Camino del Norte memories: Tapia de Casariego

Hello, everyone.

I was playing with picture files on my computer, trying some of them in grayscale, and thought I'd see if a picture from Tapia had been posted on the blog already. 

Possibly not. The visit/pass through at Tapia was included in a note about Ribadeo with very little detail.

Tapia has a municipal albergue. It is famous for the scenic view. (Otherwise it is quite basic. And heaven help you if you are there on a Sunday when fewer things are open. Tapia is a very small place.) It is one of the albergues where, if you start your day with fresh tape, you have to go outside and hope the sunlight is enough.

We got some photos of the sunrise from the albergue before we left. I converted one to grayscale and cropped out the invisibly-dark grass at the bottom. This is what was left:

So, if you're very visually oriented, this is what you can see on a spring morning in Tapia as the sun comes up.  The little flash in the rock is a tunnel carved there by the waves.

We met a very nice lady on our way out of Tapia. She told us about roofing styles (being in the architecture business and concentrating on roof design) and after that we were more aware of the slate vs tile roofs of the regions as we walked. She said that the old Camino had not gone straight to Ribadeo, but south along the river through various villages to another bridge, and then back north.  She said it was very pleasant and scenic. Perhaps if we walk the Norte again we will go that way!

We were, frankly, eager to get to a place with a washateria and get some laundry clean, so we elected to go straight to Ribadeo, crossing the high bridge--using the pedestrian walkway, it wasn't all dangerously scary--and getting there early. We then chose a hotel that was close to the washateria and got busy making ourselves look more human.

FYI, Ribadeo on I think it was Monday, doesn't have an open Turista office. (Kind of like museums, really.) The nice police people gave us a map and stamped our credenciales IIRC. Ribadeo was a pretty town to stroll through and admire the buildings and park.

Bleeping bleeding thread!

Hello, everyone.

I've started a project that involves white ground fabric and red embroidery. I did some testing for stitches.

As y'all can see, I looked at which stitch to use. Whether to use the embroidery hoop. And whether my favorite stabilizer, Sulky Solvy, would be a good idea. The stitched samples were all ironed with a bit of water. What I completely forgot to do was to test the threads. Oh, how I wish I had done that!

I was humming right along, hemming and embroidering. Then I rinsed the first pieces to get the remnants of the Sulky Solvy out.

 Even this one, though not as bad as the others, has pink smears around the cross.

Ouch. A lot of work down the drain, which wouldn't have happened if I'd just checked the threads first. (There is a sizeable embroidery thread stash around here. Some came as anonymous hunks from Ebay. I think the sellers were unloading some cheap stuff they didn't want!) Moral of the story: don't be in a huge rush to start!

I tossed all the anonymous red thread hanks and bits that I could see. Dug around in the cupboard and found some still-in-the-sleeves DMC red thread. (By thread here I mean 6 stranded embroidery floss.) And then *water tested* the DMC thread. The lukewarm water in the dish stayed clear. I put the thread on a paper napkin to dry. When I returned, the napkin was still in the original color.

Tomorrow the project can get back on the rails again.

And the DMC thread hank is now being stored in a little plastic bag with its label sleeves, so it doesn't become an anonymous pile of red thread.