A Finish, Some Progress, and....John Wayne?

I'm back!  I haven't vanished off the face of the earth; just haven't managed to follow through on my good intentions to blog regularly.

 

I've been stitching some, though!  I finished England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales:

 I think I might finish this as a flat piece and put it on an easel on my foyer table.  I did add one row of stitching to serve as a border.

I've also made a little progress on some WIPs.  First, Days of Advent; Sarai is complete and Abram is started:

A little bit of stitching on Salina Dunwoody:

I pulled out the grumpy kitty ornament last night and put in a few more stitches around his eyes:

 And finally, the April showers rabbit piece.  I had considered consigning this to the UFO pile, but it started calling out to me a few days ago so I decided I needed to finish it.  It's about halfway there:

 We have a winter storm watch for Wednesday; I had planned to travel for Thanksgiving, but if we get bunches of snow I don't think that'll happen.  Maybe I'll just stay home and stitch :-)

A few random thoughts.....

Anybody who follows professional football at all knows that this season -- as in seasons past and, no doubt, seasons yet to come -- we have had the usual brouhaha about the name of the Washington Redskins.  There are those who are opposed to the name because it is offensive to some, to the point that, as I understand it, some media outlets instruct their sportscasters that they are to not use the team name but just refer to the team as "Washington".  Likewise, I've read that some individual sportscasters refuse to use the term Redskins.  That's fine; I don't have a horse in the race one way or the other.  But whether the team is referred to as the Washington Redskins or just Washington, I don't think it's too much to ask that highly paid professional sportscasters for major networks at least pronounce it correctly.  When last I looked, there was no R in the word Washington.  I kid you not; I heard it yesterday.  "Warshington".  ::sigh::

Jeopardy! anyone?  It's the one TV show I try not to miss; I've watched it for years.  The annual Tournament of Champions wrapped up last week, and the final pitted Arthur Chu, one of the most reviled contestants in Jeopardy! history, against Julia Collins, the winning-est female player.  Interestingly, they both lost to player #3, a lanky gent from South Carolina named Ben something -- Ingram, I think.  I have to say, it was one of the best T of C finales they've had in a while.

Finally, some more pictures of Ireland.  We're fortunate in that DH's job with the airlines enables us to travel, and we made a visit to the Emerald Isle last month.  Here are just a few pictures.

Glencar Lough.  The weather was drizzly and misty but the lough is still a gorgeous place.

Matt Molloy is the flautist for The Chieftains, and he owns a little pub in Westport, County Mayo.  The hostess at our B&B told us that Matt Molloy's is the one pub where you can count on there being live music every night.

Session musicians at Matt Molloy's.  They were really good!

One of our stops was the village of Cong.  It's where the John Wayne movie "The Quiet Man" was filmed in the early 1950s.  The village has capitalized on its "Quiet Man" connection, but not obnoxiously so -- at least, not when we were there.  Might be different in mid-summer.  Anyway, this statue of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara recreates one of the moments from the film.  I'm about 5'5", so the statue is definitely larger than life.  It's a better likeness of John Wayne than it is of Maureen O'Hara. 

 

We were driving east, heading toward Trim, when we ran through a rain shower and saw an Irish rainbow!  It was the most vivid rainbow either of us had seen for a long time, and was actually a double rainbow (you may have to click on the picture and look at the larger view to see the second rainbow.)  We followed it for quite a while and several miles, but, alas, never did find the pot of gold.

 

Wishing everyone a good week -- happy stitching!