I won't bore you with details but my visit to parental units in Florida was very, very, very difficult. I've now given instructions to my kids to throw me off a bridge if I ever get infirm and nasty.
My dad and I did go shopping one day and found a needlework store not far from their home. A cursory glance showed me that they had nothing special in the way of threads. However, they did have rows and rows of handpainted canvases. Even though that's not my project of choice if the salesladies weren't so busy fawning over the only other customer in the shop, I might have asked about whimisical designs.
To keep me somewhat sane, I had brought several of the 5 x7 Dimension non-cross stitch embroidery kits that had somehow made their way into my stash. I'm no botanist but the flowers (roses, pansies, and ???) looked quite deformed if I correctly read the lines printed on the cloth for direction of stitches. I quickly abandoned the directions and used long/short shading on one kit instead of 'choppy' individual petals. On another, I had a blast morphing the ugly roses into things of bullion beauty. Because I didn't follow the directions, I ran out of thread but was able to finish both pieces when I came home.
I haven't done much stitching in the week I've been back other than to finish those kits. Instead, I've been concentrating on finishing or refinishing previously completed pictures. Watch this space for pointers to pictures.