Life's a Stitch

Thank you for all your birthday wishes, It was quiet here. I doubt the men in my house believed I needed spoiling after my recent dream trip. I took care of myself, though, and booked a mini spa appointment as I am in serious withdrawal. Believe me, I’m not looking for sympathy.

Back in Slovakia, this fountain dispensed what was nicknamed "the cure." This was nothing like the Bobbsey Twins’ in Volcano Land, their trip to Hawaii, where they imbibed in pineapple juice from a drinking fountain. People come from all over to drink this hot, vile smelling liquid, produced naturally from underground sulphuric springs that you could smell from a mile away. So committed to the cure are the Slovaks, they haul it off in bottles. I even saw someone feeding it to a baby. It’s supposed to cure whatever ails you and the list of ailments is a page long.

Of our threesome, I was the only soul brave enough to give it a go, and once was definitely enough. From my experience I think the point of the cure is the belch. The stinky sulphuric belch. I can only imagine what might happen if you stifled it. E e-mailed me recently and said she was peeling hard boiled eggs and the smell was making her feel nostalgic.

There was a little steamy pond nearby where fish and turtles lived in the stuff. Frankly I don’t know how they survived. It seemed like a life of slow poaching; a natural source of Bouillabaisse. They looked happy enough.

One of the aspects of the high mineral content in the water was that it made you extremely buoyant. It was easy to float in the mineral pools. It’s amazing how perky we all became, like we were wearing invisible WonderBras. As E and I sat on the underwater bench along the side of mirror pool with our various floaty bits, we heard men’s voices on the other side of the wall and imagined what was floating over there. No one said we had to behave like grownups the entire time we were on this trip. Besides, being related by marriage means we missed out on sharing those all important girlhood giggles, and we seemed determined to make up for lost time.

This is another scarf completed in Slovakia, details a few posts back:

Beware the Ides of March. The 15th of March is an auspicious day in history. In the year 44BC Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the senate by conspiritors led by Brutus and Longinus. In 1906, the Rolls Royce was introduced.The Godfather opened on March 15th, 1972. And in 1954 this blogger was born and thus far, has never been at a loss for words. If you want to know what happened in history on your birthday go to "This day in History."

Since this is about my birthday, how about some cake – taken in Vienna at the world famous Demel’s. Described in the Washington Post: Its baroque decor, thick with chandeliers and ornate murals of frolicking water nymphs, can get a bit unctuous. And the dour waitresses in their stern black habits could well be mistaken for an order of nuns devoted to disciplining naughty hedonists. But the dazzling spectacle of glass cabinets teaming with chocolate, trays heaped with cookies and biscuits, and tier upon tier of pastries of every conceivable shape, color and content, makes Demel’s a shrine to sweet-toothed devotees. Every word is the truth, I think "dour" must have been in the servers’ job description. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but their goulash soup was exquisite.

I’m sure some of you could use a break from the Slovakia coverage, besides I’m dying to show off Eyeleen’s Herringbone Rib scarf, cleverly wrapped around a pineapple. Who would have thought… great presentation. The scarf is drop dead gorgeous if you ask me, of course I’m biased. She did six pattern repeats, using a lighter weight yarn, details on her blog Knitting by Eye.

I’m still getting steady requests for the pattern, still available for the price of a comment. Photos of the finished product are greatly appreciated and will be added to the gallery on my sidebar.

Another requirement for a decent vacation is a good book. I brought along "Eat, Pray and Love" an autobiographical account of one woman’s year of transformation; an excellent read by Elizabeth Gilbert. In one chapter she talks about declaring a major for your life. This trip I declared eating and knitting my majors with a minor in physical therapy. Same studies as at home, but at a much better campus.

It was also a good opportunity for people watching. We dubbed people with characteristic names. There was Gandalf, the tall bearded man who paraded around in his long dark hooded bathrobe. And the Snow Queens, two elegant German women, probably sisters, with vanilla white soft serve hair piled on top of their heads. When they smiled, it melted all images of iciness. I wondered what names they would have given us. Probably three of the seven dwarves would have fit – E was Sleepy, L was the older wise Doc and I was Happy as I assume my laugh probably attracted a few glances. As a group we were all Dopey, mainly due to the language differences.

One day, while in the heart shaped swimming pool (did I mention that the fried eggs at breakfast were also heart shaped?), we heard the familiar rhythm of American English. We met Shannon and Ed, a couple who were finishing a 15 month stint of work in Piestany and were enjoying Valentine’s weekend at the spa hotel. They had had the opportunity to work in several countries and Shannon told us "I can point in 120 different languages." Lovely Shannon, also a knitter, contributed to the success of our trip. On our day off (Did you get that? A day off from spa treatments? E, L and I had a saying to cover such indulgences, "Suffer B__ch," I only abbreviate it to avoid weird Google searches). Oh yes, Shannon. She had a car and took us off campus to visit two nearby towns. Just like in college, sometimes you were able to hook up with a ride to broaden your horizons. Thank you, Shannon.

The surrounding geography consisted of gentle rolling hills with low mountains in the background. You’d be riding along and poof! There would be a rocky cliff, rising right off the road, with a castle on top.Castles that imprisoned interesting people like "the Blood Queen," who killed all the virgins for some seemingly good reason that only she understood:

Enough. I’ve made up for my lack of posts with length of post. You know how it is when you come back from vacation. The world and work and such, keep going and producing tasks for you in your absence. I’ve had to play serious catch up. And to keep this as a knitting blog I give you some knitting content. Besides the Lead or Follow Scarf, I also started an Irish Hiking Scarf in Elsebeth Lavold angora and a Vintage Velvet Scarf, from Scarf Style, with my two remaining clearance Annie Blatt kits:

If you’ve had high school age kids in recent years, you might remember their foreign language teacher’s warning about using Google Translate to complete assignments. One afternoon we were greeted by the hotel’s new fire warning system:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the technic defect was cared here. You shall must leave the building in peace, please. Your state of mind to service personnel instructions. The personal will erode thee off the building."

The "personal" in the office probably heard our peals of laughter from our 4th floor room. We had images of reluctant guests being scraped off the side of the building. Being helpful little knitters (as pictured on the left), we very respectfully offered a more effective interpretation.

Google translate was probably used for the room service menu as well, which offered "sandwich with chicken noodles, peanut butter and sweet chili sauce." "Cheese Mouse (mousse)" was offered in the dining room one night.

This part of Slovakia receives very few English speaking visitors and the general population is so appreciative of tourists and try really hard to communicate. It turns out the hotel had a fluent English speaking staff in their guest relations department, but they must have been off the day they implemented the fire evacuation system.

Now my lack of language ability causes its own set of issues. I ended up in the men’s section, awaiting my skinny dip in the mud pool. I wondered why the three gentlemen all had nervous coughs in my presence. When the time came to parade to the pool I was promptly ushered to the women’s side by an anxious attendant. 

E, L and I spoke English at our assigned dining table. We asked the maitre’d to let us know if we were being too loud in our enthusiastic conversation. There was a Danish man seated just out of earshot from our table. Having been informed that L was from Denmark, observing our exuberance, he asked her in Danish "Just what language are you three speaking so much in?"

But my favourite language situation happened when E went for a neck and upper back massage and was greeted by the command " Take off top of your body, please."

My traveling companions and I can now look a pig in the eye, secretly sharing the knowledge of its greatest pleasures. Having spent two weeks at a traditional European health spa, as opposed to a beauty spa, we ere exposed to all manner of piggy pleasures – mainly mud and copious amounts of food.

Let me clarify the difference between a health and beauty spa. I see the latter as a place to relax with the end result of nice nails, glowing skin, well conditioned hair and maybe the loss of a pound or two. The Thermia Spa was a place to relax and hammer out the aches and pains of life through a variety of treatments including massages, laser and ultrasound therapy, therapeutic baths along with some unconventional ones like parafango (paraffin and mud) compresses and carbon insulflation (injections of carbon dioxide directly into your sore parts). The food was deliciously rich. But I save the best for last – the mud pack.

First, a warning, if you plan an visiting a European health spa, leave your modesty at home. The therapeutic baths are communal, but if you read the signs correctly, there are separate facilities for men and women. There’s a story there I’ll write about later. I arrived in Piestany after 17 hours of travel, just in time for dinner. E and L warned me that I’d frequently be hearing the words "take down your clothing." Later that night E told me she had written in her journal that she was a bit anxious about the possibility of  hanging out naked with me or L. Well, wouldn’t you you it, my first treatment was in the baths with her.

Back to the mud packs. Ladies, this is the the most comforting experience I’ve ever had. You know how you wake up in the morning, all stiff and achy, and have to drag yourself out of your nice warm bed, into the cold and wet (I’m a Pac NW’er) cruel world to get dressed and off to work? At the spa you roll out of bed, don your fluffy robe, which spent the night hanging on a warmer, and walk to the Napoleon Complex (the group of buildings, pictured, not a psychological disorder) for your mudpack.

You are given a private dressing room, consisting of a small bed with white sheets and blanket,and a hook for your robe. You lose the robe and wait for the sound of the cart rolling down the tiled hallway. It holds two ten gallon tubs of steamy silky sulpher laden mud. The attendant leads you to the mud pack area with another small bed, this time with brown sheets. She glops the hot mud onto the bed and helps you lie on top of it. They use the rest on your joints – elbows, knees, hands, knees and feet. They wrap you up in sheets and a heavy horsehair blanket, tuck you in with a coil heater, turn down the lights and let your achy body absorb the curative goodness of hot mud. They come by every five minutes or so to wipe your sweaty face – absolute luxury.

After about 15 minutes you take a hot shower followed by a cool one. You are then wrapped in a warm sheet and led back to your dressing room where they roll you up in another blanket so you can "recover" from the experience pretending you are a soft burrito. Once again the lights get turned off and you are told to "schlopp gut," that would be "sleep well." This is a painting from the 1800’s of their version of the experience. Can you not see the pleasure written all over her face? If pigs could talk…

Yesterday, it was time to put on our ruby slippers and return to our respective Kansases. Is that how you say Kansas in plural? How about Kansai, that’s the name of a local sushi place here in North Vancouver. Cousin Lene is back in Denmark, SIL Ellen in Minnesota, and after three flights and 15 hours of flying I’m back home.

We’ve left our Slovakian Oz of three white tableclothed meals per day, a minimum of four daily spa services, and a fancy shmancy newly renovated palace of a hotel with helpful and friendly staff. You could never hope to do this in North America without winning the lottery. In Piestany, Slovakia, it’s $81 Euro per night for everything, based on a double during the winter season. You can stay in other decent hotels/inns with the same services for under 60. A private room is not that much more. I haven’t been home for a day and I’m figuring out how to save for the next time.

We met many people who had been there on a repetitive basis over many years. One man from Italy  had visited 120 times in 20 years. We each had our reason for wanting this trip, the aches and pains of aging, relief from injuries or chronic illness and escape from years of career challenges. We met two beautiful ladies in their early 80’s pictured on the right – Lola and Sally, from New York – who had been there at least yearly for 35 years. They had by far the most compelling reason for seeking comfort from reality, being concentration camp survivors, having lost siblings and parents. They were so positive, of course not dwelling on that horrible part of their history, crediting their trips for making them better women and wives. I told them I’d be sure to let my husband know that.

It’s catch up time, that’s the price you pay for two weeks of high quality rest. I’ll  be writing lots more about the experience, but wanted to let you know I’m back in blogland, still high on luxury and the opportunity to spend time with two special in-laws. I realized that those two represent the best parts of my husband in the form of a woman. What a wonderful combination. Here we are, Ellen, Lene and me.

In case you were wondering, there was knitting content on this trip. Maybe we visited a country with a profound  lack of yarn shops, but I was prepared for serious knitting work, packing along my blocking pins. Here is my Lead or Follow scarf blocking in Slovakia!

Well, I’m off to a spa in Slovakia, a dream that my SIL and I have shared for many years. Three Boesen women, two related by blood, one adopted through marriage, all knitters, off to the other side of the dream. To them, a thank you for being part of the dream. To you, a promise that I’ll be back in two and a half weeks, all mud packed and melted, to continue this blog. To those seeking the pattern, I’ll send it out upon my return.

Say goodbye, Gracee:

I have a friend who participated in a quilting crawl of the Washington Coast. Her friend found some particularly interesting metallic thread, but was hesitant to buy it, unsure if she already had some stashed. She made a fatal error called her husband. "Honey, can you go into my quilting closet and tell me if I have any copper coloured thread?" Ten minutes later her cell phone rings. It’s her husband. "Woman, he says, you must have $100 worth of thread in that closet!" Relieved, she bought the copper thread, telling my friend, "If he thinks it’s $100 I’m safe, it’s more like a thousand."

I know the feeling, only my guy has actually scoped out yarn shops with me and is fully aware of the value of my stash. He’s never complained, though. I figure I may not work full time forever, and I don’t have a pension in retirement so I’d better treat myself now.   

Here’s my latest FO, my Fleece Artist Celtic Vest. It’s quick, easy and looks good when worn. There’s something about the elasticity of the side-to-side stitch that conforms to you in a flattering manner no matter what shape you’re in. I highly recommend one, but be forewarned – two of us have made this vest and we both needed to add ten stitches to the length. It seems the earlier kits only came in a small size. By the way, Chuck made the shawl pin – he’ll be selling them online, in natural wood and custom colours, in the near future. I’m not the only one in this house with a stash, and believe me, tree trunks take up way more space than yarn.

Here’s a glimpse of our Sunday in Steveston, a fishing village south of Vancouver. That’s Chuck buying wild drug-free salmon (note the red sign on the fishing boat):

It was a gray and gloomy day in Steveston, while it was bright and sunny up the mountain where we live. This is due to an unusual weather phenomenon, called a temperature inversion. Usually it gets colder the higher the altitude, but sometimes it’s warmer up here than at sea level, causing a sea of city swallowing fog below. Can you picture this as a colourway:

How come, when we go to Steveston, I’m always always accused of using it as an excuse to visit Wool and Wicker? Moi? Truthfully, I might have bought something there, but I get overwhelmed in a yarn shop organized by colour instead of yarn type. I just can’t wrap my brain around it.