Friday Finish

The last few months have been especially busy.  I posted about our brief trip in the middle of October to see our daughter in western Massachusetts right after the retreat in Ocean City.  Two weeks after the trip to the Berkshires, my husband and I went to Hawaii for twelve days.  We spent three and a half days on Oahu where the highlights were seeing Pearl Harbor, Shangrila (Doris Duke's house) and spending an evening with our daughter's college roommate and her family.  The rest of the trip was spent on the big island, Hawaii, which was fascinating.  We learned that it has eleven microclimates and were surprised to see cacti as well as pastures full of cows.  There was active lava flow when we were there, but it was at least 100 miles away from us.  We both enjoyed seeing Volcano National Park as well as touring a coffee plantation. 

It felt as if we had barely recovered from the long flights when we took off again for Baton Rouge to see our younger son present his master's research.  That was a very emotional event for me.  A lot of the research information went right over my head so I just sat there thinking about how just yesterday he had been a baby, and now he is talking about attaching electrodes to aphids.  (Don't ask!)  We also got to spend time with his girlfriend who is soon to be our future daughter-in-law.  Again, just yesterday, he was a baby...

Before the Baton Rouge trip, we attended the candlelight Advent service at our younger son's college for the second year in a row.  I love this service so I'm hoping it will be an annual event for a long time.  Finally, in the middle of December, we took advantage of a free hotel night and stayed overnight in New York so that we could see the tree at Rockefeller Center and take in the Rockettes.  It was the first time my husband and older son had seen the Rockettes.  I loved that my 28 year old who has lived in New York for four years and thinks he has seen everything was still delighted by seeing the camels onstage.

With all this traveling, I'm behind in posting my recent stitching and quilting finishes.  I'll be posting one a week for awhile to catch up.  The first is CHS Alphabet, stitched on 36 countwo tht with two strands of floss over two threads.  I changed the color in the alphabet block to GA Antique Rose.  This was a WIP for a long time as I only worked on it at retreats and guild meetings.  Last summer, a friend invited me to stitch with her every Wednesday afternoon and this is the piece I took with me most weeks.  She encouraged me by wanting to see which letter I was up to each week and little by little, it got done.  This piece was fun and has lots of good memories associated with it.