The Girdle of Melian

unrises! I've been an admirer of sunsets all my life, which comes from summers spent in Kusadasi and watching the sun set into the sea every night (my grandmother used to tell me and my sister that if you skipped a stone on the water and made a wish, then stayed silent on the walk home, your wish would come true. Now I wonder if she wasn't inventing the silence bit just to keep two young girls from chattering endlessly!). The sun rose over the mountains and its colours weren't easily visible from our house. I've shared photos of the sunrise over our Swiss village before, and quite a few photos of the grounds of the Palais des Nations , Ariana Park , as well as of the entrance to the United Nations . Oddly, though, even though I've taken quite a few photos, I don't think I've ever posted photos of the sunrise over Lac Leman and the Alps before. Before that, though, I thought I'd collate some random blog-related stuff. First up, a new collection o

art two of the year end review s, this time for all other hobbies! I had a very short recap last year of my knitting in 2014 , and posted these goals : 1. Finish knitting three more cowls 2. Think about buying expensive wool to make, slowly, methodically, and properly, a gorgeous design by Kate Davies 3. Organise all our photos and print a few, especially for our grandparents 4. Bake more! I completed 3, got a start on 4, and am still doing 2! The first goal got derailed a bit as the second cowl fell to pieces (I attempted to use a set of very thick circular needles, which didn't work in my hands at all. I need to tink (undo; knit spelled backwards!) that cowl and restart). Items that I completed were a square for a joint project , a baby tuque , a second tuque, and two baby blanket s. The second tuque started as a pair of leg warmers, promised to Diana Gabaldon when she was up in Scotland, and cold...  ...it reached this height... ...and somehow tur

avid Bowie lived in Switzerland for a while in the 1980s, and (besides having friends such as Iggy Pop visit to write songs together), recorded songs at Mountain Recording Studios in Montreux, where Queen had also recorded (and the song Smoke on the Water was born. We visited Montreux last month for the first time, as well as Chillon Castle (remembering Byron and Shelley's visit there 200 years ago). But first, I storified the last few days' worth of tweets (it's not chronological, but it's not that important to read them in any kind of order. Storify doesn't clearly show what I was replying to in some cases, and in those instances I've included the original tweets from others). Black Tie, White Noise was the first album I got after the Greatest Hits, because it came out the year I was old enough to start paying attention to music on my own, following on from what I'd learned from my parents and the local classic rock station. I thought the Shire Recko