Snapshot Embroidery

This is a snapshot of the white lamp in the corner of the living room at our home of many years ago.  Or, it is a cropped portion of that corner of the room I embroidered several times.  The walls were papered in grasscloth that had been painted.  What a nasty mess!  It couldn't come down without taking part of the wall with it, so I dreamt up this stitched wallpaper to replace it.  The real corner was not so inviting as this one.

I needed something for a small spot on a nearly-filled wall, so I gathered buttons and shells and made this autumn-colored wall hanging (yes, for the grasscloth-wallpapered room):

It is a memory of beach vacationing, soft sands and bits of washed-up shells.  The ground fabric is evenweave, and it took me forever to stitch this, because of my double stigmatism.  I remember wondering, for the umpteenth time, why people thought counted work was a fun thing to do . . .