Rounding the Bend

Except for a few stitches of gold, the upper leg of the last corner is done. Much as I love these colors, I'm beginning to grow tired of it and want to move on to the next part. Soon!

Closing In

I have the medium blue of the flag done now, and some more on the torch. It was slow when I was in Croatia. I think I only worked on it twice. The next picture will show more progress.

Experiencing a Flowering

I now have almost all of the large areas done on the front. Yay! I like how it's coming along and will spend a day or so on it next week to hopefully finish the front.

More Dubrovnik

After reading my previous Dubrovnik post, my companion said I had to do more. I'd mentioned the restaurant on the Gruz harbor and then not shown a picture, so... here is one he took. We were on the balcony terrace of the place and it was a clear night. The lights are across the bay between Babin Kuk (where we were) and Gruz. Boats would sometimes come in to dock. It was very pretty.

This is part of Gruz by daylight, including a spiffy suspension bridge that we went over on our way to Split.

Our hotel had "outside" elevators. They were more like tiny trams, since they went on a grade instead of straight up and down. Here's a picture of the hotel's beach from the elevator. The beach, like all Adriatic ones, is rocky.

Another thing I didn't mention was how we got into Dubrovnik's old town. When you park on the north side of the fort, you come out at the top of it and have to walk down stairs. Lots of stairs. On the way back, you get to go up them. There are stores and shops and cross streets on them too.

Green Redone

I'm much more pleased with this since I changed the outer heart color. I also did something different with the filling stitches - I decided to do a modified Algerian Eye stitch in the middles of the large flowers. I've also decided to leave the inner hearts blank instead of filling them. I like the look better. Since this picture, I've finished up band 5. On to band 6...

Dubrovnik Stash

There are numerous textile sellers on Dubrovnik's old town streets. All purport to be selling handmade items. Very few of them are actually plying their craft at their stalls. I broke down and bought this lovely cloth from one of them. It's very plain linen with a satin stitch border of flowers with a line of slinge around the inside (really well done) and a hemstitched hem. It cost me twenty euros, a pretty good price, I think.

I also found a fabric shop! It was tucked away in one of the streets in the lower portion of the old quarter, fairly close to the Poor Claires monastery. She had a small inventory - a couple of needlepoint kits, some fabrics, and more trims. She also stocked a lot of shades of the local perle cotton. I bought these trims for my crazy quilting. The braided ribbons are dark blue and green. She had other colors - buff, red, and orange - but these were the ones I liked best. I've got a bit of a fascination for eyelets these days, so I bought the white. Now to figure out what to do with them. In sum, the cost was less than ten dollars.

Missing Lines

I discovered while on the road trip that the canvas is missing some lines on the petals. If I had done it the way it was drawn, I would not have had alternating petals all the way around. When you look at the picture they give with the stitch guide. it's pretty obvious the canvas wasn't completely drawn. Another disappointment in this series. I'm compensating and will finish it, just hate that I have to do so. This is what I accomplished while waiting in traffic jams in Montenegro.