The end of January was the Winter TNNA needlework show which was held in San Diego. Two of my shop staff and I spent three days looking at merchandise and evaluating what we needed for the shop. We picked up some new designs from designers we already carried and found some new designers as well. We also added some new silk ribbon and thread from Cascade Yarns in Australia. Primarily we ordered needlepoint canvases, which will arrive over the next several months.
I attended the March IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) meeting in Minneapolis, MN. The week started out cold and snowy but warmed up during the week long trip and was very pleasant when we left. I was able to take a meeting free afternoon and visit a wonderful cross-stitch shop about 20 minutes outside of Minneapolis. I'm always able to find something to new to purchase even though I own a large shop myself.
The July IETF meeting was held in Oslo, Norway and my husband (who also attends the meetings) and I were able to combine the meeting with a couple of weeks of vacation. We were able to visit Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim with stops in between. As we decided not to rent a car we spent our time traveling on trains, buses and ferries, including an overnight trip on the coastal ferry from Bergen to Ålesund. The most scenic routes were the ferry ride between Flåm and Bergen and the train ride from Åndalsnes to Dombås (the Rauma line). We took lots of pictures and when they are developed a few might show up here. I was disappointed not to find much in the way of needlework in the museums, particularly almost no hardanger except small amounts on folk costumes. I eventually found some lovely samplers in the Museum of Applied Arts in Oslo which were from Denmark, Germany and Scandanvia. But as the lighting is very low in these type of rooms it was difficult to really do much analysis or thoughtful viewing of the samplers. I did however, find an embroidery shop in each of the major cities and came back with some purchases of hardanger patterns I'd not seen in the US.
The end of July is the INRG needlework show in Charlotte where most of the counted-thread work vendors show their wares. I'm sure will come back with orders for many new and wonderful designs and accesories. It is great fun to go to these shows and have the time to chat a bit with the designers we carry. I know they enjoy it as well.
In the fall I'll be going to Sampler Gathering West for a couple of days of classes and then in October to Cape Cod for C.A. Wells' & Marcia Brown's stitching weekend. More details will come after those trips.
Since opening the shop in March I had less time for travel this year, at least long distance travel. I attend the TNNA needlework show in Anaheim (January) for a couple of days to purchase needlepoint canvases for the shop. The next trip wasn't until the end of July when I attend the INRG show in Charlotte, NC to do some more buying for the shop (this is largest counted-thread show in the country). Chicago in August for an IETF meeting gave me a chance to visit a wonderful button shop in downtown Chicago. My favorite find was some lovely Mother-of-pearl rose buttons. Hopefully they'll become decorations on a sampler someday. Then my husband and I went back east for a couple of weeks at the end of October for business and vacation (my last trip east to visit the folks who worked for me at Sun Microsystems; I left the company when I returned from this trip). The leaves were all gone but the weather was lovely and crisp. In contrast to the cool, crisp weather of New England was our trip to the Orlando IETF meeting the first week in December. Expecting it to be in the low 70's we were quite surprised to find it was 85 degrees with 95% humidity; not exactly my favorite weather. We did spend a couple of days before the meeting at Walt Disney World, which was fun but the heat made it less enjoyable.
There will be a few trips ahead in 1999; San Diego for TNNA, Oslo for IETF and Charlotte INRG.
The year started out with a trip to Menphis for IETF and a visit to the Sun Chelmsford, MA (Boston) office. There were a lot of meetings and several opportunities to check out the local food establishments in Memphis - particularly Bar-B-Que. Unfortunately there was no time to spend looking for needlework shops and the like but perhaps there will be on the next trip. And no, I didn't go to Graceland. I did however get to fabric shop one afternoon in the Boston area where one of my stops was the Malden Mills factory where they make Polarfleece and Polartec. They had a great selection of colors in all the weights and I came home with about 30 yards of fabric in 8 different colors. There is even a outlet store on the west coast now in Seattle (Malden Mills Seattle Outlet).
The summer was very busy for travel and I ended up out of the country for almost a month. The end of July saw my first visit to the INRG needlework show (the check out supplies for the soon-to-be shop). I returned on a Sunday night to do laundry and pack for a flight to London the following afternoon. We spent a week in Cambridge, visiting some wonderful buildings and taking in the sights. Then it was off to Munich for the IETF meeting. Rather than fly there we decided to take the train! So we boarded a train in London going through the Chunnel to Paris where we changed trains and continued on to Munich. What a great way to see the countryside and not have to worry about finding where you're supposed to be going. All told it took us about 16 hours but it was well worth it. Munich is a lovely city and between meetings and with a couple of extra days, we had a chance to do some sight-seeing. We did manage to be in Europe during a month long heat wave, which with buildings not really equipped with air conditioners was uncomfortable to say the least.
After a week in Munich we took the train back to Paris where we hopped a plane to Stockholm for a weekend and their fireworks festival. We stayed at a lovely little hotel in the old town just a few blocks away from pretty much everything. Saturday night was when the big fireworks presentation would be held and we planned to watch from along the waterfront. We decided to try the restaurant at the top of a an old ship elevator right on the waterfront and were able to get in for dinner. Then were quite pleasantly surprised to find that they closed off the roof access a while before the fireworks so the restaurant patrons could watch the fireworks. We took advantage of this opportunity and got to watch the fireworks as they say, "up close and personal". It was almost as if you could reach out and touch them and was just amazing. We took a flight back to Paris on Sunday and then caught the last train to London, finally arriving at the B&B we stay at near Oxford around 3 am. We spent another week near Oxford (Towersey) enjoying a relaxing time, visiting gardens and lots of tea!!!
We were able to spend three weeks in New England during October, partly for work and partly for pleasure. I attended the Nantucket Stitching Weekend and had a great time. The fall colors were wonderful and it was great to spend some time relaxing before the months ahead, which would be full of work on starting the shop. The last trip was close to home, just down the road in Monterey for the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. If you love mysteries this is a great way to meet authors and other mystery fans. We try to go every couple of years in part to find new authors and in part to just have fun.
There was very little traveling this year either for work or pleasure so it was a little more relaxing than in the past couple of years. There were some small trips close to home for weekends away and a couple of weddings. The only "big" trip this year was a 3 weeks visit to New England in November to visit our office in Chelmsford, MA., to attend the HNG Deerfield Seminar and visit a couple of our favorite B&B's. You'll find a description of the seminar in another section. The few days we had at our favorite B&B's in New Hampshire and Maine were great. We were able to visit some use book stores we haunt when we're in the area and collected a few editions of mystery books we didn't have (by dead authors so it's hard to find truly new ones). There was one day of "snow" when we got a 10 minute snow flurry but otherwise the weather was warm (by New England standards) and we had a very relaxing time.
Work related travel in 1995 found us spending several days in Stockholm, Sweden in July attending an IETF meeting. Since we were able to stay over a few extra days we got to do some sight-seeing in a lovely city, which is built on several islands. The weather was beautiful, sunny, clear and warm (in the 70's) and the people very friendly. We took some boat rides, a popular form of transportation in a city surrounded by water, and got to see not only parts of the city this way but some of the archipelago. Stockholm is situated on the Baltic Sea and the archipelago is dotted with hundreds of tiny islands, many of which are inhabited. It gets very cold in the winter but on a sunny summer day it's easy to imagine the peaceful life of island living where your link to the "mainland" is only by ferry.
Stockholm has a large number of museums and we were able to visit a few of them. There was an outdoor museum where they've preserved buildings from all parts of Sweden that represent several centuries of history; the history museum that contained a wealth of gold some of it dating back to Roman occupation; the wardrobe museum in the royal palace where an exhibit of clothing from the Russian Czar's was on loan from the Hermitage and even a trip to the palace the current king and queen live in. But our favorite was the Vasa Museum which houses a ship built in the early 1600's. It sank on its maiden voyage in the harbor and lay mostly forgotten until the 1960's when a researcher/explorer located it at the bottom of the harbor and eventually it was raised. The museum itself is a wonderful place to spend time in and the people there clearly love the history this ship represents. It is the only intact ship made that early to survive, mostly because the worms that usually devour wood in the sea don't live in the Baltic Sea (too little salt content) so the wood was preserved, only the iron parts had decayed. All in all it was a breathtaking sight and clearly a prize to the Swedes. The engineering lesson in this was that the shipbuilders did a heel test and told the powers that be that the ship would heel over quite easily. But no one wanted to tell the King his beloved ship would never be able to sail, so they got it ready and it sank minutes into it's maiden voyage (on calm seas). When those engineers tell you it won't work or they can't finish it when you want it without serious comprises, listen to them.
There were of course, shopping trips to find Swedish crystal and chocolate and I came back with a large quantity of chocolate to share with the rest of the chocoholics at work.
The incredibly bright spot in 1995 was a long vacation to the United Kingdom. We had been planning it for some time as the mystery convention (Bouchercon) that we attend every couple of years was being held in Nottingham, England. We left on September 10th and returned home on November 3rd, spending the 8 weeks in Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and a side trip to St. Petersburg, Russia.
We started out in London for a few days, visiting Buckingham Palace, the Victoria & Albert museum, checking out the shopping and seeing 3 plays; Les Miserables, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap and Dead Guilty, starring Haley Mills. Getting around by taxi, bus and the London Underground made things quite easy. Then we took the train to Edinburgh (where our train ride was delayed because of sheep on the tracks) and spent a few days there checking out castles, abbeys and other interesting sights. Castles and abbeys were the buildings we most visited, particularly enjoying ruins. We again took the train to Inverness and picked up our rental car there, traveling about an hour south to For Augustus, where we stayed for a week. It's on the south end of Loch Ness and the B&B was at the edge of the lake. We didn't see Nessie during our stay but we drove all over the Highlands and even took the train from Inverness to the Isle of Skye on the west coast. We traveled many miles of single track roads, sometimes into pretty remote places but we saw some incredibly beautiful scenery.
We then traveled down the Northumberland, England and stayed in a B&B near the mid-point of Hadrian's Wall (a Roman wall built about 80 AD that traverses England West-East). From there we drove down into the Lake District as well as exploring Northumberland. We found one of our favorite castle ruins in this area, Brougham Castle. After Northumberland we attended Bouchercon in Nottingham and while there Cathe visited the lace museums, as Nottingham has been a lace making center since before the Industrial Revolution.
We moved on to Wales, staying in both southern Wales (near Abergavenny) and northern Wales (Bala). Here we not only visited castles, abbeys and a manor house here and there, but spent a day in Hay-on-Wye which must be the used book store capital of the UK. We knew we'd found paradise and of course, a few books had to come home with us.
Then it was off to Ireland for 2 weeks. We took the ferry from Fishguard, Wales to Rosslare, Ireland and the crossing was anything but pleasant as there were gale force 9 winds on the Irish Sea. Some were surprised the ferry was even running! Fortunately the rough seas were not a prelude to rough times in Ireland and our visit there was very relaxed. We stayed in villages near Tipperary, Killarney near the southwest coast, Cashel Bay northwest of Galway, Sligo near the central west coast and Multyfarnham northwest of Dublin. The weather was wonderful and we spent most of our time driving around taking in the spectacular coast line and green rolling hills. We certainly found our share of castles and abbeys and even a prehistoric burial mound. Cathe celebrated her 40th birthday in Cashel Bay with a drive through Connemara National Park on a misty day. We spent a couple of days exploring Dublin, checking out CD shops so we could stock up on Irish music, visiting Christ Church Cathedral, finding the one bear store thus bringing home another bear for the collection and just wandering around a lovely old city. Sadly our time in Ireland passed all too quickly and it was time for the ferry ride back to Wales, this time from Dublin to northern Wales and the crossing was smooth and quick on the one of their new catamaran ferries.
After returning to Wales we spent a night in Port Meirion, where the 1960's series The Prisoner was filmed. It's an Italianate village on the coast of Wales and quite unique. We then moved on to stay in a village near Oxford (Thame) and had a few days to relax, explore England more, re-pack and get ready for our trip to Russia. While staying in Thame we visited Blechley Park, which was the site of England's code breakers during W.W.II. We left most of our luggage at the B&B and then traveled on to St. Petersburg, Russia.
St. Petersburg was quite an experience. We stayed in a Russian hotel which turned out to be the sole Best Western and found the accommodations very good. We spent most of our 5 days here either in the Hermitage museum or visiting one of the many palaces. This had been arranged through a tour company and it was just us, our guide and a driver on these excursions. Although my husband speaks a little Russian it was extremely helpful to have a native speaker along for much of the time. Two of the days were spent entirely in the Hermitage and even with that amount of time we felt we'd only made a mad dash through the 5 buildings that make it up. We were able to see the Hidden Treasures exhibit; the paintings taken during W.W.II that have only been "discovered" in the past couple of years. There were more paintings in the museum that we could count and in the portion that used to be Catherine the Great's Winter Palace the rooms themselves were on display. After a couple of days of sight-seeing in opulent palaces we understood why they revolted. One room in the Winter Palace had 16 Kilos of gold leaf on its walls and ceiling.
The people we met were not overly friendly but they weren't rude either, perhaps just generally reticent. In driving outside the city to the summer palaces we passed the mile upon mile of high rise housing that makes our housing projects look like small potatoes. Since we were there the last week in October the leaves had all fallen and the skies were definitely grey which didn't help with the somewhat dismal feeling we both had there. Things are improving for the people there but the kind of life-styles we take for granted here in the US are still beyond the reach of most Russians.
After the few days in St. Petersburg we came back to London to rest a bit before traveling home and do things like make a pilgrimage to the Twinning shop in London. We were also able to catch up with a friend of ours who worked with us at Sun and moved back to England 3 years ago. It meant we could also take some time to re-pack (yet again) and ship a couple more boxes of stuff home. At the end of 8 weeks of traveling we were both happy to see our house and sleep in our own bed. It'll be some time yet before we manage to make our way through the 57 rolls of film we took and turn them into a coherent travelogue. Mostly we've been torturing people with the pictures if they ask about them.
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Last updated: July 26, 1999