Whiskers & Wings: Week 1 and Goodbye Belgium!

This week has been a combination of rest and day trips, so stitching time has been erratic, but I'm happy with my progress so far:

You can see part of the window now! And isn't that snowy effect just the coziest thing? I love it! I've been stitching this piece indoors when it was raining, or out in the garden when the weather was fair. I've been lucky enough to have spent some golden evenings outside stitching this piece, listening to the blackbirds sing and having Luno for company. In fact, I was caught in fraganti by my mother one evening, who caught me in all my Pyjama-Wearing, Cross-Stitching Goddess glory (please note the sarcasm):

What can I say? Not my most flattering picture, but certainly one of the most candid ones that perfectly capture a moment, I think.

Any time I'm in northern Europe in the summer, I find myself falling in love with the landscape and wildlife: the forests, lakes, castles, mountains... The deer and falcons and hares and foxes. These are things that we simply don't have where I'm from, and for me they're so beautiful and exotic, that I always want to take the feeling home with me. And as an armchair traveller, it's natural for me to gravitate towards books, so my summer reading usually consists of novels set in Alaska, or in some other remote northern place. Right now, I'm reading A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly, which takes place around the New York countryside in the 19th century, and I'm loving that northern summer feel. 

That being said, I don't do winters in the north. I already lived in Belgium for quite a few years, and if that taught me anything is that the darkness and cold of the winter are not for me. I need the eternal sunshine and warmth of my beloved Mediterranean, where life is slow and the days are warm. Northern Europe is just a lovely summer dream. 

And so with that piece of inner monologue, I'll leave you with the last picture of Luno for a while, since tomorrow we're going back to Spain. Thank you for reading, and as always happy stitching :)