A Day Trip to Port Townsend

The SBA and I thought it would be a great day to have a small get away! We've been working hard all week and it was to be a nice day, so away we went! We went to a small town called Port Townsend. It's a town at the far NE corner of the Olympic Peninsula. It is right on the water. It was settled in the mid 1800's but had it's hay day in the late 1800's. Originally people thought it might be one of the most important ports on the west coast but when the train did not connect it to Tacoma it sort of fell out of favor. Today it is a charming town full of great shops, galleries, and restaurants. There are two parts to the town, the lower part right on the water and the part up the hill where the lovely old houses are located.

To get there, we had to cross the Hood Canal bridge. That connects Kitsap Peninsula(where we live) to the Olympic Peninsula.

We had a great lunch at our favorite restaurant, The Stillwater Cafe.

This shows the steps to the upper part of town.

More steps to the bell tower. There are only 2 bell towers in the U.S. This used to call volunteer firemen to help at a fire.

On this blog, I'm only going to show the downtown. Uptown will be for tomorrow.

Love all the signs on this building!

A front view. I think the W&K stands for the Waterman-Kate Store.

Most corners have mini gardens.

A gallery with a sense of humor!

I love all the signs. Our son-in-law, Kevin, had a showing of his African Photos at this shop.

This part of the world LOVES its coffee!

Another little pocket park right on the main street.

This is just 1 block off the main street.

See that evil little sea gull!!!!!!

Look what he did to the SBA's Seahawk sweat shirt!!!!!

Thanks so much for taking a look. Tomorrow I'll show more of this great town.

John Foster Update

I don't have much to blog about today. I have done some work and John Foster. I took the photos outside hoping to get better color. I don't think it was much better as the linen still looks gray to me and it's not, it's antique white.As soon as I get the blog done, I'm out to plant in the garden. We got a very pretty heuchera called "Brass Lantern." The tag says it has brassy gold and red spring color on maple shaped leaves It was tempting to buy more plants but we are not clear of frost till the middle of May. We work at the lighthouse this week-end so for my newer followers, I'll have some pictures.

Sorry for the wrinkles. It looks like the red changes color, it's just a wrinkle.

This tree was fun to stitch! It went much faster than I expected.
I hope you all have a great end of the week. Tomorrow is my day to work at the school. We are doing discussion groups on stories so it is always interesting to hear what the kids think!
Thanks for taking a look!

A Walk

First, I want to thank all of you that commented and offered suggestions concerning my hand. It just proves that blogland if full of very kind and caring people!! I will definitely take those suggestions and try them out. The photos are from yesterday and a great walk we took. Today has been cool and cloudy. I did work all morning in the garden. It was a great day for pulling weeds! I tried to get pictures of some of the lovely things we saw on our walk.

These will be yummy blackberries by August. At that time of year, you see lots of folks on this trail picking berries.

This will be another type of berry, maybe a salmon berry, not sure.

Now these guys are NOT pleasant!!!! In fact they are a noxious weed called horsetail. I only did the photo because until we moved out here, I had never heard of them. You can't pull them as they put out some chemical that causes more to grow. Our local plant expert, Ciscoe Morris, says you can only get rid of them by cutting them off , over and over. We have none in our yard thank goodness!

This is called skunk cabbage. It truly smells like a skunk is nearby! It grows in very wet areas.

Prettier than it smells!

We heard the lovely song of this little bird as we sat down for a rest. We think it is a song sparrow.

We found this beauty in the woods behind our house, trillium.

At the end of our walk is a large open field. Someone with humor put these two full sized animal statues at the very back of the field. They are huge and I think they are pretty well done!

Well, thanks for taking a look. I really appreciate your time and comments. I hope I'll have an update on John foster tomorrow. Pain or no pain, I can't quit stitching!

The Deck and the SBA(Super Blog Assistant)

This afternoon has been a real gift! All the weather reports had today as one dark gray blob! Rain all day! Temps only in the 50's. Shortly after noon, the sun came out and it turned into a lovely afternoon. It was probably in the 60's in the sun. Last week, the SBA cleaned the deck and got it ready for summer. Our summers are so temperate(70's-80's) that we practically live on this deck. The SBA doubled the size of the deck several years ago. I haven't added flowers yet as we are still very cool at night. I do several pots of annuals. This adds color. The trees stay all year. In the coldest part of the winter, we wrap them in bubble wrap. This has worked so well. We have never lost a pot.

Here's the SBA enjoying the sunshine. (By the way, his birthday week-end was great! We had a great time with family.)

On the far left, is my potting bench. Originally the deck was only as wide as the post you see by the yellow pot.

This is a great piece of work done by Tom Jones, a talented potter from Fairhope , Alabama.

The heuchera have put out new leaves.

I have several Japanese Maples on the deck. I'm not sure of the variety. I love the shape of this one.

Here's my garden before the plants are up.

The SBA got the fountain going this week-end.

I picked these to brighten the kitchen window. I have collected these little bottles for just this purpose.
I have had a problem the last few days. As you know if you read this blog that I LOVE!!!! doing cross stitch. I'm in the middle of a fairly big sampler. I have started having big problems with my hand. Possibly carpel tunnel. It's not bad during the day time but it has kept me up at night. I'm trying exercises. Several people have suggested that my 2-3 hours of stitching each night are part of the problem. This has me very distressed. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. I'm trying to do some stitching during the day and take more breaks at night! Wish me luck!
Thanks for taking a look! Have a great week!

John's House

Last night I finished the very large house on John Foster. You can see some rather odd spaces where John didn't stitch. I went ahead and stitched the same as John. I didn't like his choice of the chimney and door colors so I changed them. They were olive green that I didn't like at all with the green roof. I saw the chimneys as a sort of slate gray. So I stitched the chimneys and the front door with GA "Garden Gate". I'm pretty happy with the color change. Now on to the steps and the bottom motifs.
Today is just beautiful up here. The sky is so blue. Plus it's the SBA birthday. We went for a nice walk and we'll go out to a restaurant of his choice! I'll take the camera as he has picked a place on the water. Tomorrow we are having his brother,sister-in-law, our daughter , and son-in-law for a small party! I want this to be a very happy day for him!!

The white linen looks so much better than the color in the photo. sorry for the wrinkles. I usually don't iron till I'm finished. Have a wonderful week-end!

A Liebster Award

By now many of you have seen this award. In case you haven't, the word Liebster means favorite in German. This has started as a way for bloggers to help each other spread the word about cross stitch blogs that have less than 200 followers. In the beginning , my most constant follower was my dear daughter, Laurie. Now that I have grown a bit, it is so nice to have contact with people to share my passion for cross stitching.

I was given this award by three wonderful bloggers. First, Beth of "Garden Grumbles and Cross Stitch Fumbles" , second, Chris of "Tot Hill Farm Stitches" and last but not least, Natasha of "A Stitcher's Ramblings. I have loved reading the blogs of these great ladies! Thank you so much! Now it's my turn to pass this award on to 5 worthy blogs.

1. The Blue Star Stitcher. I love her great smalls and the clever way she displays them.

2. Mary at "Stitches and More" Mary does lovely work. We share an appreciation for Sheepish Designs. She has stitched an amazing Santa!

3. Amy at "Sew Amy" While it is not cross stitch, Amy got my immediate attention with her amazing Halloween quilt!

4. Laura at "Stitching My Life Away" There are so many great designs . I was especially drawn to the French Country Bunny.

5. Michele at" Just another Stitching Blog" The last time I looked Michele had exactly 200 followers but her blog was one of the first ones I followed. Michele is a fellow Seattle area stitcher. When I e-mailed her for advice on where to find supplies, she responded very quickly. Thanks , Michele


As part of accepting the Liebster award, it is asked that you pass the award along to 5 bloggers that you have enjoyed. You are asked to do the following:

1. Link back to the person who gave it to you and thank them.
2.Post the award to your blog.
3.Give the award to 5 bloggers with less than 200 followers.
4. Leave a comment on the 5 blogs to let them know that they have been offered this award.

Thank You so much to all of you that take time to read my blog. It's become a community of friends that I value very much!

A Finish!

I finished Sheepish Designs, "From Every Mountainside" last night. I got it ironed today so I could take a photo. I still need to think about framing it. I do like the way it turned out. I changed many colors. I think it was worth the time it took. With this one , I changed as I went rather than making all the changes at the beginning. This is one I will use this summer. Now that I have it done, it reminds me of summer for some reason. I also changed the date from the time I did the design to 1776 to honor the Revolution. I'm back to John Foster and should have some pictures in a day or so to show progress.
The weather here has been perfect. We have spent lots of time in the yard and garden. We still have lots to do! Hope you are all having a great week!

The colors are much brighter than shown in the photo. Plus, I stitched on antique white, not sure why it looks gray!
Thanks for taking a look!

A Great Easter

We had a great day! We started with an inspirational service at Church. Then to a very tasty brunch with our DD, SIL, and SIL's father. I usually cook for the holidays but since we just got home from our trip, I had so much else to do that we decided to go out. The day was beautiful and the little cafe was on the water.(Sorry, forgot the camera!) We could see both the Olympic and Cascade Mountain ranges very clearly! After a tasty brunch we came home and worked in the yard. I plan to stitch tonight, maybe finish "From Every Mountainside." I stopped working on it during our trip because I really had no fill stitching to do. So I started "John Foster". I'm very anxious to get back to John. Now doesn't that sound like a near perfect day? I hope your day was as great as ours!

Here's where the day started.

This is a gift from our very talented daughter! I just love it. I keep spring things out beyond Easter, so this little guy will be out for quite awhile.
Thanks so much for taking a look! Have a great week!

Happy Easter/Spring

Happy Easter/Spring!!!!!

Home and John Foster

We got home late yesterday afternoon. It feels like we left late spring early summer and returned to early spring late winter. However, it always feels good to be home and for most of the trip , I was much too hot! Even Nashville was very warm. Folks there are worried because they said they had no winter and are concerned that many of the bugs that get killed off in a nice cold winter simply did not! I will try to get out and take some yard photos tomorrow. Things are blooming in spite of the chilly temps. I worked on my John Foster Sampler the entire time I was gone and 8 hours on the plane, twice ,gives you a lot of time. I tried to plan so that I would have some good fill in areas to work as I hate to do lots of changing of colors and counting while squashed on a plane!!

Who could feel anything but happy coming home to this!

Now we'll add some water!

And here comes the ferry to take us home!

This is a picture of the John Foster. I love the big red house.

The garden maze looks a bit Quaker and the bee skeep is great.

As this shows, I have made great progress on that house. I did change the red that was called for. It was WDW Aztec Red-much too bright and pinkish for my liking. This is DMC 355 a nice brick red. I rarely stitch on that white a linen(antique white)but I love the contrast with so much red and green. Plus the green roof reminds me of our roofs up here in the Pacific NW.

Thanks so much for taking a look and have a wonderful week-end! I'll have flowers and a Happy Easter tomorrow.

Home tomorrow

We fly out at 9am tomorrow. I will catch up on blogging when I get home. I'll be glad to get back to our home computer. Hope you are all having a great week!