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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.

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.