Patriotic finishes and a bit more Egypt

Is everyone managing to stay cool?  It was ridiculously hot yesterday, and today promises more of the same around here.  But the humidity was unusually low yesterday, at least.  Felt more like Egypt than it did home!  Until my recent move, I have suffered from a poorly functioning air conditioning.  If it was in the 90's or 100's outside, my apartment would also be around 90 or so for a few hours in the afternoon every day.  What a blessing that my new home has real a/c units.  Downstairs stayed cool and comfy all day long, and upstairs was only off by 3 or 4 degrees.  Not bad when it's 105 outside!

Moving on to the real purpose of this post, I have two stitching finishes and three new layouts to share.  Since I've already mentioned Egypt in this post, I guess I'll start with the layouts.  This first layout shows some of the pretty sailboats we saw dotting Lake Nasser.  The boats are called feluccas and we were supposed to get a chance to ride on one during our stay in Aswan.  Unfortunately, our guides declared that winds were not strong enough and canceled that part of the trip.  We did see several of the sailboats being towed by small motorized boats later in the day, so I guess they had a point.  Who wants to be stuck on a hot lake with no wind?  But they were beautiful to watch, especially late in the day like in this photo.

From Aswan, we headed back up the river towards Luxor.  I enjoyed my last views of the pastoral river life.

Once we reached Luxor, we boarded yet another airplane and flew back to Cairo.  We checked into the Ramses Hilton for the last few days of our stay in Egypt.  (BTW, our hotel was looking directly down on the square where much of the protesting took place 4 months after our return to the US.  It was fascinating to watch history unfold in a place that we had been just a short time before, and weird to imagine what it would have been like if we had chosen to delay our travels until February.)

We spent the next two days riding around in a tour bus, taking in the sights of Cairo.  One of the things that has always struck me about Islamic decor is the beauty of the geometric designs with which they embellish their buildings.  So I devoted a layout to some of the marvelous architecture and decor that we saw:

That's it for the layouts.  Not too many left for Egypt.  Maybe I'll get them all finished up soon.  Maybe.

I've also had the time this week to finish up two of the patriotic pieces I shared in my last post.  This first one is stitched from a freebie pattern from Chessie and Me using the recommended fibers on a piece of 32 count Silkweavers Cookie Dough linen, and trimmed with Candy Cane R&R Chenille:

It's a pretty small little piece, so I just finished into a little pin pillow.  I'll add it to my pillow basket that sits on one of the living room bookshelves.  This was a really fast, fun stitch.  

The second piece that I have finished is Blackbird Design's "Land of the Free" from one of last year's issues of Cross Stitch and Needlework Magazine.  I stitched it on 36 count Mellow linen from Picture This Plus.  I used the luscious Belle Soie silks that the pattern called for, but I ended up switching colors for the white, blue, and green.  The recommended colors just didn't look anything like what was in the picture (or like what I wanted my piece to look like).  I guess that's just one of the hazards of using overdyed fibers!  I am pretty happy with the end result: 

Again, I used R&R Candy Cane chenille for the edging.  This piece I'm using as a door hanger on our coat closet in the foyer.  I used some pretty fabrics to back each piece:

I don't have any progress photos to show yet, but I'm stitching away on my last patriotic piece for the summer, Penny America.  I hope to have the stitching done by the end of next week.  That might be a stretch though.  We'll see.

Til next time, I hope everyone has a creative and cool weekend!