How I spent my holiday week (and behaved very badly)

Wow!  It was a very busy week last week.  I didn't even get a chance to do any stitching from Tuesday until Monday of this week.  To begin with, we left for a whirlwind retreat to the NC Outer Banks on the 4th of July.  I haven't been to the Outer Banks since I was young, and I was looking forward to seeing everything there is to see there.  While we did not visit any of the lighthouses (we're saving them for another trip, ideally when the temps are in the 70's rather than the 100's), there were plenty of other things to keep us busy.

Among other things, we drove through the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in search of black bears and red wolves.  Sadly, the animals we saw were dragonflies and one very nervous blacksnake.  But we did see lots of scat along the road.  It wasn't horse scat, so I proclaimed it to be bear scat (it probably wasn't) and decided the bears were taunting us.  We did get to see watch the zookeepers feed some baby alligators and admire some adorable little turtles at the NC Acquarium:

Doesn't he look like a wise old man?  I loved all the fish and water animals we got to see at the acquarium.

We also attended the outdoor drama The Lost Colony.  I think I might have enjoyed the play more if I hadn't been marinating in my own sweat the whole time.  But check out Queen Elizabeth's costume.  It's simply delicious!

I wonder if someone hand embroidered all that lovely gold work on her skirts.

We returned from the Outer Banks late on Friday evening after a quick visit to his father's home on one of the sounds.  The next day, we hosted both our families at a cookout.  Almost everyone came, and Alton grilled some delicious burgers, dogs, and braats.  I think everyone enjoyed themselves.  I know I did.  But I was way too busy to take any photos!  After almost everyone had left, Alton and I and my mom and dad all piled into their car and headed over to the state fairgrounds to check out the antiques show that was going on that weekend.  And that's where I got into trouble.  Because I spotted this little beauty and I just HAD to have her:

I'm such a bad, bad girl, because she wasn't cheap.  But she's mine now!  I know it's not the best of photos, but surely you can tell how gorgeous she is!  Susannah Turpin stitched this sampler in 1742.  It's on a fine, fine piece of linen, probably about 50 count, although I've not had the courage to try and count all those threads.  There are gorgeous shades of red, blue, green and yellow in this piece.  She used satin stitch, montenegrin, long arm cross, rice stitch, eyelet, and a couple of others that I'm struggling to identify.  The workmanship is so fine and delicate.  I am just beyond thrilled to have her in our house.  Mom, of course, is itching to get her own hands on her.

I know that this piece came from England, but I had two conflicting locations to start with.  I've tried an internet search of her name and came up with a possible candidate for being 'my' Sussanah.  If I found the right one (and really, how likely is that), she would have been 7 years old when she stitched this.  I'm going to try to dig through some of mom's reference books to see if I can find any similar samplers pictured there with more definite provenance.  Beyond that, I'm not sure what else I could do to learn anything more about the maker of this sampler.  If any of you have any thoughts on other avenues I could pursue, please feel free to share!

In other stitchy news, I have decided to set aside Penny America until September (or until the Olympics strikes a need to stitch something patriotic) and returned to my BAP challenge piece.  When last I left my giraffe sampler, I was slogging through the bottom half of the piece.  Well, I decided that I was tired of all that ground and feet, I wanted something identifiable on my sampler.  So I parked the thread that was in progress in the ground, and turned to the upper left corner.  I've been stitching since Monday, like I said, and I'm almost down with the first page of the pattern (only bits of the border left to stitch in).  I am so happy to have palm trees and most of a person now living on my sampler.

Here's where I was at the last update:

Here's what I've finished this week:

I plan to stick to this piece for the rest of this week and all of next week before (probably) returning to Sous le Soleil.  I'm also working on getting together the pictures I want to use for my shower, wedding, and honeymoon albums.

That's it for now, I suppose.  We've finally gotten some rain here in the past day, and it's just started up again as I sit here typing this post.  I'm glad, because it makes things cooler and we needed the water.  Hope everyone is having a cool, crafty week!

I finally scrapbooked!!!

After almost 6 months away from scrapbooking (well, except for the shopping part, I never really behind on the shopping part), I have finally gotten back it and gotten a few layouts done.  I used National Scrapbook Day to push me to 1- get the bonus room into some semblance of organization, and 2- get my scrap on!

On the organization front, a great deal of progress has been made, but there's a lot left to go.  I had more scrap and stitching product than I had storage space in the old apartment.  Now I have the room, but I am still in the process of acquiring the storage units that I need.  Hopefully, I'll have the room arranged completely to my liking by the end of the summer.

On the scrapping front, I have SEVEN layouts to share!!!  Yuppers, I am definitely back in the groove.  I am still working for the perfect place to take photos of my layouts.  There's plenty of light in my new room, but the layouts seem to come out way too dark.  I've tried to lighten them up to better capture their true appearance.

First up, and my favorite from the batch, is a layout about a trip Alton and I took to Death Valley back in 2009.

 I guess I like the color combination.  It was a great trip, which began with a girls' only visit to Las Vegas and ended with several days exploring the area with my honey.  Loved it!

This next layout is a quick, simple one showcasing a photo of my maternal grandparents and uncle working on the farm.  I'm not sure exactly when the photo was taken, but it's probably from the late 60's or early 70's.

 And finally, there are a few more layouts from my neverending Egyptian album.  When I last blogged about our vacation, we were spending our time in Aswan, and exploring Lake Nasser.  With these new layouts, we pick back up from the visit to Kitchener Island and head south in a small, motorized boat.  I think we sailed  about 25 miles from the border of Sudan, and maneuvered amidst the rocks and rapids of the first cataract on the river Nile.  The birdlife here was beautiful.

 At one point, we could see caravans of camels.  Some of them resting on the edge of the desert on the shore of the Nile, and others loaded up and walking along narrow desert trails.  It was surely something to see.  

 Our boat pulled up to the shore, and we had a few short minutes to walk on the yellow sands of the desert. A few of us dared to take our shoes off and wade into the Nile.  It was refreshingly cool, and amazingly clear and clean looking, especially considering the amount of trash we had seen floating on parts of the river earlier in our trip.

From there, we cruised on, and eventually docked at a small Nubian village.  We were greeted by several young girls trying to sell us wooden dolls.  I bought one because I thought they looked so cute.  We were taken to a local family's home where we had some tea, and then they brought out the Nile Crocodiles.  Apparently many Nubian villagers rescue the baby crocs from the river, keep them in their homes until they are larger  and better able to protect themselves in the wild.  It was really something to have the chance to hold one in my arms.  Yes, its little mouth was tied shut for my protection, but it was still awe inspiring.

It was getting later in the afternoon, and as we left the village, the camels were coming home for the night.  Have you ever seen a string of camels come swaying by on their way home for dinner?  They are very focused on their route, and don't pay too much attention to anything in their way.  Including tourists.  It made for some interesting moments.

So that's it for my new layouts.  Next post will either be some more honeymoon photos, or some stitching photos.  I'm not sure which yet.  I did finally pick up my wedding proofs this weekend.  There are only about 800 of them.  I don't know how I'm ever going to choose which ones to scrap, which to get bigger images of, etc etc.  Maybe my next post will be wedding photos.  Who knows.  Tee hee.  Til next time, happy crafting everyone!

A Trip to the Beach

Last week was the annual judges' conference. Which meant that there was no court for me. And no court means... beach week! Well, okay, beach extended weekend. But still, nice and relaxing! Mom and Dad have a time share in North Myrtle Beach, and, fortunately, they were more than willing to let me use the second bedroom for a few days. While it wasn't directly on the beach, it was across the road. You could still open the balcony door and listen to the surf. And here's our view of the ocean:

One of the great things about North Myrtle Beach is that the beachfront road area is soooo much calmer and quieter than Myrtle Beach itself (and it's maybe 5 miles up the shore, with much of the shopping and dining located on the king's highway). If our hotel had been on the shore road in Myrtle Beach, we would have had to deal with things like stoplights and cruising and inching forward a car's length at a time in the evenings. Instead, our road looks like this:

And that is probably why I could enjoy the sound of the ocean from our balcony despite being across the road!

Other things that I love about beach 'extended weekend':
1- visiting with my parents (of course!) and any other family members who happen to make it down. This year, my sister was there for two days, but my brother and sil were not able to make it.
2- yummy, yummy dining! If you visit the area and have never been to the Chesapeake House. YOU MUST GO. Seriously. Go.
3- outlet shopping. Wheee! I scored a new travel purse, and four (yes, I said 4) new pairs of shoes, all desperately needed. Oh yeah, and a new dress, some candles, my semi-annual stash of pantyhose (ick), and a few new shirts and a sweater. Love it, love it, love it!
4- walks on the beach. I didn't make it out early enough to get the freshest pickings, but I thought what I did find was pretty enough:

5- finally, there's the chance to get in some major stitch time, using the fabulous natural light coming in from the balcony window. I know, I know, this part would be much better with progress photos! Sorry. It's too dark to take the photos now, and I wanted to post while the mood was on me. I ended up taking Jenny Bean's Creation Sampler with me. It's about half finished. I'll post a photo next time around. I've also been inspired by all the patriotic pieces everyone has been sharing in blog world. I found a cute little freebie from The Sampler Girl over the weekend, and have almost finished stitching it. Ideally, I would do the finishing this weekend, but I think that I'm going to need to pay a visit to my favorite 'shop' (aka, Mom's house) before I can do that. I could back it with red felt, but I want some trim, and that, I do not have.

Til next time, keep creating and stay cool!