Old Friends

Hi, all! Time has been speeding up, I think, since Thanksgiving. We went to the Cape for the holiday, joining a zillion other people on the highway: 11 hours up; 13 hours back as we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from central NJ to Baltimore. It was fun while we were there, though. Here's a photo of one of our meals (I'd rather have this than turkey any day): oysters on the half shell from Martha's Vineyard and Buzzards Bay.

Working in Tysons Corner has its charms sometimes, but the traffic isn't one of them. This is how it looked from my window on Friday evening.

I've been working on Ann Dale by Shakespeare's Peddler. I pull her out every Christmas.

And I'm coming close to a finish on Peaceful Paradise:

This is an older photo of Pink, entertaining himself with my yarn project. He had already chewed on the bamboo needles. Pink: "They were tasty. This, however, is a little stringy."

Amended to add in reponse to Margaret's question: The header piece is a very old project that I started maybe 25 years ago. It's a Clara Waever design from the Eva Rosenstand catalogue. That's how I used to purchase needlework: from a color catalog (advertised in the back of stitching magazines) before I routinely visited needlework shops and of course, long before the internet. It's called "Stockholm," and it's still available. The design measures 18 x 47 on 26 count linen. I am not a fan of the linen that came in the kit--it's rough, and I prefer 40 count anyway, these days. All the same, I think I'll finish it as is. For one thing, the kit came packaged with either Anchor or DMC that is not numbered, so it would be impossible to scrap it and reuse the thread that's left if I wanted to stitch it on smaller count fabric, since it would be difficult to match the thread if I ran out. It's huge and colorful, though, so it's a shame not to finish it. Happy week!