Plaquing Along

I've got most of the colors done on the plaques. They're coming along, slowly, as everything these days. I'll be putting up more pictures of why things were slow last week in the next couple of days. Anyway, I like the look of these quite a bit.

Breaking In News

Sorry, no pictures for this post. For security reasons, people are discouraged from taking pictures of this area. I am currently staying with my companion/host, who works for the State Department at the US Embassy in Pristina. The building he lives in is on the same (very short) street as the incident that happened Friday night.

What it was like from our perspective - around eleven thirty Friday evening, we heard police sirens. There was some heavy traffic, too. Other than that, nothing. When we went out on Saturday, there was police tape and were some Kosovar police in SUV's parked at each end of the street. They let us pass without comment. When we went out to dinner and the grocery store (sorry, hipermarket) last night, we had to stop at the tape and let the SUV pull out from in front of it. The special plates on the car show it's not to be stopped. The taxi behind us was told to turn around and go away.

Anyway, it might sound exciting in the news and it's getting a lot of spin, but we're fine, we've had no problems, and there's really not a lot of danger around here.

Edited to add: This article from Voice of America is probably one of the better ones on the events of Friday night. The top picture is one of the bottom of our street (at one of the few times it wasn't raining these past few days). Nothing much going on here. By the way, I forgot to mention that we found out why we had the noise and the guards not from the embassy, but from my husband, who saw the news Saturday morning.

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...