pilgrims, paws, and packing . . .

With VBS in full swing this week, I didn’t have much time to stitch . . . but I did finish all my boat pilgrims!

Whoop, whoop! Next stop: sails. But that’ll have to wait because—Aloha!—I’m headed to Hawaii on Tuesday!  And this boat trip doesn't require sails.  <wink>

Back to this past week—I got some fun, happy snail mail . . .

Don't know how I'd missed this Simply Sweet offering from Kathy Schmitz!

Etsy's Pixie Fibers (aka One of the Flock) is clearing out all of her inventory.  Among other things, I got this darling PRE-cut wool acorn kit!!  It's so cute!

And this cute little sashiko kit from Brooklyn Haberdashery!

A little retail stitching therapy is always good for the soul, right?

And speaking of stitching, I also received my quarterly issue of Needle Arts from EGA.

I joined the national Embroiderers’ Guild of America (along with our local chapter) back in March, and I’ve really enjoyed diving into all the wonderful inspiration and techniques they share. So much great information between the covers!

Now here’s a little before-and-after story that made my stitchy heart happy:

Last week I picked up this lovely hand-stitched table runner. It had been poorly stored—there were food or grease spots, and those pesky little speckles that looked like spider waste. I soaked it in Dawn for a couple of days, but no luck. Then a friend recommended Retro Clean. After soaking the runner in it for 48 hours—voilà!

The stains vanished, and the piece was restored to its former glory. I’m so tickled with how it turned out!

Today would have been my 29th wedding anniversary. I had signed up for a barn quilt workshop to help fill the day, but I woke up nauseous and dizzy, so I ended up back in bed instead. Thankfully, my girls took excellent care of me.

Starry kept checking in like the little nurse she is.

And Celeste was basically a purring hot water bottle for the entire afternoon. They’re such good girls. I’m so thankful for their sweet companionship.

Linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching post. I’ll be back at the end of the month—hopefully with sails stitched (at least partially) and stories/photos from the islands!

:)

sloooooowly stitching . . .

It was a relatively slow week, stitch-wise.  Our church's VBS started today, and I spent a lot of the preparing for that!  I did get some stitching in, though.  Almost finished up the standing pilgrim on my Coming to America piece . . . 

I have about 90 minutes of free time from my last VBS music rotation to the closing rally, so I'll take this project with me and work on it each night.  Maybe I'll have all *three* pilgrims on the boat finished by week's (or VBS's) end.  

I am still unpacking and organizing things from the move . . . especially Nook things.  In doing some of that, I came across this little snowflake embroidery that was ninety percent finished . . . 

What in the world?  I started this in December, 2019.  I know this because I blogged about it, sharing this photo . . .

I was flummoxed!  It was SO close to being done. I'd pulled up the blog photo to see exactly which metalic flossed I'd used.  Once I'd found that, I began to stitch up the remaining gold spires.  That's when I remembered.  I had used a new product—Sulky's Stick & Stitch Stablizer. The project got too close to a hot iron, and it shrunk the stabilizer, so the pattern wasn't right.  I pulled out my new stitches and soaked the embroidery to get rid of the stabilizer. I left it out overnight to dry . . .

Not terrible!  I'd lost the pattern, so I "winged" it. (Not to fear.  I contacted Mary Corbet of Needle 'n Thread, from whom I'd purchased it, and she emailed me the pattern file today.  Thanks, Mary!!) I hosted a stitcher's group for my Sassy girls on Saturday, and finished up the stitching on it then.

It's not great, because my winging it wasn't great, but I'm glad it's finished.  I don't remember what my original plans were, but I've got some great metalic Christmas fabrics that I think I'll frame it with!

Another thing I found was a bag of HST pieces from my Christmas quilt.  Those weren't quite as old as the embroidery, but still date back a couple of years or so.  I laid them out a couple of different ways to decide how I wanted to stitch them together.  I came up with Harlequin Christmas, Jack-in-the-Box Christmas, and Pinwheel Christmas:

I'm leaning toward the Pinwheels, but all three have eye interest. It's a mini piece ... about big enough for a center table mat.  

In other news . . . more important news . . . family news:  granddaughter Olivia graduated from elementary to middle school *and* was awarded Student of the Year!  Pictured here with my James:

So very proud of her!!  Isn't she just beautiful?!

And finally, because we all know what a sucker I am for a sunset, here was the view from my balcony on Friday evening . . . 

It was pretty brilliant there, but to the south it was soft pink and blue . . . cotton candy skies! The whole western horizon was glorious!

I'll spend the rest of the week singing and dancing all our Magnified VBS tunes. Crooning!

:)

yellowstone in thirty-eight . . .

So.  I'm back!  What a trip we had!  I took 1,557 photos over the course of our travels.  Shall I post them all? Hahaha! Just kidding! I'm going to share my favorite five hundred photos, in no particular order (and feel free to scroll to the bottom for my slow stitching report) . . .

We spotted this juvenile moose resting on a patch of snow, on our way up to Inspiration Point, at Jenny Lake.  It was our only moose sighting!

Queue mandantory Yellowstone National Park sign group photo!

My beautiful Jocelyn!

We caught this herd of bison on our first day.  Look at all the babies!

Old Faithful!

Other geyers on the Upper Geyser Basin.

Grand Prismatic Springs

Another at Grand Prismatic Springs.  I could have shared 38 photos just from this sight.

Our sweet cabin in West Yellowstone.  Or, as Ezra called it, our "Yellowstone Home".

Waterfalls!!

Falls coming down into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

Edith and I sharing a Huckleberry Float!

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  It was breathtaking!

This one and the one below are from Norris Geyser Basin.  The colors and patterns were surreal.  This was another spot I could've shared a ton of photos.

We saw bears of all types a number of times, but this was our best (and closest) encounter.  This grizzly was less than 15 yards away, above us on the road as we drove home the second night. 

Elk were most common in the valley along the road on the way out of the West gate.

There are several markers for the Continental Divide up/down this road, but this one is the highest elevation, and sits at the lake (pictured below) that flows both east (into the Atlantic) and west (into the Pacific).  Wonders, y'all!  I saw WONDERS!

Left Thumb of Yellowstone Lake

Geysers at the West Thumb.

Yellowstone Lake is H U G E!

Mud Volcano area was very, very sulphurous!

Probably 20% of my photos have these sweet faces included!!  They did ballet poses and funny faces and were so good to have three adults taking their pictures every other minute!  :)

Petrified Tree—just fascinating!

Mammoth Hot Springs. I wish these photos did it justice!

More of my fellow hikers!

Grand Tetons over Jenny Lake.

The falls were really rushing, due to all the snow melt.

Tower Falls was spectacular.

We had a late lunch/early supper at Dornan's Pizza Pasta Company.  This was our view!

The Snake River, pretty much from the spot where Ansel Adams based his famous portrait.

On our last night, we went back to Old Faithful (for a third or fourth time) and caught the most beautiful sunset!  And you know what a sucker I am for a glorious sunset photo!

All the kids did such a great job earning their Junior Ranger badges for both Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons, as well as their Young Scientist patch for Yellowstone!

I really only shared 38 pictures (only 2.4% of my total photos), which really isn't enough to capture the scope and breadth of all we saw.  Photos just don't do justice anyway.  The awe of it is such that words don't even do it justice.  I can understand all the famous painters and photographers, poets, and wordsmiths who have tried to capture it; have tried.  But there is something about standing in the middle of the grandness of it all that just puts words and photos to shame.  If you haven't been, I'd highly recommend adding the trip to your bucket list!

Every one of the Merkels had a down day (sprinkled throughout our week), due to a stomach bug.  I never caught it. I don't know why, but I sure am grateful!  Kids and younger adults bounce back from those things than senior citizens! I did manage to do every climb, hike, and walk that the group did, save one.  At Mammoth Hot Springs, I got to the level above the springs; Joc, Evey, and Ellie went to the tip-top, but Jason, Edith, Ezra and I stayed and did a lateral hike around the rock.  Joc said the view wasn't any better from the additional height, so I felt justified.  <grin>  Anyway, I averaged 13,500 steps a day, and sixish daily miles. Not bad, right?

I did very little stitching.  There really wasn't time . . . even though we spent at least 90 minutes or more a day in the vehicle.  When there's miles and miles of Yellowstone landscape to look at (not to mention scouring that landscape for moose, elk, bears, and whatnot), you just can't focus on handwork!  I took a couple dozen stitches on my Spring Quaker mini . . .

And, since I'd finished the patriotic wool felt project I'd prepped, I went looking for something to replace it.  I came across a Kathy Schmitz project I'd gotten for Christmas 2023, but it got lost in the shuffle of Todd's illness and death, and then my grief and move.  But I found it and it's so cute!

I worked January's and February's designs, and got started on April's little stitchery.  So the trip wasn't super productive, but it wasn't totally bereft of progress!

I still haven't responded to all of the comments from the last post, so I'm off to do that now.  After I go for a swim in the pool!  Have a fabulous first week of June . . . summer is here!

:)