Still Working on It

While in Bulgaria, for some reason I did a lot less stitching. Even though I'm back in Kosovo, my stitching time hasn't increased much. We rescued a puppy on Monday and I've been dealing with her. She'll be a separate blog post tomorrow. Anyway... I have been working on my spring mystery and am finally almost done with part six. I'm sooo behind on all these.

Ready to Mail

This is Melisa's block from one of my crazy quilt round robins before I did anything. It was hard for me to figure out what to do, since this block and its embellishment so far is just not my style.

I finally decided to do two motifs. Both have been done in my time in Kosovo and Bulgaria. I also did the silver bead seam between them. This is the overall block after my work.

I spent about eight hours stitching this paisley. It's got two huge stem stitch roses, lots of bugle beads, and six rows of chain stitch. I think it came out pretty well.

And here is the tree I made below it. The trunk and branches are outline stitch and the leaves and flowers are French knots. It took me a few hours to do this, too, but I like the effect on the print. It almost looks like dawn behind it.

Stash From Plovdiv, Part 1

Okay, so I went a little bit crazy with fabric buying in Plovdiv. But we found LOTS of fabric stores! This is the set of fabric I bought from the first fabric store - and it was very reasonably priced. Most of the fabrics were under 3 euros/meter.

These next pictures are all close ups of the fabrics. The blue and peach florals are going to be great for motifs; some of the flowers are three dimensional.

Three stretch laces are also here - all of them under 2 euros/meter. I also liked the overall lace floral in the upper left here. I think it'll make a great store of motifs.

More of Varna

When you first drive in to any Bulgarian city, you see row upon row of high rise apartment blocks. Sofia has them. Plovdiv has them, but not nearly as many. And Varna has several miles of them.

They were built during the communist era, and you can see from these pictures taken with my camera phone from the car how dilapidated they look. For large numbers of Bulgarians, this is a step up from the rural huts of the villages. All of the cities are in the process of building new, better housing. It's needed. I thought it was important to show these and not just the pretty places.

We drove home to Pristina yesterday. I'll be here just over another week before returning to the States.

Scotching It

This past week, I worked on Camelot some again. It's been all scotch stitch. I'm thinking of doing this pattern again, but in blues. I really like the diamond design in it.

Outside the Cities

We drove outside Varna on our second day there and stumbled upon a monastery. We decided to visit, thinking it'd be a collection of buildings. Needless to say, it wasn't. This first picture is a bit of mural that was taken off the monastery wall during its rediscovery.

The place is called Aladzha; it's north of Varna and south of Golden Sands, about a mile from the coast. You can see it's all wild around it from this picture. In fact, it's in the middle of a nature reserve.

And here is the monastery itself. Yep, it was carved into the hillside in the 13th and 14th centuries. Despite my fear of heights, I went all the way to the top.

This was one of the monastery's bigger chambers - the refectory. Yes, the ceiling's that low and yes, it's open to the air.

And here's a picture out from about halfway up the monastery. Really pretty parkland surrounds it and it'd be a pleasant place for a picnic. Unfortunately, my companion did not take a picture of the scary stairs up the side of the hill, so I can't show you how brave I was.

BAPHA Spells Varna

We were in Varna, and yes, it's spelled that way in Cyrillic, Tuesday and Wednesday. Here are some pictures from Tuesday. It was chilly and cloudy, so, since it's a seaside resort, it wasn't as happy a place to be as I'm sure it is in the summer. This first picture is of the McDonald's. Every major Bulgarian city has at least two, I've observed.

Like Sofia, Varna has a lot of public sculpture. This piece is on the sea side of a large public walkway. You can see the nice way the road is laid out.

This is the bravest ship in the Bulgarian navy - it actually won a battle. In 1912. They are very proud of it.

A lot of Varna's architecture is definitely mid to late nineteenth-century, like this building. I just liked the look of it.

Here's a picture of the sea from the rather pathetic public beach. There's more beach that looks better up and down the coast, but the public bathing area's building has just been really neglected. It needs help. You can see how gray the sky is and how rough the sea is.

Here's another shot of the public walking areas. This is a plaza about a quarter mile from the picture of the sculpture. One thing about all the towns we visited is that there is a shopping district that's walled off to traffic. It's nice to just stroll down the avenue.