Category Archives: Cross-Stitch

Lou update

Holly Doyne Posted on by

I didn’t take any complicated handcraft to Madagascar. I wasn’t sure that cross-stitch or knitting a bus was an objective possibility. Then there is the issue of dust, stains and sudden stops which could involve a colored food or beverage item. It just seemed safe to focus on something with an extremely limited number of colors.

All of which explains why I hadn’t made a lot of progress on Lou in the last month. I pulled it back out after we returned home then couldn’t find the floss which I had carefully stored. A trip to JoAnn’s solved that problem which meant, of course, that a day later I was organizing in the bedroom and “noticed” the box sitting square in the middle of the dresser. The obvious box into which I had carefully placed floss, needles, scissors and chart. Go figure, right? But I can always use extra thread.

Any way, as of this evening, between stints of stitching and audiobook – I have come this far.

25 June 2018

Who knew?

Holly Doyne Posted on by

And before you think I am totally and completely out of it, please remember that I spent most of the years between 1981-2015 living outside the US. Outside of occasional brief stints, I have had no contact with US based primary/secondary school eduction with my children. In fact, other than my own experience as a student aged 17 and under, DoDDs schools provide my only window into US based schools. I have no experience with Parent/Teacher Associations or whatever the current nomenclature for what I remember as the PTA. Certainly I know nothing about them or their fundraising outside of what I have read in fiction.

For those reading this and living outside the US (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK for English speaking plus the salting of French and German speakers) I effectively am as naive about such organizations as you.

How was I to know that PTAs have added “evenings out at a family restaurant” to their fundraising repertoire? Carmen knew about such things and explained it to me, but I hadn’t a clue. It did explain why our chosen location for dinner – The Silver Diner was packed with children and their families. Kindergarten through Second as it seemed to be. According to our poor waitress, the group had made a reservation for “about 25” which turned out to be a gross underestimation.

How does this work? The group makes an arrangement for a time when the restaurant normally is not that busy and in return gets an amount per head or % of sales from the group. It obviously made the kids happy, there were cheerful youngsters everywhere excited about seeing their friends. Kids coloring, parents and grandparents looking poleaxed and the waitstaff dodging the waist high crew as they attempted to take orders and deliver meals.

The young lady in line behind us as we entered explained that she could see kids from her class and was ever so excited. When one of the kids informed her that her teacher was having diner, I thought she would wiggle out of her skin. With rare exception, the kids were actually well behaved. As a group, it was almost as diverse as the Bay Area without the breakdown along ethnic lines that is all too often seen in San Francisco.

The menu was great, featuring burgers and other US people friendly food in varieties from buffalo through salmon to vegetarian (I didn’t want to ask if they had a separate grill) with a pick list for adding additional condiments. Veggies were offered in lieu of fries. The water was cold and served with lemon. In other words, nice comfort food, it the place wasn’t so filled with cheer, kids and noise that you couldn’t carry on a normal conversation.

The location faintly reminded me of the 5 & Diner that Noah and I ate at once in Scottsdale. With a major exception – the Silver Diner chain does as much as they can to be part of the “farm to table” movement and locally source their comestibles whenever possible.

Lou is progressing – and other than that – it is raining. Again.

16 May 2018

Lou

Holly Doyne Posted on by 3

I have been working on a new project for the last several days and finally inserted a page for it under the project Menu.

This was Lou

Lou was a good dog.

If you know dogs, there are some that are loved by their owners, but no one else would ever say that they were good.

Not so with Lou. He was a good dog. Sociable, traveled well, polite, friendly but not overwhelmingly so and lived for his job. His job being working all day with David. It is a hard job for a dog, keeping a contractor under proper supervision. The whole day may be traveling around in the truck and visiting job sites (we will not mention the occasional treat) and keeping one’s person properly supervised.

This was Lou’s role in life and he filled it admirably. But in April, not so young a dog anymore, he became ill. Multiple vet visits and treatments, it was obvious he wasn’t ever going to get better and was absolutely miserable.

Since there is snowballs chance in hell of David ever reading this, I feel safe in posting that I am making decent progress on a present for him. I don’t know that he wants a picture of Lou on his wall, but I think he just might need one.

Side order of cross-stitch

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

I am more than capable of entertaining myself. In fact, I am probably old and cranky enough that I prefer my own company to that of strangers who don’t know when to stop talking.

And some of them talk, and talk and talk….

I neither arranged any needlework group or went to find if there was one. I have found that sitting quietly in the Concierge Lounge in the morning gives me access to as many Lattes as I am stupid enough to drink, a seat with decent light near one of the windows and the added benefit of having a 220v power point directly accessible.

Today I had the pleasure of a lovely and extremely funny Irish-Canadian lady. Patty lives near Toronto. Her journey from Ireland to attend Uni in Canada turned out to be pretty much a one way trip. (Not counting visits to relatives in Belfast on a regular basis). The kids are now grown, there are grandchildren and she has been dragging around a cross stitch of a Celtic Cross for a while needing only part of a border and a lot of backstitching.

We have agreed to encourage each other for the next few sea days and see what happens. I don’t mind that she is a tea drinker (kind of like my daughters) and she will ignore my coffee…….

Over the plate

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and not at the batter. The As batter hit by a pitch hopefully won’t have a serious hand injury. The Giants batter was hit in the butt. He was fine and later scored what turned out to be the winning run.

End score: 6:5 in favor of the SF Giants.

Otherwise, ran a few errands. Finished another small cross-stitch

 

And headed back to the East Bay tomortow

Tenerife

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Another one of those places where I have been several times. It is a frequent stop on Trans-Atlantic Cruises of which I have been on several (well, more than several to tell you the truth). Depending on the cruise line and the ship – this route to south Florida is usually known as the Southern Route (as apposed to heading across from the Baltics and going via Iceland). Stops are normally in either the Canaries (as this ship) or the Azores – usually Ponte Del Gado.

Anyway. The last couple of times I have been here I just did the wander around or take the tram over to the other side of the island and away from most of the tourists. Unlike some of the other ports, right now we are the only ship docked. That makes the numbers of tourists not such a big impact on the town (unlike an Aida & Fred Olson ships also in port). I don’t think it is going to make any difference on the ships ability to get people back on board which has been drastically lacking in the last couple of ports.

(BTW – Stu reports that 17 in Roman Numerals can be anagrammed into something, which in Latin, comes out to be the equivalent of “my life is done/over/I am dead” etc. I think it means that someone, somewhere had way too much time on their hands and was into superstition rather than working for a living. So if you are Italian, you don’t want room 17, Deck 17 or probably train 17 or Flight 17. Me? I need to go and see if there is some number in Kabbalah which holds the same place in insanity)

My major stop today was El Corte Inglais where I bought a tape measure for Carmen and a seam ripper for me. It is not that I don’t have several at home. But they are at home, I am on ship and have a few stitches to un-pick in the current cross stitch. This is 22 count canvas and I really don’t want to either damage it with scissors.

Three sheets to the

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

canvas. See! You were looking for the word “wind” even tho you know with absolute certainty that I don’t drink alcohol. I was going to say “drink” but that would be a stupid declaration since everyone drinks something – whether it is coffee, tea, soda, milk, water or one of the thousands of other choices found across this globe.

Rather, I was referring to the 12 pages of cross stitch (hey, I might yet do a filk off the traditional “12 Days of Christmas” if those Christians among you could avoid being insulted… If you do have a sense of humor – I would advise going to BandCamp and looking up PDX Broadsides who have authored and recorded an alternate and thought provoking Christmas Carol annually for the last several. “Santa has a Tardis” is just plain fun while “Sorry, Wrong Star” is quite pointed.

Where was I? On finishing up a third sheet of cross stitch. This particular project has, as I mentioned above – 12 total pages. Of those sheets – 3 cover a full page and the other 9 are partial pages, some much fuller than others. This is occurring because this particular design has an irregular edge rather than the normal squared off corners. A full page is 5 x 7.5 squares, each square is 10×10 stitches. The odd pages range from the smallest of 2×3 to the largest of 5×4. The overall design is four pages wide and three tall. The cross stitch itself is going to be a present which is why you haven’t seen any photos of it (which I will post after the relevant birthday.

Did I mention that I forgot two of the critical floss colors resulting in one of the pages appearing as if it has a bad case of the measles given all the empty spaces?

We are at sea today in case you hadn’t guessed.

SeaDay 2

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

And now there are only 8 hours of time zone change since we are headed to Iceland (GMT-1) today and another hour of fall back tomorrow.

I have now recovered, maybe, enough to discuss the flight, followed by a flight, another flight, a hotel overnight, a tram, a taxi and a five hour wait to board the ship.

On second thought, not.  It could have been much worse like that experienced by friends returning to the US through CDG. Shall we leave it at – late plane, immigration, running through the airport, getting to the gate only to be refused boarding because their seats had been given away? And, just to increase the pain, since most of the delays were due to CDG and not the plane’s lateness, they were refused compensation.

Any who – I am hanging out in the lounge and relaxing.  George is hitting the gym and going to lectures.  I am thinking about taking a nap and watching my hair grow…

 

It isn’t so much that

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

the As keep trying to lose. It is more a matter of fouling up a good thing. For example, an error by the shortstop in the first inning turned a routine out into a two base grab. Said runner later scored. And then there were the 2-3 innings including one with bases loaded that the As at bat managed to strike out, pop out or land themselves in a a double play instead of scoring a go ahead run.

Go figure – I can’t.

Meanwhile I am still playing with machine embroidery, working on a cross stitch and just finished Graphic Audio’s Mike Oberon – Hallow Point.

No crash today

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

And the house is almost ringing with silence. I say almost because the dogs seemed to be honorbound to make up the difference in decibels with their barking.

I stood it for a while, then gave up. End result is that I took my audio book upstairs and hid out for most of the day.

Progress was made on the fractal

Just imagine that you are looking at it vertically.

Another day

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

and another pile of debris –

todays dig out

which provides a slightly different view than out and down from the living room window. The smeary glass is obviously the result of dog noses…

down on the right side toward the steps

toward the left and the debris pile

and lastly a bit more toward the middle featuring steel beams and the top of one of the stacks

I took it easy today, mostly reading but also back at the fractal-54 after organizing a few supplies –

10 June 2017

Spiral Progress

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

I’ve made some progress since the last time I showed you a picture –

 

24 May 2017

 

Jill and Graeme are on a plane this evening headed home.

The As actually managed to win a game. RF 149 managed to make a fair amount of noise in spite of being down more than a dozen of the regulars. The team is headed to NY tomorrow and resume play on Friday. I’m finishing up my freaking meds and glad of it as I am not being the worlds easiest person to be around at the present. I hate needles, I hate prednisone and I don’t appreciate becoming short of breath again.

crab, crab, crab….

CISTM15 – Day 2

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

There wasn’t anything in the 0800 offerings that thrilled my heart which gave me more time to wander from the hotel to the conference center. It also meant being on a slightly more crowded Tram which wasn’t all that exciting.

Today’s sessions covered the range from effects from climate change through public health emergencies in the morning to special groups of travelers, new vaccines and the usual discussions on malaria.  What I didn’t do was attend the Gala Dinner thinking an early bedtime was much more interesting

The cross stitch is now going more slowly. Not surprising as the sections are smaller, starting to curve. This results in ending the fun of long runs of a single color mostly in straight lines which translates to mindless stitching while listening to an audio book. I’m on the last Daisy Dalyrumple (Carola Dunn, author) that is available on Hoopla. But this way I don’t wind up with another half dozen audio books in my “collection.”

16 May 2017

CISTM15 – Day 1

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Picking up where I left off yesterday, this is the official first full day of the conference. As professional organizations go, it isn’t all that large. Even with membership from 120 countries, the vast majority still belong to the major four English Speaking (UK, US, Canada, Australia) which makes sense in terms of the founder group and the original focus on medical care for tourists.

The first plenary session addressed the issues of migration from the EU perspective. From the US side of the Atlantic, we read about immigration from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria but don’t always have a good idea of the actual impact on the towns, cities, villages and countries that are the receiving side. It is startling to realize that there are now countries where 1:4 or 1:7 total population is refugees. Few, if any countries are stable enough or wealthy enough to absorb that kind of population increase. From the medical side, infectious diseases aren’t really the issue; it is trauma along the way and chronic disease that put a significant burden on the receiving country.

I spent a fair amount of the rest of the day listening to vaccine updates or conversing with various other members of the Responsible Travel group.  I also ran into an old French Military Colleague and may just have gotten suckered into working on the establishment of a new interest group.

Taking the tram back was easy but used up the last of the change in my pocket….

 

Fractal

15 Mary 2017

Fractal 54

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

It has been a lovely day; visiting, stitching and otherwise going nowhere in a big hurry. The only two things I needed to do today – mail a package and a bit of laundry – were easily accomplished.

Then of course, there is spargel –

steamed, buttered

and served on stone oven (wood fired) dinkel pancake (aka spelt in English).

Other than that – I made a bit of progress on Fractal 54 which turns out to be the second easiest one I have attempted. There aren’t a lot of isolated single color stitches.

Fr-54

Is what it will look like when completed.

So far –

12 May 2017

I think I am making good progress.

I’ve a late afternoon train back to Munich tomorrow and an extremely early flight to Barcelona on Sunday.

Projects update

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It seems much more reasonable to update you on my fiber projects than to discuss the As horrible performance in Texas last night. It takes some kind of talent to lose a game 10:5. Obviously the pitchers weren’t doing well as the home runs added up. The only positive I can draw is that the Giants also lost (Schadenfreude).

It also avoids me having to talk about not sleeping much last night so that staggering out of bed around 0330 this morning was less that thrilling. There is a reason that the early morning flights are cheap. Even Southwest had 40 empty seats on the plane. It also avoids the entertainment of getting through TSA. I went through the PreCheck lane which didn’t help at all when they looked at my cooler bag containing five pre-filled syringes which need to stay cold.

Is it gel?

No, ice. Spent the night in my freezer. You are welcome to look inside or feel around, but I can’t afford to have the meds warm up. Five minutes of fishing around and I think the guy finally figured out that I was harmless. Meanwhile, Noah asked about security measures and was ignored in a different lane. Then they got all upset when he hadn’t taken off his shoes or taken out his laptop. Please note the complete absence of signage….

I hates needles.

Anyway – on the needles –

More importantly – tomorrow I get back to Fractured Time – since I now have all the colors and didn’t want to take the Flower Spray off the floor stand

26 March 2017

 

After listening to the game through the bottom of the 9th, we went downstairs to grab a sandwich. A’s won; the Giants didn’t.

Two meals and some cross stitch

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Brunch today was at Sauls. A pleasant meal spent with a colleague of George’s. I happily ate my way through a plate of mid-eastern goodies while they mostly talked of business. Landing at our hour afterwards, I mostly listened to the ongoing conversation and only put my oar in on occasion.

To refresh your memory – this was where I was on the 30th. Oh, perhaps I didn’t let you know that. Oh, well….

 

30 March 2017

 

After a mostly aborted attempt to use the hot tub (some people in my house keep promising that they will check the power box regularly and don’t. I’d do it myself but I can’t get the thing open) since it wasn’t up to temperature I really decided I needed Thai food for dinner.  Took the Eldest, brought take-away to College Guy since he was on closing shift. The dog-lovers headed down the hill to find sushi.

Evening end – I was here on the Cross-stich

2 April 2017

which is showing some substantial progress.

 

 

 

The morning after the night before

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which in my case has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol and much to do with not sleeping through followed by a too early BART, bus and going to the SFVA. After getting through all the preliminaries (lab work, provider check, hydration) I hung out for hours getting various drugs through the usual IV route. The only oral drug in the R-CHOP combination is prednisone which you have heard me complain about more than once. I will try to limit my crabbiness this time. No complete promises, but will try.

DId I mention the premed drugs? Solucortef to start out the fun and oral meds to prevent nausea or itching. Since together they seem to do the job in preventing both allergic reactions and nausea, I am not really complaining. More stating that I feel like a bag of chemicals/drugs at the end of the day.

George came and bailed me out. Our route out of the city was over the Golden Gate in bright sunshine, over the Richmond Bridge and south to home. I certainly should not complain about the commute. One gentlemen has 2 1/2 hours each way (7 days every three weeks) and another is traveling about 3 hours each way every couple of weeks. Yes, they could go closer to home but would rather drive. States something pretty impressive about the care from my point of view.

I am crashing early obviously.

Cross-stitch update.

Since I am home and have [almost] all the thread I need –

This is where I was leaving the ship on Clock –

25 March 2017

 

And where I am now on the Flower Spray

28 March 2017