Sunday Morning

A sampler of a thousand stitches begins with a single floral motif.  Or something like that.  I suspect it's considerably more than a thousand stitches, actually -- this is a week's stitching, an hour or so most mornings, and there is still the rest of the "flowers" and the vase and quite a lot of curlicues to go, in just the one motif!  Not that I'm complaining, mind -- it's very peaceful and meditative, especially with the single color.  I decided to use the DMC 931 since there is a good chance that I will not be able to find thirty-some skeins from the same dye-lot, so that any variations thereof will actually be a good thing.

I forgot to add Molly Clavering to my summer reading -- looking for something cozy, my thoughts naturally turned to D.E. Stevenson, but as I knew there was a group read of Amberwell that I would join, I thought I would fill the gap until then with Clavering's Mrs. Lorimer's Family, which I enjoyed as much this time as I did the first.  I also found out that there was a recent-ish reprint from Greyladies of Clavering's Near Neighbours, and so I splurged on a copy.  Opinions on the DES list vary as to the similarities between Clavering and Stevenson (who were in fact friends and neighbors, as well as contemporaries), but I enjoyed Near Neighbours thoroughly, and thought it on a par with the best of Stevenson, with its gentle intelligence and wit woven throughout a plot in which "nothing much happens" but which one closes at the end with a smile of satisfaction that everything has come out all right.

It occurred to me yesterday after writing here that the Ransomes were on my "Mount To-Be-Read" list and that since there were six of them I might have scaled the first peak, as it were -- and so it proved to be, as the first goal is twelve books and Great Northern? made my total fourteen!  I took the liberty of making a new badge, with a less time-sensitive title. (The original Mount TBR challenge is at Bev Hankin's blog My Reader's Block.)

Comments

[dawninnl]

I admire your stitched motief, and agree that shade variation in a dominant colour will be a good thing. I'm thinking of semi-solid knitting yarns, which I've never knitted but like the look.

What is amazing is how I've never heard of Molly Clavering. Nothing seems to exist in ebook format so I will have to investigate online secondhand bookstores.

I have just this week decided to make a start on my own Tsundoku of paper books, at least one per month.