Category Archives: Fiber

Sea Day 4/9

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After having been reminded by Ron that I could track the location of the ship by Marine Tracker (or one of several other options available just for anyone in App from their favorite on-line source), I decided to take advantage of this cruise line’s open bridge policy.

 

At this point, there are 119 passengers and ~190 crew. There are 22 nationalities among the crew and a good dozen among the guests. Windstar, like many shipping & cruise lines, provides training space for maritime cadets. The current person is from the UK. His previous stint at sea was on a cable layer. The program alternates between several months in the classroom with a ~ 3 month stint at sea. One of the bridge officers mentioned that one of his rotations as a cadet had been on a Windstar vessel He had enjoyed the passenger ships more than bulk haulers or tankers (two of his other opportunities) and had decided to head into this particular segment of the sailing industry.

The chairs are new, the cabinets older. The bridge is almost entirely electronic to include monitoring and course charting. They do have paper and sextants as an emergency backup (and taking the early morning readings falls to the cadet).
I think this portion of the deck (being above new passenger cabins) was part of the stretch –

with the usual deck chairs, mini-dipping pool (I can hardly dignify it with the label “swimming pool”). The hot tub seems to be a lot more popular.
and then I headed back to my audiobook and stitching…

another ~1000 stitches means that 1/12 pages are totally complete and I have a really good start on the second page. (4 across/3 down)

Barbara Ana’s Dreaming of Klimt – complete. It turned out to be slighting under 300 stitches left rather than the 500 that I thought.

Sea Day 3/9 – sunshine and breeze

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Sea, sky, and breeze is what I get when I open the French Balcony doors. There is enough space to stand there, barely.

 

And, since the network seems to be letting me upload photos this morning – I am providing you with three views – from the door, from the “balcony” end and of note – one of the walls in the sitting area is mirrored. Which also serves to prove that I am actually on the ship.. I mentioned before that Windstar, in an effort to do? increase profitability? make the ship more comfortable? – whatever – had “stretched the ship. I am now in the front original portion of the ship. The bathroom has also been completely refurbished. Strangely enough, the carpet hasn’t been updated and a lot of the furniture is worn… 

Beyond that – I was able to connect with YouTube for a short while this morning which let me see the Las Palmas live feed. Then everyone got up..

I am ignoring the lecturer – for those who are not technology inclined – learning about smart phones might be a good idea… and how to avoid slow, expensive and totally messed up screens..

There was also cross stitching – I worked on three projects. I should finish the Barbara Ana – Dreaming of Klimt tomorrow – less than 500 stitches to go.

The last part of “There is no Planet B” by Cloudsfactory.net dropped yesterday. 200 stitches done and another 2k to finish. 

I also put more stitches into my LongDog sampler. It is the quickest stitch of the batch since it is. monochromatic

.

Now, the other thing I would really like is if Nitka posted the “Winter Dog” so that I could stitch the last of the Four Seasons before the end of the cruise….

Long crossing 1/9

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And today marks the start of the real crossing. On this ship it will be nine sea days in a row till we get to Bridgetown. In my world that means eight days of stitching (and probably watching a bunch of CDC CME videos + quizzes) and the last day of an hour of packing followed by more stitching.

Oh, yes, and audio books.

Over the next couple of days I will try to get organized and get some pictures posted of various ship areas as well, since this is not a ship or line with which most of you are familiar. Like any other line, there are the loyal fanatics and the casual passengers. The second group picks for time, cost, and convenience.

So that is about it for the day! Tonight we get back the first of our hours. At 12 knots/hr I am figuring every other day for the time changes…

Another 503 on Dreaming of Klimt which leaves me at 75% complete

and 971 on You Belong to me (taken in the evening without a flash) meaning a “whopping” 9% complete.

This gives me tomorrow for these two as well.

Time for dinner and sleep.

Sea Day #5 – more rock and roll – Star Legend

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We left Funchal last night and have spent today steaming (well, this is not exactly a steamship but you know what I mean) toward Tenerife where we should dock tomorrow morning.  I had plans for tomorrow, most of which involved a nice walk and stopping at El Corté Inglais while I was at it. Tomorrow is Sunday. So far, I haven’t been particularly impressed that either Spain or Portugal really care about the old fashion Sunday closing laws that are in effect still in many European countries but we will see…

I spent a good portion of the day in the Deck 8 forward lounge working on

as well as the Barbara Ana dreaming of Klimt.

The passenger group is totally different this time. A more international mix which is not surprising since a number of them winter on various Caribbean Islands. Obviously, a ship is an elegant and comfortable way to go home. And actually significantly cheaper than airfare once you add in the luggage that many of these people brought along. Makes sense. I do take a bit for more six months as apposed to four weeks.

Dinner was a lovely salad.

 

potato jalapeño soup

and seared sesame crusted tuna

I disappoint the staff. I have been eating by myself and reading a book on my phone. Dinner than way is 45 minutes. If I share a table with others it takes 2 hours. (why would I want to cut into my reading or stitching time???)

Tenerife – Star Legend

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Today’s port is Santa Cruz de Tenerife which is another of the Spanish possessions in the Canary Islands. Anyone who has much cruising out of Lisbon, Barcelona, the UK has probably been here. It is also a favorite on many of the trans-Atlantic routes.  We shared the port today with the same Aida ship as before. And, just because you can’t have enough Germans around (sorry Christian)…. there was Mein Schiff 4.

Yes, that is right. A cruise line that doesn’t name it’s ships but numbers them. I am sorry to say that they have purchased at least one of the Royal Caribbean smaller ships.

Anyway.  The port area is flat and well signed for those of us who might possibly not be able to understand that painted walkways with arrows lead you out of the port and into the city.

Pointing toward the city – follow the blue line…

Signs in the other direction clearly point toward the cruise ships. Having said that, we watched people head happily across a parking lot. I am hoping there was a vehicle waiting as that short cut had obvious, high wire fences to keep either people in or the riff-raff out.

This is an extremely walkable city. but the volcanic origin mountains rise steeply right behind the main portion of town.

 

 

The dragon head marks the port plaza

I thought I remembered a museum along the port toward the tram tracks. The building was there, but there were no signs. And the building was now completely covered – with

 

Wild flowers on the roof

 

I was going to comment before but didn’t. I have no clue why there seems to be such a Spanish obsession with shoes/shoe stores. There are more shoe stores than there are souvenir shops. Along the pedestrian zone both yesterday and today the ratio of shoe stores to anything else varied between 1:3 to 1:4. Sorry, I simply do not understand that kind of fascination with shoes. You can only wear one pair at time and why would anyone need more than 3-4 total pairs to have a good life? Running/hiking shoes, every day shoes, maybe a pair of dress shoes. Add in a pair if there is something you need particularly for work.

[Off soap box – I did not inherit a shoe gene]

Let us rather turn our thoughts toward ceramics – and the original version of poster ads on the wall –

1/3 along this street

 

We found the Central Market.

Entry to the Central Market

 

Unlike our last stop – this one was bustling with customers visiting green grocers, spice shops, butchers, cheese merchants, flowers and a dozen other specialty selections of goods.  I ended up at SuperDino (yes, it is a real store chain) which was downstairs at the market. After the discussion yesterday, I Just couldn’t resist.

chocolate

 

Since neither of us were really in the mood for a tram ride (over the mountains to the other side of the island is a lovely town and the scenery is interesting on the way), we headed back to the ship for a late lunch.

 

 

And, if you are not interested in cross-stitch you can stop reading right about now….

11/12 CloudsFactory SAL

The pattern is called – There is no Planet B. Each one of the creatures is endangered. This months portion are the two top left birds + the words. About 3k worth of stitches of so….

Sea Day #2 – Star Legend

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Today was spent at sea.

So I thought I should probably discuss cabins. This particular line wishes to describe them all as suites. Whatever. 270 sq feet (I suppose I should stop and calculate it out in real money) is a nicely sized cabin.

 

from the “porthole”

from the door

 

We spent the day just relaxing. Windstar, like all other cruise lines, has it’s loyalty club – named the Yacht Club. It was the usual (the small ensemble played too loud, drinks were served, munchies as well) followed by the recognition of the most frequent cruisers on board. If I am not mistaken the most “senior” couple have 432 cruises (not days, cruises) on Windstar… (for those of you who sail RCCL – Mario eat your heart out).

The highlight of my day was finishing

Autumn Cat

 

by Barbara Ana. It is the 3rd of 4 with just a small bit of backstitching remaining.

Gibraltar – Star Legend

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(this may be a day of adding photos later – they do not seem to want to upload)

We sailed in to the Gibraltar harbor just before 0800 this morning. It is a planned short day (departures scheduedl for 1300 as it is a fair distance to the Canary Islands).

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is very, very English. There are numerous named buildings and evidence of its military heritage every where.

Classic sign

 

The fortifications are still present, canons (non-functional) abound. There is a Marks & Spencer  (which no longer carries notions) but it does have  Scottish shortbread  and a variety of teas in its small gift ares. The  the yarn shop I found years ago has vanished. Adverts abound for Fish & Chips and the prices are all in Pounds Sterling (Euros accepted but you don’t want the exchange rate).

We walked the length of the pedestrian zone, stopping at Trafalgar Cemetery (members of Nelson’s crew are interned here, but his body was returned to England).

the gravestones remain

but only two have small indications of who is buried there. The rest, being limestone have long since errored. Further down is the gondola station – by which you can take the car up to the top of “the rock.” The last time I was here,  I hiked up, avoiding the monkeys (excuse me, Barbary apes) to see some amazing views. (If you want to see pictures – the largest number are here – from a visit in 2015.

The theater wall

was finished in 2017 by a London artist by the name of Ben Fine who apparently does a lot of street “sign” painting.

We also passed what appeared to be a huge, consolidated school, an amazing amount of new construction (why it surprises me that new buildings and apartment complexes have proliferated I don’t know. The land is limited, so building up is the only option.)

There were also dozens of dogs out for a stroll with their owners following along at the other end of the lead. As an acknowledgment of how common…

Just in case it wasn’t obvious that dogs don’t belong in government buildings

 

We were back on the ship in time for lunch and to watch the sail out from the harbor and passage through the straits.

 

And, my days end –

Meet Sumer Dog

This is the second of four seasonal animals by Barbara Ana. They were freebies from the Nitka.ru site to go along with the full Four Seasons Kit (not yet started).

Malaga – Star Legend

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The sun appeared on the horizon just before 0800 this morning rising as fiery ball rising from the sea. Glowing large and orange, it bathed the sea in golden light before slipping behind strands of clouds and seemed to gradually diminish in size,

And now that I have waxed on about the glories of morning which also included a quiet deck 8 forward lounged and copious amounts of coffee from 0600 on… I watched as we sailed into Malaga harbor. We sailed past an MSC mega container ship (random estimate of containers by counting height length and depth >2000) and the MSC Simphonia which I thought was just sitting at dock (it had passengers as we later found out).

Avoiding organized tours, according to George’s watch, we hiked about 10,000 steps around the city and up and down.

There were orange trees –

walls from many ages –

the old walls above the city

and the old amphitheater

lunch was from the grill on deck 8. Supper was supposed to be an outdoor BBQ on deck as well. I skipped it after going, finding out that it was noisy, crowded and featuring pork, pork and more of the same. Tofu kabobs just don’t make a satisfactory alternative.

We were underway about 2000 toward Cadiz.

First Finish – just a 60×60 on 18 ct Aida

Spring Cat – Barbara Ana

At Sea – Star Legend

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Up front – no pictures yet. I think that this ship wins my all time award for the slowest internet at sea. And, that includes the middle of the Atlantic & Pacific on any of my previous crossings. There is slow, then there is tortoise.

There were the usual activities on the daily program that one would expect: a sales pitch from the shore excursions people, a couple of game sessions (trivia etc). Later today there is a “Welcome on Board” along with an overview of Malaga, our stop tomorrow.

On the personal front, I managed to sleep a few hours later this morning. Time zone changes really wear me out.  At 0600 the forward lounge on Deck 8 (the top deck on this ship) opens. Regular coffee + specialty coffee drinks available. Also tea, smoothies, yogurt, delicious pastries.  There were few others up, so I was able to enjoy my lattes in relative quiet.

Otherwise, I have almost all the words completed on the “Roll the Dice” (Forbidden Fiber Co) so I switched over to stitch Part 4 on Rooky Woods (Tempting Tangles).

And that is going to be the extent of my day. Reading, napping and a bit more stitching!

TK Lounge

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Let me calculate the flight first. ~1830 -> 1805. Right – 24 hours. – 11 hours of time zone change = 13 hours flight as far as I can calculate. Not my longest flight (hello Australia & New Zealand) but not short either.

Indulging in business class (which is why I was on Turkish Airlines as their cost was by far lower than any other airline (by thousands if you were wondering) meant I had a comfortable seat, good food and no one sitting next to me. Wifi was included for the flight. The mushroom soup that was part of supper was as good as any I have had in Chops (for those of you familiar with that particular restaurant on RCCL. The rest of the meal was equally good. This morning the fruit was fresh and the coffee strong. The only thing that is difficult for me is that the seat, even reclined and with padding are still pretty hard since I don’t have any excess padding.

Mushroom Soup

Breakfast start

Landing in Istanbul, we arrived at a completely new section of the airport. The good and the bad – the signage could be improved for everyone. The Business Lounge wasn’t open, so I had to backtrack to the regular lounge. It is not the same as the old, wonderful two story lounge but still lovely. I found the “viewing” room which has a quiet full orchestra and choir concert playing on a large screen. I grabbed one of only about seven reclining arm chairs and have settled in for the duration. It is a lot of hours till my connecting flight to Barcelona

On the stitching front – I decided that I got a “long flight, new start” which is a pattern called “Roll the Dice” from ForbiddenFiberCo. Came complete – pattern, floss, fabric, bag. Excellent. Did I mention that it has only two colors? `

just a small start

Stitching Day

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After arriving yesterday at Kris & Doug’s home, it was time to relax, run a load of laundry and attempt to sleep in a bed planted on solid ground and not rocking with the wind.

Today was a day for chatting, stitching and otherwise relaxing.

Maple Lane SAL is by TheFrosted Pumpkin. I think there are six parts – monthly starting with Oct.

The Owl Forest Alice started six months ago – I have finished the first 11 parts, just about done with part #12. Unfortunately, #13 is out and I would really like to get it mostly stitched before part #14 drops. I am expecting a total of ~ 20 parts (they come out every two weeks.

And finally – Love you to Death is by Silver Creek Samplers and just needs more time put in….

Witchy Stitchy 2021

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is a stitching challenge run by Donnett at Embroidery Central to encourage stitchers to put in 30 minutes a day. For those who play on Facebook, it is post a before and after every day. For those of us not – well, she is will to accept emails. Four days can be missed in the month, but the 31st is mandatory.

I participated in 2019 and again in 2020. My reward was a needle minder each time. Simple enough, but appreciated. 

This year I decided to use one of my Halloween Stitch-a-longs since I was going to be doing a section every day (anyway). Well, sort of everyday, since it actually started last month so that we might actually have a finished piece by Halloween. 

This was my “before” picture this morning

starting point 1 Oct

with the next entry being “Slenderman” who I don’t have a clue about (perhaps he is a Dutch thing?). 

and my ending point with “Slenderman”

 

but in any case – I am planning on not missing any days this month!

Mostly Stitching

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I only had one shift week before last and none this past week so I had been hoping to spend a bit more time with a tapestry needle in my hand (as apposed to a syringe loaded with vaccine de moment).

As mentioned before, this seems to be the year of the Stitch-a-Long for me. I am reasonably current, considering all. 

In the last few days – I have been working on

< 1.

Part 9 – there is no Planet B

Cloudsfactory.net – I have to finish the tree holding the mother and baby sloth, then stitch the tiger – so 1-2 days more on this one.

2 –

Halloween SAL

from Stitchonomy. Last year she started 1 Oct. This year? Figured that most of us would really like to be done BEFORE Halloween. The frame is that of a book. Yesterday I stitched the cats, today the pumpkin head – and – surprise, surprise, apparently Mothman has struck here as well..

3. Cryptid – Part 2

Part 2 – the Fresno Nightcrawler

of which I have half it’s frame stitched – so have the other ½ of its frame and the night crawler. AND some outlining/backstitching to do before Friday to the tune of another 600 or so stitches

4. And Follow the Yellow Brick Road is FINISHED!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

This was a six month SAL which the last part just dropped this month. The designer is LittleDoveDesigns, It is stitched on 16 ct Fiddler’s cloth with the called for DMC (except for a few detours into shiny). Now that I look at it, I need to add Dorothy’s face and the cables on the balloon. From there – it may well land in the pile of shame till I figure out how I want to finish it.

5. This particular SAL is based off a TV series, which, no surprise, I have never seen. Even so – the first part of the pattern looked cool so I signed up. When the designer hit some family issues, she offered to release the rest of the pattern at once rather than monthly to any of us who were interested. That may have been a good deal for me, or perhaps not. The total stitch count was a lot higher than what I expected – much of which turned out to be huge solid color blocks.

The Supernaturals

I am thinking this is 18 ct white Aida and the thread is one of the Sulky blendables (no – I was NOT interested in stitching black….).  I am down to the last 5k or so of stitches which actually go reasonably fast as it is mostly fill in. Given how many other projects I have – I really don’t expect that I will finish it in Sept.

And that was today…..

adding Venus

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Solar System – Part 8

Unlike most of the rest of my SALs (stitch-a-longs), this particular one drops mid month or so. It gives me a chance to get a jump on some of the other projects. But then, this is now the 9th and I will see September’s plant all too soon. Since I have figured out how to load each month into PatternKeeper (fabulous app – android only) without importing everything that has been previously stitched, the ~800 or so stitches go quickly enough once I get my starting point pegged.

The pattern is by Climbing Goat Designs. The fabric is a navy 16 ct Aida (there are no partial stitches, I am not fussing with evenweave) and the thread is all DMC.

Part 9 of Fairy Tale

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was actually started last Friday and finished Monday, but puzzles and the deer got in the way.

The pattern is by Tiny Modernist with the frame available last December and each of the 12 parts being released on the 3rd of the month.

This month is Aladdin.

Fairy Tales – Part 9

While I was at it, I stitched a bit more of the vines on the frame as I would rather not have several thousand stitches to go come December when the last segment drops. The frame is being stitched with 4086 sulky, the rest in DMC. The fabric is actually a rather sunny yellow courtesy of Fortnight Fabrics.

Cryptid 1

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The designer of this piece of dark fun is WitchyStitcher. Called Cryptid – the frame was released last month and the first critter was released yesterday. Mothman (and I am linking you to the excellent Wiki article) also was featured in a 2010 horror film. Apparently a few members of my family have seen it.

Not I.

Anyway.

This is Mothman.

Cryptid – Part 1 – Mothman

The fabric is a 16ct Aida (Charles Craft) hand dyed by MyVintageNeedleArts in Sweet Potato. It is the absolute best Halloween background color yet.

Threads are a combination of DMC & Anchor Black along with DMC Diamanté and some light effects combined with a few quiet shades of DMC. It is a lot of Black. I have my own black cone of doom.

This SAL will last till early January. One part releases every week x3 a month (which gives all of us some catch up time. I am hopeful that this will be my only carryover, but I am not holding my breath.

Essentially Chocolate

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The pattern is Chocolate Cravings by Deborah Dick of Tempting Tangles.

This particular stitch-a-long is 25 parts total (now that I think of it, same as her Coffee one which I finished last year and have hanging on the dining room wall). I started nagging her then about the fact that she had designed Coffee, and Tea, but no Cocoa. And really, I don’t have a problem with the idea of chocolate instead.

Parts 1-20/25

 

If I remember correctly (hard to do when one is a horrible record keeper and we are 40 weeks into the SAL) the fabric is a Zweigert 16 ct Aida in Mocha (or something very close to that). Except for the two blues which are DMC #12 Perle, the rest of the threads are all Threadworx bought when they discontinued dying #12.

Five parts to go, which means that I actually will be done with this before the end of the year.

and he returns as well

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Given that I could sleep in this morning, it should be totally and completely obvious that I woke shortly after 0500 and couldn’t get back to sleep. But there is cross stitch, audio books, and the occasional Flosstube. Which for those of you who have absolutely no interest in crafting of any kind, much less-stitching, please feel free to skip the next several paragraphs.

Flosstube is the collection of channels on YouTube which are devoted to… you guessed it… cross stitch which uses floss in case you hadn’t guessed. Nothing obscene or difficult about the concept, once you stop laughing. Anyway – there are probably 800+ channels in the English Language alone. Then add in the Japanese, Russian, and the occasional Western European and I am not going to guess at how many people are determined to use a video aspect of the internet to share what they are doing.

Back to why I mentioned this. I watch a few channels when I have time. Or the interest. On one of those channels, the fact that Michael’s (US craft store chain) now carries Anchor Floss on spools of 10 meters. Hello? I love thread on spools. Where spools might be a bit more bulky to store (and ignoring the issue of plastic waste) the floss is less likely to be kinked, knotted up or tangled. I checked the Michael’s website.Sure enough, there were ~200 colors on offer on 10 meter spools + 20 on 30 meter spools. What could be even better? Pick up available from the store in Emeryville (4 miles from my house).

Early afternoon, off I went. And sure enough – there it was. Two organized displays of Anchor floss ; a rather large one for the 10 meter spools and a compact thread holder with the 20 colors in the larger size.

Yes, I bought a few colors to try. The key color is black. So far I really haven’t found an excellent black. DMC certainly isn’t it. Sulky is a bit better but doesn’t have enough coverage on some fabrics. I used Anchor threads when I lived in the UK and don’t remember being any more impressed with them than DMC, but hey – it is worth a shot.

From there, I went and hung out at the North Berkeley BART parking lot till George arrived. His meeting in Denver ended this morning so he flew to SFO. Which should give you the explanation of why I was picking him up from BART and not the airport. I love him a lot. But 45 minutes to SFO and 90+ back seemed insane when BART would take less than an hour.  No one drives through San Francisco, especially heading back across the Bay Bridge after 1500 in the afternoon unless they are insane or absolutely can’t avoid it.

So here I am, back home with my new treasures and wondering why I signed myself up for an 0715 exercise class tomorrow.

(Oh, right, at 1615 I was picking up George)

Ovation – Day 3

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A classic sea day (day at sea) with people eating and drinking more than is probably good for them, and familiar Muzak is heard over the speakers.

Yes – I recognize the tracks of music playing in various venues. Not because the music is great, the artists well know or anything similar to a sensible reason. I recognize the playlists as exactly the same as Royal has been using for years. I don’t know if that should be comforting or a sign that the cruise line is cheap…

We are just far enough away from the coast that I can only catch the occasional glimpse as the ship works its way north. I spent a few hours again in the solarium stitching before retreating to my cabin when the crowds got to be more than I wanted.

I am sparing you pictures today. It is a ship, shiny, with the usual amount of what some might consider “art” positioned strategically on walls and the turning points of the two main stairways traveling from top to bottom of the ship.

I stitched, collected the updates for most of my stitching projects and otherwise relaxed in my cabin.

Ovation – Day 2

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Last night as we sailed north along the coast at a speed only slightly faster than a snail crawl there was fog. And more fog. So much fog that visibility didn’t extend from my balcony down to the Promenade Deck, much less down to the sea.  It was also a night punctuated on a regular basis by the ship’s horn. Not a small quiet sound but a rather deep, loud, startling blast.

It was still foggy this morning when I wandered up to the front of Deck 14 to spend time in the Solarium

Enclosed, solarium, complete with pools of a sort

as well as some fairly comfortable seating. I left about 1000 when the numbers of people also choosing to hang out was increasing. It is a bit chilly out on deck. You would think that these people would have brought something more than t-shirts and shorts.

I had lunch at the Coastal Kitchen. Apparently Royal is rationing the number times that us lowly Pinnacles are allowed to eat there. So it is by invitation. That invite netted me a lovely beet salad with avocado followed by salmon with quinoa.

I had enough for lunch that I am mostly skipping supper.

just a little snack

 

I otherwise spent a quiet day stitching – finishing up one Stitch-a-long that has been hanging partly done for a while. Now I can move on to yet another project which I will hopefully finish by the time we dock on Wednesday

Funky Menagerie by Lindy Stitches