OK, moan over and I'll show you the first half of the back-stitching that I've been doing over the past few days on the field mice. I've done all the dark red (on the flower and rose hips) and the brown on the mice and stems, and just have the white outlining on the berries and the greens around the leaves and leaf veins to do. I did pick up my goldwork the other day only to find that the copper Jap thread went bad again. The metallic wrapping stuff keeps coming off on the very short length I need for that back part. Well, I'll just have to keep trying until I succeed, but, as failing with that makes me put the project straight back down in annoyance, I think I'd better stitch a new bit first and then have a go at re-doing that copper Jap!=)I finally joined the local library and read a new US teen book called 'Viola in Reel Life' by Adriana Trigiani, who some of you may know from her novels (which I haven't read). It was an interesting excursion into the world of US teen-dom, but I rather doubt that a 14 year old really knows as much as Viola sometimes seems to and I wonder if the author really remembered the time zone differences when she has Viola video-conferencing with her parents in Afghanistan and old chums in NYC at times that seem to be me to be very antisocial for the other party. She also seems to me to be marvellously logical and to reason things through in a way many adults couldn't manage. Anyway, it made an entertaining read and, as it'd free, who can complain!? I also got Oscar Wilde's Complete Short Fiction, but the other classics they had at the local branch were all things I knew well already. Might do for light reading sometime, but I feel ready for something fresh and I'm not really into contemporary things, by and large.
And I really want to get a viola.....