Home again

Did you miss me? You don't have to answer that! We have been on holiday to glorious Austria. I had never been before and I've fallen in love with this beautiful country. We went with a local coach company, A & P Travel, and they really looked after us and took the sting out of the long journey. We stayed in a village in the Austrian Tyrol, Waidring, which is more used to winter visitors but we were made so welcome.

My DH took his courage in both hands and took a trip up in a cable car to the top of the Steinplatte. (I decided against going with him as I had some discomfort in my chest). The trip up took about 15 minutes and DH found that he only had a few colly wobbles. Well done, hon.

The scenery, as you probably know, is beautiful and the houses are so picturesque. Everywhere we went people were busy making their log store for the winter and most country houses had wood stacked against one or more of their outside walls. I couldn't see that happening here....someone would set fire to it! (sorry, my cynical streak coming out).

I have uploaded some photos to my flickr file so please click on the flickr box alongside if you would like to see some of the places we visited.

Needless to say my eyes were open to texture even while we were on holiday and this beautiful surface was on a huge planter(DH kindly photographed it for me).

These two shutters had some lovely textures and marks on them.

This building was on the outskirts of Salzburg and I have no idea what it houses but I love the feeling of layers this photo gives (I apologise if blogger won't enlarge it).

I had high hopes of coming home with all sorts of goodies for my art work but I failed abysmally to do any serious shopping. To be fair, there wasn't a lot of time as we were tied to the times the tour organisers gave us. I did nearly succumb to some beautiful hand made lace but chickened out at the price - 23 euros a metre - in hindsight I should have just said "What the heck" and enjoyed myself, it just seemed a lot of money to spend on something I would cut up and paint on. It was beautiful though, all butterflies, lovely. Maybe I was inhibited by DH being there....lol. I did manage to collect various bits and pieces of paper, serviettes, wrapping paper and the like so I shall have some interesting bits and pieces to include in future projects.

Needless to say I have been catching up since we got back, plenty of washing and 50000 emails to look at - slight exagerration, it felt like 50000! lol. I have cleared that backlog now and my head is starting to think more about art projects again. It's funny, but while we were away I really didn't think about my art at all, beyond collecting interesting souvenirs and autumn leaves which always fascinate me. I think recently I have been feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all the art I have been looking at on the net and in magazines and before I went away my head was buzzing with ideas and techniques I wanted to play with. The overwhelmed part is not a good feeling and I think I am going to have to back pedal a bit, especially while I am getting through this anaemia. I had an ECG just before I went away as I have had some chest discomfort bordering on pain and fortunately that did not show anything acute. They did however do another blood test, this time for thyroid. I have to go back and see my doctor now I'm home.

My DH entered into the swing of things while we were away and gave us all a good laugh, bless him. Here he is in full Tyrolean outfit ready for a themed evening at a local hotel. He ended up on the stage joining in with a traditional dance and he had a whale of a time.

The braces say I "heart" bier! never a truer word! lol