Lemon Tree Tales

Return of the Prodigal Suitcase

This is the surprise that was waiting for me on the porch when I opened the door to go for my morning walk. (Okay it's something new that I'm trying to do - walk for 20 to 40 minutes every day. They say it takes three weeks to instill a habit so that means I'm a third of the way there.) Yes it took THREE weeks for this baby to make its way home from somewhere in the depth of the hell that is otherwise known as Baggage Control, Heathrow Airport! I'm just glad that it finally arrived. Maybe there's hope that they'll find the remaining piece of lost luggage?

So now I have to gather all the dirty laundry and head over to the laundromat. Oh, I haven't told you about the washer yet, have I? It's been broken for a month now. The Maytag repairman has been very busy at our house in between shooting commercials. So far he's been here four times and still has yet to get the darn thing working again. He thought that maybe he had a box of defective wax motors but now he thinks that the circuit board he installed wasn't good. He said that he'll be here on Tuesday with a spanking brand new board. I'm hoping that it does the trick because I have to tell you that I'm not having fun going to the laundromat with five loads of laundry. It may have been a fine thing to do ten years ago but since then I've been spoiled with having a washer/dryer set-up in my apartments and now the house.

WIPs: Doll Quilt & Lemondrop

After playing with the pieces for a little bit, this is what I've started to sew. One fabric, a gorgeous Kaffe Fassett dahlia print, just didn't make it. So sad, but it didn't work no matter where I placed it. I wasn't sure whether I'd want to add a sashing strip between the braids, but after studying this I realized that it needs something turquoise to break up all the purples. Luckily I have some on hand in the stash.

I've been alternating between cutting and sewing the quilt and working on another Lemondrop sketch for  the 101 Fairy Lane site. She's very close to completion so it should be up later tonight. I like to "paint" her in photoshop. Maybe one day I'll experiment with painting her using goauche and watercolor paper.

Doll Quilt Swap II: Cut pieces

I've been working on my quilt for the Doll Quilt Swap II. After mulling over which fabrics to choose from my stash, I came up with these. I need to get hopping on it though. It needs to be mailed next week to my swap partner. I hope she will like it.

Scotland: Edinburgh Castle

Our last real day of our travels had us at Edinburgh Castle. Now this really is quite the fortress. It's on a large hill in the center of the city. Lots of great buildings, even a little chapel that they use for weddings. In fact we passed a bridal party when we entered the castle grounds. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but these two had the beautiful blue sky as backdrop. Apparently the Queen was due to arrive in the city half an hour from when we toured the grounds. The army was getting ready to give her a 21-gun salute as soon as her plane touched the ground. (Actually, just reading up on the gun salute, and it doesn't necessarily have only 21 guns. It depends on the occasion and person being honored. In this case, I think that it's called a royal salute.) She was going to be there for the opening of the Scottish Parliament the next day. Of course the next day is when the Glasgow Airport attack occurred. I wonder if the new PM's coming into office had anything to do with the terrorists' timing?

We walked down the Royal Mile - called that because it connects two royal residences. Oh, and it's not a mile long, more like a mile and a quarter, or half even. Mostly filled with tourist traps. These were two interesting storefronts. A very colorful street vendor - don't you just love this little fellow? He reminds me of a Scottish Buster Brown, but I'm not sure who he really is.

We also stopped at the Camera Obscura just past the castle entrance on the Royal Mile. That was most entertaining due to a delightful young Scot who laid on the accent pretty thickly - mostly to amuse us tourists I'm sure. Still it was good for getting a nice tour of the city all from the comfort of a small dark room. We knew at this point that we wouldn't be able to spend too much time in city so it worked out perfectly. That's it for our vacation. It was a great experience and we're glad that we were able to finally see Scotland. It has beautiful scenery and very polite people.

Scotland: Various places

We were quite lucky with the weather for most of our trip. Not too much rain and a few extremely beautiful days. Apparently since we've left it's been raining cats and dogs. If I recall this is the view from a valley near Ullapool but I don't know for sure. Isn't it simply stunning?

Now these next photos you'll have to click on to see better - they're a collection of animals seen along the way. Highland cow, dairy cows herded by a minivan, white sheep, black sheep, and bunnies, LOTS of bunnies. I swear that we must have found a scene from Watership Down there were so many bunnies and rabbit holes. We also had to stop our car for this hungry little lamb. I can just imagine the mama asking if it couldn't wait just one minute. The black lamb also had been nursing when we drove past. But do you know how hard it is to snap a good picture of two black sheep?

This little lamb was so cute that we stopped the car to take a picture but it wouldn't look at me. Finally I resorted to baa-aaa-ing from the car so that it'd look at me. Yeah, it looked all right, but so did the mama. I'm pretty sure that she was gonna ram the car if we stayed any longer.

Scotland: Balvenie Distillery Tour

Now this was the most amazing distillery tour we've been on - second only to the one at Ardbeg a couple years ago. (And that ranks first in my mind because the young man giving the tour was extremely passionate about whisky and its history on the Isle of Islay.)

The Balvenie Distillery Tour is not to be passed up. Not only do you get a great guide, but you get to see a complete maltings floor in action. The work is still pretty labor-intensive and back-breaking. But you really can see the difference in the new grains and ones that have already been on the floor to germinate for a few days.

They also have a working cooperage on site where they reconstruct the casks used to age the whisky in. A huge percentage of them are casks made of American white oak used one time for bourbon. Others are port or sherry casks primarily used for finishing the whisky in for the last few months before bottling. Even though these coopers have modern machinery to assist them, it's still another labor intensive job.

Actually quite a lot of what goes on in a distillery is not unlike how it was 100 years ago. Apparently they used to give the men a dram of whisky at the start of their shift and one at the end of their shift. And if a job was particularly offensive or hard (ie: cleaning out the mash tuns) then they'd get another dram. Our tour guide seemed very sad when he told us that things haven't been done like that since the 80s. He's been in the business for 40 years and is playing tour guide as his retirement job.

When we went to Warehouse no24 to see some of the casks being stored there were three casks set aside. It seems that we had an opportunity to fill our own little bottle with cask-strength whisky. I told Steve that he couldn't pass that up. He got to drop the dog into the sherry butt cask and then fill up this little bottle from a funnel. All made of copper by the distillery coppersmith.

The tour ended with an extensive Balvenie whisky tasting (from the new make to a very expensive 30yr) in the old manager's office. We had the very pleasant company of an American couple from Atlanta, Georgia and an older couple from Sweden with their young college-aged son as interpreter. So if you're at all interested in how whisky's made then I highly recommend that you book this tour. It's pricey compared to all the other distillery tours, but this is by far the best experience and well worth the expense.

Scotland: Loch Ness Region

Contrary to popular opinion, there's not just one Nessie in Loch Ness. See? Here's two of them to prove it! Well, almost, but we couldn't resist these little cuties for our little friends Miss L & Miss J - both of whom promptly squealed with delight when presented with these goodies. (That meant of course that American Airlines found our lost bag from our trip back home. Yay! Only two bags remain missing from British Airways. It's been two weeks now so I'm losing hope that they'll be found.)

It was cold and mostly rainy for our trip from Poland to Scotland. All without sweaters or jackets because of the lost luggage. They found Steve's small carry-on sized checked bag so after two days he had a sweater and jacket. I ended up wearing the sweater that we bought for Steve and alternated between two sets of tops. They were all different shades of purple. Steve started to tease me about my color choice.  :-)

Overlooking Loch Ness, on the road from Fort William to Inverness, we stopped at Urquhart Castle for a look. As you can see there's not a lot left, but it's a pretty impressive set of ruins. And the mist was rolling in, apropos of a Scottish day. The trebuchet, not the original, looked right at home at the main walkway towards the castle. We also found a bird's nest with little hungry babies in the room just past the drawbridge. Unfortunately I couldn't capture them. Oh, but they just couldn't wait for their mama to come back.

We stopped to take a closer look at the Caledonian Canal. Perfect timing to see them moving a series of boats down the locks. The first photo shows the difference in water levels between the lock. When they want to open it they'll pump the water into the lower level from the upper level until they equalize. The second photo shows the lock opening. And finally in the third shot you see the boat crew walking their boat into the open lock. As you can see, a crowd of people stopped to watch this happen. For me it was all new and very interesting. (Click on the photos to view them larger.)

Auschwitz

Steve took this picture of the end of the railroad tracks that led to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II - Birkenau concentration camp.

What can I say about our visit to this scene of the most evil that man has done? First is that this place is so much larger than I ever imagined. I wasn't prepared for that and it shook me. To think that this wasn't even the Nazis' final plans for this place. We saw the "Mexico" site next to this where more bunkers were planned to be built to house prisoners. How can there be people, even today, who believe that the Holocaust was a hoax? This is simply unacceptable to me. One and a half million Jews lost their lives there! That's beyond criminal. It's evil.

The walk from the "death gate" barely seen at the far end of the tracks, to the memorial sites at the end was a long one. Halfway there we saw the station where the prisoners were off-loaded from the train. There is a moving picture of the women and children who were told to walk down this road towards the gas chambers. The rest of the walk I kept thinking of the dread that was present in the women's minds.

It's hard to think of what to say. This was an important thing to do and to see. As if anyone really needed a reminder of what evil man can and does do, but that's exactly why it's important to visit. To remember and honor those who died, and to keep vigilant that it never happen again.

Poland: From Warsaw to Krakow

The first thing that we realized while driving from Warsaw to Krakow is that this is very much an agricultural/rural region of Poland. There's lots of farmland and wide open spaces with a few little towns or villages along the way. Oh, and the main road? It's a two-lane highway with no major concern for speed limits outside of the towns. If someone's going too slow then you just whip out and pass them on the opposing traffic lane. A bit wild but once Steve knew the game we were doing it too. I think he said that we were going 125 mph at one point. Yeah, I can believe it! Of course Poland's roads also have a very high number of traffic accidents. That too I can believe. It took a little over three hours to get from Warsaw to Krakow.

We thought that the telephone poles were interesting. They're made of long pieces of concrete with brick openings. Sometimes there's one, two or even three poles. The third pole isn't often in a tripod configuration, but more often used as a support for the sagging two-pole design seen here.

There were variations of these little caution signs whenever you headed into the towns. This one has had a little "help" from the local teens in its design. Too funny, I didn't notice the man's "addition" until now.

How could you not "krak" a smile when seeing this car dealership? Obviously this was in Krakow's city limits.

Most of the architecture wasn't too amazing, but I really liked the roof on this little church. I wonder if it was inspired by Russian architecture at all?

The Poles are a very nice people ... some speak English, but even if they didn't we were able to communicate well enough. We stayed at a great place in Krakow, Hotel System Pop - where the color of choice was orange! The room was furnished in a very modern IKEA sort of way with lots of space. The downstairs lobby had four computers for hotel guests to use. And our stay included a very nice breakfast buffet. What more could you ask for? And I found out what blogger looks like for Polish speakers while leaving a comment for a blogger blog. Very interesting!

Happy 4th of July!

Here's wishing you a fabulous 4th of July! We're going to have BBQ with our friends. There'll probably be some watching of the fireworks display. Either way, we're all happy to spend time together on America's Independence Day.