Rome, Venice, Milan, Maberga…
Tourism in the beautiful city of Maberga was booming last week as this charming, fun-loving couple came:
Denise and Wayne, of San Diego California, popped by for a few days after a ski trip they had in Brescia, Italy. We met them while we lived in Assisi 6 years ago and they were vacationing. We kept in contact via sporadic emails since. As we tried to show them some of the area and share a bit of our lives here, they were real troopers dealing with the lack of heat. Don’t you just hate it when you have house guests and the region runs out of heat pellets?
Heat Happens…
Speaking of heat, this also happened:
See those bags of pellets? Look at how happy that stove is with that big fire in its belly! That was nothing compared to how happy Denise and Wayne and David and I were. Unfortunately for our guests the pellets arrived back in our lives on day 5 of their 6 day stay.
Shelves, Shelves – no closets, shelves…
As part of the prep for our American friends’ visit, David and I moved back into the upstairs. Our bedroom, with its vaulted ceiling and exposed stone walls is very hard to heat (sorry, no picture. I didn’t feel like making the bed and putting away all the clothes strewn about). So in the winter months we leave our beautiful big bedroom to be in the warmer, lower part of the house. Also, I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but the two stories of our house are not connected by indoor stairs (or any stairs at all) and the bathroom is on the first floor. This means that midnight potty trips involve a journey outside, down the road to the front door…brrrrr. Since the Americans were coming to visit and, well, we didn’t have heat downstairs either, why not have our big room back.
As we moved back upstairs we were faced with the challenge of finding a place to put all the crap that we dump and store up there when we don’t need the room as a bedroom. This got me to whining about the lack of closets. I even said to David, “where did people who lived here 500 years ago put their clothes”? Instead of verbally responding to that moronic question, David put up these great shelves: 
Perhaps 2 wall brackets and 5 wood planks don’t really seem worthy of blog time but let me tell you how they have changed our lives. Do a little mental exercise here…imagine your house without any closets, NONE, no attic either, oh, and no basement. Mentally take everything out of all these spaces and put them in your kitchen, living room and bedroom. Now do you get it?
Knitting Olympics come to Maberga…
For those of you not familiar with the Knitting Olympics, it is a brain child of the Yarn Harlot -- set yourself a knitting goal, anything that would challenge you personally and try to achieve it during the 16 days of the Olympics. I chose to knit a whole sweater – not a huge challenge in and of itself (specially since I chose a KID’s sweater). The catch is that I have to follow the directions in a pattern. I mean, no changes at all and no fudging (yes, that means I actually did a swatch and checked my guage). I even used the same COLORS from the pattern! I have never done that. I might have disqualified myself already because I didn’t use the pattern’s yarn. I’m using a cheaper substitute for the Debbie Bliss brand of the pattern. I justified it like this - I’m a knitter on a budget and I’d like to believe that the Knitting Olympics wouldn’t discriminate based on income. So, 4 days into the Olympics, here I am:
Yes, it is as boring to knit as it looks. Specially since I had to turn off my imagination.
Totally unrelated to anything…
This great gal turned 50 today.
Happy Birthday, Mercedes.
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