I got this yarn for my birthday last year and I was in the mood to make some socks (or more accurately to wear some knitted socks) so I pulled it out and started knitting. I normally make my socks too loose so I tried to be a bit more careful with this pair. I started from the toe using "Judy's magic cast-on" from Socks from the Toe Up by Wendy Johnson. It worked really well and hopefully I'll be able to make the second sock the same even though I've let this project take so long that I'm forgetting how I did the shaping. I think I have a few notes scribbled on a bit of paper. Somewhere. Anyway, here is a photo of the first one.

Well I had a bit of a rough start with this sweater since I failed to pay enough attention to the hip dimensions and after several inches discovered that it was much too narrow. So I ripped it out, did some math, and stared over. Then I forgot the ribbing on the sides and instead of just dropping those stitches and picking them up in the right stitch, which would probably have been faster, I ripped out again. Now I'm up to about 6.5 inches with the correct width and side shaping. I think I'm going to have to stop and weave in the tails which I normally don't like to do because it impairs further ripping out but the ends are expanding and getting fuzzy and I think it would be wise to weave them in before they get worse. I didn't realize silk could get so fuzzy but I guess it is only partly silk so presumably it is the wool that is getting fuzzy.

Today we had only part of a day before heading back to the airport so we started out with some quick breakfast and a visit to St John's Co-Cathedral and Museum. This Cathedral is truly a monument to the Knights of St John and their wealth. Every bit of the inside is covered with ornate carvings and statues and paintings and each of them contains the crest of the knight who commissioned it, and in some cases a likeness as well. We also saw what was once a receptacle for John the Baptists forearm (the one he use to baptize Christ) but the French stole the jewels and one of the Grand Masters of Malta removed the relic as he fled the city during an invasion so now its just a couple of gold and silver cherubs pointing to an empty gold container. We also saw some Flemish tapestries from 1702 which supposedly cost as much as an annual military budget but their colors were so washed out it was difficult to experience their opulence since I had just left the main cathedral and my eyes were still adjusting to the lack of glitz much as they do when coming inside on a sunny day.

Whereas the audio guide for the palace armory was brief almost to the point of triteness the cathedral guide was long winded and full of details about the painters and the knights and grand masters and symbols and really anything they could think of. Often the narrator would start waffling on about some painting or sculpture or side chapel without given any indication of what he was referring to and at other times he described the obvious bits at length. Yes, having found the most famous paining in the whole place (conveniently denoted by signs, museum guards and no photography signs) I don't need the narrator to list the characters who appear in the painting, nor to describe what they are wearing since I'm looking right at it.

After the cathedral we went to the Maltese Experience which we hardly felt we could skip given that every corner in Valletta contains at least one sign pointing tourists in its direction. When we were visiting the war museum a plaque at the end of the WWII exhibit said that as Malta gained its independence from England it wanted to make a move from a military based economy to one of tourism and industry. Well I think the Malta Experience was a direct result of that decisions. It is an "audio visual experience" cataloging Malta's long history of invasion starting with the original inhabitants and their impressive temples and catacombs and continuing through the Turks, Arabs, Knights, French, English and possibly a few others that I forgot and finally ending with a upbeat description of the Maltese people embracing change and diversity. The film was entertaining and amusing enough although some of the photos looked like they had been snapped in an afternoon by someone who ran around the city (much the way we did) quickly taking picture and sprinting to the next notable location. Some of them were blurry as if the wind was blowing the leaves of the plants in the palace courtyard or the photographer was taking shots on the sly when the museum curator wasn't looking. We also had a bit of lunch and zipped around the art museum where my favorite paining was one of a woman slicing a mans throat open. Despite what you might think my choice was not based on the subject matter but because, unlike so many of the other nearby saint martyr depictions, the woman and the man both had furrowed brows and some actual angst in their expressions. It would appear that the most popular emotions to wear when being killed in a gruesome way are boredom with a side of pouty-ness for women and boredom with a bit of superiority for men. Also the lack of cherubs and halos earns the painter bonus points.

Lastly we wandered around the city for a bit looking for a cab but eventually gave up and hopped on a bus back to the airport where we are now sitting conspicuously in a large section of the airport seating which is empty except for us, a man who I imagine is playing suduku on his phone, and the woman from Diamonds International who is eating a burger which appears much to cheep to be approved by her employer which might be why she is eating in the airport seating section rather than in her shop.

Today we were a bit slower getting started and having so efficiently toured Malta on Saturday we decided to visit the neighboring town of Rabat to see some early Christian catacombs and a Dominican Monastery. We started our trek by heading toward the Valletta bus station which is a huge roundabout filled with orange buses beeping at each other and rolling backwards several feet each time they set out to move forwards. We had to wait quite a while for our bus but once it finally came we had no trouble getting to Rabat especially since the bus driver kindly yelled out "Rabat" when he got to our stop.

The catacombs were bigger than I was expecting. The largest one was a maze of tiny passageways with cutouts in the side of the passage for children and larger chest high blocks of stone carved out in the top for adults and families. In some places there was just as small hole in the wall which appeared to lead to more room(s) of compartments. Maybe there were other passage ways on different levels that lead to these rooms which were blocked off.

Even though there weren't any bodies there (at least that we could see) it was still quite eerie and a bit uncomfortable, especially for Kim who I occasionally exclaimed "Oww!" from in front or behind me as he hit his head on the ceiling.

After the catacombs we strolled along to a Dominican Monastery which was quite peaceful with a square garden in the middle full of pools and lemon trees and a lovely high arched walkway along the outer edge of the garden. We were allowed to walk along a broad, high ceilinged hallway inside the monastery to a chapel which I think was probably smaller than the hallway which lead up to it and had an alter full of what looked like plastic pink flowers but I think they were probably a recent addition rather than a 17th century artifact.

After the monastery we noticed a convenient bus stop across the street with a group of encouraging looking old people who we hopped were on their way back to Valletta. After only a few minutes at the bus stop a bus bound for Valletta did indeed appear and we had a pleasant ride back to the city only to discover ourselves in the midst of the full blown Carnival crowd. The Carnival is, as far as I can tell, a pre-Lent celebration involving lots of floats painted in florescent colors, teens in crazy florescent costumes of things like castles, flowers and lobsters and kids dressed as princesses, cow persons, comic book heroes, and gypsies. And the occasional lizard or tiger but these animal like costumes seemed to be reserved for children to young to pick out their own.

We naively followed the crowd into the city through the main gate rather than taking the long way around and after witnessing a near fist fight between two women with baby carriages who kept bumping into each other and being thoroughly squished as several hundred people tried to squeeze between some sort of food stand and the metal gates lining the edges of the street we made it to the National Museum of Archeology where we saw some headless human figures, a tiny (and rather curvy) "sleeping lady" statue which is quite old and quite famous, and some neolithic stones from the also quite old Maltese Temples with some faint spirals carved in them. As you may have guessed I was getting a bit musiumed out at this point but I did take a photo of this thing which looked like a coffee cup with a 3 foot diameter.

After this we popped back to the hotel for a quick shower and headed out for dinner, this time Italian food at a restaurant that was either on its way in or out (or both). The waitress had to go and check their supply of food and wine each time we selected something off the menu. But I enjoyed the food and then lost my glove on the way back to the hotel.

This morning we woke up to a lovely sun shiny morning full of sight seeing optimism only to be greeted by our most dismal showering experience to date. We are staying several floors up in our hotel (based on the circuitous route from the front door to our room its a bit tough to say for sure) and the hot water only barely made it to the bathtub tap let alone up the pipe to the shower head. Adding an extra challenge to the showering experience is the step in the middle of the bath tub presumably for sitting on although given that the inside length whole bath tub is about 2 and a half feet there is barely room to stand on either of the steps and sitting on the upper one with my feet on the lower one and my knees right up under my chin made me want to huddle for warmth more than splash cold water over myself in an attempt to get clean. Nevertheless we did manage to get clean and I have since recovered the heat I lost walking around in the warm Maltese sun.

We set out in search of some breakfast but ended up visiting the Hasting Gardens which we stumbled onto before we could find any open cafes.

We wandered around a bit more and finally found a tiny shop selling pies and had some particularly tasty and satisfying meat and cheese pies before setting off for some site of interest which I have since forgotten since we ended up at the completely other end of the city gazing out over the Fort St Elmo.

While we were trying to choose between the nearby War Museum and Malta Experience a man with a horse drawn carriage convinced us to go for a ride around the city. It was a pleasant ride although the wheels were rather loud rolling along the pavement and we couldn't really hear what he was saying as he pointed to random buildings.

Along the way we stopped at the Siege Bell Monument and a random botanical garden which I can't find listed among the PLACES in my guide book. We saw quite a few cats in the garden and we were wondering if Valletta might have an unusually large stray cat population until we saw a sign on the way out of the garden that said 'Cat feeding Point'. So that explains that.

Next I tried to take us to St Paul's Shipwreck Church but failed and we decided to go see the Grand Master's Palace instead where we visited the State Rooms and the Armory. You may be sensing a bit of theme here involving the accidental overshooting of our intended tourism target. Our map of Valletta is about 9 or 10 streets wide and some of the streets are so narrow and ally like that when you walk past them you think 'surely our map is so small that it has left out small streets like this' and then you get to chatting and suddenly you are on the other end of the city having walked right past whatever church or museum you had set out to see. The map is indeed far mor acurate than we give it credit for.

Anyway back to the palace. First we saw the State Rooms which were not really as gaudy and full of stuff as I was expecting but the hallway was quite nice especially since it was lined with knights.

In the armory we saw many coats of armor and lots of weapons and conveniently enough the audio guide pointed out which ones were the most impressive of the collection so I knew exactly which ones to take photos of :).

This for example, is the oldest known or possibly oldest existing or maybe just largest or roundest cannon in the collection.

Of all the things we saw these knight helmets were my favorite.

After the Palace we popped into a cafe for some cake and coffee and had possibly the most tasteless chocolate cake I have ever eaten. Then we went in search of II-Mandragg which was supposedly "the most concentrated and intense slum in the world" in its hight of slummyness but frankly I wasn't really that impressed.

We did pop into Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church which is a large church dating back to the 1570's which was damaged during WWII and unlike the slum the guidebook had a particularly accurate description of the recently reconstructed dome. It is indeed "worth a peek to gape at the dizzying hollowness within" which appears to have been constructed in order to "make Carmel's egg-shaped dome eclipse the spire of the nearby Anglican Cathedral". It is in fact a massive egg shaped dome completely free of any ornament or painting or gold leafing which one normally finds in old cathedrals including this one (below the dome line).

We also popped into the War Museum which described Malta's pivotal role in WWI and WWII and was full of cool stuff like anti tank guns and random videos including one about the German invasion of Albania.

There was also a large speed boat looking thing which didn't seem to have room for any passengers but was apparently a reconstructed version of something the Italians used in a failed attempt to invade Malta. It did not seem from the description however, that the failure was due to no Italians ever actually making it to land to invade which was my chief speculation. Describing the events of the war were lots of standard museum type plaques containing narrative gems such as "The British fleet assumed responsibility for contrasting the Germans in the North Sea, the Atlantic coast and the channel, while the French shouldered the onus for the Mediterranean... France obtained that it would have overall authority over both fleets... [but it turned out that the French and English didn't get along so well and] problems were met at the dockyard [because] British measurements were used, while the French used the metric system. This problem was surmounted thanks to a special apparatus devised by a Maltese fitter." No actual apparatus was displayed but it sounds an awful lot like a ruler containing both measurements to me.

Here is a photo of some butterfly bombs. I don't really know what they are or how they were used but they looked cool :)

When we got back to the hotel Kim chivalrously arranged for us to move to a different room with a working shower (yay!) except when we got there we discovered that the hot water heater had been turned off (boo!) so we had to wait a bit before showering and heading off for some dinner.

Our travel to Malta was pretty uneventful. We left work at lunch time which is a good start to any trip and caught a tube/train/bus combo to the airport. We then stood in the check in line for half an hour so that my travel documents could be stamped per the instructions on the boarding pass we printed the night before only to find out we could have gone to a different desk which was not marked in any way to suggest that they provided travel document stamping services and had basically no line at all. Kim set off the metal detector with his chewing gum and we tried eat a nice sit down lunch not realizing how little time we had and ended up having to scoff it and run to the gate only to find ourselves standing in line again waiting to board. The flight was as per usual for Ryan Air complete with a litany of items for sale ranging from food to drinks to raffle tickets to smokeless cigarettes. I did manage to start a new CIV IV game but I only had time to kill off a few barbarians and not any actual competing civilizations. The taxi that the hotel was supposed to send for us never turned up so we chartered our own cab, just one of many many cabbies standing around waiting to bring tourists to the city center, and arrived at the hotel in a speedy manner. Fortunately Malta used to be part of the British Empire so they drive on the left here which is always a particularly enjoyable experience for me given that Maltese cab drivers have the same speedy, reckless attitude that cab drivers share the world over. After arriving at our hotel we set out in search of drink and nourishment and we found a cute little wine bar where we tried both red and white Maltese wines and ate cheese fondue. Until the restaurant was overrun by 20some year old men who spent more time going on smoke breaks and leaving the door open than actually eating. Now it's time for bed but I think this bring the laptop and update the blog along the way method might be my new favorite blogging technique especially now that I have my super cool Ferrari laptop which is way better than Kim's new slightly smaller laptop no matter what he says.

Kim has just declared that he is master of the universe so I think I'd better go and put a stop to that...

I've been wanting a water bottle for a while now and I finally found one at the local pound shop this afternoon. Actually it was a pound + shop where everything costs 99p+ or less. This appears to mean that it has lots of random cheep stuff some of which costs more than 99p and some of which costs less. Anyway here are some of the instructions from the package several of which I found rather amusing:
1. Heat water bag is used in medical treatment health and common live to get warm.
Right off the bat you can tell we're off to a good start.
2. The water temperature that the heat water bag used should be around 90C. The water should not over 2/3 than the capacity of the heat water bag.
Clearly the Chinese translation of 'hot water bottle' is 'heat water bag'.
3. After filling water, must let the air in the heat water bag out and let the screw tight. Check if there is a leak water phenomenon.
That one is my favorite. Most of the sentences aren't even actual sentences but then they throw in a 4 syllable scientific word.
There are a few more rules after this like "let the heat watter bag a little far from baby" if a baby is using the hot water and especially about protecting the bag from sunlight shoots when the heat water bag is being stored or displayed. In fact "when the heat water bag is used or storage must avert it to be weight on or stabed, not touch sour, alkali, [and] oil". I'm not sure what would happen if you drank a glass of lemonade while warming yourself but I think I'll stick to milk in my tea while relaxing with my hot water bag just to be safe.