Texas themed quilting fabric

Hello, everyone. 

I am on various quilt oriented email lists. One of them is Art Gallery Fabrics. Recently the promotional email was about a Texas themed collection called "The Road to Round Top", that being a prominent and well known geologic feature in, IIRC, central Texas. It's a big hill, basically, and I think there is a walking trail to the top.

This is the set of fat quarters in the collection.  The greens are on the gray side, and the whites are on the vanilla-custard side. I already have some other fabrics that go with it, too. 

It's so pretty.

I feel like a table runner out of this pattern would show the fabrics nicely. 

Or maybe a Friendship Braid type of table runner, like the ones in various Youtube videos. 

Returning to the San Salvador--Last Day

 Hello, everyone.

View back toward Mieres in the dawn

Today's post returns to the pilgrimage for the last day of the walk into Oviedo.  This is a shorter day than many, but the middle portion was a very steep climb that was signed as a "greenway". The first portion was a gentle climb over switchbacks on the road and third portion was also gentle hill going through and around farms.

View of Oviedo in the distance

When we were walking through the farms, we met some of the farmers. They were very friendly and reminded us of the old saying, "He who visits Santiago and neglects to visit Oviedo, visits the servant and neglects the Master."

The actual entry into Oviedo was a gentle slope down suburban streets, passing the official albergue in Oviedo and arriving in the Cathedral square downtown. 

We had reserved a room at Hostel Fidalgo, the same pension we had stayed at when we bussed to Oviedo in 2018. This time, being mid October, it was a bit chilly in the room; the lady explained to us that the heat in the building is controlled for the whole building by the overall management. 

The tourism office wants everyone to know that Oviedo is the origin of the
 Camino de Santiago. Which it is, as Oviedo was the capital of
Asturias when the bones were found.

We paid our respects to the Sudario and the Cross of Victory from Covadonga when we went to the Cathedral to get our Salvadoranas.

The reliquary of the Sudario, the head cloth mentioned in the Gospel of John
 description of the apostles discovering that Jesus had been resurrected

The credencial for the Salvador, the bottom stamp is upside
down as the credencial is unfolded here and the
final stamp is on a different page.

The Salvadorana
It had to be weighted down to uncurl the shape of the carrying tube.

We took a rest day in Oviedo.

Israel pilgrimage, eighth in series

Hello, everyone.

Apologies for the break in posting, it was a busy week. Today's post begins the third day of visiting in the Holy Land.  We got out early as it was our day to change hotels as well as visit places. Our bus toted all of our luggage around in the hold all day as we went around.

Qumran region, Dead Sea in background

It was a desert day this day. We headed out onto the highway and went to Qumran and then over to a place with a camel ride (five minutes for those who wished) and then on to the Jordan River. Qumran is in a desolate place--a good trick for a region as small as the Holy Land. It isn't Texas, friends. It isn't even Wyoming. Think more like one of the East Coast states...Rhode Island? New Hampshire might be larger than the Holy Land. But in this highly populated area there are desolate, empty zones.


Qumran is famous because it is the site where the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered. The Israeli government maintains the place as an archeological site and has a small museum.






















They have what I think I remember as a reproduction of a scroll unrolled in the case for visitors to appreciate. The actual scrolls, being extremely old and written on animal skins for the most part, are kept in climate-controlled conditions I think. They were apparently the main project of a secluded religious community that lived on a hill overlooking the Dead Sea. The scrolls date back to the time of Jesus, give or take a few decades, and after the wars of the late first century AD the community was gone and later completely forgotten. Their stored scrolls were in caves around the area. Every so often a new collection of ancient scrolls gets discovered.

The first scroll cave (extra entrances added by archeologists)

The first scroll cave had only one entrance when its nature as a store room was discovered. A local shepherd was looking for a lost critter (goat? sheep?) and as the hold was deep and dark, he tossed a rock down to see if his creature was down there. I guess the logic is, if it's down there it will say something when the rock comes rolling down. Instead of a bleat, however, he heard the sound of breaking pottery. "Hmm," he said, crawled down to have a look, and the rest is history.







The ruins of the community there have been excavated, at least in part, and various features of the facility are labeled for visitors' information. There is a paved path as well.

They had a really big cistern to store the winter rain water. It might not have seemed so big toward the end of summer when the water would have been running low.

After visiting Qumran, and a short stop at the place with a couple of riding camels--and a shop--we rode over to the Jordan River.

Going to the Jordan meant driving through military areas. We saw people walking around in their uniforms, possibly training, and saw signs requesting that photos not be taken.

There is an Israeli government operated visitors center at the Jordan River at the traditional place St. John did his baptizing. The bathrooms were nice, there were assorted sitting areas, and while we didn't wander in there was a shop.

View of shrine on Jordanian side of the river

 Signs helpfully informed the visitor that immersion gowns were available for $9 each in the shop. Being Catholics, we didn't have interest in that. (The sacrament of Baptism is a "once and done" thing with us.) The folks at the water's edge did, however, have a bowl and shell for our pastor to pour water onto our heads in memory of our baptisms and in honor of St. John.

View of the baptizing area.

The water may be very edifying but I don't think I'd want my head to go under the surface with all that mud in it.

As y'all can see, the Jordan River is not, pace the song, "deep and wide" and it may not even be deep. The shed on the other side of the water is in Jordanian territory. The banks are steep enough that quite a crowd could have stood around listening to the prophet preach and call the repentant to come forward and wash off their old sinful ways.

There is a gentleman that offers to take pictures of the group. He brought the group prints to the hotel a couple of days later. The price was reasonable--about $10 for the group photo print.

The Baptism Site seems like a good stopping point for this post. More of the third day later!

Looking back: San Martin de Laspra (further thoughts)

Hello, everyone.

I looked back and noticed that, while I had titled a post "San Martin de Laspra" I hadn't actually said anything about it in the post. (Sorry about that.)

The things I remember about San Martin de Laspra are these:

It really is on a hilltop. It is, in fact, on the highest point around.

The guide book says that one should bring food to cook. What the guidebook doesn't mention is that the cooking facilities are, well, basic. The large stove is, IIRC, a wood burning type. If you want to use it, you probably need to bring your own wood. And do whatever prep is required to get it ready.  There is a small, white square thing that looks like a microwave oven. It isn't. It appears to be a kind of toaster oven.  So when you go to the store (about a kilometer away down the hill, plenty of goodies but you have to carry it back uphill after you buy it) you need to basically plan on eating cold food.

The hospitalero was amazingly helpful and friendly. When the afternoon rain visited and the clothesline had to come inside in a hurry, he fired up a space heater to help the pilgrims' clothes get dry. And, as a number of the hospitaleros along the Norte do, he talked about the route ahead.  He pointed out that after Soto La Luina there are two choices. The standard Camino route stays lower and goes through a number of towns with ups and downs. The "scenic" route goes up to a ridge and mostly tries to keep a steady level...until the long, long downhill.

We enjoyed our visit to San Martin de Laspra, and with the caveat that one should buy "eat cold" food we wouldn't mind visiting there again. If we should be walking the Norte again, that is.

We appear to have been too busy walking up the hill and down the hill to take pictures of San Martin de Laspra, so for a photo today, a little flower that greeted us along the forested paths after San Sebastian:

Jack in the Pulpit

Returning to our days of Camino walking this year: leaving San Sebastian

Hello, everyone.

While it's obvious that there are not a lot of days to talk about, it occurred to me that we did learn some useful things in the days we did walk, which others would possibly want to know about. Thus these periodic posts about our walk this year.

The last post on this brought us to the city of San Sebastian. This is a good-sized city, a beach town, with a bridge over a river in the midst of it. Once you hit the beach area on the way into town the shells seem to vanish. Apparently the folks in S. Sebastian feel like it's not that hard to find your way through their city. (They do give out maps at the tourist office.) Turning left and going along the beach, there are some really gorgeous flower beds to pass, and as you go along you will find occasional signs for the Turismo office. Obviously, those are something to follow. The short version is: go along the beach and cross the bridge, then go a ways farther. The Turismo is past the McDonald's and in the midst of some other tourist agencies. There are some public benches for resting outside and some ornamental trees. The ladies at the Turismo are very helpful. After staying in a pension in the area, and having some pintxos and wine for dinner with a fellow that was also walking the trail, we got up in the morning (not quite as early as the sun!) and started walking in the lowering, dribbly clouds. We passed the harbor area and then passed the lovely manicured garden/park with the stone statue of the Infanta, and then found a hotel bar that was open and serving coffee. They also had little bocadillos and pastries. The rain came down for real for a few minutes while we were having our bit of breakfast. By the time we left, the rain had pretty much stopped. We continued along the beach, looking at the map and wondering where we were supposed to go next. (No shells yet! Nor yellow arrows.) We came to the end and found ourselves at a tee junction.

At the tee junction, not being sure what to do, we went right. We found ourselves looking at the Funicular building a few minutes later. Just as we were about to do the absolutely wrong thing (climb the stairs next to that building) DH noticed a lady in a third story window waving and pointing back the way we came. We took her advice. And as we approached the tee junction again from the side direction, a gentleman  came up along side of us and told us that we needed to go straight for a little while. He also accompanied us up to the corner we needed to turn at and pointed out the shell sign on the pole. (God bless both of these kind folks!) We turned right at the corner and followed 3" square blue shell stickers on sign poles until we found the path across the headland.

The Camino path over the headland. Note the yellow arrow on the pole.

The map of walking trails in the province (?) next to the trail cutoff.

This trail is a mostly-gently sloping set of switchbacks that climbs steadily until the pilgrim is looking down at multi-story apartments, and then comes down again. There are no scary moments and the main difficulty for me was simply that I had not gained my climbing legs yet. (It takes several days to get one's fitness up at the beginning of the walk, and especially so if one hasn't done much hill climbing before the trip.)

The remainder of the day was a lot of walking past beautiful farms, villages, views of the ocean, and so on. Much of it was on bitty little trails. I really felt for the bike riders who were pushing their bikes past us on the one-butt-wide rocky trails to reach a place they could actually climb aboard and pedal again. The trail does not go past any facilities to speak of, rather like the day before, but near the end of the stage one does enter a lovely fishing town that has bars and possibly also places to stay. We elected to cross over and stayed in Zarautz, as it was only another few kilometers uphill and down past some pretty farms.)

Returning to our first day of walking in Spain

Hello, everyone.

The last post left off at lunchtime. One would think that lunchtime was only half or maybe three-quarters of a walk day. But if the pilgrim doesn't elect to stay the night at Pasajes/San Juan--some do, and after the difficulty of the first half, it's probably far from a bad idea--the route carries on into San Sebastian. (Sorry, the Basque name of the city escapes from me at the moment. Anybody who knows and wants to put it into the comments, feel free.)

There are a couple of marked ways out of the little port town of Pasajes-San Juan. At least, that's what the guide books say. One is said to be easier (meaning less steep) and the other is said to be scenic.

We followed our noses and didn't look around to find the easier way--even though we'd talked about not wanting to climb the very steep stairs to the lighthouse, that was what we ended up doing. There are some pictures we took, early on, on the stairs. Later on there were more decrepit steps, some with rebar poles to steady the risers...and some of the steadied risers and even treads had disappeared over time. This is not a staircase to run up!

Before the stairs began: the water is so clear, the rocks are so neat!

Near the bottom of the endless stairsteps

You can almost tell here that the size of the treads and risers varies. It varies more later on. At the very top of the steps, there was a picnic table. I'm not ashamed to say that we lay down on the benches to rest a minute before continuing on.








There were some really pretty views. There was a bit of paved road, and then the trail went off pavement and continued on along the sides of the hills.

Looking down at San Sebastian, just before the trail began its steep descent into the city