And Now for the Sky

I have finished working on the ground and now I am painting the sky. It is such a beautiful colour. It is 2 colours dmc 504 and 3813 blended together and is stunning.

My purchases from ebay arrived the other day and this is the first time I have had to post them on my blog. They are all charts from the 1980's. This is my favourite. It is a sampler by Mary Beale and is called "Personal Sampler". It reminds me slightly of my favourite style of samplers which are the Mary Balch samplers. That will give you an idea of the charts that I order from The Scarlet Letter.

This is a Needle's Prayse chart called "The Garden of Eden Sampler". It has Adam and Eve in it and I bought it to add to my small collection of Adam and Eve charts.

This one is a sampler from Jean Farish and is called "The Roxanna Corson Sampler". It has one of my favourite morbid sayings -

When I am dead and in my grave
And all my bones are rotten
When this you see remember me
Or I shall be forgotten.

I told my son that I was going to do this one and put it above his bed. I got told not to bother lol.

When I first say this one I thought it was a book on Antique Samplers that were museums. Well derrr it turned out to be just a chart of a sampler called "Ann Horton Sampler - 1830". But I am happy with it, which is the main thing.

Well as you can see they are all lovely, but I will put them away as I have bigger fish to fry as they say.

After a lot of hair pulling on my part (luckily I have a head of thick hair) I was able to place my order with Scarlet Letter and hopefully they are in the mail. I ordered the Betsy Davis and Betsy Manchester samplers. There is only one shop that I know of in Australia (in Sydney) that sells Scarlet Letter charts. Maybe it is just as well that I don't live near it and that I have to order things on line. Hopefully, my charts will arrive next week. I am looking forward to them arriving as I fell in love with them the first time I saw them. I am going to do them when I finish Elizabeth. I thought I'd do them before the eyes finally pack it in. Thank goodness I have one of the Mageyes. I find I am using it more and more.

You can tell in my small part of the world that Winter is coming. It has been wet, misty and cold for a few days. I have to rug up now, but if you travel down the mountain you need cooler clothes. No wonder my family keep getting colds.

Well, I suppose I had better go and fix my washing up. My washing machines is always singing out that it is finished. I don't know, a woman's work is never done lol. I hope that you are all well and happy in your part of the world.

Painting the Garden Green

On of my favourite movies is "Alice in Wonderland" and I quite like the song "Painting the Roses Red". For days after I have seen the movie I get around singing this song. While I have been working on the garden on Elizabeth I keep singing this song. Don't know why. Darn I'm starting to sing it again lol.

Well, as you can see I have nearly finished working in the garden. I am looking forward to finishing this bit. Then when I have finished working the garden I have the sky to do which is behind the buildings up to all the small buildings.

I am quite looking forward to moving onto another area. I haven't made up my mind yet whether to start doing the border or continue above the flower vines. Decisions, decisions.

Last week I placed an order to Wye Needlework in England for one of these lap needle frames. I chose one that had 3 sizes of hoops and they arrived the other day. I am really happy with it and it is quite easy to use. I have been having a lot of trouble with pains in my wrist from the dreaded arthristis after breaking my wrist about 7 years ago. Wye Needlework is in Bakewell in Derbyshire where Pemberley from Pride and Prejudice is set. Ah Mr Darcy or should I say Colin Firth. I still think he is the best Mr Darcy,

I am also waiting on a parcel of very old charts that I bought on ebay last week. I successfully bid on 4 charts and got them all. One f them is a Adam and Eve Sampler from Needles Prayse. Also I think it is a sampler called Roxana Corson, a sampler from McCalls Heritage Collection of Museum Samplers and the one that I really wanted called Personal Sampler by Mary Beale. Hopefully they will come today or tomorrow. I have a great deal of patience in most things but not in others.

Yesterday I (hopefully) ordered 2 charts that I have always wanted from The Scarlet Letter. I had a lot of trouble trying to order them. I kept being told that I had to enter the "Billstate" on the previous page, and as I have no idea what that means or where on the previous page it had to go I gave up trying to order them that way. I ended up printing the order form, scanning it and them sending it via email. Hopefully that way the order went through. I'm really looking forward to these samplers as they are a style of sampler that I really love. They are also samplers that I will have to do soon, before the old eyes pack it in. You know 40ct linen one week 18ct Aida the next lol. Oh God, I hope not, I don't like working on Aida.

Had a lovely long weekend. My middle son came up for a few days and my eldest son and DIL came up for a few days. It was great pity that the weather was quite lousy. My eldest and DIL were quite happy, the love going to a book fair that is on a couple of times a year in a church in Leura. They were able to buy a lovely book of all Lewis Carrols work, with drawings by Tennial. It is really lovely. He must like Alice in Wonderland too, do you think.

While they were here my DIL decided to give my blog an update. Do you like it. She loves fiddling around with her computer designing things. For some reason she couldn't get the colours right with the needlework in the heading. I told her that she can change it anytime she likes because after a while it starts to look a bit boring.

Beautiful weather in the mountains at the moment. It is quite cool during the early mornings and evenings, but over the last couple of days the days have been lovely. But as usual, with the weekend approaching, guess what is coming back. You guessed it. Rain.

If my parcel comes today or tomorrow and I can get on this computer (I have to kick somebody who is on school holidays off) I will post a photo of my purchases.