Incoherent Scribblings

Christmas by the Lake

Yesterday, when A. asked me what I wanted to do for Christmas, I jokingly replied, “Go for a walk on the beach.” (Remember, we are in southern Germany… a pretty long way from a beach.) “OK,” he said. “Get bundled up. We’re going to Tegernsee!” I had actually been thinking a nice warm beach somewhere in the Caribbean, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?

So, we hopped into the car and made our way down to Tegernsee. I have written about Tegernsee before because it is one of our favorite places to go in the area. It is the most gorgeous lake complete with a beautiful background of mountains. Of course, it is nicest in spring and summer, but even in the fall and winter the place has its charm.

We visited Tegernsee on Christmas last year and there was ice on the edges of the lake and quite a bit of snow. This year, however, the lake has no ice yet and while it was wet and muddy, there was very little snow. It didn’t seem to me that there were a lot of people hanging out at the lake on Christmas Day last year, but not so this year! The place wasn’t nearly as packed as it is in the spring or summer, but there were still a lot of people.

In fact, there were so many vehicles that we had a bit of an adventure finding a parking place.

There is a parking area near our favorite spot with a row of angle parking, a “car pass-through” of about 1 meter (a little over three feet), and directly behind the angle spots, a row of parallel parking. The parallel spaces are supposed to be for buses and motor homes and while the situation is tight, we can usually manage to squeeze through.

It just so happened that yesterday there was also a little bit of snow in the parking area. A small car had badly parked in an angle space that was about half full of snow. Directly behind it, a motor home had parked. This left less than the normal one meter drive through area. As we approached, A. didn’t think we would make it through. However, the spot was so tight that turning around wasn’t an option either. So I jumped out of the car and navigated him through the area with no more than 5cm (about 2″) between our car, the small car, and the motor home! I swear I will never get used to traffic and parking here in Europe! Amazingly we made it through without a scratch and then directly found a parking space.

While walking along the lake, I tried once again (mostly unsuccessfully) to be an amateur photographer. A few shots turned out OK before the batteries in my digital camera died. One was this photo, which I have so aptly titled “Lamp Post at Tegernsee.”

“Lamp Post at Tegernsee”
Copyright and photo 2004 by the blondelibrarian

Meet Polly and Maggie

I just finished five additional hours on “Passing Admirers” and can really see some progress today!

I decided to give the women in the picture names so that you know who I am talking about and working on. From now on, the woman on the right in the white dress will be known as “Polly” and the woman on the left in the violet dress “Maggie.” (Maggie’s dress looks brown in the display photo, but the floss colors are actually “Antique Violet.”) You may ask why I chose the names and I can only say I thought of them on the fly, but I think they sound like nice Victorian names.

Anyway, I have finally finished the bustle on Polly’s skirt and will try and do 5-10 more hours on her dress before I finish this rotation. The dress should go pretty quickly, because there aren’t nearly as many shades in the dress itself as there were in the bustle.

You can see the latest progress pictures in my cross-stitch gallery!

Sewing Wreath

Way back in February, I stitched the “Sewing Wreath,” by Mike Vickery. I discovered it from FreePatterns.com (registration required), but it is no longer there. However, it originally appeared in Cross Stitch Magazine, No. 40, p. 6, 1997.

The skill level for this piece is “challenging” and combined with the fact that it the second piece that I ever did on Evenweave, I can attest to the fact that I found it slightly difficult. Nevertheless, it stitched up pretty quickly (it might have taken me a week) and I didn’t even make that many mistakes! I quickly learned while doing this piece though that ¼ stitches have a distinct advantage on Evenweave.
I had wanted to frame it for quite sometime, but felt that a square frame didn’t do it justice. As luck would have it, a few weeks ago, I came across a small wooden hoop and decided that would be the best framing solution for this piece. I have a couple of other pieces I framed in hoops, but was never happy with my solution of trimming the fabric very close to the hoop and then tacking it down with my glue gun. After consulting with Isabelle, I decided to trim the fabric around the hoop in a wide circle, leaving the extra fabric as a decorative fringe. It turned out great. My only wish is that my walls weren’t white so you could see the fringe a little better.

(Click for a larger picture… Attention: it is over 300K, so it might take some time to load!)