Inspiration

We celebrated the 90th birthday of Troy's grandma in Denver last weekend. We enjoyed record-breaking heat, a 3-month old poodle, and plenty of luau-themed food. We forgot to bring the camera, so I'll have to wait for someone else to send me pictures.

I was inspired to try new things with my cross-stitch. One thing that caught my eye was this rayon embroidery floss which has a nice shine. So I'm giving it a try for the lettering on a design. It seems a bit fussier to work with. I hope it stands out as much as I envisioned. I am hoping the letters will look somewhat like foil embossed lettering on paper.

Work in progress

Early this year I had the idea to combine my husband's art with my craft to create a wedding gift for his cousin. We started with a picture from the couple, then Troy drew a design, I made a cross-stitch chart from the design and am now stitching away. Here is the inspirational photo.

... I'll share the resulting cross-stitch later (it does not look like this photo). I often get frustrated that most of the cross-stitch patterns I find are too cutesy or fuddy-duddy, so this was an attempt to make something new and more personal.

Aloha

I just returned from 9 days on the big island of Hawaii and 12 days on Kauai. The three best things I did on the trip:

1. Snorkelling for the first time. Apparently, I hyperventilate while underwater, but once I calmed down, the coral reef and colorful fish were amazing! Sorry, no underwater photos.

2. Lava.. I usually think of national parks as overly-cautious places where they terrify you into thinking that the natural world is the most dangerous place to be (if you want to go for a 15-minute hike, you must bring bear spray, snake-bit kit, a gallon of water, emergency flares...) but Volcano National Park actually encourages you to walk through active volcanic craters, rift zones and lava flows. Sure, the really dangerous stuff are off limits, like lava benches that collapse into the sea. However, they still have their hangups at Volcano NP. Rangers told us it would be a 5-mile hike over aa (rough black lava rock) and pahoehoe (smooth black lava rock) to view flowing lava. Locals told us how to get to the same flow from outside the park with a much shorter walk.
3. Backpacking the Na Pali Coast to Kalalau. Of course I enjoy any backpacking trip with friends... but there is just something special about hiking to a place where you can wear just a bikini and a sarong for five days while collecting mangoes to eat everyday.