It's been a while since I've shared my needlework, but I've finally made a little progress on a couple of projects. I've mostly been working on my band sampler. The top rows are fairly mindless work, so it's easy to stitch a few letters or add a border row while I watch TV. As you can see I've started moving around a bit. I like stitching letters, but so many of them can get a little tedious. There will actually be one more alphabet to stitch in only a few more rows!
However, I've just started on the more challenging section of the sampler, and the first more complicated stitch is an Algerian eyelet. Next to French knots, eyelets are my least favored stitch. I don't mind them when it's a matter of only a few, but I have an entire row of them to work on. I've decided to just do a few at a time rather than try and work the whole row at once. My eyelets are a bit uneven, but I think once I've completed more of my sampler they won't be quite so obvious to the eye.
I thought this weekend it was time to work on my Mystery Sampler as well. I hate to let projects I started out being so excited about languish. I do like the linen I'm working on and the colors. Given a chunk of stitching time this section, which is part two of the project, actually works up pretty quickly.
Not to get too ahead of myself, I thought I'd give you a peek of what this will look like when I get the individual parts stitched and sewed together. I've only folded the left edge of part two under, so it's poking up a little, but the vine edges will match up and continue on through the five sections. Section two is on the narrow side. It may not show up well in my photo, but the linens are actually two different colors--the piece on the left being slightly darker than the piece on the right. I really like the way it looks and it's going to be one of my more unusual finishes when I finally get them all stitched and sewn together.
A few bookish notes. I'm looking forward to the fall season of Mystery on Masterpiece Theatre. The third season of Inspector Lewis will begin at the end of the month. I've yet to see any of the Wallander shows, as I've wanted to start reading the books, but maybe it won't matter whether I've read them or not? I'm not sure how closely the shows follow the books. And a modern version of Sherlock is also airing. Perhaps this was on last season? But I don't remember it. I am so looking forward to fall--I can't even tell you how much. I've decided I'm going to get very serious about Anna Karenina now, so I can think about what good Victorian novel I will pick up next month. And I'm already contemplating what to read for Carl's RIP Challenge.
I've still got an hour to go before I finish Jame Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, but I've loaded a few new audio books on my player. I was set to start reading Sara Gruen's novel, that I mentioned last time, but now I also have The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey to choose from. The latter is a whopping eighteen parts long and took hours to download (I had to stretch it over two days!). Now I'm not quite sure what I'm in the mood for. I guess I'll listen to the first few minutes of each book.
As for reading I've been dipping into a variety of books this weekend. I did start a new library book, Conor Fitzgerald's The Dogs of Rome. I've got this urge to visit Italy at the moment. The commissario in this novel, the first in a new series, is actually an American expatriate who has spent most of his life in Italy. It seems like an interesting spin on an old formula, so I'm off to see what I make of Alec Blume. I do hope Fitzgerald's Rome is nicely evocative. What I like most sometimes about books set in foreign climes is getting a real sense that I am indeed in Rome (or wherever the author happens to be writing about). Often crime novels, any novels for that matter, could almost be set anywhere. So, do you have a favorite author who makes you feel you are very literally someplace else?