Ian in Luxor

One of my favorite people in this world is Ann Wood, a Brooklyn-based artist and dear friend whose blog is filled with delights — from papier mache ships with billowing sails made from vintage materials, to finely crafted horses, spiders and owls that she sells in her online shop. But her newest passion is to craft little birds from materials she finds at flea markets and on E-bay — Victorian lace, satin, old cotton aprons, etc. Lately, Ann has taken on a project to produce a bird a day, much to the excitement of her fans (who must number in the thousands, given the many comments she gets and how quickly the birds sell when she puts them in the shop). Each bird is unique and has a name.

I count myself among the lucky few to have one of these birds — and even luckier to have one of the (ahem) early birds, one of the first Ann crafted last year. Ian is my companion here in Cairo. He has his own shelf on the entertainment center and gets a little exercise every week when the housekeeper comes on Tuesday. She moves him away to dust the shelf and then puts him back in position, never in the same spot. (And yes, Cairo is probably the only place I’ll ever be able to afford a housekeeper.)

When another friend visited this past week, we did a whirlwind couple of days in Luxor, and I took Ian along. The photos here are from Ian’s first trip outside of Cairo here in the land of the Pharaohs. He seemed particularly impressed by the number of birds in the heiroglyphs, and said he is now a huge fan of ibis-headed god Thoth and, of course, Horus, the falcon-headed son of the gods Isis and Osiris.