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A couple hours late, but I did finish page 5 (the third full page of the top row). This pages feature is the first (left) flag. I love the detail!

I spent 18 hours on it this week (taking advantage of two days off), for a total of 316. I spent 94 hours on this page, so I guess it is safe to say I will spend 100 hours per page on average….

Some more stats: total stitches is now  approximately 21.000 (out of 347.100 total). That makes it about 6% out of the total. And what does that look like? Like this:

Due to work I couldn’t work on my stitching as much as I wanted (still spent 21 hours on it, for a total of 298). I worked on the bottom half, focussing on the red.

A big part of the red in the bottom center is part of the flag. The difference between the flag and background is not very clear now though the flag is a bit lighter, a bit more orange. The streak that separates flag from background is yellow/greenish, so that should make it clearer.

I don’t think I can finish the bottom this week, most of it is confetti, but I will try my best.

Like I have said before, I love history, especially early medieval history. One of the blogs I follow is the one run by Medievalists.net. I had seen several announcements for the new installment of Penguin’s history of Europe, written by Chris Wickham. When the reviews came in, and were very positive, I couldn’t help myself. On a recent trip to England I got the book.

The book starts out with a short introduction into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth century. From that the book focusses mostly on the history of the Byzantine empire, the Franks, current day England and the Islam empire. Besides that it also looks at the situations in other parts of Europe, from Scandinavia to Ireland, from Bulgaria to Poland.

For me, the explanations of Wickham were very clear. In this introduction he starts out by explaining how he came to the conclussions that he came to, and how contemporary sources might not be trustable, but can still be useful. I have read reviews that say that the book is a bit too advanced to be an introduction, but for me the level was never too advanced. Some things might have been explored too deeply, but there was always a reason for that, to set up other chapters.

What I loved most about this book is that it not only tells you what happened, but it explains in detail how it could happen, and why it happened in a certain place and time, and not somewhere else. It also tried to say things about regions you don’t read much about (Eastern Europe), which helped to complete the picture.

What I am trying to say, is that this book was a very good and very readable introduction to medieval history, and that I highly recommend it to anyone interested in early European history.

LibraryThing link.

This week I finished up the top half of the third page with tons of confetti. That gave me a bunch of flowers and (in the middle) the top point of the flag. I also started the layout of the bottom half. Most of that half will be taken up by the flag, flanked by red with flowers and the last bit of the tree.

This week I spend 19,5 hours on the piece, for a total of 277 hours.

By nature I am a cataloger. I love lists, and I have a bunch of catalogs of stuff, including my Bette Midler collection and my books, games, music and dvds in the Pedias by Bruji.

Way back in 2006 I started to look for an online cataloging solution for my books, to always have a list of my books on my phone or available anywhere really. I looked at different websites, including Shelfari and LibraryThing. In the end I went for LibraryThing because the focus seemed to be solely on books and readers, and not just on ‘look at me and my books’. I got a lifetime membership (Only $25,00!) back then, to be able to enter more than 200 books.

Meanwhile, offline, I had started entering my books in Bookpedia. When we moved in august 2006, I cataloged all books before they went into the bookcases. I only wrote down title, writer and ISBN, but at least I had a list. With this list I started playing with LibraryThing.

In 2008 I started completely cataloging our collection in Bookpedia, including cover scans, summaries etc. With this I started cleaning up my LibraryThing registrations, and later adding to it. After months of work (in between other things of course) I finally finished it, so my LibraryThing contains exactly the same information as Bookpedia, yay!

This means I can get great recommendations for new books, I can connect with people who are also interested in the same genres (Medieval History!), I can have friends look remotely at my bookcase, and can just enjoy the feeling of a complete list!

My LibraryThing catalogue can be found here.

I worked some more on the top half of the third page (page 5) this week. Mostly red with a bunch of flowers and the top of the flag post in the middle. I think I have done all ‘big’ colors now, the rest is just confetti.

I spent 29.5 hours stitching this week, for a total of 257.5 hours. I have set myself a new schedule for stitching:

I will finish a page each month. Any leftover time will be spend on the next page, but this way I will try to finish one row a year. For this year the schedule comes to this:

Jan/Feb: Page 3
Mar: Page 4
April: Page 5
May: Page 6
June: Page 7
July: Page 8
August: Page 9 (end of row)
September: Page 10
October: Page 11
November: Page 12
December: Page 13

Lets see how far I can follow the schedule :D

This week was spend mostly preparing for the third page (page 5). I had a bunch of new colors to make, and thus had to buy more needles. This page is mostly red with a bit of the three and a flag with pole.

I spend only 6 hours stitching on this, with a total of 228 hours on the total piece now. From now on I will feature partly photos when I am working on a page; when a page is done I will undo the frame and take a pic of the whole thing.

I have been staying at my mom’s house for the past few weeks, and she has a sewing machine. This gave me the chance to finally prepare the linnen for the Permin Vierlande, and I couldn’t wait to start. I stitched on it for a few evenings. This will be my travel project, so I will work on it mostly away from home.

Of course, I started on it the wrong way. I started in the middle, but due to the frame I had the linnen turned 90 degrees to what it should’ve been. So, two hours of stitching had to be taken out and I could start again. I am loving this already, it is so much easier than A mon seul desir, and the result is so much more instant. It is very different!

Oh yeah, this is 7,5 hours of work (including frogging….)

Well, I did it! I finished page 4 (the second chart page) in three weeks + 1 day. I spent 31.5 hours on it this week, for a total of 222 hours :D That’s about 14.400 stitches. I guess finishing page 1 really motivated me.

Now it’s on to page 5 (of 56). I already started preparing and discovered 24 new blends to be used on that page. I guess tonight will be spent making them. I’ll probably need more needles too, and I will have to organise the needle organizer pretty well. The next page has the top of the first flag (on the left of the tent).

Well, I worked hard on my Mon Seul Desir this week, 28 hours (190.5 total). I finished the upper right corner, which took me most of the week because of confetti. I laid out the foundation of the rest of the tree. Although it is hard to see, there are five colors in there already. I am confident I can finish that up this week, which makes for a record three weeks for page 2.

I think I’ll have a goal of one row of pages a year (there are six rows, and I believe 8 pages per row.