What a lovely day!!

We arrived in Florida along with the fabulous weather and it has been gorgeous all week.
Dan has been our resident chef and is keeping us all well fed. If you are wondering what the well dressed chef on holiday wears when preparing dinner in 80 degree weather ...here is a peek...


This is Martha, who while surfing blogdom yesterday found my blog and discovered that I was less that half an hour away from her. She got in touch with me via blog comments and e-mail and here we are together this morning at The Golden Needle in Port Charlotte. It is barely visible in the background but if you look carefully you can see Martha's Cirque des Cercles on the wall behind us.

The Golden Needle is a terrific shop which has so much stock and so many fibres and so many fabrics and more charts that a person can imagine. Our time passed so fast that I barely had time to pick up a couple of My Big Toe patterns (which I don't have in my shop) and a few little buttons

Oh yes and before we hit the Golden Needle we visited an incredible Bead Shop. I don't even do beading except on the odd pattern but ohmigod...so many beads. I have never seen so many beads in my life!
Anyway Martha is delightful as is Kathy who owns the Golden Needle and I am so grateful that she took the time to get in touch and to pick me up this morning.The reason I had to dash off from the shop is ...Dan and Bruce offered to take Luci and me out for Valentine's lunch. I got to pick the restaurant...The Olive Garden.. and here we are having a pre-lunch glass of bubbly...That was followed by a delicious lunch... half of which we took home for supper. Our chef will get the night off.

Tomorrow is Daytona 500 day... One of these days I really must do some stitching!

Florida

Here is the Embassy Suites Hotel where the Nashville Cross stitch market is held...
I hate to say it but I did not even get to visit all the exhibitors. Some offer stuff that I do not sell in my shop like yarn and needlepoint but there were a number of cross stitch people I just did not get to see. The problem was that I spent so much money at the ones that I did see... and remember, we have to get all this stuff home. Normally when we are on our own there is plenty of room in the car but this year there will be 4 of us and our luggage driving back together. I really had to stop somewhere with the buying. Anyway, I still had a fabulous if exhausting time.

Now we are in beautiful sunny and warm Port Charlotte. Here is a picture of Bruce and Dan and their new best friend Kasey Kane(for those of you who are not NASCAR fans). We met him in the grocery store and with the manager's blessing, he came home with us. Guess that means there will be 5 of us in the car on the way home! He came without luggage though and he doesn't talk or eat anything! He just startles us when we catch him out of the corner of an eye and see someone when everyone else is accounted for I spent this morning cleaning up my website in anticipation of getting pictures of the Nashville loot on asap. There was no room for the printer/scanner the car so I will have to rely on photographs from the camera. We'll have to wait and see how that turns out!

Luci spent about 4 hours with me yesterday entering stuff in my inventory and putting price tags on charts...and we are not finished yet! Man I had fun!!!

Nashville

I came, I saw, I spent, I'm broke!

But ohhh ! what a day! I'm high as a kite in an exhausted sort of way.
I bought lots of fabulous stuff and I can hardly wait to get home and show it off.
Fabrics that the pictures of cannot do justice to!
Charts that are new and exciting!
Kits that you won't want to put down!
Patterns that are not even released yet!
A great chart that I want to offer as a class!
New ideas ... lots of plans.
I am so excited.

Now I have to take Dan the pack mule out for dinner with Jeannette and Dale Douglas. I think the pack mule will consume a few hops tonight!

Then we are off to Florida for a holiday. Watch my website for some pictures of the new bounty.

Edited after dinner to add that the temperature outside is 61F right now.... it was warmer earlier!!!! Heaven!!! (especially since it was -24C when we left Canada on Thursday morning)

My Stitching Album

As many of you know, a number of us are working on Jeannette Douglas's "My Stitching Album" As I am going to be seeing Jeannette on the weekend I wanted to have some progress pictures of some of the stitchers' pages ...

Marie Paule's Page 2 ..using JD's selected colours Marie Paule's Page 1...using her own choice of colours

Judy's Page 3 using her own choice of colours

Beatrice's Page 2 using her own colours

Beatrice's Page 1 using her own colours

And my page 3 using my own choice of colours...

We are all adapting the pages to our own tastes...leaving out some things and adding others but sticking pretty much to Jeannette's plan overall. I hope she will be pleased.