Sunday 27 April 2008

Home at Last - sort of

We have arrived safely back in Ontario. We are staying with our son and his family until Sunday and then will move back to our home.

When we leave for the winter, we winterize the house, turn off the propane, the water and the electricity. I empty all the cupboards and the refrigerator and we take anything that will freeze to Beatrice for the winter. When we first arrive home, we have to turn all these back on and give the house time to return to some kind of warmth. That time also allows us to spend time with our sweet granddaughter since they live about 15 minutes from us.
We had a great trip home. We stopped in Denver to visit with some friends we met RVing several years ago. They always find some cool place to take us when we stop by. Our friends took us to the little town of Evergreen - really rustic and very cool. We went to a barbershop quartet performance at one of the local high schools in the evening. When I first heard barbershop I kind of rolled my eyes but they were more a men's chorale group with some barbershop quartet pieces and they were very professional. The voices were incredible and we really enjoyed it.
Next stop was Guthrie Center, Iowa where we visited for a few days. The guys did their thing and my friend Joann and I explored a beautiful quilt shop and did lunch. The next day we did a little drivng around the countryside and had to check out the baby chicks at the local feed store. They are DH's favorite thing to see when we are there.
I was sweating when we crossed the border because the van was full to the roof and we were over our import allowance but they barely even looked at us!!! The border agent probably took one look at the overstuffed van and decided she wanted no part of even opening a door LOL.

Our granddaughter spent this Friday with us and helped us unload everything into our house. I have been unpacking the last two days and almost everything is in it's place. It is amazing that all my cross stitch supplies disappeared into their assigned places without too much overflow. We will move back in on Monday. After buying food to fill the cupboards and the fridge we should be at home.
One nice thing about so many days in the car is the amount of time I could spend stitching. Check out all my progress!

Paradigm

A full page of Book of Stitches
Finished Part 1 of Periphaeria Spanish Mystery Sampler


And I even put some time in on Noddy and friends. We now have a mountain and a houseboat!


I also managed some time on a mystery stitch to be displayed one day. Amazing what 2700 miles in a van will do for your stitching time.

I arrived home Thursday afternoon and found time to attend a needlework show in Kingston on Saturday. I went with some of the Thursday stitchers and did lots of catching up. I saw some other stitchers I knew there (Christin, Carrie, Wendy and Marie Paul) Ann from Knowledge and Needles had a large display set up at the show and Dani was her assistant. I bought a few JBW designs from Ann's booth.And I found all these wonderful hand dyed threads from New Zealand. Barb, Dani and I tried to buy out all the colors. We were so in love with all the beautiful colors. Check them out. Well, that's all for now. I know this is a photo intensive entry but I just could not decide what to leave out. Till next time - keep on stitching!





18 comments:

dragonxser said...

welcome home! Glad you made it there safely, and that all is well! I love the look of the fibers - is there a name to go with all that glorious colour??

Anonymous said...

Wow! You have done a lot of stitching and what great stitching it is! I love those designs. It sounds like you have been having many wonderful times, what a blessing those are. Enjoy getting settled back in.

Kim B said...

SO glad your trip went well! You did get quite a bit of stitching accomplished and it sounds like your trip home was full of fun and adventure :)

AnnMcD said...

Great to have you home.

Cheryl said...

It really doesnt seem that long ago since you were leaving to go south. Time flies!
You sure have got a lot of stitching done! Everything looks great as does all that stash :)

Becky K in OK said...

So glad to hear you made it home ok. Your stops along the way seemed like so much fun.

Great travel stitching. Congrats.

Carol said...

Welcome back home to Canada!

Beatrice said...

All I can say is YIPPEE !!!!!!!!!

Love ya!

Vonna Pfeiffer said...

Hurray for a safe trip home! And WOWZERS on all that stitching! Looking great ;)
Great threads...they are all so pretty, I can see why you lovely ladies bought them out!

Ranae said...

Glad to hear it was a SAFE stitchy trip home.
Kudos! for stitching in a moving vehicle.

Michele said...

glad to hear you are home safe and sound! I'm very impressed with all the stitching you did in the van!

omgosh those are some lovely thread colors :)

staci said...

So glad you made it home safely, and with lots of stitching to show for the miles!

Love Evergreen, an aunt and uncle of mine lived there (and Bailey and Morrison!)

Those threads are wonderful!

Juls said...

Glad to hear that you are safe at home!!! I loved all of your stitching!!!!!! And great stash!!!

Lynn said...

Welcome back Kathy! You are so lucky that you can stitch in the car. I've never had much luck with that. I can read in the car but stitching gives me a headache.
Great progress on all your projects!
How nice that you were able to catch up with friends at the needlework show. Adding to the stash is always fun too!

Wendy said...

Welcome home, Kathy! You sound so organized in your packing and unpacking. I guess you have learned by now how to do it quickly efficiently. And no stitching overflow? Good thing you got to the show in Kingston to help solve that problem. Those threads are scrumptious. What are they called?

mainely stitching said...

Wow, you've had some busy and happy times since arriving home! :D So glad you didn't get checked out by the border control! LOL!

Great stitching!!

Dani - tkdchick said...

I'm sooo glad you're back!

Margaret said...

What a great trip home Kathy. I'm amazed at how much lovely stitching you got done during the trip.

How wonderful that you had this great show to go to so soon and got to meet up with all your stitching friends.