Wine Tourism

 One of Moldova's few exports is wine.  This place, Chateau Vartely, is one of the major wineries.  The company is trying to make itself into a venue for tourism, too.  None of the grapes are grown at this site, but they do have three cottages for overnight rental, a very nice wine tasting area, and a beautiful restaurant.  Unfortunately, it's pretty much in the middle of no where...

They do have a lot of weddings and receptions there, though.

In the Red

It seems I'm in a very, very red phase on this at the moment.

Blue Sky...

or a bit of a cloudy one.  I mainly worked on sky this week.

Book Buy

When we went to UNIC, another department store in town, I bought some books.  The place was too crowded to really look around and buy things, but Andreas found these for me.  One is fishes in cross stitch.  The other is florals in surface embroidery with iron on transfers.  Together they were about $10.

The Lady Is Complete!

It's been quite a while, but she's finally done and she's beautiful!  The best viewing distance for her is about three feet.  It feels good getting such a large project done.  I've sent an email to the charity I made it for to see if they still want it.  If they don't, my husband insists on keeping it.  Now to find another patriotic piece to stitch!

Outside of being large, this was a fairly easy stitch.  My main complaint was that the beads were too large for the area they needed to fit, and that they were unevenly sized.  Made do, though.

The Guest Room

 Moldovan homes have a formal living/dining room, which acts as the family brag room.  It's the place where all the best things are kept, and is kept spotless.  It also has all the certificates and awards won by the family hung proudly, and the best rug on the wall.  This top picture is of the rug made at the craft school hung in their mock up of that room.  The second and third pictures are of embroidery in the room, and two more show the awards won by the school. 

The last photo is of the food and drink they laid out for us.  The drink was fresh pressed, barely fermented wine.

Working Left to Right

I'm working the top part from left to right now.  It's coming along pretty well, though I have nothing done on the bottom yet.