posted by Lily on Uncategorized

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brrrrr….. has that cool change and its wind been whistling through the tumbledown house today or what! I arrived home from work, chilled to the bone after a cold night, thin blanket, and little sleep, so donned my slippers and cardigan and headed up to my bed – the sunniest spot in the house – for a bit of cross stitch, warmth and serenity.

Very soon I was joined by Simon – he was happy to curl up at the bottom of the bed …

and before long, Little A tucked herself into the armchair by the window and chattered away on the telephone to her best friend – who was due in an hour for a play, but there were important details about “Animal Crossing” that had to be giggled over first.

(btw, that’s yet another WIP on the arm of the chair – my penny rug runner for the end of the bed – I’ve stitched pennies onto half the length – must get around to stitching up the remaining pennies and attach them before winter is over!)

It was truly a glorious winter morning – well, late autumn! And I have now finished 2 whole blocks (1 and 4) of the Hawk Run Hollow, and half the third (7) – it will be giddyup to the stables by this time next week!

(If it looks a bit wonky, that’s only because it is laying across the bolster!)

Funny colour combination in this one – that yellow is SO bright – and there’s a mix of greens – the bluey green 500s cheek to cheek with the more olivey 3360s.

So I tweaked the colours a bit in this one – gave it the lily look – that’s my favourite blue and I love it with that red. Do you know, I have puzzled over those funny looking critters behind the fence for over a year – were they some kind of strange llama and if so what were they doing in a colonial village! Guess what, they are dogs and do you know how I know this – it said so on the pattern. It’s amazing what you learn when you read the instructions! This block was mostly done – but I was positively stoic last night and did the door knob, put on the curtain ties, gave the dog/llamas tongues, finished the grass, stuck the bird atop the sign (blue of course, not olive-grey-brown). It is so satisfying to look at it and think, all done!

And here’s the current block – more lily colours. See the side border – the half stitches – well I read in a book on cross stitch that this was the standard cross stitch technique – do it all one way and then back the other – so I tried this, despite 20 years satisfying experience of doing the whole cross. I don’t like it – my stitches wind up lumpen and messy – and you can’t always see where you need to go back and then bits get missed – so I’m not doing it any more.

I love the poetry of this sampler – “Over it sailing shadows go, of soaring hawk and screaming crow”. I quite like crows – I like their plainness. They were sitting outside my window this morning at school in the fig tree – they have so many different screams – strident aggressive shrieks, and warbly laughs, and whiny protests.

All I need is a couple of good movie nights and this block will be finished and I can start the stable block – there’s a lot of brown-olive-grey in this block – bit hard to have blue horses I suppose.