Valentine Rose Finish

Hi friends! We had a beautiful weekend! Sunny and warm. In the sixties! I visited my father's grave on Friday, his birthday. I brought him flowers. I also finished his sampler.

You can see my finish is different than the charted Valentine Rose. Some changes are necessary when you are stitching the entire piece one over one on 25 count linen. I fit my father's name down there, but the date would not fit directly above his name. So.....okay. I put it above the house. Which meant the birds went bye bye. But I knew, yes I KNEW with that one remaining charted bird with only one of his feet clinging to the big 'ol heart, THAT bird was NOT remaining a black bird. Not in my father's sampler. I just kept hearing my Dad's voice, telling me it should be a Polish Eagle. My father was 100% POLISH and rather proud of it! He loved the Polish Eagle. He called himself the Polish Eagle! So I created a Polish Eagle for him. Not sure it is perfect, but I made it for him and that is what counts.

Here is one more picture to share with you. I do not know how old my father is in this picture. This is my Grandpa holding him. ❤️️

I had to shorten the base of the urn to make it all fit. I changed the colors of the strawberries to 221 from 3857. They were too dark for me. I changed the color of the flowers from 3022 to 3024. They were too green for me. All the stems and leaves are 642, not 611. Not green enough.  My Polish Eagle is stitched in 4015, the pale grey to white variegated DMC.

I received this super adorable and very generous gift from our friend Karyn. Isn't it precious?! Thank you again Karyn!

I suppose I am getting to know Maisie too well. ;) I figured out where the book, A Dangerous Place was headed. Still a very good read. You truly feel Maisie's grieving in this book.

Four years after she set sail from England, leaving everything she most loved behind, Maisie Dobbs at last returns, only to find herself in a dangerous place . . .
In Jacqueline Winspear‘s  powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy, a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gibraltar leads Maisie into a web of lies, deceit, and peril.
Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger.
But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn’t ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, “You will be alone in a most dangerous place,” she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain.
Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie’s arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on “the Rock”—arguably Britain’s most important strategic territory—and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.

I am now stitching on Forever Be My Always by Emma Congdon.

I hope you have a super week my friends! I plan to! 🐩 Thank you for your sweet words of encouragement! I am thankful for YOU!

Stitching and praying,
Vickie