Happy Birthday

Hi friends. I want to thank you with my whole heart. You have reached out and shown me true friendship. I have been comforted by your sweet messages. Thank you. Thank you for caring. It means a lot. It makes a difference. I feel the love. It brings joy, yes joy to my heart knowing so many of you cared about little Mabel. And my heart needs that. I know so very many of you know just what this feels like, losing a dear, beloved pet. That broken, crumpled heart feeling. Thank you once again for your kindness.

I finished Happy Birthday, pattern #6 in the Anniversaries of the Heart series. This sampler is dedicated to my paternal grandparents. My Grandpa died when I was only 6 months old. My Grandma died right after I turned one year old. Here is their wedding picture. Isn't this fantastic?

The upper third of my Happy Birthday had to be altered. When stitching this entire sampler series one over one on 25ct linen, some alterations are necessary to fit names and dates. So I created a different border to go across the top of the pattern. I am happy with how the names and dates fit. 😊

(One over one on 25ct cream Dublin linen)

I used all DMC on this. I changed the pinks and the purple, in the same way I did on Pink Hill Manor. I also changed the brown of the house to 3864. I changed the grey of the roof to 318.

And the really obvious change?! HA! Out with the birds, in with the poodles! I put in two Mabels in Pink Hill Manor. I put in two Henrys in Happy Birthday. How do you like that?!? Personally, I LOVE it!💕

 That is my father's sampler you can just see above this one, his parent's sampler.❤️

Okay, tied with my favorite Maisie Dobb books, is this book for best book I read this year. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is sooooo good! You should read it. There. That is all I need to say.
In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

 I am now finally back to stitching on the big anniversary gift I am making for Brian, Forever Be My Always by Emma Congdon.

I hope you have a restful weekend my friends. We will be celebrating Emerson's 21st birthday with family on Sunday afternoon.

Stitching and praying,
Vickie