I’ve fallen a bit behind on my WIPGO posts, so doing these after the fact in July (oops!). Apologies for that! I’ll be backdating these entries to fit where they’re supposed to go in the sequence.

Down the Danube by Jeannette Douglas is a piece that I never was meant to have. It was an exclusive for attendees of a Christmas market cruise down the Danube river in 2016, and is not for sale at any shop. I didn’t attend that cruise. Yet here I am, stitching the piece because now it has become a memorial to a lost friend.

Two members of my local stitching group, Becky and Sandy, went on the cruise with Jeannette and had a wonderful time. They stopped at several towns along the Danube river for sightseeing and market shopping, and then spent the nights on a river cruise, where they met their fellow stitchers and likely got more chatting than stitching done… because that’s how retreats always seem to go. Jeannette gave each of the attendees a full kit of Down the Danube as a souvenir.

And then in 2017, Sandy died unexpectedly.

Months later our stitching group helped her family clean out all of the stitching and crafting supplies – with plans to distribute amongst ourselves, and then to take the rest up to Celebration of Needlework to the freebie tables to give away. Sandy’s stash was divided, and along with a couple other pieces (including a Wentzler), Down the Danube came to me. I was just finishing Four Seasons of Mystic, and I had the closest connection to Jeannette among the folks in my group, so it just made sense.

Sandy had thrown a few stitches into it, but had barely started the snowtops on the mountains at the very top. I put a few more in, but then became busy with Astrology Sampler and Max’s birth sampler… and so it quietly sat and waited.

I haven’t progressed too far and already have an error in my count – I made the top ridge of the mountains one column too wide. Thankfully it’s about at the halfway point, so I shouldn’t need to pick out too much. I think I’m going to fill in the house on right and then move with a better sightline rather than just do the mountaintops for my second attempt at it.

I have no timeframe for finishing this one. It will be a memory piece for Sandy, and will hang alongside the other pieces on my wall when it gets finished – exactly when it’s meant to be finished.