Friday mumblilng

I have finally finished the flower basket.  You may be wondering about the smudge at the bottom.  It is not a stain.  I put the smudge there to make my signing stitch obscure.  Yes, a signing stitch.  We sign the embroidery in the same way we sign the calligraphy in Japan.

Thank you for your kind welcome back comments and e-mails.  I am still trying to catch up with the correspondence and will take some more time to get back to you.  As for the monthly challenge idea, I am not entirely sure if it works, but I have decided I will give it a try, at least once.  The main concern is that restricting to one design may result in excluding some people who are not up to the design.  I thought about it for a few days and I realized that I was not sure how exactly the monthly challenge works.  Is it like "can you figure it out?" and I only give you the finished one and the participants will try to see if they could reproduce the design by themselves, or I choose the design and give the instruction, too?  I need more of your opinions here.

Some of you may remember that I considered changing the currency at my shop at Etsy.  The foreign currency exchange rate is relatively stable at the moment but it may fluctuate drastically again without warning and setting the currency at the shop as the denomination of the country I live can save the trouble of repricing the merchandise whenever the currency rate fluctuates, or rather save me from feeling guilt by increasing the price.  So, finally I have went ahead and changed it to Japanese Yen.  At a glance it looks the same as before, but once you opened the product page, the price is shown in YEN than US Dollars.  I apologize for the inconvenience caused but I have to protect myself you understand.

Lastly, as you may have already known, we were hit by the big earthquake and tsunami this afternoon.  The most affected area is north-east of Japan and luckily the area we live are not affected and all my family are safe.  I have been watching TV from the moment the earthquake hit and the damage toll just keeps increasing. ... ... ...  The earthquake itself was big with a lot of aftershocks, but it is tsunami that is devastating.  Please note that I am speaking in the present tense.  Tsunami is still rushing to the Northern coasts, over 10meters high.  It may take a few days until we knew the final number, but it looks grim even now... ... ...