns for the new book from CraftLit "What Would Madame Defarge Knit?" that will be released on 7 February 2011. Yep, just a few short months to go. It has been an amazing amount of fun to be involved in this project for the last year and I hope that everyone enjoys the patterns as Heather has assembled a varied and wonderful bunch of designers. I am hoping this will help me to move into doing more design work. And so along those lines:

I did spend a day on the couch. And I have been working at my kitchen table ever since with yarn and books and graph paper piled up all around me scribbling away. At least it keeps me off the streets...

Tonight's light rainfall

Wraps me in soft silence

On my short walk home

On a Clear Day ...

Which the day after Thanksgiving was not. How is it that there always seems to be such foul weather at the Holidays? But some friends and I headed east towards Slovenia to tour two wineries that were in the Udine/Trieste region. Braving the snow and rain we stopped first at the Bressan winery. Owned by the Bressan Family for 10 generations and currently overseen by Fulvio Bressan it has been in active production since 1726 and creates some of the finest wines in Europe. He is leaving Tuesday for Vienna to recieve an award from the European Union that says this ... so it is not just me. Although I would drink his wine for the rest of my life quite willingly.

The majority of the grapes that he grows are specific to the Friuli region: Tocai Friulano, Malvasia, Ribolla Gialla,Schiopettino and the legendary Pignol which is on it's way to extinction. He uses no chemicals and no synthetic fertilisers and no industrial yeasts. There is much more information at:  http://bressanwines.com/.


Stop two was to Castelvecchio (the "Old Castle") in Gorizia on the Slovinean border. There we toured the cellars. Entering though here:

A bit tough for the claustrophobic. And so down this shaft for a bit and then you come upon:

Lovely isn't it? When these cellars were dug out there was quite a cache of old Roman coins discovered. The wines here were also quite tasty although I am afraid that we should have come here first as the Bressan wines are impossible to follow. The homemade prosciutto crudo was wonderful as was the Sagrado Rosso, a wine they are quite well known for. The Viila has is being renovated and is beautiful ... and careful attention has been paid to the mosaics on the floors.

In other news. I have finished my designs for the "What Would Madame DeFarge Knit?" book that is coming from CraftLit in February. I am trying to finish the test knit on one last item and then it will be time to start on some new designs that have been floating round in my head and on bits of paper in my office for the last month or so. While I was knitting I was listening to a new audio book:  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I listened to the Audible.com one but am going to order the book to have. It was wonderful and I was very sorry to see it end. I think it should be a movie.

A foggy landscape
Fond memories of my home
Hanging on the wall.

Gainful Employment

I am a bit jealous. It's a hard thing to admit ... but I am jealous of JennietheDog. You see, while I am not allowed to seek gainful employment here, she has already found a job and settled right in. She is in training to be a Therapy Dog and so she is working at the local library helping the kids who come in to improve their reading skills.

Here she is on a Saturday being read to by a young girl. Today she goes to help the preschoolers. She loves her job since it means that sometimes she gets to be petted and sometimes they read her to sleep. It's a hard job ... but some puppy has to do it. Here she is hanging with her new friends just before she heads in to work.

We are off to work ... she still can't drive ... it's that "no opposable thumbs" thing. But if I get some good pictures I will update this when I get home.

Road Trip

Back at last from a longish break but with pictures and some news. We went to Florence(Firenza as it is called here) and had a splendid time. We rode the EuroStar train there as driving in the old city is right up there with having a tooth pulled without the benefits of anesthesia ... just plain no fun! But after an initial bit of rain the weather turned out glorious!



We saw "David" and spent a morning at the Uffizzi zmuseum and ate wonderful food and drank even better wines. We saw the old castle:

And we saw the Duomo and clocktower which are made from an amazing number of coloured maarbles.

On the knitting front I was able to finish my patterns for the new book from CraftLit that is coming out this Spring and I am still knitting away on my Faroe shawl. The shawl should be finished within the next week or so and I have a great idea for a shawl design that I will start on then. I am updating the Etsy shop this week and I have tried my hand at dying with walnut husks. This is what I got:

It is hanging to dry now and I am anxious to see how it ends up.

And we are at the end of the gardening season here. I still have spinach in the garden as it likes the cold but even the kiwi have been picked and brought in. Late October brings the roasted chestnuts to the forfront (castagna) and of course those must be eaten hot and only, ever, with a glass of red wine, never water, or they will give you a bad stomach.

And of course we have the cider we pressed in September ... tasty stuff that. LOL

The whisper of leaves

And me ... I keep listening for more.

But the wind moves on.

Summer Camp: the Remix

I am sure that most of us have suffered through Summer Camp. I went to several ... finally managing (I think) to be sent home from one in disgrace. And so a few weeks ago it was with some trepidation that I headed off to Camp again. And this camp was both different in some ways and in others the same.
I had signed up for a knitting camp with The Alpine Adventure Agency. I headed up into the Dolomites to a small "camp"called San Martino di Castrozza and a wonderful "tent" called The Grande Hotel des Alpes. It was tough there. The chefs were skilled and the sommeliers were amazing. We had the usual "camp fare" of venison soaked in wine with wild mushrooms, struedel with creme Anglais, lots of things with wild woodland berries ... I think I may have gained weight. And the wines there were to die for.
Then we were forced to hike through the usual campish scenery (if you were an extra in The Sound of Music that is):

We learned the science of cheese making at a local latteria where they have just a bit of cheese on the shelves being wiped down and aged:

We prowled the forests looking for various types of edible mushroom. We ate the good ones but these were the bad ones:

And for our "Crafttime" we had knitting since it was actually a knitting camp. Myrna Stahman (who will be sainted later this year for her unending patience) taught us how to knit Faroese Shawls and Seaman's Scaves. She was amazing ... even when she ripped back 10 rows on the middle stitches of my shawl and then knit them back up correctly while carrying on a lively conversation with the class. It was the best class I have ever taken. And we were able to take our knitting everywhere we went and that was fun too.

That is Myrna ... carrying on a conversation with me and knitting at the same time. I can only dream of being that coordinated someday. So, this time Camp was fun. And maybe next year I can go again ... if I can finish my shawl.

Only the wind sneaks

Into my room on this night

Guttering the flame