cross stitch – BooksPlease

This week I’ve been reading just two books. Often I read more than this but I’ve decided for the time being to stick to one or two at a time. It’s been easy this week as one of the books is compelling reading – Black and Blue by Ian Rankin.

It’s a real page-turner and very complicated. I’m reading it quickly because I want to know what happens next and to see how Rebus gets himself of the terrible mess he is in – suspected by his superiors of being a killer(!) and of corruption back in his early days as a detective, along with Lawson Geddes, his boss at the time. He’s being investigated by a TV company and also by the police themselves in an internal enquiry and all the time he’s spiralling downhill under alcohol and cigarettes. I’m thinking that when I get to the end I may go back to the beginning and read it again more slowly to appreciate the detail.

This contrasts so well with the other book I’m reading – Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey. I’m reading this one slowly, one or two chapters at a time, because it is quite intense. It’s comprised of letters between a group of women writing from the 1930s to the 1980s about their “ordinary” lives, but it’s by no means mundane or ordinary at all. It’s social history, as told by the people who lived their lives through the Second World War and into the late 20th century. It’s a bit like eavesdropping on private conversations, reading these personal letters between woman who became friends through their Correspondence Club.

Both books are ones I’ve owned for a while and so are books off my TBR mountain. I have bought one new book this year, but as it’s a craft book it’s not adding to the pile to read, but adding to the pile of cross-stitch projects I want to do! The book is The Portable Crafter: Cross-Stitch by Liz Turner Diehl, a beautiful book full of designs for small(ish) items that you can work on anywhere.

One that caught my eye is a corner bookmark. But it looks quite tricky with Kloster blocks – you have to cut out the centres and it might be a bit bulky for a bookmark

There’s a design for a little Persian rug, finished size 3½” x 5″ I’d like to make.

But the one that I’d like to start first is a Garden Clock, the only thing is I don’t know where I can get a wooden clock in which to insert the design.

For a change this post is not about books.

I like to do cross-stitching, but one of its disadvantages is that I cannot read and stitch at the same time. Other difficulties are that I cannot do it in the summer as my hands get too hot and at other times of the year I find the light is not good enough so I have to use a daylight lamp, which I don’t find very easy. Anyway, now that I’ve just finished reading The Testament of Gideon Mack, which I’ll write about soon, I feel it’s time to get stitching again after many months of inactivity. I have quite a lot of different ones on the go, some I’ve been doing for years. One of them is a kit to stitch Little Moreton Hall. The photograph above shows the minimal amount I’ve done. It’s quite hard as it is such a fine canvas and small stitches – I’m no expert. The Hall, a National Trust property in Cheshire is a beautiful timber framed Tudor building as shown in the photographs below.

Little Moreton Hall is one of the most impressive buildings I know, with its wonderful decorative timber framing and patterned glazed windows. It is marvellous to be able to visit such an historic building and many rooms are open for the public to look at and walk through. It looks top-heavy with its projecting upper storeys. The earliest part of the building dates from the 1440s and 1450s when the Great Hall and the East Wing were built. A third storey was added in 1560-70 during the reign of Elizabeth I, containing the Long Gallery, 68 feet long with a massive arched roof. Cross beams were inserted into the roof trusses in the late seventeenth century to stop the walls from coming apart. The walls are crooked and the floor is uneven, so you experience a truly precarious feeling walking along the gallery. When I visited it quite a few years ago the Long Gallery was not furnished, much as it would have been when it was first built, because the Elizabethans used the room for walking, daily exercise and games. It was very easy to imagine what it must have been like.

I bought the Guide Book, the Cross Stitch Kit and a small bay tree in a pot for the garden as souvenirs. I like to buy Cross Stitch Kits of National Trust houses and properties wherever I can find them. I now have a few including a view of St Michael’s Mount near Penzance in Cornwall, and an ornamental gate in the garden of Townend, a 17th century solid stone and slate farmhouse near Windermere in Cumbria.

I also like to buy bookmarks to stitch. They are much quicker to finish and have a practical use. I’ve decided to start the bookmark shown on the left in the photograph below even though I have several other kits I’ve started and not finished.