Finished the cross-stitching on Verandas

House #1 finished

I only worked on this project about 4 times over the past fortnight and got it out for the last time this rotation after dinner last night. After I'd worked on it a couple of hours I realised that I could actually finish the cross-stitching so I stayed up to 11:45 to get this done. Luckily I'd gotten involved in a Swedish movie that went that late and that I was surprisingly able to follow even though cross-stitching meant that I wasn't able to read all the subtitles. I finished the bushes to the left of the last house (House #1) then went back and filled in the one and two stitch gaps I'd left in the palmetto tree and house. The last area I did was the inserts on the front door of the house which were DMC #415. For some reason I didn't have this colour with my threads for this project and it also wasn't in my mother's DMC box so I had to go searching in my craft cupboard for it. Luckily I found it and so was able to finish the project.



The whole Verandas scene--cross-stitching finished!

I'm now back to New England Sampler. With only 4 projects in my rotations they seem to come around more often. Funny about that.

I bought a photo frame for the two Chinese projects and have cut the matting so that I can mount them. It's a cheaper alternative to having them professionally framed but I didn't think they deserved that level of expense. The photo frame is really nice and they will hang vertically one over the other so I think they'll look nice.

On to reading now--I'm on Book 3 of the Tales of the Otori which is titled Brilliance of the Moon. There is only the sequel to go after this and I'm trawling the library website to pick this up so I have it on hand and ready. I'm thinking of reading Stig Larsson's books after this.

Work going slowly

There have been a few personal happenings lately which have meant that I'm only working on projects sporadically. My mother-in-law has been unwell since late August so there have been lots of trips to the hospital and then the temporary care facility. The past couple of weeks we've been involved in the search for a permanent nursing home for her as well. Plus I've accepted three weeks part-time casual work! So personal time has been greatly curtailed. I have managed to complete the NZ possum scarf--just in time for the weather warming up. I finished the cross-stitching on Cottages II and started the backstitching but unfortunately didn't finish this before the rotation ended. I'm now working on Verandas and so close to finishing the cross-stitching on that as well! But the first week of its rotation I didn't work on it at all so I'll really only get one week's work in on it.




Here is the possum scarf!

I started reading a new series of books called Tales of the Otori and I'm enjoying them. I'm on the third book of the series which confusingly is called Book 2 because originally the series was a trilogy but then the author wrote a sequel and then a prequel. I started by reading the prequel. I'm enjoying the books very much. After these I must go back and finish a Series of Unfortunate Events which I've been slowly creeping through. I'm up to Book 11 there. My daughter Jade just started Book 12. (Of course there are 13 books in the series.)

It's a busy time of year!