Spring Finally Arrived!!

June 17, 2010--I'm sure that you realize that spring finally arrived before the middle of June! Even though that is true, it arrived WAY later than we wanted. This was a very long winter with lots of rain and snow.

Just to give you an idea--this was taken the 15th of March!!
















We were lucky that we had planted daffodils a couple of years ago and last year Larry planted tulips. It was so nice to have some color showing! Our pansies survived the winter, but never really grew much.








Here are some of the daffodils. They seemed to have reproduced some since last spring and the flowers seemed as big as before.

















The tulips were so pretty! We found out that the tulips open up during the day and then close up at night! They are even smart enough to know not to open up when it is raining!

















Larry was able to get a great picture with most of the tulips and a group of daffodils all in one!















We also had some marigolds pop up that had died last summer--at least we think they are called marigolds!!
















Our strawberries from last year are doing great. They had spread a lot and were covered with blossoms back in May when most of these pictures were taken. Today I picked our second bowl of berries and they are so tasty!


















The cherry tree has cherries on it for the first time! I was so afraid they would become ripe when I was in the states last month, but they are just getting ripe now.

May:













Now:













Our peach trees are loaded with baby peaches. One of the trees is covered with twins and even one set of quints!! We didn't know what to do about it so we just left them the way they were. They are now big and they still are connected, but one is small and the other is bigger. They look like they will still be small this year, but hopefully they will be as sweet as last year's.

May:

















Now:











There were about 5 blossoms on the apricot tree, but nothing happened so we won't be eating fresh apricots this year! Our pear tree had numerous pears, but the ants decided to have a picnic and took care of those for us! This is what they looked like before the picnic!















The pine tree that Felice gave us has a lot of new growth on it as do the hedges that Larry planted last year.



















Our son Larry planted corn and it was barely poking through in May. It is now a lot taller.

May:













Now:












That's all for now!

Tombolo

June 14, 2010--Isn't it amazing how time just flies by? It's been several months since my last post and as usual, I don't really have a good excuse!

This blog is about lace making--specifically, bobbin lace making. I actually started my class in late February and had so much fun! Tombolo (lace) has been around for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. In fact, we went to the Accademia Museum in Florence and there was a painting of the Annunciation and it showed Mary making lace!

The class was very interesting because, of course, no one spoke English! So, not only am I learning something completely new--but, I am learning it in Italian! Not to mention the fact that I haven't had too many opportunities to use words like tombolo (lace); fuselli (bobbins); spighetta (braid); spillo (straight pin); or uncinetto (crochet hook).

These are the bobbins.















My teacher (Pia) was so funny. She tried very hard to talk slow with me, but would soon forget and go back to speaking fast. She did a wonderful job of explaining how to do each step. Here is a video of Pia working on my lace so that you can see how it looks when someone who has been doing it for years does it!




This is another video of Pia. This one gives you a little more feel for the class. Sometimes it was so noisy you could hardly think and then all of a sudden it would be perfectly quiet!








One night I took a few pictures of the classes. The beginner's class just had two students. This is Francesca (with Pia) who was in my class. She is a pharmacist.
















This is the second year's class. It was a much bigger class. Sometimes there would be 8 or 9 students as well as 3-4 teachers.


















There was also a third year class, but there was only one student and she wasn't there the night I took the pictures. The student was a girl in her 20's who made some amazing things.


In this video I am demonstrating how my "technique" has improved somewhat over the course of a few months.



And in this video I'm showing you the most complicated stitch that I learned this year.





We all went out to dinner when the classes had finished. We ate (well, they ate) just antipasto (appetizers--including snails!). There were probably 15 different dishes brought out. I really enjoyed the meatballs and a few other items. Their bread was excellant!

This is how I started the night.




















These are two of the first pieces I made. I saw one similar to the round one in Venice and they wanted 26euro for it. Since this one took me about 6 hours to make I don't think I would get rich if I tried to make a living at selling my lace!

Hope that you enjoyed your tombolo lesson!

Ciao