About Me

My photo
West Virginia
When I started my retirement travels in 2009, I wanted a way to share it with family and friends as it was happening. Hence, "My Travel Journal". However I realized I wouldn't always be on a trip and wondered what to do with the blog in between times. My daughter pointed out, wisely, that travels can also include trips to the kitchen to try a new recipe, trips to visit family, trips to my neighborhood Starbucks, or a fun day trip with a friend. You're welcome to join me on any of these journeys! I've set up individual pages for each of my major trips (see tabs above).

Also, I have an Etsy shop where my current needlework resides. The last pieces I posted here were in 2013! So if you'd like to see what I have accomplished recently, go to (and I apologize for having to copy and paste):

www.etsy.com/shop/thedollhouseneedle

I recently added an "Italian Word a Day" thingie which shows up at the bottom of every page. You see the word and can click to hear it pronounced. I've been enjoying it and I think my accent is improving as time goes by.

June 13, 2017

Just a short update...

I made it back home - at my 3-week check-up the doctor said I could drive home and wear my good walking shoe.  I figured since most of the trip is on interstates, it would be cruise control for most of it and I was already getting used to using my left foot on the break on the few outings I had while at Chris's.  It turned out to be fairly grueling because of the very rainy weather when I had to keep taking it out of cruise.  But I got here.

Oh, and I forgot - while I was in Virginia, the National Cathedral had a "bless the bikes" event for the nationwide group of bikers "Rolling Thunder".  Chris had volunteered to help out that day so I went along.  Spent most of the time in the docent room but did go out to watch the actual presentation.  It seemed to mean a lot to the bikers and they spent a lot of time in the cathedral looking at everything.  I overheard one saying to a couple of others "I mean, you see pictures of course, but being here and seeing it for real - it's just fantastic!"


It's always nice being back home.  I went up on the roof deck for the first time this year on a beautiful, breezy, evening and had a nice visit with a couple of neighbors.  The view is so lovely always that, of course, I took a couple of pictures. :)



I do love my river and I do love that beautiful bridge over it.  That goes into Ohio and at the other end of Huntington is a bridge that goes into Kentucky.

I belong to an on-line group of people who love dollhouse miniatures and especially love doing miniature needlework.  This week a lot of them have gone to Maine for the annual International Guild of Miniature Artisan's "school".  There's a school in Castine, ME and they use that while it's empty during the summer.  So while they're gone, the rest of us decided during this week we would try and finish one of our many UFO's - not necessarily needlework - could be furniture, kits, dollhouses, whatever.  So I decided I would finish the sadly damaged Christmas scene that I had given to January when I moved and had to downscale.  Her cats finally discovered it last Christmas I guess it was and it has been sitting at Chris's ever since.  I brought it home with me and cleaned it up and reglued the various items that needed it.  They managed to also chew off the battery box for the lights on the tree and I had a couple of spares so soldered the wires back onto a new box.



So here is the final result except for the birdhouse I forgot to glue onto the fence.  I made this way back when I belonged to a miniature club which put up a display of our miniatures every October.  One year we decided to design and build our own shops and have a street of shops (hence my fabric store) and the year I made this we decided to have an outdoor Christmas fair with everyone making a booth or whatever to put in it.  This and a "knock the snowman's hat off a shelf" were my two efforts.  The scene was pretty fun, if I do say so myself.

The next two pictures are a close-up of three special ornaments on the tree - a Moravian star near the center top that I made after the kids and I made life-sized ones one Christmas.  I've tried and never been able to make another mini one.  There's also a real, but very small sand-dollar down at the bottom of the tree and a little tiny clothespin handpainted to look like a toy soldier over on the left and almost invisible.

And the other picture shows the little birdhouse in place.  I love that the birds living there have built a snowman out front :) 




And I think that's about it for this post.  Merry Christmas in June!



No comments:

Italian Word Word of the Day

My Trusty Followers

Blog Archive