Spring has Sprung!

My daughter had her Japanese Speech Contest Saturday and came in 2nd place, yea Maggie! She's the one in the black dress above. The girl next to her took 3rd and the guy was "most humorous". They are all in the same class and their teacher is standing next to them. It was held on the anniversary of my dad's death so we knew she'd do well.
Here's a photo of Dad in Wisconsin maybe 10 years before he died. We miss you Dad.

But life goes on and spring has sprung in north-central AZ. My family has a cabin near Payson and my sister took these photos there this weekend. Here's a peony about to bloom.
And a pretty cactus flower
Some beautiful tulips in the yard.

And the apple tree was in bloom. Happy Spring everyone!

June2007 Just Cross Stitch

This is the cover of the June Just Cross Stitch
This is the piece I designed.

I just received the latest issue of Just Cross Stitch featuring a design that I did. It's thrilling to see something you created in an honest to goodness magazine and I think Elizabeth Pugh did a wonderful job with the article she wrote. Thank you to everyone who has written with good wishes and questions.

March Challenge

It's taken me forever to post these two pieces mainly because somehow a red spot appeared in two places on my fabric so I restitched to cover one but the other remains. So I tried to tea dye that area, didn't work and eventually ended up just washing the whole piece, didn't help. So here it is with the red spot, maybe a little more faded than it was. I can never seem to get a scan that isn't crooked either, sorry!
Our challenge this month was to stitch something related to the Nativity story in the Bible. The above is my piece, spot and all and this one is Lorraine's:

She stitched the Maureen Appleton piece from the JCS ornament issue 1999, changed the linen color among other things but I really like how she added the vintage metal sequins all around the piece.

A quick spring trip

We finally had some time to get to Mexico after spring break was over. The weather was beautiful, the food was great, the crowds were gone and we explored more than usual. Isn't this a great curio shop?
We drove around in circles for 45 mins trying to find the dirt road to the restaurant at the top of this hill.
Yea! We finally found it and the view was spectacular though we were a little amused once we were up so high to see that the town that seemed to have so many streets when we were driving in circles, was actually not very big. We ate out on the patio...
and watched the sun set...

Out at the house the pelicans were everywhere...
Along with lots of seagulls...
We sat and viewed the stars on the patio each night...
... and explored on the rocks and tidepools below each day.

I wonder what stories this old boat could tell?

Whew, finally done!

I've had this sitting around for maybe 9 months to stitch and finally pulled it out at the last minute and finished it yesterday. I feel like a weight has been lifted, I never do well stitching for a deadline!

The top piece is a finishing companion for tools and will have an angled pocket going across the left side and hopefully the starfish will be peeking out of the pocket. The bottom piece is a companion pocket. I re-did these to reflect stitching by the sea rather than stitching in a garden. I had to leave the bees in though as the beautiful silk finishing fabric has bees on it.