Venice - the Queen of the Adriatc

We went to Europe in Oct. Our itinerary was to fly to Venice and spend 2 nights there before boarding a cruise ship on the third day. The ship remained in Venice for another day and then we went to Croatia, Montenegro and Greece. We disembarked in Piraeus, spent 4 nights in Athens and flew back.

I had never been to that part of the world before. We flew through Venice once but that was it. I have read lots of books about Venice and set in Venice and thought I knew a reasonable amount of Venetian history and art. I was wrong.

Before leaving, I was in touch with our boutique hotel via email. They wanted to know when I'd be arriving and if I needed someone to meet me. We got in about noon and I like to take public transport as much as possible when I am sightseeing because you experience the city so differently by moving that way. In this case, the expense sealed the deal. A private taxi is very expensive. The public water taxi is cheap but required a transfer. There is also a public airport taxi.

Venetians move about using the vaporetti or water taxis which are frequent and relatively inexpensive. They go up and down the Grand Canal (lines 1 and 2) and also go to other islands as well to other sides of the main islands. Other than them, one walks. The airport is on the mainland, in Mestre. There are buses that go from the airport to Piazzale Roma which is the only point in Venice where you can come in a wheeled powered vehicle. I assume there are bicycles in Venice but since one has to go over canals via bridges, I didn't see any of them. From Piazzale Roma, we would have switched to a vaporetto and gone to our hotel.

Instead, I decided to take the airport taxi (the Alilaguna) which is a boat that you take at the airport. It stops at far fewer places than the vaporetti but fortunately, it stopped very close to our hotel. In fact, it stopped at the same dock that the vaporetto would have stopped at. I also had downloaded maps of Venice and looked up the route to the hotel because we wouldn't have access to the internet till we got to the hotel.

The views were beautiful as we flew in.

 Mountains on the mainland

 The causeway linking Venice to the mainland

The Alilaguna dock as we wait for our taxi.

Unfortunately, the way the Alilaguna boats are set up. you go down 3 steps to the place where you sit. The windows are high up and there isn't much of a view. After it emptied out a bit, I knelt on the seat and peered out but at first it was not possible to do that.

We got off and started walking towards the hotel. Unfortunately, I had no sense of distance and we went over a couple of unnecessary bridges hauling out suitcases up and down the stairs before I caught on. So we had to backtrack, going up and down them again! But it wasn't very much time. Just effort and coming off an overnight flight, tiring.

Our hotel was in an old palazzo which is what the residential buildings are called. It was small. Only 30 rooms but very comfortable and modern. Our room was up 3 flights of stairs. Fortunately they carried our suitcases up. We rested a bit and then decided to go sight-seeing.

St. Mark's Square was not too far so we started there.

 Our first view of the square. Being late afternoon, it was not that crowded. When we saw it the next day, it was packed.

 St. Mark's Basilica. I had just read Dan Brown's Inferno earlier in the year. Part of the action is set in Venice in and around St. Mark's. I also read a series of books by Donna Leon whose protagonist is a detective in Venice. Many of the names and places are very familiar and it was exciting to see them in real life and compare them with my imagination.

 One of the sides of St. Mark Square with the clock tower to the right.

 View of the Doge's Palace from the square.

Photography is forbidden inside the Basilica and the guards stop you if they see you. But I snuck a photo of the Pala D'Oro because there weren't any guards behind the screen.

 Up on the balcony there is no restriction on photos. This is the square from the balcony.

 Some of the gorgeous murals on the cathedral. Venice's rule extended to Byzantium and beyond and the Cathedral is made up of things that were brought back by the Doges as well as things created in the Byzantine style. This was one of the things I learned. I knew Venice had far-flung impact due to its location and the trade that went through it. But I didn't realize how much they actually ruled in terms of geography.

 The famous horses on the balcony. These are copies. The originals are inside in the museum.

 Looking out to the laguna from the balcony. The Doge's palace is to the left.

 Looking out at the clock tower.

 The far side of the balcony, away from the laguna, looks down on this square. Getting to the edge on that side involved walking across some very uneven stones in the balcony.

 A close up of the clock tower

A couple of views of the mosaic frescoes taken from the street level. It is such a beautiful structure! That is what I loved about Venice. Everywhere you look, there is gorgeous architecture and it is from all over.

After descending, we walked over to the laguna and got our bearings. We came back here the next day so more on that later.

 There are two famous, very old cafes in the square. You can sit inside or outside and have a cup of coffee or a drink and people watch.

 Gondolas lined up along the laguna. We didn't take a gondola ride as it didn't appeal to me. But we saw them everywhere and I took a lot of photos of them.

 The Doge's Palace.

People sitting around. We went during the quiet season but there were still plenty of tourists!

One of the gondola docks. That green tower is supposed to be a sign of the boats that ferry (traghetti) you across the canal. We went looking for one one day but never saw a boat. They are large gondolas.

I love the way the light reflected off the water.

I promised you architecture!

After all that, we were tired and stopped at a cafe in one of the squares to grab a quick dinner and went to bed.

We lucked out with perfect weather. No rain and no clouds on most days. it was in the 70s F - easy to walk around in the sun without getting too hot.

All done!

I am finally done with all the weaving I committed myself to. Now, no one twisted my arm and no one is expecting presents. But I thought it would be nice to take home-made gifts to family in India. I've always been a bit leery of taking knitted things as most of them live in warm weather places. I've given my SILs and aunt a couple of knitted shawls for use when they travel to colder places.

But now I am weaving and a woven shawl is much lighter and more useful than a knitted one. Besides, knitting with the fine yarns that one can use in weaving is time consuming. Weaving with them is easy.

I showed you the yarns I was planning to use in my last post. My plan was to warp for 2 scarves at a time and weave different designs by varying the sequence in which I depress the treadles as well as the possibly the weft. I would have warped for more scarves but I didn't have enough yarn. I would have had to use 3 colors in the warp and then a fourth in the weft. I thought that might be too much. So two it was.

I used the same basic color plan for warping. Even stripes, but I didn't want it to be half and half. I decided to put one repeat on each side in the color from the other half of the scarf. It worked really well.

This is the first warp for example. The warp is half maroon and half teal. But there is a narrow stripe of maroon on the teal side and a corresponding stripe of teal on the maroon side.

Here is the first scarf which I showed in process above. It has an indigo weft.

The same warp with a ruby weft and a different pattern.

Details of the two patterns. The colors are accurate in the big pictures. In the close-ups, the camera gets a bit confused color wise.

I also finished the socks I was knitting two-at-a-time. I worked on them a little bit at a time in the evenings and finished them up on a drive we had to do for some business.

These 3 photos are the close-ups of the second pair of scarves and a sample I did with the bit of warp left over. All three use the same threading through the heddles but a different sequence of treadling. All of these patterns are basic twills where I am raising two shafts on the loom at a time and moving fairly rhythmically across the shafts.

These two scarves were done with stripes of tartan (green) and chestnut (brown) in the warp and a weft of old gold.

I also finished up two scarves with the Shetland I was using up. Now I have only a little bit of the yarn left.  These and the cotton/linen one that follows are plain weave woven on the rigid heddle loom, I am now at the point with that loom that I can warp it in a little over an hour and finish a scarf in 2-3 days.

First of the two scarves. The second is still drying so I'll post a pic next time. I'd rather wait for daylight to take the photo.

Lastly, one of my SILs doesn't wear silk so I made her this cotton/linen scarf from the same yarn I used for the towels. To break up the monotony for me, I inserted some hand-manipulated laces at various points. I had used one of these in my doubleweave workshop but had never done it otherwise.

These two are called Leno. The bottom is on an open shed (with the two layers of warp separated) and the top is on a closed shed. I like it better on the closed shed.

Then I did another called Brooks Bouquet which I like better overall. I find Leno a pain to do but I like working Brooks Bouquet. I saw this for the first time at the Ashford shop in New Zealand. The top is a closed shed and the one below is on an open shed. Here I prefer the open shed version.

And that is it for now. 10 scarves and 3 towels since Sept. Of those, 6 scarves since Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow I am going to finish sewing the hems on the towels and then will wet finish them. I also got little labels to put on the scarves that say 'Handmade with love by Jaya' and will sew those in too.

More photos to come of all that and my next knitting project. I may also take the opportunity next week of it being a bit quieter to do the travel write-up from one of the two trips.

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate!

Weaving up a storm

I have been weaving and weaving and weaving. I had this pile of Harris Tweed Textiles Shetland jumperweight that I had bought on Elann.com years ago. They were getting out of the yarn business and it was cheap. Lovely yarn. I have no regrets about buying it. I used it to make the color gamp scarf in the summer and fell in love with the handle of the fabric that it created.

This was the color gamp scarf, in case you missed it then.

So I decided to use the rest of the yarn to make scarves for the men in my family. Unfortunately, I only see my son at Thanksgiving and I knew I was going to see my brother then. Christmas can be iffy due to the weather. I wove two more scarves with the yarn. One using clasped weft and the other was just stripes.

That yarn is just beautiful. It blooms and creates a gorgeous fabric. So all those three have gone to their new homes.

I love weaving on the floor loom. I warped up some towels following a pattern blindly. My only deviations from the instructions in the book had to do with color and fiber content. I used my own color combination and a cotton-linen yarn instead of a cotton yarn.

The process was a learning experience. First, I had never woven with such thin yarn. I had lots of warp threads to wind. That process went very smoothly. Then I had to warp the loom. Part way through winding the warp threads on the back beam, the right hand side jumped out of the spacers (raddle) than they were threaded through and ended up in a big bunch on the back beam. Oy veh! I thought about it overnight and decided to try and fix it because that bunching would mean the threads would go through the metal heddles at a sharp angle, causing a lot of abrasion and maybe breaking threads. So my husband and I slowly wound the warp off the loom, I redistributed the threads on the back beam as best as I could and we wound it back on. It wasn't ideal because there were a lot of crossed threads, but it was the best I could do. Fortunately, while there was a bit of abrasion (I have rust dust bunnies under the loom), the threads held together and I didn't see any wear on them.  I have to be a lot more careful next time.

They are off the loom but not finished. I need to hem them before finishing. But I have more weaving to do so I am holding off finishing them now.

The mystery in this project is that I ended up with 3 towels in stead of two. I ran out of the rust colored yarn after the first two towels (the project called for 8 oz of that color and I had exactly 8 oz). I wove the third towel with the mauve contrast yarn. This project was from Anne Field's Learn to Weave book.

I heard about a selvedge treatment described in Anne Dixon's Handweaver's Pattern Directory. It was on a Ravelry forum and I thought I'd try it. I really love the way this selvedge looks. It is really solid and like a commercially woven selvedge.

Anyway, while I was weaving these towels. I decided to weave silk scarves for family in India. We are going there in Jan. That is why I am not hemming and finishing the towels yet. They probably won't be going to India and I want to get those gifts completed first.

First I wove another Shetland scarf. I finished that today. I need to wet finish it tomorrow. I put stripes into the warp and used a solid for the weft.

Better photos after it is finished.

I spent some time today planning the silk scarves. These are the colors of silk that I bought from Colourmart over the summer.

The idea behind buying them was to use them to learn various weave structures. I've decided that my first structure is twill. The scarf I made was in a 2/2 twill and the towels also were in a twill called M&O. For these scarves, I've picked a twill called M&W because the threading on the loom is like an M and a W.

My plan is to warp for two scarves in stripes and weave with a third color. The two scarves will have the same warp threading but I will treadle the weaving in a different pattern and that will create a completely different design in the fabric. This way I save on warping time and still end up with unique though fraternal scarves.

I start winding the warp for the first 2 scarves tomorrow.

In between all this, I did get some knitting done. I knitted a wrap when I was traveling in New Mexico at the beginning of Sept.

The pattern is I want that Wrap from Ravelry. I found the perfect buttons at the LYS. The yarn is handspun from a door prize I won at a fiber retreat in 2012. It has a bit of sparkle in it so I wanted dressy buttons.

I also made progress on the two at a time socks. No photos of the progress but I am half way up the leg now.

More on weaving next time. After these scarves are done, I hope to get back to spinning. I haven't spun since the Tour de Fleece in July!