Happy anniversary to me! Kurt and I have been married 8 years today. To celebrate, the family spent the day at the beach yesterday. We had so much fun that it was almost worth today's sunburns! We snorkeled, body surfed, swam, built sand castles and relaxed. I added a couple of inches to my first knitted sock while my family stalked ghost crabs. (The sand of our beautiful beach is snow white and thus, much of the sea life is white as well. Thus the name "ghost crabs".)

We found a some nice sea shells while snorkeling.

It is extremely rare to find a whole clam shell. Typically by the time they are on the beach, you can only find them in halves. However, snorkeling in the waves can produce shells in much better condition. (Of course, Gabrielle promptly broke the shell into two halves soon after we brought it home.)

I especially love the design detail on the delicate little sand dollar I found beneath the waves.

The Lord is the Ultimate Artist! He etched the most beautiful flower like design onto the surface of the sand dollar, for no other apparent reason than to create beauty. Wow!

I finally finished sewing Gabrielle's dress for her birthday. The sewing went well until the end. The seams were all done with my Serger, a HV 936. The embroidary, pin tucks, entredeaux, etc. were done on my HV Designer 1. There are 12 embroidaries around the bottom of the skirt. After stitching about 2/3's of them, my touch screen went on the blink. I finished this dress on prayer alone and will be taking the machine in for repairs at the end of the week.

Here is a close up of the bodice. Though it is difficult to see, some of the bodice embroidary and entredeaux detail is carried to the sleeves.

I marked design details with pencil. Unfortunately, after washing the dress 4 times with every stain remover I know, the pencil marks remained. I have used pencil many times and this was the first time I have had this problem. Perhaps the "Hotwheels" pencil I borrowed from Gregory is different from my normal #2 pencils.

The biggest problem was the 1/8" diameter dots I used to measure each of the 12 lace embroidary designs. Despite all of the great advice I received from my online HV 936 friends, nothing worked to remove the marks. I finally sewed gold sequins and pink pearl beads over each of the marks. If I could not eliminate the problem, then I thought I'd cover it.

Here is a close-up of the problem area. I think it turned out well and you cannot tell the bead work was not intended. At least Gabrielle will get her dress next Tuesday for her 4th birthday!