Gas Street Moorings, Birmingham

The suitcases arrived today! Way hay! Two computers to play with now and lots of dirty washing!

Little Fat Person on the end of the Cyprus pan-handle. The Lebanon is 60 odd miles behind.

Kyrenia Harbour with St Helerion Castle in the clouds behind.

Kyrenia's Venetian Castle at night. .

The central building in one of the Caravan Hotels. An oriental version of the Halifax Piece Hall. Lots of little crafty, souvenir shops and cafes.

Vouni. A pre-hellenic city and the most magical place on earth. You can just see the mountains in Turkey on the horizon.

On the whole the holiday was a great success. We visited all the old haunts and not many had changed out of recognition. Famagusta was a lot cleaner and bigger(?) and our favourite cake shop, Petek, was still going strong, though the Cyprus House restaurant looked like it was on its last legs. There were still empty beaches though lots and lots and lots of villas have been built, blotting the landscape.

Here are four of the cards that I bought from Maureen Hutchinson who took me on the walk to find orchids.

And finally, one of mine, a little plastic doll in a gold frame on a turquoise circle, then matted up onto orange and brown deckle edged squares. I cut some small lengths of turquoise white dotted gross grain ribbon and stuck them behind the square before fixing the whole panel to an orange card blank.

To finish off I tied a knot in some more turquoise ribbon and fixed it to the bottom left hand corner.

Gas Street Moorings, Birmingham

OK. Back at home - eventually (4 days travelling). Replacement computer set up (suitcases still in Istanbul, along with camera download lead etc, etc). David is never going to leave the boat again.

More later

Kyrenia, Cyprus

We have been in Cyprus a week now and it has been lovely. The flight out from Birmingham to Istambul was packed and an hour late leaving. We managed to catch the connecting plane by the skin of our teeth, unfortunately our cases didn't. They arrived 2 days later! The 1st picture is the view from our bedroom window. You'll be glad to hear that the water is too cold for swimming.
We have made several trips out, visiting old haunts and being pleasently pleased that nothing much has changed in the last 16 or so years since we were living here. There are an awful lot more villas dotted all over the place, but on the whole it is still as we remembered it.

Yesterday I went on a guided walk to see orchids and this one one that we found. Can't remember the name. I was a bit disappointed that I've missed the anenomies though.
















While we were on the walk someone spotted this, a baby chameleon.















And this is a view from the bottom of one of
the crusader casstles. St Hilerion, perched on the top of a mountain above Kyrenia. This is as far as we got this time. The walk to the top is very long and very steep. So we passed. Well we've been here before, many times.










So, in the floral mood. I actually BOUGHT some cards from the lady who took us on the walk yesterday. David can't understand it, but they were so pretty and I do love the wild anenomies.

This is one of mine though. The flowers are stuck onto some thick, white, handmade paper which has been torn and feathered. This is then stuck down onto a pink, hammered, panel and matted onto a silver one before fixing it to the pink card blank.

The spellchecker is not working, it keeps losing the pictures and giving me instructions in Turkish - so sorry, you'll have to put up with the bad spellings today.