Bruce and I had a trip to Covilhã in central Portugal, right at the end of June. I knew that it gets hot in the interior during the summer, but I wasn’t prepared for 104 degrees F. With humidity. We were there for the annual Wool Festival, which runs for 2 weeks in June, and I was psyched to meet up with one of the University professors there. We have been corresponding for some months, and plan to get together at some point for me to see the collection and talk about our research interests.

The other thing I wasn’t prepared for were the extremely steep streets. I’m sure some of them go downhill, but the ones I needed to take always headed up. I know this next photo is way out of focus (I was pretty out of focus myself by then), but if you need a funicular to go from one street to the next, it’s just way too steep for people. I’m sure the sheep and goats do well.

When I wasn’t sweating from my teeth, I was able to indulge my continuing love affair with Portugal’s azulejo tiles.

It was great to see some of the incredible street art that has characterized the festival for its 10+ years, but after our early morning visit to the Wool Museum, I started to fade rapidly. We were a little concerned that I might get really sick from the heat, and so instead of going to the park (mostly an open field) where the real events were, we came back home. I was pretty sure I’d melt out in the direct sun. Maybe another year if the forecast improves (it was unusually hot that day).

After a day of recovery, we went over to the beach that’s about 10 or so miles west of us to take a long walk. It was actually chilly out walking on the sand, and we got to witness a very unusual weather formation. This is known as a “Tsunami” cloud, and while very common in Australia, is not normal here. It looked like a wave heading for the shore, but quickly filled up the sky with mist and fog, making it hard for the beach goers to enjoy the afternoon (I thought it was great — no sunburn). The surfers were unimpressed and continued to ride the waves – some of which were a decent size.

Things with yarn

I have been singularly unproductive of late. There are unfinished (barely started) projects scattered everywhere, and most of them have nothing to do with Scottish wool. Actually, I’ve been doing some crochet. Quite a few years ago I took a really interesting class from Daina Taimina, mathematician and crochet artist.

It was really the first time I’d tried crochet, and she was amazingly patient. Daina is well-known as one of the artists who pioneered the crochet coral reef projects. I don’t have any photos of her work specifically, but she “invented” the math/crochet interface that gave rise to the art. In any case, the seaweed on the beach gave me new inspiration to try to create my own beach tapestry/wall hanging, using crochet, knitting, and some tapestry weaving (another thing I haven’t done in a zillion years).

To my West Brookfield Library knitting/crochet friends – here I’m doing the one stitch I’ve been able to master – single crochet. We’ll see if I can progress beyond this one stitch! I also should mention that crochet cotton is one of the things that get security tabs added to them in some of the stores here. Crochet is WAY more popular than knitting, and you can find dozens of colors and weights of crochet cotton in many of the small variety stores – particularly those where the goods primarily are from China. I guess there’s some amount of theft, however, because it’s never discounted, and the balls are run across one of those “deactivation” machines at the checkout counter. At the moment, the easy repetition of 4 single crochet stitches followed by 2 single crochet stitches in the next chain are mindless enough for me at the moment. I just got some glitzy eyelash yarn to try another type of formation. Stay tuned.