Dragon Charted

123stitch.com had a sale on dragon charts last month.  My husband went shopping.  He bought a total of nine charts.  Now to get more time to stitch.....

Old Time Tools of Distilling

On President's Day, the embassy organized a trip to Transnistria for us.  Transnistria is a country-that-isn't.  This particular part of Moldova operates completely independently and has tried to be its own country or part of Russia.  Most people who live there are ethnically Russian, and the economy is still communist, although it is loosening some.

We went there to go shopping and to see where they make the local version of cognac.  The first room they showed us was their "sports room".  The sports will come tomorrow.  Today, the pictures are of the older machinery they kept - really old, hand cranked stuff.  I'm glad it's not so taxing to make these days.  The name of the distillery is Kvint, if you want to find more out about it.

Done With The Blues

I finished another challenge piece!  This one's even a twofer, since it's part of my crazy January challenge and was the petite project of the January CyberStitchers meeting.  All done now.  I feel smug!

Ten Done

The tenth part is done now; it was rather a smaller half band, and so didn't take all that long!

Quilted!

 I had this quilt top finished for quite a while, but never got around to doing anything with it.  I'd promised a friend that I'd make her a quilt for her baby, so... she looked through my pieced quilt tops and picked this one.  I didn't have time to hand quilt it last summer between moving and the shortness of time of a pregnancy, so I took it with me to the States and had a quilt shop in Shreveport quilt it for me.  She did a really good job and it was very inexpensive!  The only part of that I didn't like was that I had asked her not to bind it.  I wanted to put an ecru lace on the edges.  She bound it instead... these are the pictures my parents-in-law took of it before they shipped it off to Florine, who'd also moved in the meantime, for Alexandra.  It got there just before she  was born in October!

On To Seventeen

I am now officially on the seventeenth motif.  Only seven more to go after this!

Turning the Corner

I've begun to turn the inside corner on the bottom left.  I think I'm making faster progress on this one than I did the last two.