Arrivaderci Roma – or maybe not

 21-22-23 October 2024

 

With travel, things don’t always go according to plan.  Even the most precise planners know that when travelling, things often go awry.  So, travellers learn to be prepared for things going wrong – missed flights, delayed flights, extra nights due to missed connections, whatever.  Preparation and a mindset of “whatever happens, I’ll get home eventually” are the best ways to deal with all those possible extenuating circumstances.

 

Most of our class members left La Romita on 21 October.  We arrived at the airport, and one woman was rather frantic as her flight was leaving in less than an hour.  Hopefully she made it.  Everyone else either had a flight later in the day, or, like me, planned to fly out the following day.  I didn’t really have a choice, all the flights for Tucson left in the morning – so I booked a hotel not too far from the airport, the La Romita bus drove me there, and I had a lovely night.  Turned out that a fellow student, the woman who so kindly gave me a ball of the indigo-dyed yarn she brought with her, was also staying at the same hotel.  We had a very nice dinner right at our hotel, said good-byes, and had a decent night’s sleep.

 

I got up early the next morning (22 Oct), had brekkie at the hotel, and took their shuttle to the airport.  I checked in, and found out my luggage had gained 15 lbs!  Made sense, I had the copper tubing loom as well as five or six jars of black truffle products in there!  It was still under the airline’s maximum, but I was surprised.  (My ticket agent agreed that Spoleto has the best black truffle products in Italy!)

 

Normal airport things – Customs and Immigration, waiting for the flight, boarding the flight.  Then we sat and waited.  The pilot came on the intercom and said the plane had a problem with the hydraulic system, it was being worked on, we should be off soon.  He kept us apprised periodically.  Flight attendants brought drinks, chatted, assured us things would be okay.  Two hours later, our captain came on to say all was fixed, but they needed to re-submit their flight plan or route or something.  This had to go through the Italian office that handles such things, then some European air space office, and the new route then needed to be approved by the US office of the airline.

 

You can see where this is going.

 

Once all those offices approved everything, we then had to wait for a truck to pull the plane away from the jetway.  We FINALLY were cleared to get to a runway – but at this point, the captain told us that we had to wait for our turn to get into the air.  We had exactly 13 minutes for this to happen.  If we were not in the air within 13 minutes, then all the plane’s crew would be over their time working limit before we arrived in the US.  Which meant if we were not in their within those 13 minutes, they’d be forced to cancel the flight.

 

Yes, that’s what happened.  Flight cancelled.  There were several people who were slightly hysterical, they were supposed to go to work the following day.  (I’ve been in that situation, so I can sympathize.  Had to call my principal at home and tell him I was stuck in Florida and would be back to work in two days, please plan for a substitute tomorrow.)

 

People with smartphones began to receive notification of when their new flight was scheduled, and most were on flights the following day.  I whipped out my iPad, signed on, and checked.  Yes, my flight was scheduled to leave 22 Oct, the day I was supposed to arrive.  Looked like a tight connection in Dallas, given that I’d need to collect my luggage, go through Customs/Immigration, and get to the gate.  But this is why I have MagicJack on my iPad, so I planned to call the airline later and push back the connecting flight.

 

Of course, with a huge plane load of people, the airline scrambled to find hotels for all of us.  None of us knew exactly what was happening, but there were a few representatives who told us to get our luggage, and eventually told us to proceed to doorway number something.  (This is why it’s good to travel with luggage you can handle yourself!  I was fine with my rolling duffel and daypack.  Other people were struggling with multiple suitcases each, because there weren’t any carts or skycaps available.)

 

We piled into the bus.  The driver didn’t speak much English, so one of the reps came on and told us we would stay one night at a hotel, there would be a bus tomorrow to drive us back to the airport.  The hotel would provide lunch and dinner. 

 

The bus drove.  And drove.  And drove.  It took probably two hours, given the traffic.  We ended up at a seaside resort in Civitavecchia, the ancient port city outside modern Rome.  (For those wondering, that is pronounced chee-vee-ta-VECK-key-ah.  I know, I’ve practiced so I can say that smoothly.)

 

We lined up, were assigned rooms, received keys.  Given a plastic bag with a panino (one sandwich is a panino, two sandwiches are panini) and a bottle of water.  Told what time dinner would be served.  No one seemed to know what time the buses would arrive the following morning, but it would be early – my flight was leaving at 8 AM.

 

My room was nice, though the floor was still damp as if it had been freshly mopped.  My guess is that this seaside resort had closed for the season, but some airline rep knew or was related to the owner, and they opened up just to house these stranded passengers.

 

So, I enjoyed my lunch on my lovely balcony overlooking the sea – the Tyrrhenian Sea.  I called Richard and told him I was delayed, I had an extra day in Italy.  That I’d get in tomorrow, 23 Oct.  This happens to us all the time, he said fine, not a problem.  We promised to talk later.  I called the airline and pushed back that connecting flight out of Dallas, not a problem.  I took photos of my view of the sea and the marina (it was sunset by now).

 

Dinner was lovely, though all portions were absolutely huge – just one course would have been enough!  Passengers recognized each other, we chatted with people at other tables, it was a room full of stranded travellers either resigned to being delayed, or happy to have an extra day in Italy.  Word spread that our buses would arrive at 4:30 AM, perfect since most of us had an 8 AM flight.

 

Very peaceful night by the sea, my alarm clock woke me in time, I was all set to leave – and I could not get my door unlocked and opened.  I’ve never been good with locks, or keys – people tell me to turn it to the left and I never know if they mean turn the top of the key to the left, or the bottom of the key – they obviously go in opposite directions, and it just never makes sense to me.  I turned the key one way – door stayed locked.  I turned it the other way – locked.  I pulled the door toward me and tried both directions – locked.  Pushed the door forward and tried the key – locked. 

 

The room didn’t have a phone to call the front desk, so I pounded on the door and hollered “Help!  Help!”  No one came.  I went out on the balcony and yelled for a while – no one answered.  I tried the door again, no luck.  More pounding, more yelling, back to the balcony.  Now I was the frantic person, because I needed to get to that bus!

 

On maybe my fifth trip back to the door, I finally got it open.  It was one of those things where the key stops, then you need to really crank it hard to make it unlock the rest of the way.  As I said, I’ve never been good with keys.

 

I was running so late, I rolled my duffel across the dew-covered lawn instead of going around on the paved walkway.  Sorry, but desperate times and desperate measures, all that.

 

Turns out I could have waited.  I got on the bus, and we sat.  And sat.  We were getting worried, it had taken two hours to get here, it was now 5:30 AM, our flight was due to leave a 8:00.  I got out and told the driver, in my minimal Italian, that we needed to go, we fly at eight!  He assured me we’d be fine.

 

I think we finally were on our way just before 6 AM.  We made it to the airport in time for our flight – as we were bused out to the plane, we realized this was exactly the same plane we had been on yesterday!  And we recognized the crew!  Same exact flight with a new time of departure, and new flight number.  Oddly, we all had new seat assignments – you’d think the airline would have kept everyone in their former seats!

 

I was in the same section, had the same sweetheart flight attendant – but because I was several rows back, the meal I had pre-ordered was already taken.  I explained I picked that due to food allergies, the two other options were likely to have foods that I’m severely allergic to – and that I once ended up on a flight getting shots of epinephrine in the plane’s galley!  My wonderful flight attendant went to the captain and asked if he’d be okay with a different main course for his meal, so I was able to have my chicken rather than the pilaf (with cashew) or the meat (with chutney, all too often mango).  Many thanks to the captain and flight attendant!

 

The rest of the trip was fine, though I’m glad I bumped back the flight to Tucson.  I kept Richard apprised of my travels, and by the time I arrived in Arizona, he was tired, it was dark, I said I’d grab a taxi and he should stay home.  I had a friendly taxi driver, made it home safe and sound, after taking what became the loooooong way home.

 

So – two maps of Italy.  The close up is obviously the outlined square on the first map.  The pink star is La Romita in Terni.  The pink circles are the towns we visited, and the numbers show in what sequence.  "D" is for delay, LOL!

 

 

The Natural Dyes - WOW the Colors!

21 October 2024

I've talked about the four women in our class who foraged for plant material and made all sorts of dyes.  They really worked hard, and accomplished a lot during our ten day class.

Not that I learned anything about dyeing, but I was having enough trouble just warping the loom!  I really did not need to try anything else in the class, trust me!

The group used a combination of foraged materials and the Saxon blue that our instructor, Shelley, brought with her.  The blues in the center are Saxon blue, some overdyed over elephant ear mushroom dye, or, well, I don't really know.

But look at all these colors!  Amazing, aren't they?  So big props to our dyers, who created these and more colors of yarn!

They then catalogued the various colors, making cards with a swatch of each yard and labelling them with the plant materials used, the mordants, percentages of whatever - so that these colors can be replicated.

As I said originally, I wanted the colors that were used in the San Gemini flags, the indigo blue, bright white, and rich red.  So I didn't get involved with the dyes.  (My big contribution, she said facetiously, was helping spread these skeins on the drying rack so the yarn could fully dry.  I know, one tiny step in a HUGE task!)

But the results really were incredible, so I wanted to be sure to include them here! 

 

Weaving La Rocca del San Gemini

13 October to 15 November 2024 - end date approximate

 

Our second day in Italy was a full day travelling to Tarquinia and the mosaic garden, but our looms were screwed together.  YAY!  Day three dawned with dry looms (finally!), a half-day trip to the waterfall, and it looked like we were ready to weave!  Some yarn was dyed.  Most of us had our designs.  We had measured and marked inches (and quarter and half inches) on the top and bottom horizontal bars of our looms.  We were all set to learn how to do tapestry weaving, which is different from basic weaving.

 

First we had to "warp the loom."  Basically, the warp is the vertical threads on a loom, and they are stationary.  The weft is the horizontal threads (we used yarn) that weaves back and forth across the warp to make the fabric or tapestry.

 

In our case, there was measuring and making sure we had ten warp threads per inch.  Tying the beginning cotton twine to the loom, looping around and counting as we go, making sure there are enough ups and downs to create the width of the tapestry.  Then tightly tying the end of the warp twine to the loom, and carefully moving the threads so they are fairly evenly spaced at the top and bottom of the loom.

 

There's also a weird twining thing we had to do across the bottom of the warp threads.  Because our looms were tubing, this gave us space between the warp threads, one being over the tubing and one under.  This makes it easier to know which thread to go over or under to create the weave.  The weird twine thing is supposed to make the warp threads, the overs and the unders, on the same plane.  Okay, that part made perfect sense.  Plus the tight horizontal line is kind of the base for the weft threads.  Also made sense.  I just don't know what it's called, and I also found out I don't do it well.

 

It involved a long piece of warp thread folded in half and attached to one upright on the loom.  Then that is woven horizontally between the vertical warp threads.  The doubled thread is woven one over and one under each warp thread, with two twists between.  Yeah, I made a total mess of that.  When someone tells me to twist two threads together, I assume one twist is 360º.  Turns out that 360º is two twists.  Maybe.  I’m still a little confused.  I definitely ended up with uneven twists between warps, so they were no longer evenly spaced.

 

I botched it so badly, Shelley redid mine.  You know it's bad when the teacher does it for the student.

 

Anyway, we began weaving! 

 

Well, before we could weave, we needed to draw the design on the actual warp threads.  This meant putting my drawing under the warp, and using a Sharpie (or other small point permanent marker) to draw the picture.  My design had a lot of straight edges, so I just used cardboard as a straight edge since I didn’t have a ruler.

 

Then we began weaving.  Going from left to right is easy, the warp threads are separated for this weaving direction by the tube used to make the loom.  But there isn’t a device to automatically switch which threads are over and unders, which happens on large looms for basic weaving.  So going from right to left meant picking up each “under” thread one by one, holding them in the right hand until we have maybe ten or fifteen of them, and then pass the yarn, the weft, through them.  Yes, slow and tedious!

 

But there are a few things that made it easier.  First, in order to create a design, it’s okay to work in sections.  The weaving doesn’t need to be totally horizontal across the entire width of the piece, it could be one section of horizontal in one color.  Then another section can be woven next to it.  This was very good news, because the first day of weaving I only had my indigo blue yarn, and my white yarn.  It was another two days until my cochineal red was dyed and then dry enough to use it for weaving!

 

So, there are special tricky ways to weave but change colors for different parts of the design without leaving a slit in the weaving.  Normally this means interlocking the two yarns, and it makes a tiny sawtooth sort of design.  But I was not good at this tricky color change, so my tower sides got a little crooked, as did the doorway.  My lower tower looks like it has lights between the crenellations in the roof.  Eh, this was my learning piece, so I wasn’t going to be all perfectionist about it.  But, well, it is a bit frustrating when things aren’t working the way they really should.

 

Eventually I kind of got the hang of things.  Certain parts worked fine, like my diagonal line.  Other parts are decidedly wonky, and the tower looks a bit like it’s shaking in an earthquake!  (Shelley’s husband is the one who came up with that description, and it’s very apt!)

 

Most of us wove every afternoon, after mornings spent exploring various towns as described in the previous blogs.  (Our dyers continued to dye, and I want to devote a separate blog to the gorgeous yarns they created.)  Our last day, 20 October, was a Sunday and we were scheduled to explore Terni.  Most of us opted to stay and do more weaving, so we could be as close to finished as possible.

 

My piece was just about half done by the time our ten day class was finished, so I packed the entire loom in my luggage, along with the small balls of yarn.  (I wrapped the weaving section in paper to make sure my clothes and such didn't unweave anything!)  Definitely made my luggage heavier, along with my black truffle products – my luggage leaving Italy was fifteen pounds heavier than when I arrived!

 

I managed to finish my piece in Tucson, and tied off the warp threads using the Maori technique.  Different cultures have different weaving techniques.  Modern weaving borrows from those many cultures, but tends to use the names of the original cultures for those specific techniques.

 

Yes, the left side got extremely crooked.  There are ways to “bubble” the weft yarn so it doesn’t pull, but apparently I didn’t leave enough slack to keep it nice and even.  As I said, this was all a learning process for me.

 

Last thing that is a bit odd about tapestry weaving – weft yarn is attached to the warp threads with a loop around and under technique, and the short end is left hanging.  Every time a new color is added, or more yarn of the same color is added, there’s a little short end hanging on the back.  This is a weird French tapestry technique; other cultures don’t do this, and there are ways to prevent the woven yarn from coming undone.  But I’ll talk about that in another blog.

 

So I have my first little tapestry.  I’ll eventually sew a cotton fabric on the back to cover those hanging yarn bits, as well as the warp threads. 

 

All in all, it was fun.  It was interesting.  Not sure I’ll make tapestry weaving my new medium, but it’s always good to learn something totally new.

 

 

 

Orvieto 2024

19 October 2024

 

Orvieto is a lovely hill town, fairly large, with a huge well-known cathedral.  Most people visit the cathedral while there, but it’s one of those places where one or two visits is enough for me, so this visit I skipped it.  

 

The town is also known for their ceramics, similar to Deruta's but slightly different in style.  There are wonderful ceramic signs scattered around, as well as tons of shops with gorgeous displays.  Definitely photo worthy!

 

It was a chilly and rainy day, but there’s a Saturday market that is always worth a quick walk-through.  I always like the produce section, the displays of fruits and vegs look like brightly colored mosaics with all the colors!  Lots of clothes, kitchen implements, cheese and meat vendors – you name it, someone there sells it.

 

Orvieto is divided into various quarters or neighborhoods, as are most of the towns dating back to Medieval times.  In Orvieto they are referred to as Quartiere, obviously a quarter, like the Latin Quarter in Paris.  I always like the signs for the quarters or neighborhoods, marking the borders.  Such a decorative way to delineate neighborhoods!  I also like having special emblems or symbols for each neighborhood!

 

So I did my usual wandering, occasionally bumping into some of my classmates, or chatting with shopkeepers in my minimal Italian. 

 

At the top of the hill is the cathedral, distinctive with its very dark green and white striped exterior.  This was trendy during a certain time during the Medieval period, though I don’t think it’s a very attractive look.  The Duomo sits in the Piazza del Duomo, and since it’s a very important cathedral due to the miraculous altar cloth, now housed as a relic, the interior is even more ornate than the exterior.  I find it overwhelming.  Marble, mosaic, frescoes, gilt, carved wood.  Kind of too much of a good thing.

 

In one side corner there’s a gorgeous fresco by Luca Signorelli, “The Resurrection of the Flesh.”  Since no one really knows what might happen at the end of days, it’s a very imaginative resurrection.  But the dead who are coming back to life all look thrilled at being in their 20s to 30s, all gorgeous, shapely, and ready to party.

 

Anyway, since I skip the cathedral, there’s a wall at the far side of the cathedral with a great view of the valley below the hill.  I especially like the former monastery turned hotel in the vineyard.  It was a foggy and rainy day, which added to the ethereal quality of the monastery.  Definitely atmospheric!

 

There’s also a clocktower in the piazza with a bell on top.  I don’t know if the bell rings on the hour, but I love the angelic mermaid on the bell.  SO whimsical, and makes such little sense!  LOVE it!  The angel mermaid even has a horn, or trumpet, or possibly a drinking horn.  As I said, absolutely whimsical!

 

One of the traditional meals served all over Orvieto is the porchetta sandwich.  Porchetta is roasted pig, the kind roasted whole so the exterior is crispy, and the sliced meat is served with the fat, on thick bread or a crusty roll.  There’s a great little porchetta shop off to the side just before the Piazza del Duomo, perfect place for an inexpensive meal.  I skipped the pork, though, and had the formaggio e tartufo, also known as cheese with truffle sauce.  Yum, SO good!  With an orangina, the perfect quick lunch on a chilly and rainy day.

 

More wandering, though headed slowly back to our meeting spot for the bus.  I stopped at the Tizian Caffe for a late cappuccino and a mini tart, to warm up and also have access to a restroom.  I got in a quick sketch of my partially eaten crostata and cappuccino, the cups are always so ultra-modern.  The restroom was next door, in a very ornate municipal meeting area.  Very fancy trompe l’oeil and carved ceilings!  (Though for all I know, the carvings are painted and just another part of the trompe l’oeil part.)

 

Finally the rain let up, though it was still a chilly day.  It was closing in on time to meet the bus, so I headed back to the parking area outside the city gate.  There’s an old fort there, built in the 1350s or so.  I didn’t have time to visit it, but got in a few photos of the exterior.

 

It was a nice last day of hill town visiting, sort of slow and easy.  Well, I walked over five miles according to my pedometer, but it still was a casual and relaxing walk hitting my personal highlights in Orvieto.