'Winter’ finished

I’ve finished stitching the Lizzie*Kate ‘Winter’ button-up piece. Anyone familiar with the design will see that it’s been thoroughly de-Christmassed in that I’ve omitted the Christmas stocking and the star on the tree as well as not put the red beads on the tree, so it’s much more neutral now. DH is going to try and find some way of displaying it in a temporary mount on the wall, which will be nice.


I also did this pastel picture as a copy from a photograph. I couldn’t get to sleep one night and found I was thinking about art and getting on with some, so I got up and made a start on this one. We’re going to put a little mount around that too and pop it on the wall.


Haven’t made a lot of progress on the stumpwork, as you can see here. I think I’m preferring very easy things at the moment, like cross stitch, but that may have something to do with being so dratted tired and a bit sick of using my weary brain for school and just taking care of ordinary things which, as anyone whose lived abroad will know, can be a strain when you have to do it in another language! Anyway, I did some of it yesterday and hope to get a bit more done by and by.


I’ve been reading quite a bit again and finished ‘The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless’ by Eliza Haywood yesterday. It was the first 18th century novel I’d read for a long time after quite a number of Victorian sensation novels, so it seemed a bit slow at times, but it had its thrills. If what one reads there is anything to go by, adultery and all manner of clandestine encounters were very common amongst the middle and upper classes in those days! Seems the lower classes led the way in morality!! Of course, today, there's not much conception of morals at all and what's socially acceptable, or just what one can get away with, is often mistaken for what’s actually right......