Adventures in Calabria

By the way... this is the worst season for visiting South Italy 😆 Girifalco is in a cloud, Calabria is a red zone for rain fall. My friend in Sicily just had a combo of hurricane and Etna exploding. My laundry after 3 days is still damp. I recommend late December when the yellow flowers start. Feb and March can be very cold. But for now there will be many red zones and floods etc. If you booked a holiday here now, you would likely regret it!!

Ok, last post! Here's some of the inside of the hotel rooms and bar areas. Spaces also for live music. Full of art work, paintings and sculptures- after nearly 2 years of not visiting cultural places it was really nice to see things like that 😆 I loved how one house was on an immovable rock so they left it there and built around it, and check out that bathroom 😭 Most of the artwork was done by the couple, Nicola and his wife who own the place. I really liked the interior design.
➡️ https://www.ilnibbio.it/
You'd never guess what was in the inside from looking at the outside which is quite a stark difference from some other places I've visited. Often the exterior of the houses was great but the inside was intentionally sparse and cold meaning customers were forced to spend most of their time at the bar. Here though, you could happily live like you were at home. Perfect space for artists and writers, musicians. Especially if you need silence and mountains.

Ok ok, maybe I need 4 posts 🤣 This one goes out to the textiles enthusiasts!!! Ginestra!! Or in English a plant called Broom. Stiff green stalks with yellow flowers. Beautiful happy tough shrubby thing. Here in Calabria they make fabric with it. It goes through quite a long process which also involves leaving it to rot in a stream... I think it's similar to linen production but I'm no expert. I'll find a video. It's not common anymore, it's a dying craft- both the fibre production and the weaving. The fiber is a bit coarse, like a more gentle coconut fiber or jute. It can be refined a bit more.
Anyway, I really loved how they utilized the fabric here. It looked like something you'd buy in Scandinavia if you have too much money 😆 Here they stapled or stretched it onto frames and used like paintings or tapestries. The colours were very bright. I added a blanket photo as an example of weaving but I think its cotton. Usually a big piece of traditional fabric is made in panels as the looms are not wide enough.
So if you go to visit this Albergo diffuso in Morano Calabro, you can see many traditional crafts up close like this 😊😍

Part 2 of Morano Calabro. At the top there is a Norman Castle. A man from the village has restored many old houses on the inside and created an Albergo diffuso - diffused hotel. There are bars, music venues, a variety of small museums containing artifacts from various countries... There's a vast collection of local ceramics and textiles used as displays or decor in the houses, much of it recuperated items, upcycled, new lives for old things. He has a house just for storing all types of things from old sauce pan lids to traditional woven blankets and ribbons or wood and iron. Here's some photos from walking around... in the next post I'll write more about the hotel rooms available and the textiles- because the fabric is very interesting and unusual.
➡️ https://www.ilnibbio.it/
It's on top of a hill surrounded by mountains with a flat plain in the foot of the hills. So I assume that there is a cloudy/rainy moment around midday quite often. The sea was not visible, but it's never too far away!

Right, said I was going on a break. But today I went on an unexpected trip to Castrovillari and Morano Calabro in the province of Cosenza which I'd not yet visited. It was a nice day out, so much of Calabria I haven't seen yet, it's a big place mostly of seemingly inhospitable mountains, but then you spot houses in the craziest of places... I took too many photos, so I'll have to break this post into 3 posts I think.
Didn't spend much time in Castrovillari. But Morano Calabro I recognized immediately but couldn't figure out why. Later I discovered that the artist Escher visited this part and did a famous drawing of the place which I'll put in the comments. Welcome to Fall/Autumn in Calabria 😊🍂🍁☘

Hey, here's some goats. I need to take a small break from blogging because really nothing is happening much these days... I'm working a bit as an English teacher but really it's been very hard to find something to write about. So break time. I'll reply to messages a bit later, sorry for the delay, Facebook has been a bit stone age recently 😉 Have a lovely day!

Here we go!! A big one for the mushroom lovers!! I'm exhausted 🤣 its addictive, energy crashing but maybe, maybe they'll be another mushroom, a better mushroom just by that tree... etc etc etc. I got 2 bags. Personally I didnt find any Porcini mushrooms, but these are all edible. Its extremely important to go with someone who knows what to look for!! A lot of Mushrooms look edible but are actually poisonous. It was fun, in the morning I heard a rustle in the trees and huge Falcon flew out of a tree above me. Later we saw the whole Falcon family going for flying lessons. At one point I wandered off alone, and heard some *oink oink* sounds so... yeah, quickly turned around and went back. Never get in between baby wild boars and Mamma wild boars. You will die. So basically Foraging here isn't 100% safe. Don't go alone. Also we carried big sticks so we don't fall. And knives to slice the root off the mushroom which I learned you must leave in the forest. Spores etc. Also bring snacks. And gloves. And good boots. My friends dog nearly got bitten by a snake so yeah... also snakes... 😆 Ok, now I have to prep- the shrooms. Or nap. Nap first. Big yellow ones must be boiled for 30 mins, dried and fried. Egg ones, can be eaten raw or in pasta.

In the spirit of discussing our... urm... Ok well you know the Japanese art of Kintsugi, when something is broken you fix it with resin and gold dust to make it more beautiful than before, it's broken but its value has increased 🤣😉 I suffer from PANIC ATTACKS 🤣😆 Yeah! AND despite a lifetime of panic attacks and anxiety attacks which are not the same thing... I decided to travel alone, as a woman, in part of a country I was told is so patriarchal that I wont be able to breath... (depends on the village) I've been here for years, traveled to many other places alone too. Bringing my panic with me, collecting experiences that increasingly mean it wont ever go away.
I decided that my panic attacks were in fact a manifestation of my witchy powers 🤣😂🧙🏽‍♀️ Because they often happen as a reaction to the *red flag behavior* someone else is presenting. Maybe that happens to you too? Think about it!
But it seems my trigger is loud voices that wont stop talking and self-centered people, and its worse in small spaces. So I reach out to those of you with the same condition. Here is a walk around Bivongi whilst I was becoming increasingly panicky until my mind went boom. I managed to reign it in and control it by telling people I don't speak Italian 🤣 and thus avoiding more stressful conversations, until evening. And no. Meditation does not help me.

Spot the thing!!!! No prizes for the right answer though 😉

Here's one for the plant crazy people!! FICI D'INDIA. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. There are no words for how much I love these plants. But. Do not touch them without layering your gloves 🤣 also the spikes can fly out in strong winds. Sometimes people grab a big knife and chop the top of a paddle off into a bucket thus avoiding the need for gloves until later. Theres also a variety of stick things for grabbing the fruit. The fruit are full of big hard seeds so you have to learn to eat them. I am slow at eating the fruit. Mexicans eat the paddles too, nice fried with onions in tacos. But they don't eat them here.
I was so happy to be back. My soul lives on this road you know... it escaped my body in 2019 and stayed here 😂 if you're lucky in the morning you'll meet the goats. They're black goats with green eyes. Fici d'india and goats = happiness.

This is Riace. I don't go back often. You know when you get stabbed in the back and betrayed... well I didn't have the emotional strength to deal with it so I ran away, hid and avoided coming back. That was the motivation for starting this blog actually.
So much has happened since I left. People have started to abandon it once again. The right won the Mayoral election. But despite that, there were still many African migrants that I remember from before, I used to play hula hoop with the kids. Once I saved them from "poverty tourists" who nearly choked them by giving them dangerous tiny toys, miniture paint pots. I had to grab the babies (5 of various ages under 6) and pull the paint pots out of their mouths. They were eating the paint and glitter and the pots. Nightmare 😖
This is a travel blog ⚠️warning to tourists- do not give tiny toys to small African children and babies after you've made them cry by forcing them to pose for your **look I'm not racist** social media photos⚠️
But as the poverty tourists have gone, the war of left and right seems calmer. There was an African shop, selling coconut milk, curry powder, afro hair masks... to me that is progressive. It's a real shop, it's not propaganda. Whilst depopulation is sad, I hope there some level of peace and healing taking place in the absence of those relentless and parasitic journalists and poverty tourists that go there just to pull the curly hair of African babies. Oh yes, I'm brutally cynical but I still find beauty everywhere I look.
I used to live in this house. It was the first moment of true peace I'd experienced in years. Silence and balconies with sea views. It's up for sale if you're interested 😉

Tomorrow, Bivongi. Festival of longevity. Lots of different events and things to see. A celebration of the things that bring long life. Contact me for more details if you need them.

Look at that light tho... Golden Hour sun glow. Nothing quite like it and the almost pink rain in the distance- the sky was growling deeply in the mountains too, like a fat purring sky cat.
I've finished the 6 paintings for the festival in Bivongi tomorrow and Thursday. See you there if you're coming 😉

A brief visit to Bivongi yesterday for a meeting, but I was starting to feel a bit unwell by this point. I had the first vaccine last week and my energy has been really up and down but mostly down since. I'm creating 6 large paintings for an event here soon so watch this space 😊

❤ Camini yesterday. We stayed only for couple of hours as we had a meeting elsewhere, it was difficult to leave. I was very overwhelmed with emotions. It was thriving, and after 2020/21 it's amazing to see small place like this doing so well. There are more workshops than I saw last year including a sewing workshop with a tailor who is Jamaican/British but lives in Venice and is currently working in Camini. There's another workshop making traditional instruments like the Calabrese lira (lyre)... A ceramic workshop (video for another post) There were some *new old houses* - abandoned houses that have been reconstructed. Also a photo exhibition by a Syrian resident. My plants were still alive 🤣 And, importantly also the cats I couldn't take with me when I left, they are still alive and have human slaves to care for them 😆🐱
I gave the painting of Old Pietro to the Mayor as I felt strongly it was the right thing to do, Pietro was always at the bar with a coca cola and cigarette mumbling to himself, an iconic character, sad to hear he passed away last year. I hope to return soon, some places connect with your soul more than others and I definitely feel more connected to the world when I'm there # # #

Today's painting competition. I definitely won't win, and for some reason I'm painting in a realist style which is weird. But as I've been struck by a severe lack of inspiration recently, it's nice to know I can still paint 😂

Wildfires everywhere. Calabria is burning. The Aspromonte mountains are on fire. Some people were killed trying to save their olive trees. It's bad. I've read lots of reasons behind the fires, from pastoralists trying to create fresh grazing areas, to forest management going wrong, to privately owned fire fighting companies deliberately starting fires because they get a lot of money for using their helicopters. I don't know... I know in Portugal foreign Eucalyptus trees were planted and took over from native plants- native plants being fire resistant and Eucalyptus being very flammable.
There is also a trash crisis, with landfills being full so people often choose to throw stuff over the side of mountains and hills. Land disputes are often fought with fire...

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A tour for children and parents in Girifalco. It's a more interesting place than I realized! There is a lot of evidence that Girifalco was inhabited during the Neolithic period as they've found 2 tombs and bones. There's a lot of spear and arrow heads, flint but also obsidian which apparently means they were trading with a volcanic area. There's a some Byzantine history here and there was once a Jewish community. My translations are not so good as it was bit loud 😉 They also visited the weaving laboratory. Here's a woman in traditional dress.

Here we go, from yesterday's painting competition. We find out the winner tomorrow. It was a physically hard day. I chose a place where I thought the sun would pass in a few hours, but I was a little bit wrong, almost right but off by around half a meter 😆 so the sun was on me all day... at 37°c 🤣
Thanks to Pro Loco Girifalco for organizing and thanks to the various people who kept me hydrated. Was great to meet other artists! We wait for tomorrow 😊

On the 4th August there will be a outdoors painting competition here. I've entered, so we'll see how it goes!

A film about Calabria. They visited also Girifalco and Camini. I feel strangely emotional now... nostalgia...

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Here are some images from the Fashion show. It takes a lot of people to make one thing! 3 people to set up the loom, one to weave, I sewed the headdresses and did the fringe macrame. The aim was to create a modern style inspired by the old traditional dress.

Later this evening we will be at a fashion show displaying some of pieces made by Vitaliano Artigianato check out the page if you want see live footage and photos later! (If we havent melted, its 35°)

Last night Rocco, the weaving boss (17 years old) was given a Maestro of Art award by an association in San Pietro a Maida. The audience was very inspired to see someone so young protecting traditions from dying out.
It was nice to dress up a bit finally!! You know that moment when you get to wear your nice shoes for the first time in two years 🤣
He's wearing a silk scarf made from handspun silk, and I wove the scarf, finished it 2 days ago. It was really complicated too because I do not have the brain for dealing with numerical sequences (dyscalculia and dyslexia!! Shout out to anyone else with this type of brain!!)
So I had to develop a sort of code for myself so I don't get lost and ruin the pattern! I'll admit this scarf is full of errors though 🤣 But you can't see them without a magnifying glass, phew 😅

Fici d'india by Adele Murace Gioielli and Simona Canino

Hello from Bivongi (Reggio Calabria)!! I was there this morning for a meeting to organize a festival and we were given a tour of the historical centre.
I finally got to see the Prickly pear earrings I want in person (*prickly pear/nopales/fici d'india*) I'll add those pictures in the next post. The restaurant did some excellent food too.
I have to say, as a crazy plant lady... the Spider Plants there were luscious and spectacular and I have some serious spider plant envy right now.
The story of the high up houses, poor people didn't have a lot of space so as the families grow they add an extra room on the top and so on, up and up and up. For me it was like walking around in a Cubist work of art. I haven't felt inspired for a while as an artist but today I woke up a bit.

This is where I am learning to weave! Like the page if you're interested in Calabrian textiles 😊

Hello, here are some patterns I've been learning in the past few days. Honestly I feel like big Spider working with hand spun silk 🕸🕷

Started learning this design in the afternoon. But it was so hot I had to stop 😆 This was hard, I couldn't remember the foot pedal patterns, but I didn't make any huge errors so that's something! After a while the fabric starts to guide you, the same with knitting and crochet.

Its finished. The coloured lines are where it will be cut. There's also a really beautiful macrame border made by an 86 year old lady to sew to the final piece. It's a lovely grey mottled linen. Think I started weaving on Friday or Monday morning.

Trying to guess the football score based on how many times my neighbour yells C***O off the balcony. I guessed it was tough game, C***O was only yelled once towards the end with some small follow through that I won't repeat... initially judging by the lack of dog barking I thought it was Italy 1 and Spain 0 but after googling I can see it was penalties, hence the tense silence all evening 🤣😂🤣 Ok its loud now. Fireworks and car horns and flags. Congratulations Italy 😅

I'm really getting into the flow of it! The loom is over 150 years old so it's a bit cranky sometimes but I'm learning quickly how to fix it without needing too much assistance... I've definitely been going through the process in my dream sleep 😆
I'm weaving a table runner in grey linen for a customer. I can't tag the Boss man because he doesn't have a page yet.

Catanzaro
A really great day. Fun, sun and solidarity. Ok maybe the sun was bit intense 😆
Here's some random pics 😎 I've met a number of obviously and less obvious LGBT people in Calabria. One woman was very old and clearly a le***an but I dont know of she ever had the opportunity to learn about that. She is herself now, in old age when she has less social expectations. But in her young years, she was a r**e survivor, her baby from the r**e was taken away, she was married off and never went to school. We hope for a better future for the next generation xx

Guarda!!! I wove this thing. It's going to be a table runner and maybe the chequered part will be for something smaller. He makes bow ties, bags etc. It was hard work, but I managed to spot the mistakes in time to fix them. I think I was practicing the movements in a dream too, I woke up in a strange position like *where is the loom?*... 🤣

Back in the studio this morning! I'm knotting the fringes and sewing on labels. Easy stuff so far as fringes are done using macrame and similar to friendship bracelet knots. Rocco has a lot of work to do from the sound of it, so I haven't been taught any loom skills yet. The silkworms are fine, getting fat. Never thought Caterpillars could create so much p**p, it does not smell good in summer 🤣

A coworking space in Calabria. I'll read it better later, at work spinning 😆

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