A new machine, a new challenge

Hello, everyone.

In December, a large box arrived for my sweetie, and someone else wrapped it up in paper. There it sat until Christmas Eve, when I opened it to discover a new machine!

This not-so-little beauty is the Janome MC500e, which does embroidery. It does not do sewing, other than what sewing can be done as an embroidery project. Here it is working on the in-the-hoop coasters on the Sew4Home web site.  I used a different color of linen, from stash, and different colors for the threads. The actual pattern was developed from a canned border design, which the ladies at Sew4Home made into an intricate decoration for the square coaster.

I see some non-fattening Easter gifts here.

The machine came with some canned alphabets and designs, and I found some more freebies to try  out as well.

I put this test piece into a three-ring notebook my sweetie gave me. The text was done with the canned lettering alphabets in the machine, and the shell is a freebie I found online. (The person giving the shell away free has it as a part of a beach-y ensemble for a bathroom floor mat. The shell is around 3 3/4 inches across.) Long time readers know that the Camino de Santiago made a big impression around here, so the shell just reached out and grabbed me through the computer screen and said "just think what you can do with me!"

I wrote notes on the test piece, as y'all can see. Which threads were used, the file name of this project--which I envision as a pillow front--and some comments on the way the quilting cotton behaved under the needle.

Very recently, I learned out to print out a placement template, actual size, to see how things work out.

This was an exploration of various sizes of the canned letters that came with the machine. I broke out my little ruler and measured the height of the capital D for the different alphabets. This little trick is done on my machine's software by clicking the little icon at the top, rather like hitting "file" in Word, and a list of options appears. One is Print and it sends what you're working on to the printer, with the centering arrows and everything.

It's been so exciting discovering what can be done with my embroidery machine! And  my local quilt shop has classes on various techniques, explored through projects, as well.

This was from a class that introduced me to in-the-hoop applique. It's a Kimberbell design. Four of us came and worked through it. The little bunny is just as cute as a button, IMHO.

Thank you, Santa!

Update on bead embroidery project

Hello, everyone.

Last spring I started a little embroidery project.  It was a practice piece, mostly, and to try out the stabilizer I had gotten in the mail. (Lacey's Stiff Stuff? I think so.)

It was also a way to use up some bead stash.

Yesterday the beading on the face was finished.

Posing on a different chair this time, a scallop shell.

It's time to choose a finish for the piece. Options include adding it to something else by stitching it down and adding a row of beads at the edge. Or adding a felt backing and putting it onto a headband. Or adding a vinyl back and making a pin or necklace or a simple fidget.

I think it's a little small for a plain fidget piece. Too easy to drop and lose!

There may be headbands around but they're still buried in a box somewhere.

The other options remain open for now. Feel free to chime in with a suggestion for the finish in the comments!

Bead embroidery color play 3

Hello everyone.

This is a little update on the scallop shell.

As y'all can see, the #15 pink rocailles are almost filled in. They look better alongside the ivory colored perles.
Next after these are filled in, the base of the shell. The best matches in the stash are either 3mm Swarovski perles (left over from the wedding dress a few years back) or some #11 Opaque Rainbow Cream Delicas. (That is a lot of words to spell out ivory, isn't it?)
It may become a brooch in the end. It might even get some dangling fringe! But it's too soon to commit on the final finish.

Bead embroidery color play 2

Hello, everyone.

This is an update on the color experiment with the bead embroidery. More was done on the iridescent pink filler beads.

As y'all can see, the iridescent beads on the left just don't work out very well. On the right side of the scallop shell, #15 rocailles in ceylon pale pink are working out better. (After this picture the iridescent beads were pulled out and put back in their box. The shell will be filled in with the #15 beads instead.)

While the last post was photographed and posted with the tablet, today's post was a cooperative effort (if inanimate objects can have such a thing!) of the cell phone camera and the desktop computer. I was unable to figure out how to log into the blog account to use the cell phone for posting. Fortunately, the tablet will be with us on the pilgrimage.

Color play: bead embroidery edition

Hello everyone.

Today, to get in practice for posting from the Camino, a small exploration of colors in a bead embroidery.

The piece is a scallop shell, being sewn onto a bit of, I think, Peltex.
Beads used so far: some ovals inherited from my late MIL and pink, excuse me, rainbow cream soda translucent #11 Dynamites that were bought from Fire Mountain Gems.

Several other candidate beads are nearby.

Merry Christmas

Hello, everyone.

Weather report: last night it was supposed to get down to the upper 40's (F) and today we should hit the mid 70's. It's cloudy, but other than that it is what we call "Chamber of Commerce Weather."

An ornament for the peregrinos. Also a rendering of the Flight into Egypt.

A neck chain for the shell pendant

Hello, everyone.

As mentioned a few days ago, there has been a project to get the bead-woven shell element back into use.

Thanks to this entry on Pinterest, and a careful study of the beads available in-house (that means stash usage) a neck chain was woven and put onto the shell.

The lobster-claw catches are on the front, not in the back. It means adjusting the routine when adding it to an outfit, but that way the chain can be completely detached if there should be a reason to do so.

Beads used: silver bugle beads from the craft store, silver-lined 15-count rocailles and blue 11-count Delicas from Fire Mountain Gems. Strung on 6 pound Fireline. (I love working with the Fireline!)

Progress on the Fidget Quilt

Hello, everyone.

I have completed my first Fidget Quilt.  It was completed with items and fabrics from stash: some red corduroy, quilting fabrics, fuzzy knit binding, a bit of mesh web and a shaped cut of yellow duck, plus some Pure and Natural thin cotton batting for a little bit of body.

Echo quilting inside the flame

The underside of the flame

Layout of flame, zipper, and on the left a tassel and embroidery bits, with candidates for top and bottom edges. Only the cows and sunflowers print was used as the top then was the correct size.

The pool of bits n bobs. Used: the shell, the flame, yellow-bound zipper, flame, and some odd bits.

The zipper got a bead pull--this needed some special treatment, just because the person who gets the quilt will probably pull the zipper pull a lot. I used double stranded Fireline to attach a red bead and a black stone cross, with a small seed bead as the bottom stop for the set. Then I used more doubled
Fireline to go through all of it again. A loop of fabric was added near the top and a jingle bell tied on to it, also. The odd bits of things--an antiqued brass disc, a tiny dove, a beach shell--were securely sewn down. The zip was attached around the edge of the binding with a blind-hem stitch.

 The little barn on the bottom edge got outline quilted.


After all the quilting was done and the dangly bits added, a brown bias binding was added to all four edges.

Ready for delivery.

Trying something completely new: a fidget blanket

Hello, everyone.

Back at the computer again, and looking forward to getting some cool weather soon. We hope! It was 91F when we stepped out the door to walk a little this evening.

There have been, among the other sewing and quilting pins, a number of Pinterest items on my feed about Alzheimers fidget quilts. Or blankets. Or mats. Also called dementia fidget quilts.  It seemed like a good thing to figure out for gifts.

The pictures here are in-progress photos. (It's not done yet.)

Dangles and doo-dads to put onto the top side when it's assembled.

 I found a zipper to put on the top, and some dangly bits, and an old yellow shape that now has an orange mesh loop at the base to fiddle with. Also made a little tassel out of leftover fuzzy white binding.

The top side is getting another strip along the upper edge. 

I found some red corduroy to use as the back side, and a smaller piece that was full of embroidery stitch testing. I'm planning to add the white tassel to the piece of embroidered corduroy. The zip and the yellow shape will go on the brown piece, and the dangly bits will be scattered here-n-there.

Walk Report

Hello, everyone.

The sky was hazy and the day was forecast to be hot, but we got out and got walking anyway.

Did the Hike and Bike for about 6 miles, working-in new insoles for both of us. There were 15 cottontail bunnies to see, plus two roadrunners. One of them sat in a tree and called at us.

A roadrunner

I've been working on some little things to hang from our packs on the pilgrimage this time. We're going to be walking to Fatima, as well as to Santiago de Compostela, and I thought it would be an idea to have some sort of token that we're pilgrims to both places.

The Marian monogram traced onto Sulky Solvy and basted onto the nylon flag fabric (from stash) and ready to embroider

One of the finished hang tags. The piping is supposed to be reflective--by the way, don't soak reflective piping in OxyClean solution to get the remnant blue ink out! It softens the reflective coating. Stitched in cotton floss, using stem stitch. backed with 2 layers of poly organza and 2 layers of white ripstop nylon. A buttonhole is at the top for hanging the tag from a handy place.

I've never tried making something like this before. If I do it again, I think I'll put the last layer of ripstop on last, over the piping, and I think I'll also soak off the Sulky Solvy before assembling the little tag. Might be good to trace the design in yellow, too, instead of blue. (That was supposed to be a light blue and you can see from the picture that it's almost as bright as the floss!)

These tags are about 2/3 the size of our scallop shells from last year. I think we may use the same shells again this year, since we didn't "souvenir-ize" them by writing details of our first pilgrimage inside or anything like that. They're still plain and simple, the natural creamy color of the shell.

Frutas del bosque remembered

Hello, everyone.

The Camino lives and grows in your soul, and at the oddest times you find yourself missing one particular moment. That happened to my sweetie this weekend. He went to HEB and saw the ripe (imported) cherries and came home to say that I should pick them up. It's a great deal, he said. Well. Maybe, for midwinter, but they were still about $6/pound. (4-plus euro for the half kilo, ouch!) I didn't get them. But I thought about it--and here is where my thought led me:

In the last part of the Camino, in Galicia I think, we were walking along over green and often woody hills. We passed one particular bit with some houses, my sweetie walking ahead as he so often did, and I looked up and found I'd caught the eye of the sweetest little old lady. She was sitting on her chair in her drive, just off the trail, and arranging frutas del bosque (raspberries) in baskets for sale to the passing pilgrims. She smiled at me with the brightest twinkle in her eye...I caught up to my sweetie a few steps later and said, "I can't believe you passed that up." Well, he didn't know what I was even talking about, so he went back, and there she still was. He got a basket of berries and we munched on down the trail, quenching our thirst with the wonderful berries.

And that was what he was really after with the cherries. He wanted to be there again, on the trail, meeting this nice old lady and getting a basket of berries to eat.

Once I figured that out, I looked around for something that was a little closer to frutas del bosque. And there were fresh blackberries there, marked down to about a dollar for 6 ounces. I got two packages of those and handed them to my sweetie with "I got your frutas del bosque at the store."

Now I want to be back there, smiling at that sweet lady, and then tasting the lovely juicy berries. (and as with so much we saw toward the end, neither of us had a camera out!)

This and the next one were both on the same day. The path was slanted and rocky, so we walked on the road instead. That bright red speck is my sweetie, up ahead.

We saw so many different pilgrim statues. You can see, he has his staff, his water gourd, his Cross of Santiago on his coat, and his shell on his hat.

Top of the pilgrim monument at the overlook Monte de Gozo just before Santiago.

Weather update: moisture!

Hello, everyone.

We got an inch of rain (2.5 cm.) over the weekend. Yesterday morning I got up early and saw morning mist outside my windows.

6:30 a.m., about, and foggy mist beginning to fade as the sun rises. Temp about 70F.

It was quite warm in the afternoon, got to the mid 80's, and then cool air blew in overnight. This evening, after a day that barely reached 70, we had a "cold night" sky, and it was time to bring in my sweetie's orchids again. We will probably keep them inside all week.

On another subject, I'm working on the UFO (Un Finished Objects) collection. The Red Quilt is about 2/3 of the way channel-quilted, and I've even figured out who I can maybe give it to.

And I'm trying out the third set of beads with the Cross of Santiago, this time a simpler version that isn't so huge it can't be included in something.

Newest versions of Cruz de Santiago, at bottom left of top sheet (nestled in below the arrow) and on top of bottom sheet (two-drop, and I want to try it in 15 count rocailles)

I'd like to also graph out a smaller scallop shell, something that would work as a pendant. But we'll see...this week is Thanksgiving and the whole in-town bunch is coming over to turkey and trimmings on Thursday. And since I'm likely to be too busy to post much this week and may not get to it again until Friday, I'd like to take the opportunity to wish a happy and blessed holiday to my US readers.

New developments on the framing and hanging

Hello, everyone.

The map of the Camino de Santiago came in the mail. And today I got it out of the tube, laid it on the table under a whole lot of books and CD cases to flatten it and keep the cat from napping on it, and trawled the store room for a frame. We had one! It had a poster of "modern military aircraft" in it, but the child who had it hanging has moved out some time back and the poster was just sitting there, taking up the frame. So I took it out and put the map into the 2 foot by 3 foot frame. Added matboard in back of the map, and also used the cardboard the frame came with and the clips.

This isn't the best picture, and I need to get the hammer out and move one of the nails on the side frames, but here it is:

AD 1445 map of the Camino de Santiago. (Please ignore the flash reflection!)

Also today I made it rain! (Well, unless somebody washed their car, that is.) I hung the clothes out on the line, so of course it rained right after the clothes got dry. And I was not home! But arrived home from the store before it progressed beyond sprinkling, grabbed the clothes on the way into the house, and watched the rain quit falling.

I would have been fine with a good soaking after I took the clothes in, really. The garden is dry and I find that the patience to stand there drizzling a good soak onto each pepper and tomato and eggplant and bean and cucumber and the corn patch just isn't there.

But the pecan trees in back have fruited big time this year, and every time I go outside there are a bunch of nuts on the ground. Only a few of them have been invaded by ants. (I so dislike the ants coming out of the nut in my hand and biting me.)

On another note, I've got the birdies taking an afternoon "constitutional" almost every day, so Mr. Guinea isn't nearly as grumpy to the hens. Especially when I put their morning food out in three distinct, separated piles that each is thick enough to be opaque, so he isn't worried that Mrs. Guinea won't have enough to eat. And I include a scoop of kitty chow in with the layer feed, to increase the protein in their diets.

The other day he found a caterpillar on the ground while I was feeding them. She was happily pecking away at the bird food, and he was picking up the caterpillar and calling her. Over and over. Finally she decided she'd had enough of the Layer Feed and wandered over to see what he was all excited about. He's really devoted to her, but she acts like she goes to sleep wondering why it was her fate that her One True Love is such a jerk and won't let her be friends with the other birdies. Meanwhile, he's very protective of her and concerned that she gets all of any food she likes. And when she goes to lay an egg, he stands nearby and guards her.

If he hadn't killed a couple of cockerels, and wasn't so determined to run the hens off whenever he thinks the food pile is too thin, it would be completely sweet and romantic. Instead it's one of those mixed-bag things. I go from thinking what a sweet mate he is to needing to go into the pen and chase him around so he'll understand that the hens are under my protection. Meanwhile, the Barred Rock hen (Princess Stripey) can't decide if she can hang with the gray guineas or not. Sometime Mr. Guinea lets her, sometimes he chases her away. I guess he isn't sure if Princess Stripey is a guinea or a chicken!

Bead project finished

Hello, everyone.

Today I finished the beaded shell project.

Y'all probably remember the last picture of it:

Peyote stitch shell project, at end of weaving stage

You can see that the shell seems to be placed too far down in the blue background. I decided to add a fringe to balance the colors. Looking online led me to this article about beaded fringe that seemed to be the right kind of a thing. Using a pad of graph paper, and basing the structure off of the fringe in that article, I counted the number of strands at the bottom edge, separating the "up" beads from the"down" beads, and drew a pattern for the strands.

Each tiny square of the paper was one bead, marked B for blue, W for white, R for blush ("reddish"), F for fringe, etc. It seemed hard to read, so a line of light orange at the color changes was added before beginning. The hanging crosses are an inspiration from the miniature  wall tapestries we saw in Istanbul souvenir shops. Many of them were icons and had a collection of crosses and eye beads hanging from the bottom.

The pattern for the fringe, with the completed bead thingie.

Happily, the fringe pattern uses up more of the Delicas that are in the basic shape, plus some enameled crosses, perles, hearts, and Delica fringe-beads that are in the stash.

After finishing the fringe, I held the project up in front of a mirror and discovered that this is just way too big to make a necklace out of. I supposed that if I'd been thinking of it and drawn it differently, it could have been a bracelet. Maybe the next one will be! But this isn't a bracelet either. So...I laid it on my purse and had a look at the proportions. It fits!

Completed purse ornament.

I used some more of my favorite thread, Fireline, to attach it to the purse with a pair of 6mm blue glass catseye beads for the transition at the top.

Fireline 6 lb test line and Rappala line cutter. You cannot use normal scissors to cut this stuff! You will ruin the edge on your blades. Go to the sporting goods section and get fishing-line cutters instead. Mine are from Wal-Mart.

Just a few thoughts

Hello, everyone.

I will have an update on the shell beading project soon--have scanned the interwebs and discovered ways to do fringe. Also, expanding on the fringe for the Autumn Leaf amulet pouch on a web site (slips my memory just now) I have sketched a design for the fringe at the bottom of this square pendant with a scallop shell. Bonus points: I can use some of the blue enameled crosses that I have lying around in my (large) bead stash.

And one more thing--
When my sweetie and I first felt the pull of the Camino de Santiago, we didn't know what it would be like. What it would involve. And the depth of the roots that is would grow into our souls. Every day I think about the Camino--what it was like. What I wish I'd done a bit differently. What I'd do now if we were doing it again. (Not quite the same as the previous.) What routes I'd like to walk if we are so blessed as to go again.

Not only do I miss the good foods we discovered in Spain--ham cones! Pulpo a gallega with pan! Gambon al ajillo with pan! etc. etc.--but I have begun to make my own baguette bread so we can eat some of the wonderful foods we ate one the Camino, and during the days at the end when we were exploring and waiting for the date of our return reservation home. (No, I'm not recreating the airport food from the 1 day flight series that turned into a 3 day flight series.)

And periodically, like a growing crystal that is discovered by a gem hunter, I find a new lesson that the Camino has taught me.

It's not only the urge to have shells everywhere. The urge to create jewelry of shells and Crosses of Santiago. The every-morning feeling that it's time to walk, even before the alarm goes off.

The Camino de Santiago takes root in a pilgrim. I'm still a pilgrim. I don't think I'll ever stop being a pilgrim. And that itself is probably one of the lessons of the Camino.

Just after the stairs at the entry to the city of Santiago, studying the map of the city. I never felt sorry for the bicycle pilgrims until tha tlast day, when I witnessed them toting their bikes down the stairs alongside us. But at the bottom, they got to ride again. We walked the couple-three miles from those stairs to the center of the city on our feet.

This was another of the approximately 2200 pictures we took on our pilgrimage trip. :-) Enjoy.

Update on the Camino themed bead project

Hello, everyone.

Today I think I'll update y'all on the progress on the bead project.

I think I had posted a couple of early-stage pictures of it--which will reappear in this post.

I wanted to design a scallop shell bead project, a woven picture really, using peyote stitch. And I had the free beading-design graph paper from Fire Mountain to use. So I sat down and used my pencil to make a sketch. Actually, three sketches, but two have not been started. The one I tackled first is the scallop shell.

The scallop shell is possibly the oldest symbol of the Camino de Santiago (Jakobsweg in German) (Way of St. James in English, at least before everybody started just using the Spanish name.)
The medieval pilgrims would travel to Santiago, and sometimes also another week to the coast, and they'd pick up a scallop shell as a souvenir. They'd proudly display their shell on the return trip.

These days, pilgrims get their shell when they start out, and then after they arrive, they use more modern, more convenient transportation to go home again. A few walk the reverse trip--we saw them. I had a lot of trouble understanding why they'd do it. But they'd pass us, going the other way, with their backpacks, probably not even one percent of the number going west to Santiago.

I don't remember if they still display a shell as they go the reverse direction.

At any rate, I was inspired to make a peyote-stitch shell.

The early stages:
This was just the, um, tag at the top of the shell.

At this point I'd begun the shaping of the body of the shell. (In the background, you can see the arrow and the Cross of Santiago on the graph paper sheet as well.)

Now the shape and the shadows of the channels begin to show up.

At this point, the shell is done. You can see that the angles of the channels don't quite match the angle of the beads as they lie. But it is still a scallop shell.

I plan to fold over the top part to make a tube, and then make it the centerpiece of a necklace.

Maybe I'll expand the concept next time, after making a Cross of Santiago, and place the Cross of Santiago on the center of the shell. That was a common way to place the two items in souvenirs that we saw in Santiago. It's the way my pin is made, too.

I still don't know what I'll do with the arrow after I figure out how to make that. Possibly I could hang it from the base of the shell? Or maybe just have it be a separate piece altogether.

For the curious, the beads used in this are Delicas, from Japan. They have very regular sizes and a really nice, big center hole that the needle can go through again and again.

A short one for today

Hello, everyone.

A little while back, I mentioned that I've been trying to make different crafty things in the shape of scallop shells. The scallop shell is about the oldest of the Camino symbols; the early pilgrims would get the shells when they got to Santiago and maybe went on to Muxia or Finisterre (Fisterra) and then head on back home with their hard-won proof of completion proudly displayed.

These days the pilgrims acquire their scallop shell when they start out, or on the way, and display it while on the pilgrimage. Of course, these days even if you walk to Santiago, you can take a plane to go home again!

Santiago Peregrino not only has a scallop on his hat, he is also shown with scallops on the wall beside him.

Santiago Matamoros has his scallop on his hat here. The Moor underfoot is obscured by the flowers. (Statue in the Cathedral of Santiago)

I was inspired to try to make a peyote stitch beaded scallop shell. It's still in progress--had to undo about half of what had been done and redo--but here are a couple of pictures of the project. (It's about 2 inches wide, those are the #11 Delica beads.)

Earliest photo of the beading. The sketches for a few Camino-themed projects are on the peyote-stitch graph paper next to the dish. (Graph paper from Fire Mountain Gems.)

Today's progress. This is what I do if I sit down in the room with the TV and don't have a book in hand.

Lesson Absorption is Gradual

Hello, everyone.

I am coming to the conclusion that the Pilgrimage to Compostela doesn't really end when you get on the plane to go home. (Even if you don't have to try again to get out of Spain!)

I find myself trying to process it by, for example, making quilt squares with scallop shells on them.

The first draft of the scallop applique, with color mates. A second draft has been pieced, but not appliqued. I intend to make photos of the assembly of that version, as the angles problem has been worked out now.

(Yes, the scallop square is necessarily applique. I don't even want to think about how tricky it would be to piece that many odd and curved seams. The square would probably outright refuse to lie flat at the end of it, too.)

And trying to make a beading pattern of a scallop shell--the peyote stitch one I started with is presently being "unwoven" back to where I should have bent lines more--but it's a learning process.

Early pic of the beaded scallop picture, right about when I think the design went all wonky. On sheet in background, the pencil sketches for Cross of Santiago, the yellow waymarker arrow, and the scallop shell.

This morning I am thinking that I should just toss over the weaving in progress and start again. Since there are three different threads in it, and at some point one finds it impossible to continue unstringing the threads because of the add-ins and the finishing-offs.

We learned to go with the flow a lot more than once would have been possible. It started on the very first day, when we arrived in Biarritz. There had been a plan for that day--a plan that had involved a lot of looking on the web and considering maps and so on--that involved staying the night in Bayonne, then moving the 20 miles down the way to St. Jean, then the following day (decompressed from plane travel) beginning to walk. This all went by the wayside when we encountered a lady pilgrim from Scotland, who suggested we share a cab to St. Jean. And we did.

I think the pony in St. Jean knew more about what I was doing than I did.

Now I look back and consider what I heard about the weather that hit on the day we would have been starting to walk, and I'm grateful that the plan went by the wayside. Because on May 19 the weather was pretty good. Give or take an evil headwind. Way better than the rainstorms and snow and much stronger winds that hit the next two days, which I heard about from other pilgrims. (I haven't been talking much about the other pilgrims we met on the trail. That's because I don't feel really comfortable spilling whatever they told me, and I overheard, and I guessed without any evidence, without any permission from them nor any expectation that there would be a blog post in the future. It just feels too much like a peeping tom putting up a videocam next to somebody's fence aimed at their uncurtained bathroom window.) On May 20, I heard, the snow was so bad that people were calling cabs to drive up the mountain and get them--one man said that he saw a long string of headlights through the storm, collecting stranded pilgrims to carry them down to start over again. He told of his start when we met him in Santo Domingo de Calzada--he'd decided that he'd freeze to death before a cab could come to him, and kept going. I could not have done that day on that unsheltered trail up the mountside.

I am firmly of the belief that when one goes on pilgrimage, God watches. And now I see that the evidence of His guiding hand was there even on our very first day in France. I look back over the walk and see many more things like that than I realized at the time, too. Directions--unsought--from strangers, more than once. Lodging when we couldn't find it. Encouragement from a passing pilgrim. Too many times to count, really.

Before I close this post, a feet picture set:

They look a lot better two months after returning than they did in Pamplona, don't they? (I will let you go back to that post if you want to see something really scary.) The purple toes are coming right along, the athlete's foot is gone, the blisters are gone. So, if you go and find yourself covered in blisters early on, just go to the pharmacy and get the bandages and use the antiseptic--hand sanitizer if that's what you have on you--every day and change bandages a lot. Wear your shower sandals in the evening so the feet will air out a lot.

Final note on feet: life is not fair. My sweetie only had one blister the entire 500 miles. But he had a new plantar fasciitis develop--the second one--which bothered him a lot. And the Roman roads with their pokey rocks were very hard for him--made his feet more sensitive to other pokey rocks later on. Ibuprofen gel, yes! Ibuprofen at bedtime, yes! And foot rubs.

I encourage anyone reading to make the pilgrimage. And accept that once you do, it will take root inside you.

We are now reading Mr. Kelly's Kindle book about the Via de la Plata, and Mr. Brierly's book about the Camino Portuges. Who can know whether we will be blessed to make another pilgrimage in the future? Or even to repeat the Camino Frances, the route we walked this summer?

Santiago exploration

Hello, everyone.

We took a few days to rest in Santiago.

We got our Compostela certificates right away, of course. And we strolled through the downtown area and looked around.

We saw buskers (musicians playing with a basket--these ones did NOT want their pictures taken) and we saw a few costumed characters. Not many of either. We saw the tourist tram.

View of the Cathedral plaza with tram. Note that some in picture have just gotten into town on their feet, and are still wearing backpacks and shells.

We gazed at the many religious statues and carvings.

Santiago Matamoros

The Adoration chapel

Our Lady

We had begun having sandwiches instead of restaurant dinners--less fuss and bother, fit better with our eating and sleeping schedule. And we found a little grocery store and bought cheese and Serrano ham and bread and wine.
Tomorrow's post will be about our visit to Fisterra.

The Town with Three Names

Hello, everyone.

We got up in Arzua at our usual time and stopped by a bakery for a roll and coffee and some Spanish-language pop music. I felt like I was at home! It was the first time I had heard Spanish-language pop since leaving Texas.

Didn't you hear Spanish music in Spain? I hear you asking. The answer is, mostly, no. Everywhere we went, the bars and restaurants were either playing American pop (new or old) and just weren't playing music at all. Johnny Cash was nice, just because, but I really didn't expect to hear no "international" pop for most of the trip. Which just goes to show that expectations can be wrong.

We walked along the trail and crossed over (well under) the N-547 several times, before crossing over the small bridge of Rio Burgo and entering O Pedrouzo. Also called O Pino and Arca. One of these names is Galician, I don't know which, and I also don't know where they all came from. We stayed in a pension room that night, not wanting to have our rest interrupted by excited folks who had just joined the trail recently and hadn't worked off enough energy to be quiet.

You see my sweetie's hat posing for the picture!

The next morning, we were up before the sun and the sky was gorgeous! I snapped a photo on the way out of town.

Dawn on the Camino! I don't know why the camera thought it was June 20th. I have that day as June 21.

 About 8:30 we found an open restaurant in the middle of nowhere and had our breakfast bocadillo and coffee. Then went around the airport--didn't see any aircraft landing or leaving--and on to Monte de Gozo.

Monte de Gozo was at one time an overlook. The pilgrims would take a bath in Lavacolla, then keep on walking to Monte de Gozo. (Getting their clothes dirty all over again!) From Monte de Gozo they could view the Cathedral of Santiago. You can't do that anymore.

There is a lovely small chapel there, to get a sello at, and a small stand that sells drinks, and a gigantic modern-art thing to look at--but the view of the city is entirely blocked by the trees that have grown up on the downhill slope.

The top of the pilgrim monument. They did remember to put a shell on it.

I think the sculpture on the side is Pope St. John Paul II. I'm not sure what the thing over the shell-y path is. (And yes, I couldn't resist showing that we were there! Everybody was taking pictures of each other.)

We walked through miles of outer city before reaching the old town. We passed sculptures of various kinds and lots of traffic. Eventually we passed over the ring-road into the Cathedral area. We looked around for places to stay, even though it was only about 11:30 in the morning. After all, we had arrived! But every place we had an address for was full up. "Completo, completo." It was discouraging. As we began walking out to find one of the albergues whose signs we'd passed on the way in, I said a quick prayer: "Jesus, take us where we need to be."

Five minutes later, as we milled around like lost four-year-olds on the sidewalk, we heard a lady's voice. "Peregrinos! Peregrinos!" We turned around and saw a lady about my age. She offered to let us stay at her place--it turned out that she had an apartment that she rented out, and it was free for a couple of nights.
God watches over the pilgrims, that's all I can say.

We went to Mass on the Sunday of Corpus Christi. As it was a feastday, the confraternity of men who cares for it came out in their red robes and swung the Botafumeiro.

We paid our respects to the Saint--there is a kneeler in front of the casket with his bones, and a jeweled reliquary behind the main altar of the Cathedral--and there was also an Adoration chapel. So I was able to give thanks there as well. Over the course of our walk to Santiago, I had gone from facing the tabernacle with a laundry list of concerns--worse yet, a distracted mental babble--to on that day just sinking into the gratitude.