Yesterday there was another gift of leather, two shopping bags of scraps, from my new quiltmaking friend here, Graciela. She called to say how much she is enjoying the book I lent her, and said some more pieces of leather would be dropped off by a family friend living nearby- my goodness these pieces of suede and leather are in almost every colour of the rainbow, including a brown slightly metallicised or pearlised piece. Since then the colours have just been going round in my head, and I simply must do something that uses some of the chartreuse piece.

I feel I am approaching a fork in the road – assembling leather applied to look like patchwork of some kind, in rather traditional colours like blues, pinks and beiges ? ; and organic shaped earthy coloured pieces to continue exploring on with the landlace or sandlace ideas.

This has always been one of my favourites in the Old City part of Montevideo. It caught my eye on my very first visit here in 1989, and I have always admired it even although until recently the exterior was rather delapidated.

Quite a few older buildings are being brought back from the brink in this area and down near the port. All of them remind the visitor and the resident of the rise and fall, several times, of wealth and importance of this city through it’s almost 500 year history. 

A closer look, where you can see fish, Neptune, the medallions above the windows which I took to be crabs, and I just managed to capture the shells at the foot of what look like waterfalls under the nameplate on the building above the main entrance.

I like this colour better than the eau-de-nil green it used to be, although that perhaps was more watery.

Although it is now a bank, the original owner of the building was the Montevideo Waterworks Co., and in keeping with this, all the external decorations are watery in theme. At first glance the external simply looks like one of the many of the other neo-classical buildings around the city, but closer examination of the various decorative features shows them all to be water-related. In a refurbishing almost complete, these features have been retained, in some cases repaired, and the whole exterior repainted. 

I had always thought this motif above each window was a large long legged crab. However by cropping and zooming the image, it is clear the ‘legs’ however are leaves, meaning I really will need do go downtown again with binoculars to get up close and check this out. In keeping with the watery theme of all the other building decoration elements, I feel it is most likely to be a turtle.