Bender (Tighina) Moldova - War Cemetery

 Being in eastern Europe, you'd expect a war memorial and cemetery of this size to be from World War II.  This one is unusual in that it's not.  It's from the Ottoman-Russian wars of the 18th and 19th centuries.  These wars are one of the root causes of Moldova's current frozen conflict.  They caused a lot of settling of  certain ethnic groups on lands formerly occupied by other ethnic groups... you get the picture.  Anyway, beautiful place, but hard to get an unbiased history of.  Lots of nationalities, from as far away as Sweden, buried here.

Socks!

Warm, warm wool socks perfect for cold winter days.  Ronda and her husband gave them to Andreas in appreciation of us letting them use our spare room overnight.  Thank you!

More Flaky

A bit more done on the snowflake.  It's taken a lower priority at the moment due to having to work on the blackwork project.

Pretty Pretty Scarf

This scarf was given me by Ronda, one of our Peace Corps friends.  Its so pretty, and practical too!  Thank you!

Between Heat Entertainment

 The top two pictures and a couple more show some of the few attempted passes on this course.  You also get to see the extreme safety features they employ to protect the track staff.  The last three pictures are of the between heat entertainment, where they took out the Moldovan-painted car and drifted, laying rubber all over the track.  

Still Hairing

A bit more white done, including some between the curls, and some more hair.  At least each time I work on this I see progress.

Karen's Goldwork Block

 I've finished another goldwork block.  There's only one more for me to do before I get mine back.  I ended up finishing another block off with a very small addition of a fan button, too, because the previous person was too sick to finish.  The block I worked on for myself had a large yellow spot on it.  It took me quite a while to figure out what to do with it, since I was only using gold thread and such.  I decided, after reading Karen's guidance, to put toasts in different languages on it.  She wanted luck stuff.  The edges I left blank because I did the seams so heavily and wanted something to counterbalance them.