Playing catch up...(picture heavy)

***

Hello Friends!  Hubby and I are just back from a last minute, very quick vacation cruise of the Mediterranean so I have a few vacation pics to post but first, I have a few stitching finishes to share!!!

I finished "The Rain Fell" and whisked it off to the framer so fast that I neglected to get a finished snap of it first.    :-(  

Don't worry though, I'll be sure to upload a couple upon its return..

I loved stitching and finishing the Royal Wedding Souvenir almost on time for the anniversary...

design by The Sampler Girl

Most of it is stitched with silks from stash.  I used a scrap piece of 35 ct. hand-dyed R&R linen.  It might just be my favorite fabric of all time to stitch on..

And, hot off the stretcher bars is this bargello Easter egg...

I love the bargello pattern and the overall size of the egg, but I'm not 100% sure about the colors I selected.  The yellow might be throwing the harmony off...  You think?  Plus, the thread coverage is a smidge on the thin side for my liking.  I might just have to do this one again in another colorway with a heavier weight perle cotton.  Next year???

That wraps up the small seasonal pieces I wanted to get off my To Do list this year.  Currently, I'm working on a modern wedding sampler for my newly remarried cousin and his wife.  It should be finished in a week or so.  Then, I plan to dive head first into a Monet impressionist piece that I've had set aside for years.  It is Parliament at Sunset, if you've seen the painting.  I triple heart love it but it is pretty daunting.  I'm sure it will keep me busy for several months.

Now, as for the highlights of the cruise...

First stop:  Sicily where we were once again astonished by the natural beauty of Italy and the genuine character of the people..

Mount Etna

Port of Messina (Sicily)

from Taormina (Sicily, Italy)

Second stop:  Turkey (Ephesus) where we visited the Church and House of the Virgin Mary and celebrated mass.  Afterwards, we toured a rug making factory.  I particularly enjoyed watching the lady pictured below charting an antique pattern.

charting a rug pattern

Turkish rug weaving

an exquisite, small silk rug (placemat size)  

I would have loved to have brought home one or two small rugs but the ones I liked were thousands of dollars (of course).  So sadly, we left Turkey empty handed...


Third stop:  Athens, Greece where we climbed up to the Acropolis (what a hike!) and had the most magnificent views of Athens, and saw what's left of the Parthenon.  We also got to see the Olympic flame which was being transferred to the London Olympic committee the day we were there. 

looking down on Athens from the Acropolis

the Olympic flame with the Parthenon in background

Final stop:  The isle of Crete where we had a quick tour of a few houses of worship, central market, Old Harbour and an ancient monastery turned museum. 

Western Crete shoreline

150 year old Greek Orthodox church

Greek olives in central market

docked in Rome:  instead of rushing off the boat to the airport, hubby and I checked into a hotel and spent the day in Rome.  We revisited a few of the major sites that we saw last year (Trevi fountain, the Pantheon, etc.) but we also took the time to walk around inside a few of the most significant churches/basilicas in Rome (Santa Maria Maggorie, the Church of Louis of the French, and the Church of Saint Agnes in Agony).  Since it was Sunday, we were actually able to participate in several services.  It was an amazing day to end an amazing week.

Trevi Fountain

massive Caravaggio painting in the Church of Louis of the French

The trip was too quick and I'm dreading work tomorrow but it was nice while it lasted...

Here's hoping you all are finding time to stitch and making plans to enjoy Memorial Day weekend with family and friends.  I'll be in the laundry room if you need me...  :-)

Tea in January

HAPPY NEW YEAR, FRIENDS!

I hope this post finds everyone healthy and happy in 2012.   Considering that my last post was in October, I'd love to show and tell you tales of all the stitching that has been happening since then, but sadly, I haven't even made enough progress on Pinecones since then to share an update.  In December, hubby and I took a quick 3 day trip to Columbus OH to see Andrea Bocelli in concert (swoon) and cruise the Winter Fest fabulous art festival.  While I didn't snag anything worth bragging about, I always enjoy walking the aisles and aisles of beautiful hand crafted wares.  We also darted away for another three day trip to visit family in NC.  The rest of the year was just a blur. 

Today is the official Packing-away-of-all-remnants-of-Christmas Day at my house.  I hate to put away the dishes and nativity.  They are always the last to go.  Just to prolong it a bit, I'm blogging about it whilst enjoying a cup of very special tea.  I've never tasted a tea exactly like it except for the first time I enjoyed it back in May.  It is one of the signature teas served at the historic Caffe Florian on the magnificent St. Mark's plaza in magical Venice, Italy. 

(Warning:  memory lane straight ahead)

Setting:  St. Mark's Plaza, Venice Italy
Circa:  May, 2011
Subject:  Taking tea with hubby

For starters, hubby doesn't drink tea.  So, everytime we visit a place with a tea room of particular note, he knows he will be persuaded to join me for the 'experience', as he calls it.  He's a great sport and even acts like he doesn't mind (plus they sell Coke everywhere).

salmon quiche and aperitif for me, club sandwich and Coke for hubby

Since it was late afternoon and we were quite hungry, we skipped the scones and went straight for the heavy stuff.  After lunch, I couldn't leave until I had tried their tea.  Can't come all the way to the Caffe Florian and not have a cuppa!  You might be thinking Italy is all about espresso, which was true, except for the treasure trove of teas at the Florian.

From their marvelous tea menu, I selected one they called Te Mosaico Veneziano and it was stunningly brilliant.  A black tea with orange rind and lavender flowers.  I couldn't resist bringing home a small box of beautifully presented silk bags of this tea.  Which brings me to the present.  It may not be May and I'm definitely not sitting in the sun on the plaza of the oldest caffe in Italy listening to the orchestra, but the tea is just as brilliant as it was then.

Now, enough of that!  Back to reality and off to the packing with me.

Happy Stitching friends!

Still catching up

The older I get, the longer it seems to take me to get back in the swing of things after being away for even a few days.  I told a friend the other day that I was so far behind I was about to lap myself and she thought that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. 

I'm glad she got a kick out of it...it makes me want to cry!

While I was away 'on holiday', my office experienced a 33% turnover (a resignation, a retirement, a promotion, etc.) and my boss was promoted to another office.  We are were a two-manager office, so you do the math.  I'm down a third of my staff and my 'better half' left me (former boss, not husband), so work has been nuts since the moment I walked back in the door.  In an effort to just get my head above water I worked about 9 hours Saturday (which I thankfully haven't had to do in about 10 years!).  It's going to be rough for the next three to six months, but I'm feeling very strongly about not giving work every second of every day.  I want to STITCH something!  ANYTHING!

One thing about being so far out of any kind of normal routine, I feel totally free to jump back in anywhere I want.  I have a mound of WIPs I could use to warm-up with (don't want to pull a hammy).  But I also have a couple of extra special PIGs (projects in grocery sack) that are calling my name.  So, we'll see what happens after church today.  I'm feeling very 'stitchy'.  :-)

I'll leave you with a couple of vacation shots (until there are stitching updates to share...)

The window shopping in Venice was out of this world!

velvets to die for

and silks...

There were several of these Venetia Studium (click link to visit their website) stores throughout Venice and each featured a different color scheme in the window.  And they changed the windows very frequently.  I was mesmerized by each!

 in every imaginable color...

I'm pretty sure those aqua crocodiles were made for Elton!

You know how I have kind of 'a thing' for paint chips?  Well, the vibrant colors and orderly display of these silk scarves and shawls were almost more than my heart could bear.  I wanted so badly to pluck about 40 of them off the shelf and stuff in my purse, but since Italian prison is not my idea of a good vacation, I admired them from afar... 

silk shawls ($200 and up, each)

And just like that, it's over..

***

Hi All!  I'm back from vacation and anxious to catch up with everyone.  I'm also anxious to catch up the laundry, mail, email, etc., but those pesky nuisances can wait a little while longer.

So, how was the trip?  In a word, incredible.  I'm a traveler and student at heart, so the past three weeks have been completely inspirational for me (and totally exhausting I'm afraid for dear hubby).  I won't bore you with the minutia but hope you don't mind me sharing some highlights with you as I have time to edit pictures (around 3000) and review my travel diary.  Yes, I am a nerd...but you knew that already, right?

Quickly, here's a nutshell:

Italy is captivating.  It is chock full of the best, greatest, most unique, oldest, rarest and most precious treasures the world has ever seen.  If you are into art, history, religion, architecture, literature, romance, mystery, comedy/drama, music, food, wine, photography, cooking, collecting, biking, hiking, sunbathing, etc., Italy is for YOU.  I love(d) it all - seriously.  For me, it was the total hedonistic experience. 

Italy is also chock full of tourists from every corner of the world.  More on that later.

Best things I did before the trip:

• Set up a savings account (like a Christmas club) and saved (for years) for the trip
• Lost weight - (like, a lot of weight)
• Learned basic Italian
• Packed an empty carry-on (for souvenirs, gifts, museum books, etc.)
• Studied street maps of the major cities we were visiting
• Used Rick Steves' website as a tool to plan the trip

Stupidest things I did:

• Planned a three week, six city vacation to a place I'd never been instead of using a travel agent
• Packed six pairs of shoes (I know, I know...)

What I wasn't prepared for:

• Nerve wrecking noise levels in Florence and Rome
• Encountering fellow tourists who were having a miserable time because they (multiple choice/fill in the blank): were having trouble communicating, couldn't understand the menu, had to walk too far, had to wait in line too long, wanted something in another size or color but it wasn't available in that size or color, etc.

Why do people go to foriegn countries on vacation and expect it to be like EPCOT?  Come on people!  You are in ITALY!  They speak ITALIAN here (many also spoke English very well).  And, SO WHAT if you had to walk half a mile to see the basilica of St. Peter?!?  On several occasions, I found myself feeling angry at the B.A.Ts (bad attitude tourists) and feeling sorry for Italians who put up with them day after day after day.  The longer we were there, the more empathetic I became.  While I was hesitant (nervous) to use the little bit of Italian I had learned at first, I quickly learned that ANY Italian was better than none at all and was GREATLY appreciated by the locals.  

Imagine being a waitress in a small cafe in your hometown.  You serve coffee and sandwiches for 12 hours a day.  Now imagine that of the 1200 customers you will serve today, 800 of them will not speak a lick of English and probably half of those will get upset AT YOU for not understanding exactly how they want their coffee and sandwich.  And you do this 6 days a week in order to barely scrape by.

One thing I noticed right away was the eye contact.  I'm big on eye contact.  When I'm having a face-2-face conversation with someone, eye contact is essential to me.  If I'm not given eye contact in return, it honestly hi-jacks my train of thought.  I can't carry on a conversation without it.  I don't know why.  Can't explain it.  I carry on phone conversations just fine.  But in person, I need you to look at me if we are going to have a conversation.  So, what I noticed was many of the waiters, clerks, and hotel staff did not make or sustain eye contact with tourists.  It struck me as peculiar - maybe a cultural thing..maybe not...  I watched.  It was definitely a pattern.  Then what I discovered, quite by accident, is that the instant I began to sputter my broken Italian... Boom ... Eye Contact!  They would look up from their order pads, key pads, cash registers, and smile at me!  And talked to me in their best English.  I'm sure my childlike language skills were amusing to them but honestly, I didn't care.  By trying to learn their language in order to communicate clearly, what I had done was found a way to connect to a people who are overrun, daily, with thousands of visitors from every corner of the globe who don't speak a single words of their language. 

I had a lot of fun trying out my Italian everywhere~ even in the gift shop where the two teenage clerks talked about how I had touched everthing in the store and probably wouldn't buy anything (yes, directly in front of me).  I continued to browse quietly for a few minutes, then, in my best Italian, said "Do you take credit cards?  I would like three of these in blue, please. They are gifts for my family back in the US.  Will you wrap them?  Thank you."    The girls looked horrified.  One dashed off to the stockroom, never to be seen again.  The other couldn't have been more humiliated.  She turned red, called me 'madam' about a dozen times, threw in a couple of freebies and gift wrapped every thing very nicely.   :-)    As I was leaving the shop, I threw in a "You have a great day", just for good measure.  Big self-satisfied smile, exit, stage right.  Wished I knew the word for 'darlin'. 
I hope this doesn't sound horrible.  I wasn't mad at the girls. They were just being kids.  I was just terribly pleased with myself.  :-))

Other than shopping, and eating, and visiting churches, galleries and museums, we walked, a lot.  In three weeks of pasta, pastry, cheese, wine and daily gelatos (plural), I lost five pounds.  Okay, so I was a little OCD about getting up early and beating all the tourists to the best places for the best picture taking opportunities.  Many mornings, I would get up and out before 6 o'clock and run around all over the historic districts in order to get a few unhurried shots.  This was one of my favorite things to do and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to photo-document their vacations and isn't on a fixed schedule.  By 9:00 am., in Venice, Florence, and Rome, you were shoulder to shoulder with a million other tourists.  You've been warned that pickpockets abound and traffic (in Florence and Rome) is a nightmare, so stopping in the middle of the street or bridge or evening making your way across a plaza to take a picture was not easy, if even possible.

If I haven't gushed enough for you to tell, I loved every minute of it.  Except maybe toting my luggage off and on countless trains.  I didn't love that part.  I hated that part.  I hated that part enough to think to myself, Why didn't I just book a bus tour?  Then I'd just have to get my luggage from the room to the bus.  Easy breezy, lemon squeezy.  But nooooo...We had to be 'independent travelers'.  Just two tourists, a train pass, six cities and increasingly heavy luggage.  Yes, that part sucked.  I'm sure my chiropractor will have a full blown fit when he gets a glimpse at what I've done to my back - but, what the heck, I may never get to see Italy again, so it was worth it!

That's enough for now.  I'm off to the laundry room.  

Here's hoping you and yours have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

Let the SUMMER begin!!! 

Chicken Stitchin'

What's kickin' chicken?

Isn't this pincushion just about the cutest thing you've ever seen? 

I thought so too!  My thanks go out again to my EGA chapter Education Crazy Smart Genius, Liz, for bringing this project my way.  Since our Education theme is Traveling Around the World, Liz draws inspiration from folk needlework from all over the world.  Our chicken pincushion was found on a Russian blog, so he is our Russian chicken.  :-)  

To make your own, you only need to stitch a rectangular shaped piece about 3"x7".  If you want your chicken to look symmetrical, keep in mind that it's "spine" runs down the middle of your design (landscape orientation). 

Click here for the tutorial and to see many different chickens.  I "heart" the plaid one. 

:-D

Speaking of birds!  I caught one of the pileated woodpeckers with the camera the other day.  They don't get too close to the house but this one seemed to be very intent of getting the attention of another woodpecker.  My guess is that it was not paying too close attention to where they were.  You can't miss those bright red heads!

Hubby and I are off for our great adventure tomorrow.  I've set up a series of posts that should publish automatically while we are gone, to let all the fam know where we are and what we are doing.   Feel welcome to follow along..

Arrivederci!

Day dreamin'

Ran across a disc of photos hubby took on one of his business trips to Italy. I could definitely conjure a few dreamy dreams with this one as the setting. Can you see the lemons on the potted trees in the far rear of the photo? (click on photo for better view) Can't you just smell them?

I'll have a dopio espresso and biscotti, per favore!

Here's hoping you have a dreamy week...