Giza

Yesterday my sweetie and I took a guided tour of the pyramids at the Giza plateau. It still amazes me that one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world is located only 30 minutes away by car, depending on traffic. It's also interesting to compare my hubby's photos with mine. I seem to have people, he goes out of his way to have none. Anywhere here are just a few photos.

The Great Pyramid of Cheops was the tallest man-made structure until the Eiffel Tower was built. This thing is huge. I was in a better mood this trip so it didn't just strike me as a big pile of rocks... Our guide convinced us that it was worth going inside the pyramid to the burial chamber. This is what I could see looking out from the robber's entrance to the pyramid. There's Cairo right there. And loads of tour buses.

It was an interesting trip into the pyramid. I didn't panic and run screaming, tho it wasn't exactly pleasant. You have to climb a 45 degree ramp bent over double. That went on quite a ways. It's a narrow little thing and it's the only way in OR out, so you had to manage to get by people as well. The burial chamber itself was fairly small, considering how much stuff I'd expect the pharoah to cram in there to take to his afterlife. And it was damp. Didn't hang around in there for long, let me tell ya. My muscles just ache today.

This is a photo of the back of the Great Pyramid where there are hardly any people at all. Most of the hordes are in the front I guess. Closest to the parking lot.

I love the Sphinx. His proper Egyptian name is Abu Hol, Father of Terror.

And this is what it looked like when I stepped back (and down) a few feet:

Yeah, lots of people. Not just tourists either, but some of the locals were doing tours.

The horrible obnoxious sellers of postcards, bookmarks, water, etc weren't nearly as bad this trip as the last time we went. Is that because I have acclimated to Egypt or that we had a tour guide and didn't look like such easy prey? Still makes me angry to see little kids selling stuff, tho this was at least a Saturday and there wouldn't be any school. Then again, I bet they're there every day of the week.

So it was a good tour, glad we went. Made me feel happy to be living in Egypt, which is a good thing as well. It was only a half day tour, it wasn't too hot, and we had a nice breeze, which means I wasn't completely wiped out when we were done. Plus I'm now smart enough to bring an umbrella with me to provide shade - that made a difference too.

After napping a bit I managed to sew for awhile. This post is already too long for that, but you'll see my progress shortly.

Sewing bits together

I'm making progress on the Endearments quilt. I was thinking of making a couple more words, but I have a certain size I want this to come out to (so it will fit on my favorite hangar) which is always dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that I sometimes make compromises with the quilt when I'm doing that. It doesn't come out the very best it could be. I'm liking it tho, so no worries, I don't think.

I decided to toss the Xs and Os I'd made as well as the house block. I think the piano keys I've made are livening things up and helping to get purples into areas they might not otherwise make it into.

So that's where that quilt stands as of this morning. I just need to finish the quilting in two blocks in Spaces 4 Rent and then I'll be ready for the binding and sleeve - my most hated part.

I've decided I'm not a Leaders and Enders kind of sewer. Even having all the little squares cut out so all I had to do was grab them and sew them together just threw me off. I can't divide my attention that way between two different quilts. I'm just going to toss my little squares into the bag to donate to charity. Here's Lily with her head under the table, sprawled out on the chair that has to-be-donated scraps piled on it.

Sweetie and I have watched a couple of the "Rebus" BBC movies with John Hannah as the Scottish police detective. They're grubbier than I expected them to be and I'm discovering that I just don't like Rebus. He's a jerk. At least in Ian Rankin's books you get more of Rebus' internal monologue so you have a better understanding of why he does things. I'm rather incensed that the DVDs don't have subtitles - those brogues are hard to follow. It is wonderful to see panoramic shots of Edinburgh tho. And all that gloomy rain - eeuw.

I just finished reading "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within" by Bruce Bawer. Aiyee. Horrifying and upsetting. If this were a ranting blog I could go on for pages. But it's not. I think my next book better be fiction. Happy fiction.

Comet House

I had to go to some briefings yesterday about our upcoming move. Snooooze. It was one of those things where there are way too many people whose situations are all completely different and so the briefings are so vague as to be almost useless. But now there are faces to attach to the names of people that we'll be dealing with and I have a load of material to read. All written in beaurocratese zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I was rewarded with lunch at Taboula, the bestest Lebanese food around. Tried a new dish, the Shmander Salad, a beet salad with some greens. Good, but not nearly as excellent as my reigning number one dish fattoush: lettuce, cukes, tomato, pita bread "croutons" and a tangy lemon dressing. In addition, my luncheon companion told me to stop worrying about the price I paid for the Palestinian pottery the other day. She's done way more travelling than I have and lived in Jordan for a couple of years - she says I did okay. Whew.

I did a bit more sewing yesterday, in fact I was almost late getting out of here. But I have to admit I've spent a lot of time online. I discovered the blog Be*mused. Oh, I'd dropped in before to read individual posts about Gee's Bend quilts and her visit to the Tokyo Quilt Festival, but it was when she posted about her favorite quilt book, Liberated Quiltmaking by Gwen Marston (holy cow, sellers are offering the paperback used for sixty bucks? aiyeeee), that I really took notice and delved in. I've now read all of her posts (I think) way back to the beginning and had an absolute blast. Try it, you'll enjoy it, just ignore all that darn knitting :)

Okay, I've got to get off the computer now and actually do something today. I've got quilting bee in the afternoon and tho it's enjoyable and I'll get more work done on Space 4 Rent (see block above) which I'm nearing the end of, it won't be sewing on the machine which is what I feel needs to be done and which I've been neglecting.

Fringe Necklace

I'm really excited. I signed up for a jewelry making class today. The classes are only a couple of hours long, once a week in May. I've been wanting to take this class for a very long time, but all the spaces have always filled up before I've gotten in. As part of the class the instructor is going to take us down to the Khan (the souq, aka market) to her favorite bead shops. I'm hoping to find some Beduoin silver beads that I like.

I'm not really into semi-precious stones, so don't know that I'll find much else that I'll like, tho I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately we can't get good glass beads here or any of the gorgeous lampworked or dichroic glass beads. I do still have a bit of a stash of them, luckily.

This is a fringe necklace I made last year when visiting my friend Siobhan in the states. Well, I started it there but finished here on my own and I'm not sure that I got everything fastened properly, so I'm always terrified something is going to give way and scatter all these beads.

I love this necklace, but unsurpisingly my hubby doesn't. I'm banned from wearing it in public while I'm with him cuz he thinks it's so loud and obnoxious. We had quite the discussion about that one, but I did win the "right" to wear it over to friends' houses since that's not public public. I'm sure he's actually forgotten that discussion and I'm not even sure he'd even notice I was wearing it.

One of my favorite beads on here is a sculpey alien that a friend gave me. Unfortunately I put it too high up. I'm actually considering reworking this baby since I have even more beads now that would work in it and I think I could make some improvements. We'll see.

What I really need is the perfect shirt to wear it with. It looks lovely against my royal blue rayon shirt, but unfortunately it has a collar. I need a silk shell. Mmmm.

I've once again spent way too much time goofing off this morning. Does anyone here do the Bloglines thing? And how is it working out? Have to admit I've gotten tired of going to blogs and seeing that they haven't been updated.

New Pottery and a Head

I went a bit nuts today with the shopping. Spent too much money. I'm normally very cheap (I may be cheap but I'm not inexpensive - ha ha ha) and don't splurge but today I decided to go ahead and buy some blue and white Palestinian pottery that I've wanted.

If I'd actually bothered to translate the prices into dollars, there's no way I would have bought the tray (ouch). I think it was the acquisitive part of my brain that refused to do the math so that I could go ahead and just buy it. Now that I have it, I'll enjoy it. To look at anyway. We entertain so infrequently that I can't justify buying anything using that excuse.

The phrenology head on the left is from London, England. I've now brought back two large ones and a smaller one in my carry-on luggage. No, that's how many I have; I brought back another one as well for a friend who collects hats. Don't ask me why, I just love these heads. Phrenology is the "science" of reading bumps on the head. Kind of like palm reading only different.

We had a wicked amount of rain yesterday and the night before last. Just amazing. Now there are enormous mud puddles everywhere and the trees and bushes all look incredibly bright and green. Usually all the foliage is covered in dust/sand and looks dirty.

I don't know if it's the rain causing problems with the plumbing, but our water pressure is low. Had to wait ages before I could take a shower this morning and we were out of hot water last time I checked. Ah, apartment living. It's just too hard for the water to make it all the way up here to the fifth floor.

I'm goofing off instead of sewing. I did do some of that earlier and my excuse now is that I have to ponder my next move. Yeah, that's it.