Home again and the 'Pool' finish

Well, here I am, back from doing about 3500km across Central Europe. I was going to post a picture from each country we went to in this post, but that would take a lot longer than it sounds going through all the photos and choosing one etc!! So, I'll be uploading them to my new Webshots travel album soon and will post the link when it's done. We went to France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria though, which was all great, although I was disappointed that we couldn't drive the way the SatNav first suggested from Germany to the Austrian Tyrol - through Switzerland and Leichtenstein, but there are tolls to pay on many European motorways, so we tried to avoid those as the budget was a bit tight.

Here's the completed Ornamental Pool embroidery. MIL said she would rather have it as a framed picture than as a cushion which might get damaged with all the kids she has charging around her living room. She was toying with the idea of a rectangular frame with glass and put glass over it to see how it looked, but we persuaded her to a square frame with a light mount, wooden frame and no glass as the glass really dulled the sheen on the rayon and metallic threads. So has this photo actually. DH took it in strong light and I'm a bit disappointed with it as the shiny bits have all but vanished from sight and the right hand leaf is so affected by the light that you can't see the stitches anymore, (well, you can now somewhat, after auto focusing several times with Photoshop, but it's not as I'd have liked it). So, don't try taking embroidery photos in too strong a light or you'll miss a lot of the textural effects. Won't be able to get a photo of the framed piece until we next visit there and I don't know when that will be.

One of the things I got in the post when I got back was a flyer for the 2008 Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show, which will be the first weekend in October up at the Great Yorkshire Showground. They advertised this year's Madeira Embroidery competition, theme being 'Glimpses of China'. Well, I wish I'd known about it before, as now there are only about 6 weeks to get the pieces worked and entered and I'm not sure I'll have the time and umph for it. I haven't finally decided againsgt it, I want to look through all my Taiwan photos etc first to see if there's something that might make a winner, but as I'm not that fussed for the prizes, if I'm honest, I wouldn't hold my breath. I think I'd be most interested in the prestige of winning than the goods!!!! We'll see about that one anyway.

Thinking about developing my language learning through blogging, I'm seriously considering opening parallel stitching blogs in Chinese, German and also one in romance languages - basically Spanish with some parts also 'duplicated' in any or all of Italian, French and Portuguese. Spanish and Portuguese speakers, how can I roughly translate Sew in Love so that it will work in both languages? 'Bordar/labores de amor'?? Any ideas from anyone??