And now something easy for the weekend. Things are moving right along with my stitching and I'm not even spending a lot of 'home' time on my Bee Sampler. I usually work on it for 20-30 minutes before work and sometimes during my morning break, but as you see all those stitches add up quickly.
The Queen Bee has a home/hive now, though I am still 'growing' the surrounding flowers. I'm working mostly now on the bottom border and the lower left medallion which will (soon) have a bird inside it.
I have a long holiday weekend to look forward to as the library where I work is closed on Monday. I think I could almost finish my sampler if I dedicated most of my free time to it this long weekend.
But then I have another new sampler that has been calling for my attention as well. Is it too early to think about Halloween? Yes, actually it is, but not if you are stitching a design with a Halloween theme and hope to finish it before October.
This is a "mystery" sampler designed by Lizzie Kate last year. It's not really a mystery for me as I have all three charts (I think these were released last summer--one each month) after the fact. It's called "Very Scary" and I think that the designer does a mystery design every year. Since I wasn't really stitching last year (or for a couple of years before that) I missed out on a lot of new designs (just as well perhaps since I have plenty of stash already to choose projects from). I couldn't help myself, however, and ordered the charts and fabric as well as the overdyed floss colors not too long ago.
If you are really curious what it looks like (the three charts are in the above photo with teasers from the finished sampler peeking out), you can go to the LK website and look it up. But I'll keep you updated on my progress and you can watch the design emerge as I stitch each of the three charts. I am stitching the design on 30 count Tin Roof linen (it's a muddy green color--hard to tell from my photo the exact shade). More border work for me on this design, too. It calls for a sawtooth border which is made up of cross stitches and satin stitches to fill in. I'm looking forward to beginning on the motifs inside the border.
It may be the unofficial kick-off to summer, but I have no special plans for the weekend. I think my books, however, will be vying with my needlework for attention. I have lots of short story reading lined up, am nearly finished with Joan Bodger's How the Heather Looks (will definitely be finishing that in the next day or two) and will spend time with Mary Stewart and Michael Morpurgo. And, well, who knows which other books I'll reach for.
One bookish note--Three Percent, a literary blog for international literature translated into English, is going to put on a World Cup of Literature this summer. It's akin to the Morning News Tournament of Books but the book entries will be from each World Cup country. You can see the list of countries participating here. They are looking for book nominations (published in 2000 or after)--
"In terms of what we’re looking for, I think the books we end up including in this competition should be fun, interesting, enjoyable, “readable,” etc. So, in contrast to the BTBA finalists, this could include more genre works and the like. Not that we want to include crap, but I don’t think this should feature 32 obscure, high modernist writers from around the world."
--and they are looking for judges should you feel so inclined to get more involved. The list of books will be up June 10. Since I am hoping to do a better job reading books in translation in the second half of 2014 I am eager to see which books they come up with.
On that happy (always good to have a new book list to read from) note, I wish you a very bookish weekend.