Spring?

This morning we woke up with rain and storms as if it were the beginning of autumn instead of the beginning of spring. So our clean up day is postponed to next week.

Now I only hope the wind doesn't get any stronger because tomorrow morning I want to take the hydrofoil to the mainland. I am going to spend a few days with my son in Thessaloniki and on saturday he and I will be attending the TEDx event in Thessaloniki. I am very much looking forward to that.

My youngest son is also hoping for quiet weather because he is leaving the island on saturday by ferry boat. He is going on the traditional 5 day excursion with his school. They will be going to Barcelona.

That is one of the disadvantages of living on an island. Your plans sometimes have to change dramatically due to weathercircumstances.

I just had a look at the weather forecast and I wish I hadn't......it doesn't look promising.

Ah well, wish me luck.

Spring cleaning

This week is the annual "Skiathos clean up" week. An initiative started by the cultural society "Skiathos". This will be the sixth year that volunteers clean up beaches and other parts of the island. Tomorrow is our turn, the international women's club is taking on the area of Kalivia. If the weather is as lovely as it was today, it will be a nice outing as well.

Today I went for my usual stroll along the beach in search of some seaglass.

It won't be long before this beach will look very differently

The assignment from the Seaglassartist community was to take a photo of the seaglass as found on the beach.

I almost missed this piece of white glass in the froth. I managed to pick it up without getting my feet wet. And I am glad I did because it is a lovely piece.

Independance Day

Today is Independance Day, a major celebration where Greece commemorates the war of independance and celebrates freedom after 400 years of Turkish regime.

In the morning there was the traditional school parade. My youngest son took part for the last time, since he is in his last year of school. He was very proud to carry the original sword that was used by Markos Botsaris, one of the heroes of the independance war of 1821. I took a very nice picture of him, the sword and the great great great granddaughter of Markos Botsaris, but will not be able to show it here because then revolution will start in my own house.

It wouldn't be a special day if it didn't have a special dish and for Independance Day that dish is salted cod and garlic sauce or "skordalia". Don't ask me why. I have no idea where it came from but we did enjoy it today together with the nice spring sunshine

oogghhrrr frustation!

I had decided for today not to open my laptop and have a computerless day. There are a lot of different crafting projects lying around waiting to be finished and the weather is bad so a perfect day to work on one that needs a lot of work and attention.

Just before I went to Holland I had started assembling the meditteranean dollhouse the parts of which I had been collecting for two years.

So today I continued with that. After more than 3 hours of cutting and glueing it turns out that I had started wrong and the whole basis construction should be exactly opposite!.

Well, since I had paid extra attention to glueing everything really well so it would be a strong dollhouse..... you can imagine how hard it was to take it apart again. I can't say I did a very good job and it will never look as good as on the picture.

And to calm down from my overheated, frustated, bad mood waiting around the corner feeling, I did the one thing that will for sure relax me a bit:

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p.s The two photo's of the dollhouse I pinched from Anthoula who is an amazing artist and also collected this dollhouse. I hope she is doing a better job than me. I am sure she does! If you explore her blog you'll know why.

sunday lunch by the sea

The electricity has come back on, the sun is out again and life is back to normal. At least it is in our little part of the world. In far away Japan, life will not be back to normal for a long time I am afraid. I cannot find words to express my feelings and sympathy for people all over the world who have to experience disasters, either caused by nature or, even worse, by man himself.

My fisher-man finally went fishing again, for the first time since a couple of weeks. Today we enjoyed yesterday's catch.

It was a nice break from working in the garden.

Theatre by candle light

Every year the Skiathos Women's Society organizes an event to celebrate International Women's day. This year they brought to us a theatre play.
I wasn't sure if it would take place since the storms had made sure there was no boat connection to the mainland and of course the dreaded electricity cut. But somehow they managed to make it happen.

Even without electricity we enjoyed "La Poupee". Directed and acted by Anna Kokkinou, a bittersweet monologue about a doll-dress maker stuck in her own world.

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The dreaded power cut

Last monday was "clean monday" as it is called here in Greece. It is the beginning of lent and the start of the fasting period before Easter. It is a special day and one of my favorite celebrations. Well, this year was slightly different. Although we are almost in spring....it is full winter here at the moment. As predicted with a lot of storms with rain and snow.

We did have the traditional seafood such as sea urchins and oysters, octopus, mussels and shrimps and taramosalata and more.


We had to stay inside since it never stopped raining. It didn't stop us from having a good time and we ended up dancing, first some greek traditional but then golden oldies from the 70 s.


Then in the middle of the night...the electric power went of and that was the end of that party.

Yesterday we got organized and now the fireplace is lit and a generator is humming outside, providing us with electricity, it isn't so difficult to cope.

Grey, grey, grey

This is the only colour for about a week now, mix that with rain and it is getting really boring. It should be all colours now since it is carnival weekend.

In past years we did participate in our local carnival parade but this year there is not going to be one. Probably just as well because it would have been very soggy and cold. And the weather forecast says snow and storms for next week!

I remember the first snow I experienced on the island. It was in 1987 and it started snowing the 8th of March! In the middle of spring and with trees full of blossoms. There was a lot of snow and it stayed for weeks. But the worse was that the island had no electricity and no water for 2 weeks! Yes 15 days! That was not easy I can tell you. And melting snow to use as water is not as simple as it sound.

Some pictures from past carnivals then, just to get some colour on this page and to get away from that grey, grey, grey

We built a real pirate-ship

And dressed the part

Dancing Queen

The year after Mamma Mia was filmed on the island, we are doing our little sing and dance in front of public....scary

But after the first nervous try...we couldn't be stopped

A day in Delft

While in Holland I also had the chance to meet up with a dear friend of mine and visit the beautiful old city of Delft.

My friend picked me up from the trainstation where she had arranged a rental bicycle for me.

A usual sight at any Dutch railway-station.

Luckily I didn't have to look for my bike here!

Of course there was a lot to talk since we hadn't seen each other for a long time. First we chatted over coffee, more during cycling, then whilst walking and finally over lunch in a beautiful coffee-house (not to be mistaken for coffee-shop.... which has a different kind of specialities) where I enjoyed one of their prizewinning sandwiches.

It tasted as yummy as it looks

There was a nice surprise when I went to the bathroom. The wall with the mirror above the basin was made of a beautiful mozaic of old Delft Blue pottery pieces.

What an original idea!

A similar but much bigger one can be found at Schiphol airport, which I only noticed for the first time when I flew back to Greece

After lunch I strolled the ancient city centre and its cobbled streets and came across a different kind of supermarkt: "Hypo the supermarket for art and design"
The perfect place to spend a couple of hours admiring all different kinds of art by local artists. They also do workshops and lectures and there is a cafe as well with a grand collection of LP's (remember the vinyl ones?) actually playing on a pick-up.

I saw a lot of things I liked. But the ornaments made of kitchenware and cutlery were amongst my favourites. Apart from the two on the photo above there were also candleholders made of spoons and forks. Really clever and well made.

The evening was spent with my friend again and it was extra special because after a tasty meal she had arranged for Thai massages for the both of us. What more could I possibly ask for.
Thank you B. I had a great time!