The Start of the Ride and More tulips!

This the barge which was our hotel for the next 7 nights. The accommodation was modest but nice and the food was excellent. There were 12 other bikers and a guide who led us around.

In this picture and the two below are floats for the tulip festival.  The entire float is made up of individual flowers. The purple from hyacinths and the yellow from daffodils.  They spent the entire day travelling from town to town picking up local bands to play.  We saw part of the parade and were lucky enough to see them the next morning in daylight. 

More fields.  The colours were so vibrant despite a dull day.  Did I mention the cold and wind!  We started each day with the temperature about 4C and the wind at times (against us of course) was about Force 5.

Here we all are in front of a statue of Hans Brinker. 

Amsterdam

This picture shows how wonky the buildings have become.  The three above the car are all tilted.  The buildings are all built on stilts that are about 12 feet long as the land was all swampy. From the 1600s until recently they used logs, which are still there but have a tendency to rot if exposed to air.  And many buildings were tilted forward to facilitate the use of hoists to load furniture etc into them.

Below are the tulips floating in front of the Rijksmuseum 

 And me fresh off the plane. 

Another day finds us enjoying a traditional Dutch Apple cake amid the hustle and bustle of bikers cars and pedestrians 

A classic scene overlooking a canal.

Not only tulips were in bloom but fritillarias as well. 

A Taste of Matisse

We enjoyed our visit to the Stedlijk museum which was featuring a Matisse exhibit.  The pictures below show the progression of his work from early in his painting career to the end period of paper cutouts.   The last picture is actually a tapestry based on his cutout.  I'm having trouble with these postings so am not going to try and place the pictures together!

Our Lord in the Attic

We stumbled upon this little museum in a classic canal house. During the 1700s it was rather unhealthy to be a Catholic and so this family built a church in the top of their house where they could secretly hold services.  It still has the original organ.

And below is a classic city scene. 

My Modern Quilt

This started out as a simple quilt for my mother in law using some of my collection of fabric samples from playing with surface design.  I then got a little carried away with the quilting. It's backed with flannel to make it warm and cozy.

An exhibit of bees

Our Text'art group had a outing which included a visit to the Visual Voice Lab in the Belgo building in Montreal.  This exhibit by Sarah Hatton is as a result of colony collapse in her bee hives.  As a result she wanted to voice what happens when hives are too near corn fields which have been sprayed with nicotinoids.  The black in these circles are made with her dead bees and the entire work was then coated with resin.  The results are beautiful and it is only if you look closely that you will see the bees.

Stencilling

Here are the results of my stenciling.   Learning how to be creative in making a screen was so valuable.  I probably should have taken pictures of the screens themselves! 

Think about Tudor houses when you look at the brown and the orange pieces.  This has been so much fun!