Images From Georgian Bay

For the first week of my holidays I hopped into my car and drove 5.5 hours west from my home to the Port Severn area of Georgian Bay (Ontario).  After Sheila inviting my circle of stitching friends up for a mini-getaway in June, I called her up a few weeks later and boldly invited myself up for a visit during my summer holidays.  I was very lucky, and Sheila agreed for me to come up for a few days at the end of July.  I had a great visit with Sheila and gave me an opportunity to get to know her better, as every time I have seen her has been at the spring and fall retreats in a room full of yacking, stitching ladies. 

Sheila & Jim's home from the water

Jim still has his grandfather's car from 1935, we went for a drive and ice cream I got to sit in the rumble seat in the back!  What fun!

Sheila my wonderful hostess and her dog, Molly

Boys from one of the many camps on Georgian Bay

An neat little tug!

One of the islands you can camp on, closed for obvious reasons!  Yikes!

Lots of sailboats about

The loon, found on the $1 coin... the loonie!

The Marine Train At Big Chute, the water levels between two bodies of water is just too drastic for locks so the boats drive onto this "train" are brought up the hill and drive on in the next body of water.

Marine Train delivering its passenger in the other lake

The hydro dam open at Big Chute, great white water!

Severn Falls

A number of silos in the Midland area are painted like this

It was a wonderful 4 days in the gorgeous Georgian Bay region!  Thank you Sheila and Jim for your generous hospitality!

A Huge Happy Dance

Hi everyone!  I'm back from my first week of holidays, well actually I've been back since Friday.  I haven't blogged because I've been spending a little bit of time with Todd, it was his Birthday on Friday... and I've been beading, and beading, and beading!

The result of all of this beading????

Celestial Dragon

c2001 Teresa Wentzler/Leisure Arts

Stitched on 28ct Forget-Me-Not Blue Joblean

Stitched with DMC cotton, Kreinik braid & blending filament, Mill Hill Beads

The Chinese characters are : top left - happiness, top right - longevity, bottom left - virtue, bottom right - wisdom

Here's a closeup that shows a bunch of details, like the scales, the netting and beads, and couching.

I started this originally back in probably 2001 as a New Year's project, then I ignored it for a very long time!  This year I decided it was time to actually get moving with this project.  I started seriously working on it back in March of this year.  So in the space of 5 months I've finished up this piece and I'm soooo happy with it!

I'm heading off to Quebec City tomorrow, but I will have Internet access so I hope to catch you up on the happenings and pictures from my first week of holidays.

Jason & Roxanne Get Hitched

Before I head off for my trip to Georgian Bay, just wanted to let you know that Celestial Dragon is still not done, so it'll be coming with me!  I won't be online until I return!

Here are a few shots from the wedding I went to Saturday night.

Here's a not so great picture of me, gosh my hair needs brushing!!!  That's what happens when you drive around in a car when its hot and the windows are down.  I can take a good picture, but I am never happy with the pictures of myself.

My friend Paige (on left) with her cousin, we hung out for the evening.

The ceremony was held outside on one of the rooftop terraces at a downtown hotel

Bride & Groom

The Kiss

Dancing up the aisle!

Wedding Row All Framed Up

I haven't done any framing in ages!  Wedding Row proved to be a breeze to frame!  The frame went together beautifully without giving me any headaches, and the stretching went so smoothly.  No tweaking and playing with it for hours on end to get things straight and even.

Wedding Row by Bent Creek

Frame detail

I'll be giving it to the bride and groom tonight.

CD, all the purple netting done now onto the blue netting

Here's were CD stands.  I was hoping for a nice long stitching marathon last night, well I was wrong I was in bed by 8pm (which is very unlike me!).  Oh well, all of my chores and stuff are done I've got until mid afternoon to stitch before I have to get ready to go.

Frrrreeeedoooom!

Today at 3 pm I officially started my holidays!  I have been looking forward to some time off of work.  For quite awhile my plans were up in the air, also I didn't really want to nail myself down.  Now I've got two busy weeks ahead of me!

Wedding Row - Bent Creek

Saturday evening I have a wedding to go to, one of my long time TKD buddies is tying the knot.  Today I started the process of framing the wedding sampler I've stitched for him and his bride.

Monday I'll be packing up my stuff and my stitching and heading back up to Georgian Bay to visit Sheila.  She hosted our June get together, this time I'm going for a visit just her and I!  So I'm looking forward to lots of stitching, relaxing, some nice walks/runs, and time out on the water. 

My second week, it looks like I'll be spending a couple of days with my Mum in Quebec City.  After having a small taste of it back in 2000 I knew I wanted to go back.  Quite a few of my friends and family have been recently and its helped us narrow down this year's destination fairly easily.

Where I've had the time this week I have been working away on Celestial Dragon, its still not done!  I spent Saturday and Sunday finishing up the backstitching of the dragon, the scales on the dragon, and couching gold braid on the border.  I'm now working on the backstitch netting, I've almost completed all the purple netting but there's still blue netting to go in and a LOT of beads!  There's a lot of stuff to do tomorrow, so I'll try to get in as much stitching as possible but probably not as much as I'd like!

I have been stitching where I can this week, but it has as

July Goals And Stuff

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by and visited my new blog and thank you for all your support and very kind words!  I read and appreciate every comment (on both blogs).

We're a few weeks into July and I still haven't shared my stitching goals with you (shame on me!).  Even though I haven't put them up here to share with you I did make a point of jotting it down on paper when the first of the month rolled around. 

June Review
Finish Wedding Piece - Yup just have to get it framed before next Saturday!
Stitch an Ornament - Yes!
Find Something for Beatrice's Round Robin - Yes I've picked it and made my working copy
Work on Celestial Dragon - Yes!

July Stitching Goals
Finish Celestial Dragon
Stitch an Ornament
Start Beatrice's RR
Start 2 Smalls

I didn't take a Celestial Dragon progress picture Friday night as I usually do, probably because I was so anxious to work on it!  Late Thursday night I put the final "X" in the dragon!  Last night I started the process of backstitching the dragon on this last quarter.  I wrapped that up today (I took this picture before I realized I hadn't finished the beard), and started giving the dragon scales.  Boy that is taking a long time!  Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to start the background netting.  There's still a lot of detail to go into this piece!

Have you noticed this year that I'm not sharing as many photos with you as I used to?  That's because I haven't really been shooting very much this year.  I don't know why, I'm not shooting as much and I find I don't carry my camera around as much either.  I used to always have my point and shoot in my purse, I've really got to get it back in there!

Earlier this week after getting home from work I decided to photograph some of my day lilies that are currently in bloom on the side of my house.  It felt really nice to get out with my camera!  Now I wish it would just cool down enough for me to go wandering around with it again, like I used to!

Here are some shots from my time in the yard.

Anudder Blog

I'm a member of the Weight Watchers Canada online communities and e-tools, over the weekend there was a recent upgrade and one of the components was a blog section which being an avid blogger for so many years I decided to start one over there.  But is it really getting any traffic, and I can't easily share with you guys (for those of you who care/are interested), there seems to be no direct link to that blog.  So I'm going to share with you here what I'm putting over there as well.
I'm hoping this will help me stay in focus and on track

Follow the linkity-link : Battle of the Bulge : Trying to Stay at Goal