Turkey talk

My favourite turkey for the past few months has been Plum Street Samplers Gobble. As of Sunday afternoon, he is finished and ready to strut his stuff.

Plum Street Samplers Gobble
stitched on 32 ct PTP Legacy
using DMC floss

I am certainly going to miss this fine fellow for he has accompanied me to various stitching locations in the last few months. I think he will look wonderful next Thanksgiving when he is framed and proudly displayed in my home. I do have another turkey stitch in the wings (pardon the pun!) by Bent Creek which I can always pull to fill the void.


Once more we were hit with a winter storm in our area on Tuesday only this time we received more freezing rain rather than snow. The surface of the snow now has a definite sheen to it and the snow crunches rather loudly underfoot. Last night it was so windy that I couldn't get to sleep for all the noise it was making! I could hear the cracking of the tree branches which are coated in ice. It reminded me of the ice storm we had here in the late '90s.
My Tuesday stitching group cancelled their get together because of the weather so I spent the day stuck indoors, stitching alone. It was just too miserable to go out.

I spent the time catching up on a few of my WIPocalypse goals. I managed to complete The Trilogy Secret Snowdrift which has been hanging around since 2009! This should have been a quick stitch but for some reason or another it has been sitting unfinished in my drawer. I only had a few things left to stitch on it - the last little penguin, the border, some long stitching on the snowmen's arms and attaching a couple of buttons. This will make an adorable pillow or wall hanging.


Now I figure I'm on a roll so next I dug out LHN Acorn Hill. If you remember, when I last stitched on this one in the fall I only had the inner border remaining but had run out of floss. Okay so I ordered the floss and I distinctly remember it arriving sometime before Halloween. I also remember cleaning up my stash room, having the floss in my hand and putting it away. It's the part about putting it away that I can't remember. For the life of me I don't know what the heck I did with that skein! I'll be darned if I was going to order another one so I took the opportunity to try out some of the floss I won during Victorian Motto's Christmas giveaway. One skein of that floss looked almost identical to the CC Brown Sugar that I had been using. I pulled it, started stitching and personally I don't think you can see much of a difference. If you look at the border stitched along the top of the house, that's the Crescent Colour floss and my inner border around the piece is the VM floss.

Little House Needleworks Acorn Hill
stitched on 28 ct Lakeside Linen Buttercream
using Crescent Colours floss and Victorian Motto

Paradis Perdu also received a little bit of attention yesterday. I finished stitching one of the alphabets and started on another. 

At the top of this design,beneath another alphabet, it is charted for you to put in your year of birth which coincidentally just happens to be my birth year. Then, under the small alphabet I've just finished, there is a spot for another year. This time though, the pattern calls for only two numerals. They have used 04 which I suspect is the year the design was stitched in. I haven't decided whether to put in all four numbers here or leave it just as 12. There is plenty of room for all four. I'm also thinking of somehow highlighting my initials in the main alphabet with a different coloured floss.


I haven't decided which will be my next new start yet. Anything that I've picked out I'm missing something, either fabric or floss. I'm expecting some orders to arrive within the next few days so I think I'll just stick to my BAP and some ornaments until then. I'm in the process of finishing off the Prairie
Schooler Winter ornament right now.


Time to get a move on! Today our Wednesday group meets and following that I'm heading out on a drive to pick up my son Daniel. He is going to spend a couple of days with us and then return home on the weekend. It's a beautiful, sunny day and the temperature has risen some so I'm actually looking forward to the drive. 

A finish of sorts and a flood



LHN Acorn Hill
stitched on 28ct Lakeside Linen Buttercream
using Crescent Colour floss

                                                                       While Acorn Hill may look finished, it's actually missing an inner border. The second border looks just like the one at the top of the house and runs around the inside of the outer brown one. I ran out of floss to stitch this with and it should be arriving any day now. I realized about two weeks ago that I would probably run short so I paid a little visit to my ONS to order another skein. Of course I couldn't stop at just that! I threw in a chart as well, one of the new fall releases by With Thy Needle & Thread. Hopefully they'll make an appearance in my mailbox shortly.
After all the colour trouble I had with this one it turned out not too badly at all.

I'm having colour issues again but this time it's with BBD Trix or Treat. One of the required flosses is a blue-black shade however my skein is pretty much all black so there will be no variation between the crow and his hat. I've put this one aside for now. I was never really happy with the fabric and since I haven't got very far with it, I'm thinking I just might restart the whole thing. I'm wanting to get going on some Christmas stitching so this will get put on the back burner for now until I decide where I'm going with it.

Other than this, I haven't got any other stitching done.Here's where the flood comes in! Late last week Bob and I arrived home to find that our hot water tank had given up the ghost and in the process leaked all its contents on the basement floor. Our basement is a finished one and fortunately the damage could have been much worse. The water ran behind the tank into the next room which is a storage room with a cement floor. However from there it ran out into the hall and soaked the carpeting along the entire length of the hallway and into the spare bedroom. The carpeting was ruined and the drywall soaked up a good portion of the water. It's hard to see in this picture but the darker area is the wet portion of the carpeting. When you stepped on it the water came up and covered your shoes!

 We have replacement coverage for the tank since it's a rental and the gas company was quick to show up with the new tank the next morning. A call to the insurance company has resulted in our wet carpeting being cut up and removed along with the wet drywall and then heavy duty blowers being brought in to dry out the remaining wall and floors. They have assured me that they will replace the entire carpet in the rec room not just the hallway and a fellow from the carpet store is coming out this week to bring samples for me to choose from. Of course new drywall has to installed too. It's the thought of moving everything when they replace the carpet that finally got us geared up to do a major cleaning downstairs the past few days. Our rec room is around 1100 sq feet and besides the furnishings, a good portion of the floor space is covered by boxes and file cabinets. What do they contain? Music, music and more music!! Every available surface down there has sheet music on it. I kid you not! It happens when you marry an organist/choir director!

Since all those furnishings have to be moved, the mess on them has to be cleaned off and all the extra boxes removed. While the new carpeting is being laid, all the furniture will be sitting out in the garage (including my stitching chair and lamp). I haven't got a clue how'll they fit it all in there! We've managed to clean up most of the main room but still have to get everything filed away in the spare bedroom which also serves as Bob's office. This room will also get new carpeting.

So it looks like we'll be living in a bit of a mess for the next couple of weeks. The thought of the drywall dust alone scares the heck out of me. That stuff gets everywhere! Wish me luck!!

My first exchange has arrived!



Prairie Schooler 1994 Prairie Fairie

This year I decided that I would take the leap and participate in my first exchange since I have a lot more time to stitch now that I'm retired. Angela of Hooked on Stitches offered to organize a Designer Exchange where a different designer would be picked for each exchange. Unfortunately the exchange has fallen apart due to another incident which I know many of you are aware of and this will be the only exchange taking place rather than the four planned ones.

My exchange arrived in yesterday's mail. Our designer that was chosen for this exchange was Prairie Schooler. Gracie has sent me the most adorable flatfold! This is one of the Prairie Schooler Prairie Fairies which were released as promotional cards. It's the perfect stitch for autumn and Gracie has finished it with a lovely sunflower (or are those daisies?) fabric for the backing. I'm so thrilled and can't thank her enough! It is proudly displayed in my livingroom with all my autumn decor. My exchange hasn't reached my partner yet so that pic will have to wait. I really enjoyed participating in this and I'm so sorry that a very unfortunate set of circumstances have forced things to come to a premature end. I'm not sure if I will participate in another because of what's happened. I'll have to think on it.




LHN Acorn Hill

 I was determined to get moving on my Acorn Hill and fix all the things that were bothering me about it. So yesterday afternoon I frogged out the pumpkins for the second time along with all the leaves on the vines and started fresh. This time I used WDW Carrot and it has really worked out well. The pumpkins have more varied colour and the colour fits the design a lot better. I then went ahead and restitched the leaves to match the grass. I'm really happy with how things look now and I'm forging ahead with the rest of the design today.

The postman also brought me another surprise besides my exchange. Nancy of the Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe had a giveaway in September to share some of her new dyed trims with her blogging friends. I was lucky enough to have my name picked and my assortment arrived yesterday. Look at these wonderful trims! I just love her chenille and I'm planning on using some to finish off some pillows this weekend. Besides the chenille, the giveaway included hand dyed ric rac, cotton twill tape and even hand dyed buttons! Thanks so much Nancy, I will definitely putting these to good use. If you haven't checked out her shop, follow the link and have a peek. In her sidebar is a link to her ebay shop. She also has some wonderful hand dyed lace trims.

The other pleasant surprise I received yesterday came from Becky. Last year Becky had a pumpkin challenge on her blog of which I was the lucky winner. My winnings were put on hold because of some personal tragedies which hit Becky and her family and forced her to quit blogging for some months. Becky is now back and contacted me this week to say that there was a GC to 123 Stitch waiting for me at their site. Thank you Becky!! This was worth the wait particularily because now that I'm retired I have less spending money available than I did when I worked. I already have an extensive wish list at 123 and now I just have to decide what to choose for my winnings.

After such a wonderful day my mood has improved significantly and my stitching mojo is in full force. Off to grab lunch before my Wednesday afternoon stitching date! Keep on stitching!







Out of sorts

Out of sorts is exactly how I was feeling most of the past weekend. I can't say that I felt ill. It's more like I don't have a lot of energy and can't seem to settle on any one thing. Unfortunately this is what I was experiencing on my weekend visit to Rebecca's. I was so glad to be able to join with some of my stitching friends but once there I'm afraid I didn't seem to get anywhere with my stitching. Perhaps it was the weather.... overcast, cold, rainy and really windy. Yeah, that sounds good, let's blame it on the weather even if I know better! In any case, I started out working on Gobble only to find out that my border wasn't lining up. Okay let's switch to BBD Tricks or Treats. We haven't seen that one for awhile and it looks like you won't see it anytime soon either! Despite the fact that I had a stitching lamp beside me, I just couldn't seem to see the linen well and progress was painstakingly slow.  I have decided that I definitely don't enjoy stitching on R & R linen and will stick to something else from now on.
That only left LHN Acorn Hill. I wasn't too enthused with this one either but it was that or nothing and a wasted day. So I stuck it out. My pitiful progress was actually only the grass in front of the house. It's stitched on the diagonal. The rest of the stitching I completed at home last night. This is the second time I've stitched the pumpkins and I'm still not happy with them.

I didn't use the called for Belle Soie silks but instead went with the conversions for the CC cottons. The pumpkins are to be done with CC Copper Penny. If you look at my previous pic below you'll see that they're more peach than pumpkin.

I didn't want to have to order the silk so I dug through my stash and found this orange silk by Silk n Colours. Okay so now they're the right colour however the picture doesn't show that it's more of a neon orange. Not the look that I wanted! I still have WDW Carrot and Pumpkin in my stash as well as some GAST Bittersweet. I'm going to give the carrot a try before I break down and order the original silk called for.

Then there's the issue of the leaves and the grass. The conversion to the cottons called for either CC Eve's Leaves or Weeping Willow. The leaves have been stitched with Eve's Leaves since I had already had some of that. However, that's when I found that the floss didn't have enough variation to stitch the grass. So I ordered the Weeping Willow and waited until it arrived before tackling the grass. It's a darker shade of green so now I'm thinking I should frog the leaves and restitch them using it as well. Any thoughts or suggestions? Oh yeah, gotta restitch those tiny little flowers also to match the pumpkins. Might as well have started from scratch!
I am not having a good time with this one! Might be Christmas before I get it finished.

Despite my stitching woes I did enjoy my time with the ladies. I only stayed the day because of commitments on Sunday but it's always good to see them and get peeks at what they're working on. Take a look!



Christin, hiding behind her PS Alphabet block



Rebecca, with her Sepia Baby



Tracey, giving evenweave a try



Tracey is a new member of our group. She is a coworker of Dani's and is just starting to get back into stitching. Before her go at evenweave, she was stitching on a lovely design of Labrador Retrievers.



Rebecca's Mom, Sylvia



I wish I'd thought to take a picture of Sylvia's stitching. She was working on the cutest baby sampler, a kit which she'd picked up for only 8 or 10 dollars, I can't remember which.



Bonnie, all comfy in her spot

Bonnie was working on the cutest scarecrow for her Mom. Follow the link to her blog and you'll see her finish.



Dani, stitching her PS Alphabet block



Both Dani and Christin were working on PS Alphabet blocks to be used in their friend Nan's quilt. They too had finishes on their blocks as did Rebecca with her baby stitch.

Earlier in the day Beth had joined us and Trista was there on the Friday evening and was expected to return on the Sunday. Both Kathy and Beatrice had previous commitments so we were unable to catch up with them.

Thank you so much Rebecca for opening your home to us! The company as well as the food (who can forget the food!) were wonderful.

I'm hoping my mood improves as the week unfolds and I can get back on track with some of my projects. In the meantime I have a few pillows to stuff and stitch closed from previous finishes.

Keep those xs crossed!

A blast from the past!

That's what we experienced over the Canadian Civic Holiday long weekend. Two of my sons travelled to Windsor, ON as well to visit with family but the main purpose of the trip was a reunion of DH's and my high school band, The Forster Band . The reunion included those who had played in the band anytime during the years 1960 - 1980. We've kept in touch with a number of the band members over the years and several travelled to Ottawa for our wedding 10 yrs ago but there are some that I haven't seen since graduating from high school  37 yrs ago. Please bear with me, but I wanted to post this with some pictures for the benefit of those family members and friends who read my blog as well. For those who are utterly bored, scroll on down. There should be one stitching pic near the end of this post!

The weekend started off with a meet and greet on the Friday evening at our local watering hole, The Dominion House tavern. This was a favourite spot for gathering while we were in college, and university and is the oldest continually run tavern in the Windsor - Detroit border region. Now for those of you who are not familiar with Windsor and its weather, I think it's one of the hot spots in Canada. We're talking moist heat, not dry, and the humidity levels are unreal. I'd forgotten just how bad that humidity can be until we stepped outside on Friday afternoon. The temperature was 36 C ( 97 F) with a humidex that made it feel like 46 C (115 F) !
It's difficult to breathe under those conditions. Figure in that the tavern we all met at had only one lone window air conditioner that was trying its best to handle the heat with more than 100 of us inside. You get the picture, we were one hot, sticky bunch of people! Did we care?..... No!!
We had the most fantastic time reacquainting ourselves with one another. The beer flowed freely (yes, we had designated drivers!) and maybe that's another reason why there was only one air conditioner. Thank goodness, there was also an outdoor patio although it wasn't all that much cooler outside.

We all wore name tags and there were lots of us whose eyes dropped to the chest first  to check out the name before we said hello. After all we didn't want to open mouth & insert foot! Thank goodness I wasn't the only one who was much a little larger! A lot more gray hair around too! Some even dared to wear their red blazers, part of our former band uniform. We were known about town as the Travelling Redcoats. During the years 1967 - 1972, the concert band travelled to Expo '67 in Montreal, Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan and in 1972 to Windsor, England to perform at the Windsor Music Festival.


Lots of this going on!



Ray, showing off the signature blazer



Bob and me chatting up fellow band members

After a very late night and now knowing which face went with which name, we all headed home to grab some shuteye before the band practice on Saturday afternoon.

Here it is, Forster Secondary School or Forster Collegiate Institute as it was known when I attended.How many times did I walk up and down those steps?  God only knows! 

Before the band practice took place in the old Music Room we were free to wander the halls of the school, reminiscing. For most of us though, every spare minute of the day was spent in the music room and that's where we all seemed to be drawn to. The practice was to begin at 1:30 and we were all in there, instruments in hand and ready to go shortly after 1:00pm . Now I was a little nervous about all this. After all it had been 37 yrs or more since many of us had taken up our instruments. I have my own flute and have been playing some over the years but not much recently. For those who didn't own their own, instruments were provided with a small rental charge. Our conducter, Ernie Gerenda, travelled all the way from Mexico where he has now retired to be with us for this special occasion.

What a hoot!! As you'll see from the following pictures, laughter was the order of the day. I gotta tell you though, we sounded pretty damn good!! Even Ernie was surprised and said that he figured it would only take a couple more rehearsals and we'd be good to go again.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.



Ernie directing the group





Yours truly on the left, playing my pop bottle!





That's my DH on the left!
My hubbie has gone on to make a career in music as an organist & choir director.



My BIL on the right. He continues to play percussion in a number of jazz groups.



Bob getting ratted out for playing the wrong note. Some things never change!

How you doing with those bifocals fellas?



Thanks, we had a blast!



The practice overwith, we all returned home for a quick catnap before the evening festivities. The organizing committee had arranged a lovely dinner for us. They combined it with an evening of reminiscing through slideshows of pictures from our Japan and England trips along with a video of the afternoon's practice which had been put together so we could hear ourselves. The rest of the evening was spent saying goodbyes and exchanging contact info.



Several of the group from our grad year





My forner highschool sweetheart Peter, myself and Bob sporting the famous redcoat



All of us who attended the same grade school, Prince of Wales



Myself, Ernie, his wife Freda and Bob
Freda was like a den mother to us on the band trips

The weekend was over far too soon. It's not likely to happen again. Sure there will be those of us who still see each other in the coming years but it is unlikely that so many will ever gather again. There were 200 of us at the dinner, coming from as far away as Mexico and Hawaii.

Many have gone on to careers in music either playing or teaching . There are those of us who are doctors, health care workers,teachers, sound recording engineers, land developers, social workers and auto workers . None of us however will ever forget the lessons we learned under Ernie's direction.....  those of teamwork and that hard work and diligence pay off! Thank you to all involved for the remembrance of a lifetime.

Now if you've lasted this long, it's on to some stitching. It's unfortunate but my stitching has taken a backseat lately. Our summer has been a busy one with very little time to myself. Now that our travelling is over with I should be able to get going on some things again. However my sister from Michigan is arriving this Sunday for a visit so I'd better be quick!

Some of what I'm working on is for an exchange so I'm unable to show it at this time. I signed up for the Rotating Designer exchange . This is my first  and I'm looking forward to meeting some new bloggers and stitchers thanks to it.

I've finally found the red floss I've been looking for to use on the Canadian flag on my version of LHN America. I paid a visit to Thread & Eye needlework store on my way home from Windsor. It's a convenient stop right off of the 401 highway in London. There I picked up CC Ribbon Red which is just what I'd been looking for. Now I'm finally getting back to stitching on this piece. I'm still not sure yet what colour the roof of the house will be. I'm trying out blue at the moment.

I've also got an updated picture of LHN Acorn Hill. Not a heck of a lot done since the last photo but like I said, it's been a busy summer.

I want to thank each and every one of your who left concerned comments regarding the train derailment my son was involved in. All is well, he returned home by train once more following the long weekend. Unfortunately the young man who was hit by the train died of his injuries this past Thursday. He was only a year younger than Chris. My heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to his family in their time of grief.
I also want to apologize for not responding to some of your comments. It seems that while I'm away and using my mobile browser I can receive emails but I'm not always able to send outgoing mail. I'm not quite sure what's with that!
If you've survived this lengthy post, well done! Hope you are enjoying a good week and I'll touch base with you again soon.

A bit of this and that

The summer is just flying by isn't it? We've been home for 5 days now from our cottage vacation at Lake Muskoka and I have hardly had time to put my needle to fabric. This is one of the reasons why:

My son and granddaughters arrived at our place just 2 days after we got home so I was kept rather busy. We took in the Winnie the Pooh movie while they were here. Very cute!

This is one of the other reasons I've not had much stitching time.

This solarium/gazebo was a retirement gift to myself. Now I can stitch outside in the evenings until daylight fades and even then some since we made sure an electrical power line was installed underground, coming up inside it. As you can see, those cedar hedges to the right are one of the main reasons we can't sit out at night. We get eaten alive by all the mosquitoes they harbour. The hedge isn't ours to remove and anyways it does provide some privacy. Now all we have to do is fix up the lawn around things. They had put down some sod which they didn't tell us they were going to do and while we were gone it pretty well burnt up with all the heat. The neighbours found it and tried watering but I think by then it was too late.

On my way home from Muskoka we took a side trip to see my friend Ann at Knowledge and Needles in Brighton. It was there that I found my WDW Havana and was then able to complete BBD Their Song. Here is the final picture.

And here is my meagre progress on LHN Acorn Hill.

One of the things I did do this year on our trip was to visit a few of the antique shops in Muskoka. I'd always wanted to do this but we never seemed to have enough time. Here are  the treasures I picked up.



This piece is a very close match to my childhood tea set which is also pink depression glass.





This was my favourite find of the day. A beautiful glass rose bowl with flower/scissor frog.

I had one other find which I'll save until my ort post. Can you guess what it is?

That's about it for now. I've just finished my packing for our next trip to Windsor to visit our family and attend our high school band reunion. It promises to be a lot of fun! 

More cottage life and stitching too!

Welcome back to week number 2 at the cottage. The picture above is of our rental here in Lake Muskoka. We have a lovely boathouse cottage and I spend most mornings on the deck stitching.  The owners also have some lovely gardens on the property which I snapped a few pictures of yesterday afternoon.

Don't you just love the flower sculptures  in the background? I've posted a close up of them as well. This is truly a lovely cottage which unfortunately is up for sale as well as the main house behind it. They have already had a couple of offers and are negotiating a sale so it looks like we'll be vacationing elsewhere on the lake. We do have a lead on two other locations, one of which is just across the bay from our current location.

As I mentioned earlier, I love to stitch on the deck of the boathouse with the view of the lake in front of me. However I've been unable to do much stitching the past couple of days since the sun was just too strong and I found I had a headache for most of the day. This could also be due to dehydration. I've never been one to drink lots of water and the water here tastes awful as far as I'm concerned. So I've been filling up on ice tea and lemonade. All that extra caffeine from the tea is not helping the headache any.

However I do have stitchy photos for you! Here is the picture of my completed BBD Their Song minus the three words which I ran out of floss for. It's a bit wrinkled looking. There is an iron here in the cottage and I did try pressing it last night but I don't think this iron is as hot as my one at home plus it doesn't have steam. I'm going to give a call to one of my LNS which is on my way home and see if she has any of the WDW Havana which I'm needing to complete this with. Next I thought I'd try getting back to my Canadian version of LHN America. But once again I'm not happy with my choice of floss colour for the flag in this one. I'm trying to find just the right shade of red in the Canadian flag and am not having any luck at the moment. They either look too cherry red or too orangy red and I've ended up frogging out the flag once I get it started. I'm still undecided  on the colour of the house roof too. I guess I'm not very good at making decisions. Maybe it's heat stroke! So the only thing left to stitch on was my new start, LHN Acorn Hill. Below is a pic of my progress to date. It does't look like much but it will eventually be a cute little house. See that pretty red door? I'm stitching this one on LSL Buttercream and loving it!

At the tail end of last week I returned to the village of Rosseau to have a look in the antique shop there. We had visited this village on our first weekend here and found it very quaint. Imagine my surprise when I found this beautiful old sampler in the shop. I tried to get a good picture of it but where it was hanging the sun shone on it at the wrong angle and always gave me a reflection.

It's been stitched by Eliza Prout, aged 11 in the year 1833. It took me a little bit to decipher this but I believe that's what has been stitched. Take a look below at the other pics and see if you agree with me. The sampler is not in the very best of shape. The linen is torn in several spots, perhaps just eaten away and the colours are faded somewhat but hey, wouldn't you look a little worse for wear if you were 178 yrs old?!



Is that supposed to be a dog in the above photo? I'm not really sure but I love it as well as the deer and the butterfly in the previous pics. I would love to own a sampler like this but it's a bit out of my price range. I'm aways amazed at the stitching abilities of these young girls.

I visited other antique shops during the week but didn't find any other samplers such as this one.

Here are some other pictures we took during our visit to Rosseau. My DH loved the General Store and its collection of old bottles on the upper shelves.

The gardens are found next door to the local ice cream stop and the church is where my DH played the organ on the Sunday morning. 

On our way home from Rosseau we stopped briefly in the village of Minett. That's where we found this fantastic carving in an old tree. What a wonderful way to preserve the remains of some of these older trees. We found out from some of the villagers that many of the trees in the area were lost during a horrific storm on the lake three weeks ago. We ourselves saw evidence of this on our many boat trips on the lake. In some cases we saw where the trees had fallen on the cottage.

One of the many other things which we like to do each year on our visits to Muskoka is to take in the waterski show in Bala. This show makes the rounds of the lakes each week and has a different theme each year. Two years ago when I saw it with my son the theme was Raiders of the Lost Ark. This year the theme was James Bond. Goldfinger was also present and was responsible for taking off with all of Bonds' Girls. The shows are great fun and showcase the talents of waterskiers from the area as well as abroad.

This will be my last post from the cottage. We are heading out on Friday morning for the long trek home. I absolutely hate leaving the lake. I always feel so much at peace here but we've had a wonderful time and all good things must come to an end. I'll post some more pics of our vacation when I've returned home. Until then, happy stitching!