Down from the mountain

After being computerless for a while, I have returned with some photos of Uncompahgre Peak. We were in Denver for a wedding, but what's a trip to Colorado without climbing a fourteener? So after the wedding weekend, we headed down to the Lake City area. The weather was nicely much cooler in the mountains than it had been in Denver. The hike started on a nice bright morning. Here's the rocky summit:

You can see that the clouds were starting to gather. They quickly turned dark and reminded us why we needed to get an earlier start to our hike. Get off the mountain by 1pm is the rule we'll stick to from now on. Wiley did not enjoy hiding out under a rock while waiting for the hail to stop on the way down the mountain. But he did make it to the top and back down again. Some people had their doubts that he could handle it.

Voila!

As promised, here is the completed wedding cross-stitch. Note that the wedding isn't for a another week, so SHHHHH.... don't tell the groom and bride about this. Actually, it won't be that big of a surprise for them anyway. And I couldn't wait to put this online, especially because I won't have much computer access after the wedding.

This lettering was done using the DMC rayon floss. It does have a certain shine to it. This design had a simple color scheme with only 4 colors, but it makes the lettering that much more striking. We were also excited to find a two-tone from and the black/red matte that highlights the colors of the cross-stitch.

Water

Thanks to the city rebate program, we replaced our who-knows-how-many-decades-old toilet (with an estimated 7 gallons of water per flush) with a simple new toilet (1.6 gallons per flush). I really didn't know just how much water the old toilet was using, but I always knew that it took FOREVER to refill itself. It's one of those toilets that you check on several minutes later to see if jiggling the handle will make it stop... only to find out that it always takes that long to refill itself.

Now instead of flushing that extra 5.4 gallons of water, we can use it on sunflowers and tomatoes, YAY! Of course, the city has another rebate program for xeriscaping our yard, but that takes far too much planning. I prefer to do my home improvement piece-meal. Getting the xeriscape rebate requires an approved plan and a minimum of 500 square feet. Maybe I'll pull it off this fall.

Work in progress

The wedding cross-stitch that I have been working on for months is nearly finished! I'll post it when it is... but first I'll share with you the history. I thought my husband's art would make great cross-stitch patterns, better than a straight from photo to pattern converter can do. Here's a painting of our dog that he made.

I was hoping that he could take a photo of his cousin and fiancee and turn it into a drawing that would make a good cross-stitch wedding gift. The photo we used was post last week. And here is the resulting pattern on grid... It was difficult to explain to my hubby why the lettering on this would be nearly impossible. I think I pulled it off, though. It was fun designing a cross-stitch pattern with someone else, but it was also frustrating working with someone who doesn't cross-stitch. I may try it again, but not on my next piece of work.

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.