Category Archives: Cross-Stitch

SeaDay 2

Posted on by August 18, 2017  

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

Posted on by July 1, 2017  

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

Posted on by June 12, 2017  

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

Posted on by June 10, 2017  

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

Posted on by May 29, 2017  

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

Posted on by May 17, 2017  

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

Posted on by May 15, 2017  

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

Posted on by May 12, 2017 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

Posted on by April 8, 2017 4

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

Posted on by April 2, 2017  

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

Posted on by March 30, 2017 1

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

Handover Started

Posted on by March 24, 2017  

Last night in the Centrum the hand over to Thompson/Tui was started. Lots of people, cake, balloons, music and a few speeches. Since I was standing as part of the group on the stairs I will completely spare you pictures. Did I mention speeches? The Royal personal were short, heartfelt and clear. The Thompson personnel, at least the ones from the Miami home office came across as a bit condescending. Tui Discovery II? Please, how about a real name…

And no, I did not touch the cake. After attempting to sit in a lounge for part of the morning and having to move multiple times due to people coughing we retreated to one of our cabins for the afternoon.

It also was formal night. I skipped the rack of lamb in favor of mushroom curry..

Good progress today – I’m now on two columns past the midpoint. Of course, I would be a much happier bunny had I not forgotten two colors…

23 March 2017

Toward the Suez

Posted on by March 20, 2017  

You should have heard the complaints all morning when there wasn’t any internet. I mean, seriously? Is it really a crisis if you can’t read a newspaper on a Sunday or play on line poker? Jill and I just shook our heads and kept on stitching.

19 March 2017

Otherwise it was a quiet day punctuated by the usual dance classes, art auctions, bingo and quizzes. And maybe a cheer or two when the techs managed to get the sand out of the receivers and the passenger/crew internet connection back. As far as why we managed to get hit by a sandstorm, the Red Sea is simply not that wide. Having 75+km/hr winds means that they easily make it from the Arabian Peninsula to any ship which is within 40-50 km of their shore.

my view for most of the day

We arrived at the East end of the Suez around 2300…

 

 

looking toward the port

HOA & Djibouti

Posted on by March 18, 2017 2

Watching the map this morning as we w\sailed through the narrowest part of the straights (which I am sure was planned for daylight) I was reminded of how little I miss the Arab Middle East. Or HOA (Horn of Africa) or that nasty place in 2003-4 referred to Djibouti and should be only visited if you never left the airfield.

According to the [ex]Marine I met up with on deck this morning, we were due to pass through the narrowest portion of the straits at 0900. At least that is what the front desk told him when we called. Neither of us being all that stupid about geography and willing to look at the progress screen on the telly, we were on the deck right before 0600. Since sunrise was around 0515, this explains why we slowed down so much overnight. This area is definitely one to pass during the day.

Looking off to Port, the African coast is receding in the distance. And is plain, we are not exactly the only ship making this passage.

 

On the Arabian Peninsula side…

 

With neither side looking all that welcoming.

 

Cross Stitch update –

17 March 2017

 

 

Down memory lane

Posted on by March 17, 2017  

last night I finally downloaded the 2007-2015 content from proseknitic.de in preparation for cancelling the site.  Should I bother to tell you how many spam comments I had to kill. I found them, of course after I had done the import so I am hoping that most fell outside the import windows.

Then I took a look at comments from way back when and started following links from all the knitters.

Should I not have been surprised to find most of the blogs inactive for years or that I have lost track of a number of people? Part of it makes sense. The blog[s] drifted away from pretty solidly knitting content only to being more about travel with the occasional opinion rant more than fiber. In other cases, I think various people found that Ravelry was easier to use than posting on a blog where few people ever commented. Feedback is important unless your soul is basically that of a writer, in which case you just need to express yourself and the h* with anyone who can’t take a joke.

Thinking back – April 1998-March 2007 – email list. March 2007 (ten years – that is quite scary in some ways) to the present with more or less consistency running both the blog and an email list that varies in size depending on the subject, the year and the drop of those not interested. The last has been balanced by the gain of new friends.

 
My first mailing lists actually went out from my laptop but through a military server. Use of that server lasted till ~2000 when it finally quit tossing outside emails and implemented some security procedures. After that it was min.net for 10 years till the guys got bored and went out of business. Then there was YahooGroups which I think lasted almost until the UK. At some point the restriction on number of addresses was lifted and I went back to emailing straight. Now? Gmail doesn’t have a problem with a serious number of addressees and cross posting from the blog is pretty much cut and paste along with the occasional editing.
 

At the end of my session with the computer I verified that those pictures which were still on the old blog transferred to the new. Those which seem to have disappeared off that site won’t be found till I dig through my photo archives at home. I knew there was a reason that I backed up everything. I’ll finish PDFing the archives and pages just to have them before pulling the plug on the last three sites hosted in Germany.

 

Clock Fractal

I am making progress

15 March 2017

The Cochin I didn’t sea.

Posted on by March 9, 2017 4

As we sailed in, I sat and watched as first the industrial area went by, some lovely houses with fishing vessels and then the new city at a distance. Rather than dock at the city proper, we docked at one of the outer islands.

Looking out the starboard side at the dock, there were buses galore, industrial port and a line of vendors under white opened sided tents. Mentally I placed “go out and look at the vendors” somewhere above cutting toenails and below eating off ship. That is – not really high on my to-do list. There is a synagogue in the area and that would have been a nice visit. But given the population density and my current vulnerability to infectious disease I labeled the idea as not worth doing.

Instead, I had a lovely time chatting with various people and enjoying another supper delivered by room service –

just the right amount

 

Of course, the nagging to return landing cards started about 1900 when they announced they needed them ALL back. Even if you never bothered to get off ship. And here I thought it was going to be my souvenir of India….

Cross stitch update –

The flower spray

 

and

the start on the clock

 

Tomorrow we are back at sea for a day of peace, quite and a bridge tour. Why not? Last opportunity on this ship….

Amazing Service

Posted on by March 8, 2017 15

There we were, Jill and I happily sitting in my cabin and working on our respective cross-stitches when a knock came at the door. Answering, it was a nice young man from room service who dropped off a tray with three sets of what looked like entrees, two sets of silverware, smiled and beat feet out the door before I could say a word or tip him.

???? I mean, we had been talking about going up to the Park Cafe for maybe soup or salad. I had pretty much just had fruit for breakfast so lunch definitely was in order. Admittedly, I had chatted with the Sous-chef the other day about mostly ordering from room service and inquiring about the availability of Indian since it isn’t on the normal menu (much less anything other than sweet potato fries and deserts being of vegetarian persuasion. )

Apparently my absence had been noted and both she and a couple of other staffers were worried I wasn’t eating properly. So here I had a lovely coconut milk based curry with pressed cheese, popadoms, nan, dahl, three condiments as sides, rice. Thank goodness Jill was around to help me eat since it was enough food for many. So much in fact that I called room service around 1700 to reassure them that I wouldn’t need supper. Obviously the cabin number shows up on the system – the manager on that name answers the phone with “what can we get you Miss Holly!”

From here on in, I am just going to be sensible. If I don’t put in an order they will bring me food and probably too much. So I will enjoy the nice upgraded cabin for the rest of the cruise, room service for 1-2 meals a day and all the lattes I can drink in the lounge.

Cross stitch

this has become

this

 

and is the project I just started. Tried working on black and gave it up as stupid, switching to navy as a better option…

Falling like snow

Posted on by February 20, 2017 4

gently drifting away, there was a small cloud of hair on my pillow two mornings ago. Not unexpected, I had run my hand through my hair last night and come away with strands between my fingers. But my days of the temporary cute bob are limited.  What I am also noticing is all the grey hair, which I had been denying is all that plentiful.  I probably should be glad that I’m not imitating the current bumper crop of rainstorms.

I’d had the discussion about hair loss with my oncologist just this past Wednesday. He said that it didn’t occur in all of his patients. I quietly pointed out that 90+% of his patients were male, most over the age of 65. Hair is not an issue with most of them. Me, on the other hand, I figure that hair loss is a price that I most definitely will be paying to bring to kill off enough tumor cells.

And here I originally was going to talk about President’s Day. I remember when it was Washington’s Birthday; the change in name receiving general acceptance not occurring till the 1980s.  (FYI – Next year it will fall on 19 Feb). When you work for/are part of the Federal Government it is one more holiday on which you have to organize call coverage being as how it is cheaper to use military than to pay overtime to civilian employees.

Where was I? Oh, right hair loss. Potential to go back to wearing freaking hats which I swore I would never do again when I retired from active duty.  I found a couple of patterns and may just stick with scarves. Either way, I am not one to shave my head to speed up the process. Somehow the drama of handfuls of hair is balancing out my general irritation at the whole idea.

Meanwhile, I am making progress on the bijillion shades of blue that go into this pattern. Having a small Ott light shining directly on the fabric has made the whole process a lot easier…

 

20 Feb 2017

Navy on Black

Posted on by February 20, 2017

You see, I had this bright idea of creating a cross-stitch from this amazing clock face fractal I found. I have the software and tried a number of different parameters. Part of what makes it stand out is the dark background. If I want to cut the colors down to 30 – then my program assigns dark navy as the background color. But I really prefer just a few more colors and black.

Fractal Clock Face

The next choice of course is background. If I can deal with stitching on black, that would leave me thousands fewer stitches…..  This leaves the following challenge

DMC 939 on black

which points out that – the canvas is part of the design and gee – there isn’t much contrast with DMC939

testing the second color

It is really, really obvious that bright light helps.  Now I am going to need to find my small clip on light for travel. Or Jill and I are going to have to stake out a small window table in the Lounge right next to the window for our March trip in order to have lots of daylight.

The cats are enjoying our company. Especially when they are charging through the house about four in the morning.