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I worked on the Vierlande again this weekend for about 9 hours. I started on the motif above my last finished one. I decided to first finish all the big motifs before filling it in with the little ones. As we will be going away again this weekend I expect to finish this one the coming weekend. This has cost me about 43 hours so far.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer
After reading the Twilight Saga I was tempted to also read The Host by Stephenie Meyer. The only book by Meyer not set in the Twilight universe, I was pleasantly surprised.

The premise is that the world has been colonized by an alien life form that takes over human bodies and minds. The main character of the story, Melanie, is a rebel who fights against the takeover, but she is caught and an alien, Wanda, is inserted into her body. Melanie’s mind however, refuses to give up, driving Wanda to do things that are unnatural for her species.

I like the story, the flow of it and the writing style. It took a while for the story to get going, but when it did it was very good. I also found myself understanding the emotions felt by the main characters. I recommend this book.

Sword of Shame by The Medieval Murderers
I have only recently discovered the writers collectively known as “The Medieval Murderers” even though three writers I really like are part of them, Susanna Gregory, C.J. Sansom and Michael Jecks. Other members are Philip Gooden, Bernard Knight and Ian Morson.

The set-up is a main theme (in this case the Sword of Shame) and each writer writes a chapter, a short story, using the theme and ‘their’ main characters (for example, Sansom writes a story about Matthew Bartholomew, etc.). This works out really well and leads to an entertaining book.

The main theme here is an Anglo-Saxon sword that seems to be involved in all kinds of negative situations, thus making people suspicious. It leads to all kinds of murder cases that our main characters can investigate and solve.

I loved the writing styles, and even though the stories were written by six different writers, in six different time periods (and also in a couple of different countries), they all flowed well together and made for a good book. I highly recommend it!

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
After seeing it in the bookstores everywhere, and having it recommended everywhere to me from LibraryThing to Amazon, I couldn’t keep myself from picking up Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. It promised to be a story in the tradition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales set in the England of the Plague, 1348.

The story describes a journey, or a flight, undertaken by a group of (eventually) nine very different people, thrown together by fate. All nine have a story to tell, and are living a lie, whether they know it or not. Due to the fear of the plague, justice and the past, they have to keep on moving through the desolate landscape of an England that is suffering from bad (or non-existent) harvests due to unrelenting rains, and from the plague. They are being followed and slowly all nine have to face the truth.

The story is very slow to start, and very quick to end. I found this a bit disappointing. For as long as it took me to get to the action, I would have liked it to have lasted longer. The writing is very good, though Maitland uses a trick I absolutely hate. Numerous times during the story she let’s the storyteller say that “it would turn out to be grave error”, “that would not prove to be safe” etc. I would like to discover this myself as the story moves along, and this way it almost feels like a spoiler of some sort.

The book shows some of how hard life was during the plague and famine of 1348, and how people tried to survive, however, this is all background to the main story.

I would recommend this book to anybody with an interest in story telling, medieval England and daily life during the great mortality.

Not only did I not stitch on Mon Seul Desir for almost a month, now I see that I didn’t even upload Week 20. Well, here are both week 20 and 21. Total time spend on the piece is now 358.5 hours. I am way behind schedule, but I was just too busy and kind of had it with this project (sooo much work for so little to show for it). So, I hope I can still finish the top row this year, but if not, ah well, it is still a hobby, and it should always stay fun!

Oh, and BTW, that triangular shape in the middle is the top wing of a bird :D

It’s been a very long while since I posted, and also since I stitched. It wasn’t only the heat that kept me from it, I was also busy planning for my mom’s 50th birthday present, my own holiday and work work work. But, I finally got some stitched into the Vierlande again, and finished the second emblem. This one had a lot of backstitch, and was spread over two pages.

I decided I will work upwards from now on, finishing page one. I will do all the big emblems first however, before filling it in with the letters and smaller emblems.

I worked on it for 34 hours now :D.

Summer has officially begun here, with temperatures of over 25 degrees celcius… I didn’t stitch too much this week either, it is just too hot, and I get sweaty hands and a head ache from my hot lamp. I did manage to work on the piece one day, for 6 hours (total 340 hours). I am hoping to finish this half page next week, but the confetti is all that is left, so that will take me quite some time.

Even though I had the week off, I didn’t work on Mon Seul Desir as much as I wanted to. I rediscovered my Nintendo DS, and I was just a bit tired of stitching. Like I said before, this page will be done at the end of June, May was just too busy for one full page.

I worked 12 hours on it this week, for a total of 334 hours.

Another weekend away, but a busy weekend this time, so I spent only 1.5 hours on it (total 27.5). I worked some more on the blackwork/cross stitch on the inside of the second pattern.

I had a busy busy week this week, so I only worked on Mon Seul Desir for 6 hours (322 total). To be honest, I think I am suffering from Mon Seul Desir overdose. It is such hard work for such little progress, I think I need a break. I know already that I won’t finish this page in one month, so I am going to take it slow.

Oh, the major feature on this page is a bird, and the line you see going from halfway on the left side down to the center bottom line is it’s wing. Much bigger than the rabbit on the first page.

Another weekend away, and another weekend spent working on the Vierlande. I spent 12 hours on it this week, for a total of 26 hours. I finished my first (center) pattern, and decided to work on page 1 first. I did the outline of the second pattern and started on the center, but this one contains some blackwork so that is slowing me down a bit.

I only worked a couple of hours on A Mon Seul Desir this week, pics will be updated later and because I don’t have to work next week I hope to spend more hours working on it.

I spent the weekend away, so I took the Vierlande kit with me for some stitching. Between having fun I spent about 6.5 hours stitching on the center piece (for a total of 14 hours now, including frogging). Although I love the design the combination of the stiff fabric and the threads makes stitching a pain sometimes. I have way more knots and thread breaks that I do on Mon Seul Desir, even though this thread is also DMC… But, on the positive side, it is nice to see some quick results.