Santo Domingo de Calzadas to Villambistia

Hello, everyone.  This is a second post for today to catch up.

The Cathedral chickens of Santo Domingo, sadly Blogger turns this photo sideways.

We left Santo Domingo at 7, as we have been doing. It's actually a little later than in previous caminos, but the sun is almost up when we leave and the walking is good. We walked along through various little villages and grabbed a bite of breakfast along the way. (Stopped at the first food we found, then later discovered that there was an actual inside bar by the church that we could have eaten at. 😒 But live and learn.) We arrived in Belorado, the "stage end" town in several guides, about 1:00 and found long lines in front of various albergues. Several pensiones were full up as well. 

Pilgrimage art on the Repsol gas station

We struck out for the lovely village of Villambistia and the Hotel Rural Casa de Los Deseos. As this is a small village the hotel offers a menu for supper and also a  small (traditional for Spain) breakfast. We really enjoyed our supper! And since we have "broken the stages" we aren't surrounded by crowds. We don't expect that we will hear people in the next room hooting and hollering after 9 pm either. (In fairness, when the bedtime/lights off time of 10 pm arrived last night, everyone got quiet. And the famous chickens of Santo Domingo are surprisingly good neighbors!)

Nájera to Santo Domingo de Calzados

Hello, everyone.  I didn't post yesterday,  so this post covers yesterday's walk.

We walked from Nájera to Santo Domingo. This Santo Domingo, by the way, is not the guy started the Dominican order. He was, however,  that Domingo's tocayo: his mom had asked the well known holy man to pray for her to have a son. When the son arrived the following year, she named him after the famous patron of the pilgrim travelers and founder of towns. And holy monk. He is one of the "engineer saints" of the Camino.

We did about 23 km on a glorious day. 

This was a really delicious tortilla, with bacon and cheese on top.

View of Santo Domingo from the trail. (DH the nearest pilgrim in photo)

Yesterday long and hard, today some happenings

Hello, everyone.  As y'all can see from the title, yesterday was a demanding walk. There were lots of ups and down, some steep. Also, the route into Logrono was transformed into a "green route" which whike it went past every new tree planting in the area, was a little bit longer. Gronze.com has the walk from Viana into Logrono at about 8 km. It was morexlike 11km. I was too tired to make a post. 

Carp at the park

Pilgrimage monument at edge of Logrono

Today, we left Logrono about 7 am. The walk through the damaged and park area at the edge of the city, which we did in pre-dawn dark 11 years ago, was very pleasant in the early morning. 

About noon ish we saw a helicopter flying around, which has not been usual. It turned out, when we got into Najera, that the power was out. It wasn't out for half of Europe as the rumor was running. It was just out for all of Iberia, the peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal. After the power came back, around 5 pm in Najera, we tracked down a bar with internet and looked it up. It turns out that, if you should happen to be in a power outage in Spain, Najera is a great place to sit through it. Big cities like Madrid and Lisbon had some panic buying and their (electric) metro systems got stuck. (That must have been fun for the passengers.) 

Sheep happily in the pasture outside of Najera 

A very refreshing day on the Camino

Hello, everyone.  When I say "refreshing" I mean what in South Texas is called "fresh": cool and nice. 

We had a cool front blow through while we were walking. The wind picked up enough to push hats off of heads. The sky flirted with rain, but only put out a few sprinkles. 😀

The rainbow showed us what the clouds were doing somewhere else.

I think these tall flowers are some kind of bulb.

We got into Los Arcos a little bit after 2 pm. This being siesta time, we had a cool drink, went to the pension to check in, and lay down for a little rest.

A hot spring day

Hello, everyone.  Today was supposed to be warm. It was. In fact, since we saw a huge thermometer on a building, we checked it. The reading was over 30 degrees C. We drank a water bottle each before 1 pm. 

A fence with irises

A pretty wildflower

We made it to Estella today. It's about 22 km. We got into town during siesta and very little is open then. The place will pop back to life at 6 pm.

Good progress today

Hello, everyone. After a very busy day yesterday,  doing errands, we started walking  about 7 this morning.  We passed over about 26 km and saw many beautiful flowers. 

It was good walking weather today, too.

Tulips are blooming here

Hello, everyone. 

I'm so jealous of the tulip beds in the Pamplona parks.

Aren't they gorgeous?  

The weather was cool and cloudy today.

More later. 

Camino 2025 is on the road

Hello, everyone.  We're on Camino again. This time it's a return to the Camino Frances. 

A little picture to fly on:

A beautiful retama in bloom. Located at Sal Del Rey, an historic site in Northern Hidalgo County,  Texas. Photo by DS.

Retama is a member of the legumes (bean) family. It becomes a large bouquet in the springtime in Texas.

It's amazing what one can see traveling

Hello, everyone.  Recently DD and I were in the airport in Harlingen and discovered some really cool art pieces.

As y'all can see from the caption photos,  they have made a scavenger hunt out of the viewing experience. This is fun, and it makes the baggage collection experience much more pleasant. I also enjoyed noticing the Duplo bricks and other toys, and the many unmated sandals, that they included.

Progress report 2 on maintenance

Hello, everyone. The last post showed shirt #1 ready for Fray Check and soaking. Shirt #2 has been basted and stitched now. 

This is the view from the front.

Both shirts have been dabbed with Fray Check and are now dry. Today it's time to soak off the Sulky Fabri-solvy from the underside of the stitching. After this dries, there will be testing try-on. 

User tip, you really do need to stabilize the dickens out of the damaged area with both a backing fabric and basting stitches. The basting stitches also allow you to check the thread color for compatibility with the fabric. 

On both of these tee shirts I ended using a different thread than I expected. The light playing on the merino wool wanted the shades I ended up with. (Stash has now increased by several spools of fine polyester thread.)

Another item that was extremely helpful, in addition to the embroidery hoop and the size 28 tapestry needle and ball point straight pins, was the Ryobi battery powered magnifying light. It gave me a good look at the winds of the yarns. I'm so grateful to DS for giving it to me!

Progress on maintenance

Hello, everyone. The holes in the previous post are almost done. All they need is to have the Fabri-solvy to be soaked off and a bit of Fray check to discourage the bits of yarn from making runners.

The front and back work on shirt 1. I got a really good color match on this one. The front work is close to where the backpack strap goes. There will probably be test fit later. 🤞

Commencing on shirt 2.

The damage is more structural with this one, the one hole is at the shoulder and cuts 2 seam lines. The ball point pins came out because getting the shoulder to lie flat in the embroidery hoop was going poorly. And keeping the strain on the knit fabric as even and gentle as possible matters. This cut crosses over where the backpack strap will lie, making it even more important. 

There are 3 different threads in use for basting: the remnants of the earlier work at the neck, a darker shade, and the darkest, which looks like the best match: "Tree Bark" polyester thread. I basted the shoulder seam line straight before beginning to stabilizer the rest. Then I basted down the point of the cut to nest into itself.

The cut line is not only long, it also curves. At the end I will remove all of the basting that is not covered by the repair stitches.

Hiking also means gear maintenance

Hello, everyone.  To day I will talk over with y'all the latest gear maintenance project, a part of preparation for walking the Camino again.

This shirt encountered an accident. I contacted the maker, VOORMI, and sought advice. They were super supportive and recommended me to use a whip stitch, fine needle, and very fine thread. About in the 80 to 100 weight thread, actually, in polyester. 

I had some 80 weight Aurifil cotton in the house but I don't think mixing cotton and the wool will be a super good plan. I do know that the spiffy fine cotton thread, with the right (wrong) encouragement, will break. So I ordered new thread spools from Red Rock Threads and Ripstop By The Roll. 

I'm about to set up my embroidery hoop for floating the shirt on top of a light water soluble stabilizer. Probably the heavier one of my 2 Sulky wash away ones. (The lighter one, Solky Solvy, probably can't handle being the support layer on the bottom.)

I'm thinking the DMC size 28 tapestry needle will be the way to go. 2nd choice, the Bohin size 26, a tiny bit thicker, and with that amazing Bohin polished surface. Third, a new packet of needles I found at Walmart, branded Singer a mix of sizes 24 and 26, also tapestry tips. The tapestry tip needle is the hand sewing version of the "stretch" needles sold for machine sewing. It will work it's way between the strands instead of piercing them. And gently does it is the theme for this extra fine Merino wool shirt.

I will use tacking stitches to hold the knit steady while I work on the tiny, tiny whip stitches. That is why I called this floating,  it's the equivalent to floating projects on the embroidery machine.