Varna Stash

Sometimes you just turn around and a shop is there. That's what happened several times in Bulgaria with us. The shop I bought this stuff from in Varna was - get this- in the pedestrian underway to cross the road in front of the cathedral. It was a tiny hole in the wall and stocked with trims and yarn, no fabric. In Bulgaria, it's either a trim and yarn shop or a fabric only shop, no mixing! I couldn't even find pins in the fabric shops.

The two skeins of yarn are a local brand and eyelash. I just liked the color and they feel silky smooth. The trims were dirt cheap. I really like the dyed lace on top the best.

I even bought some beads. My companion said that every time I walk into one of these shops in poorer countries, I pay the shop's rent for the week or month. I think he's silly. All the shop keepers were friendly and helpful, even when I didn't speak Bulgarian and they didn't speak English.

Another Bit of Progress

I told you last week I'd made small progress on this. It happened again this week. Most of the progress, even, is to the side. But it's several stitches more toward completion. For some reason, I've been a bit busy.

Plovdiv Cross Stitch

I bought two cross stitch kits from the yarn shop in Plovdiv. They're from a Polish company called Ariadna. The fabric's pregridded, and you can see from the designs that they're completely stitched. Price was exceedingly small. I'll start working on one soon to see if I like the way it stitches up.

Another Round Robin Start

This block was pieced entirely from fabrics I bought in Kosovo and Bulgaria. The theme for this round robin is autumn, so I made it all in what I consider to be "fall" colors. I like the look of it and wonder what they will do with it.

The Accident

On this past Sunday, AFTER we got home from Bulgaria, this happened. It was in the middle of Decan, as we were on the way to Decani Monastery and following another US vehicle to get there. Some Kosovar decided to turn left without brake lights or turn signal and slammed his brakes. Four cars back, well, we plowed into the SUV in front of us. This is the front of our car. Nice damage ... he's selling it for scrap.

This is a picture of the back of the SUV we ran into. Did I mention it was armored? All the damage it got was the license plate falling off and a very small crack in the bumper. No one was hurt in the crash (not even the puppy!), and we did get to the monastery after about an hour and a half with the police and paperwork. Had to go back to the main station in Peje to complete the paperwork after visiting the monastery, but we were all home by dark. I'll have pictures of the monastery up in the next couple of weeks, but I want to finish the Bulgarian series first.

On the Plane...

Sitting in first class means you have room to break out the stitching, which I did. I stitched on the Vienna-Paris flight and again on the Paris-Newark one. Lots of positive comments from the people who saw me doing it. Anyway, part of what I stitched was this - I worked on the compass rose. The outer lines are now all the way down to the east and west markers, so I made quite a bit of progress.

The Worst Road EVAR

These pictures are of the -good- part of the trip from Varna to Plovdiv. We did all the prudent things - we had a map. We printed off directions from google. Everything should have gone smoothly, right? Nope. We got lost. Actually, we took the right road ... it was just a goat track. So. Here's the good part: we stopped for lunch just north of Shumen at this place. The owner didn't speak a word of English and we didn't speak any Bulgarian. From deciphering the menu written totally in Cyrillic, I was able to order us chicken soup and shop salad for lunch, along with diet coke and bread. It was excellent!

Here's a picture of the soup. It was obviously homemade and very full of bits of chicken.

This is a typical shop salad plus a few extras - the local feta-type cheese, cucumbers, and tomatoes. There were olives and onions in this one too. We ate the whole thing. This salad is normally served without dressing.

As you can see, the owner keeps this restaurant in the middle of no where in immaculate shape. The local shepherd was enjoying a midafternoon beer, his flock across the road, while we were eating. Anyway, we'd gone too far on this road and we were on the way to Romania instead of Bulgaria when we passed here. We turned around just after and got onto the "right" road. BIG mistake. I was driving, my first time driving in the Balkans (another story there), and we ended up on a road that was washed out in one direction and full of potholes in the other. Lucky for us, we were supposed to take the pothole direction - over a several thousand foot mountain behind a logging truck on basically a one lane, two way dirt track. I drove it all, though, and my companion didn't complain about my driving once. It was still scary! No photos of the road - we were so busy driving and trying to stay un-wrecked that pictures just didn't cross our minds.

What was supposed to be a six hour drive took almost double that. I'm just glad that we got a good lunch and a warm welcome at the hotel in Plovdiv when we got there. Never, ever take Route 7 in Bulgaria. It's a nightmare.