Some of Split

These few pictures are of Split's old town. The place is weird because it's built of the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian (end of the third century AD). The roads are the palace's corridors, and the buildings, former rooms. This top picture is an example. The columns are part of the old palace and the cathedral was built inside. Kind of neat looking.

This is a picture of the north gate. You can tell it looks a lot more like a single building here than a bunch that are protected by a wall.

And this is a picture from the harbor, on the south side. Unlike the harbor for Dubrovnik's old town, this harbor is much more a working one. The ferries depart from this area, and they're constantly coming and going.

A Bit More Color

I have fallen sooo far behind on stitching on this trip, between the road trip to Croatia and something else that you'll hear about in a post in the near future. Some progress on Tuscany, though. I added more color to it and am about halfway done on this fourth section of part three. Once I'm done with it, I'll start in again on part two and finish it off. This is obviously going to be a very looong project.

Stash from Split

While in the old town of Split, which is also Diocletian's palace, I found three! shops. Two were trim shops and one was a fabric shop. I helped the daily receipts of all three. This top shop shows some cute ribbons and a wide piece of lace I found.

More trims here and the only piece of fabric I bought at the fabric shop. Fabric was top quality, but I really don't like paying nearly a hundred euros per meter for stuff I could get in the states for about thirty dollars a yard, especially since I can dye my oen silk. So I bought this piece of linen, which I found really interesting. Now to figure out what to do with it.

The metal trim snaking across this picture is heavy and was expensive, but I really like it. It's made up of basket charms and Swarovski crystals. It'd make a good bracelet with some left over, but I have other plans. The ribbon on netting will do well on some projects, too.

Both of the trim shops had a wide selection of very nice buttons. Several were dichroic, even. I bought a bunch and also this neat little coin trim, where it's all old Roman reproductions in tin.

And here is all the stash I bought, laid out together. It looks like a lot when it's all spread across the table.

This shop was off by itself down one of the streets running down to the harbor.

And this was one of the trim shops. It was directly across from the expensive fabric shop shown below. Very nice people in all three places, and willing to help.

Scaffolding

This week I worked on what I call the scaffolding - the dark parts that aren't the flowers or the back ground or the punch. The part that everything else hangs on. I made some progress and also did some more of the light blue.

Part Five Done

I got part five done and have since received the four squares for part five. It's definitely a leafy pattern, so I'm glad I picked the green floss (Victorian Mist from Hand Dyed Fibers). I like the way it's turning out so far. It's still only available through the Marquoir group on yahoo.de.

Plaquing Along

I've got most of the colors done on the plaques. They're coming along, slowly, as everything these days. I'll be putting up more pictures of why things were slow last week in the next couple of days. Anyway, I like the look of these quite a bit.

Breaking In News

Sorry, no pictures for this post. For security reasons, people are discouraged from taking pictures of this area. I am currently staying with my companion/host, who works for the State Department at the US Embassy in Pristina. The building he lives in is on the same (very short) street as the incident that happened Friday night.

What it was like from our perspective - around eleven thirty Friday evening, we heard police sirens. There was some heavy traffic, too. Other than that, nothing. When we went out on Saturday, there was police tape and were some Kosovar police in SUV's parked at each end of the street. They let us pass without comment. When we went out to dinner and the grocery store (sorry, hipermarket) last night, we had to stop at the tape and let the SUV pull out from in front of it. The special plates on the car show it's not to be stopped. The taxi behind us was told to turn around and go away.

Anyway, it might sound exciting in the news and it's getting a lot of spin, but we're fine, we've had no problems, and there's really not a lot of danger around here.

Edited to add: This article from Voice of America is probably one of the better ones on the events of Friday night. The top picture is one of the bottom of our street (at one of the few times it wasn't raining these past few days). Nothing much going on here. By the way, I forgot to mention that we found out why we had the noise and the guards not from the embassy, but from my husband, who saw the news Saturday morning.