Favorite Lighthouse Images

Counted Cross Stitch by Debbi Ricci

Englewood, Florida

Gurnet Point, Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts

The beautiful counted cross stitch image of the lighthouse at Gurnet Point, Massachusetts, was created by Debbi Ricci. She has kits for several US lighthouses.

Gurnet Point has a special meaning for Debbi since she and her husband lived there in the keepers house through one of the roughest winters New England has to offer. It also has a special meaning for me -- I made the 11-mile (estimated) round trip hike from Duxbury Beach to the Plymouth Light Station the day after Memorial Day 1994. To date, this has been my most ambitious lighthouse adventure. See the Photo of Gurnet I took to remember that day!

Similar to needlepoint in intricacy and detail, counted cross stitch embroidery is a hobby Debbi Ricci has enjoyed for many years. It is a textured form of art that she can do almost anywhere, although her favorite topic is the beach, especially lighthouses. She began stitching lighthouses in 1989, the year of the Bicentennial of the US Lighthouse Service, when lighthouses were receiving publicity because of automation. She and her husband Bill enjoyed discovering the lighthouses of New England where they lived, he photographing them, and she shopping for graphs and stitching them. When they moved to Plymouth, MA in 1990 they began a 4 year as resident caretakers of the lighthouse there, fulfilling a dream and responding to the call of the sea.

Her stitching hit a snag when she discovered that there were no graphs of the local lighthouses. Encouraged by Bill and her friends, she designed her own graph of Plymouth Light and thus began a new phase of her hobby. The beach community around the lighthouse responded enthusiastically to the kits she assembled, and soon there were requests for more local lighthouses. One friend came back from Key West with a request for a graph of that lighthouse, and Debbi made that too. Now she has completed the design of her 6th lighthouse kit, Boca Grande Lighthouse.

The first kits were designed by hand, a tedious and frustrating procedure, but now she has the aid of her home computer and the process is less tedious, although still time consuming. The reward is in sharing her design with other cross stitchers who share her passion for the craft.

Once the sample is stitched, she assembles the kits which include fabric, needle, graph, and floss. She even sorts and labels the floss on a cardboard palette. The kit is finished off with a photograph of the sample so the stitcher can see the finished product, and a how-to page for beginners who would like to learn how to cross stitch.

Information about how to get counted cross stitch kits from Debbi Ricci:

	You can send e-mail 
to Debbi at bgcc@ewol.com.	
Or you can contact her by regular mail at		


	Debbi Ricci
	10116 Topsail Avenue
	Englewood  FL  34224	
Tell her you saw her work on the Internet at this page, please.

Photo by Jim Carigan, May 31, 1994.

Click on the photo to see a larger image.

Although the Riccis were living in the keepers house, you see on the right, in 1994, they were not there when I was there. So I have never met them face-to-face. I met Debbi, electronically, on the Internet almost 2 years later.