The blessings of rain

Hello, everyone.  We're in full-on early summer now, but recently we had a few inches of rain. We've been really dry, so this was very welcome. 

Today the flowers are showing their appreciation. 

Group photo of rain lilies.

Another species saying hello.

One of the new ones, bought from Plant Delights by mail order.

A canna showing its glory.

Getting ready to sew a new quilt top together

Hello,  everyone. I really missed my crafting activities while we were walking on the pilgrimage in Spain. It's just another sacrifice that has to be made--my crafts are not as portable as crocheting or knitting. (Interested readers may find some of that neep on the Camino Forum.)

Okay, the phone turned it sideways,  but y'all can still see the position labels pinned onto the squares. This labeling system I learned years ago, when I had to take a math class that involved matrices. (Tables of info, for a more practical name) The spots were all designated by an alpha + number code for clarity. It works very well for quilt piecing, too.

This is my second quilt from the Building Blocks pattern. I used up parts of 2 Charm packs (5×5 squares) and some 2.5 inch strips that were lying around, plus the solid purple for the sashing inside the squares. It's going to be a baby/lap size quilt, which is much easier to quilt than the larger ones.

Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid (edited for spelling)

 Hello, everyone. Sorry it's been so many days, things have been busy. Most of the 2024 Camino pictures have been added to my computer now.

And scrolling through them, I encountered a number of photos from the Mercado de San Miguel. This isn't really a "market" in the Old World sense. It's a tourist trap--but this one is worth it. No admission charge. Food, food, food, and also a couple of drinks shops, plus a certain amount of seating.

The octopus is the round slices in the middle. Yum! 

Anchovies on the left, the codfish loaf (pastel de bacalao) I think is in the center, caviar on the right. Yum!

This shop had several varieties of olive skewers. They were great. Below the prepared skewers a number of trays of olives (straight-up) are visible. I love Spanish olives. 

Yes, the Mercado de San Miguel is always crowded. Yes, there are a lot of tourists there. But the food is great, the wines are good, and it's a fun way to spend an hour or so getting a midday snack.

Regarding pastel de seafood, the Spanish have a number of variations on this and they're all tasty. My first discovery of it was the pastel de langostino (crayfish pate) while walking the Salvador in 2021. 

 Since then I have had seafood pastel as part of other meals and it's always a delight. 

View from the Needle in Madrid

Hello, everyone. We got home a few days ago and are slowly catching up to ourselves. 

I couldn't resist taking a photo of the jet airplane in front of the Air Force building.

View toward the mountains. We think the El Escorial is on the foothills in the distance. (The visit to El Escorial and its Royal Monastery were covered in reporting on a previous year's Camino.) It's possible that the building that looks like two stacked shoeboxes houses the Garment Museum.