NO MORE SKY!

Right, it's ALL DONE.

I've got a lot done since I took this photo yesterday, actually, but it'll do - I don't want to take it off the frame until I've got a bit more done.



I debated whether to start the frame below (with the pastoral scene) when I got to the bottom of the text frame and started working the border horizontally. Eventually, curiosity won out! I plan to mostly put in the pale green for the grass though, concentrating on the text, and use up bits and pieces of threads from the text and ornaments. It's cute though - I have the very beginning of the grass' border, and two flower stalks.

The last few days have been a bit odd. Troy's eyes are really playing up, so he's up here and mostly lying down. Poor thing. Presanctified Liturgy was last night, which was beautiful as usual though a little confusing because we did a bunch of it in Arabic too, and the Arabic book is confusing for Arabic speakers! Eventually we sorted it out... Also, the bulletin needed folding and putting in envelopes, so we helped with that, and I've volunteered to help each month - it's not hard, I'm used to the work from when I used to do it for my job, and it's nice to be useful. So we had me, Jeremy, Abouna, Jeremy's godfather and Khouria (the priest's wife) all working away sorting, stapling, folding, putting in envelopes... it was actually a lot of fun. And I learned (a very tiny bit) of arabic, though I get the gist of most of what is said around me - the number 2 is ithnan, though I can't get my tongue around it yet (it's harder than it looks written in text!), and tea is chai, which makes sense to me :) I learned 2 because that's how many spoons of sugar I wanted in my tea! Sweet tea without milk has not tasted that good in ages... Khouria asked if we wanted sugar, or sugar with ants, as there were ants in the sugar bowl...and that led to remembering Jeremy's baptism, when the hose hadn't been used in ages and was full of ants, so they baptised a bunch of ants, too...I can just imagine all the ants with halos turning up to greet Jeremy when he gets to heaven. Shukran is thankyou, too.

Today is a lazy day. My body is in a supremely bad mood, so I'm going to take it easy. Check the mail, maybe make some ANZAC biscuits (not sure, but they're easy and I could probably get Troy to do the stirring), do a lot of stitching, take some more painkillers...*grins*

Oh yes, before I end - I've recently rediscovered this icon-


It's the Theotokos - Mother of God, and this particular icon is called The Joy of all That Sorrow. In San Francisco there's a big Russian cathedral with this name, and I'm rather fond of it. In the icon, she is shown as a flower, and the people around are asking for her intercession, and receiving what it is that they need. I can't find a copy of it as a print though, so I might have to get one written...or ask Pater and see what we can do about a hunt :) It's not a Greek icon though, which makes it harder

Anyway, off to stitch!