A foggy morning, then blue sky!

I woke to a foggy morning.  Cold enough to have frozen over the water in the bird bath.  It didn't last long though.  By the time I'd walked into town to buy groceries, the fog had lifted and the sky was a flawless bright blue.  Back home I didn't have the energy to mooch down to the allotment, so instead I did more of my crewel embroidery.  

I'm trying to make every square slightly different, despite my limited range of stitches.  The crewel wool is so thin and delicate.  I'm using a single strand of it on the needle and you get a lovely soft effect but oh, it is fragile.  Tug too hard on a stitch and the wool breaks.  I suppose it might not help that I'm using mainly vintage wool.  Age might've weakened the fibres.

This is the latest page of my  Ann Wood inspired stitchbook.  It's a piece of gell printed cotton, and has been stenciled and stamped.  

Apart from that stitchiness, I've been catching up on my reading.  I finished Andrew Taylor's 'The Second Midnight', which was good, moved along at a fast pace and kept you guessing about how things were going to turn out.  I wasn't convinced about the emotional depth of the characters portrayed, and much prefer Taylor's historical novels set in 1600s England, just after the time of the Great Fire of London.  I also read Tracy Chevalier's 'At the Edge of the Orchard'.  It's a story initially based in the unappealingly-named Black Swamp of Ohio in the late 1830s.  Where the Goodenoughs are trying to scrape a living from growing apple trees, but it's all very bleak and they're far from a happy family.  Disaster strikes and gradually the family breaks up.  We mainly follow the progress of Robert, one of the sons, and his travels across America, ending up in California where he finds a new profession collecting seeds and seedlings of giant redwoods and sequoias.  Those are shipped over to England where the wealthier classes want new and unusual trees for their gardens.  Enjoyed the book very much, but didn't those early American settlers have hard lives, especially the women.  

My next book is 'The Women who spied for Britain' by Robyn Walker.  It's a quick read, and I'm already halfway though.  It features the real-life stories of eight female secrets agents who worked for Britain during the second world war.  Sadly many lost their lives when they were captured and executed by enemy soldiers.  They were extraordinary women, brave and resourceful, and deserve to be widely known about.  

That's all for now.  I'm going to have a rummage through my tin of veg and flower seeds, and work out what I can start sowing.  It's officially Spring tomorrow, after all.  Have a great weekend.