Hello! How are you? I hope you are doing well. All is well here with the days flying by at the speed of light.

I have started a couple of new ensembles for the Little Darlings–apple themed. I only have a small stash of apple fabrics, so had to pick from what I have used before, which is fine. I don’t mind using up what I have.

I am making a red sweater coat for the blue fabric and a mohair cardigan in blue (to match those cute little flowers) for the pink. I finished the red first and am glad I tried it on before sewing up the underarm seams and weaving in the ends. Look at how big it is on Alice! Is she shrinking? lol

I’ve heard this happening to knitters–your gauge changes over time. I guess mine did just that. I thought I noticed in my last two cardigans that they seemed a little roomier, but they still fit nice, so I didn’t think twice about it. It really shows up in this style though, and with this type of yarn. I first thought I’d need to find a bigger doll to wear the sweater coat, but then I thought I could save it by ripping out rows. It seems like the biggest size problem is in the length and not so much in the width. I’d think it’d be both. Anyone know why that is?

I’ll be working on these two ensembles this week and hope to have more progress to show you soon.

Other news… I received a couple of embroidery books for my birthday in July. They are both beautiful additions to my library! I love looking at floral embroidery–such beautiful hand made gems that make my heart sing.

If you need bullion stitch inspiration then “A-Z of Embroidered Motifs” is for you. It’s chock full of motifs created with this stitch. This is the stitch I use to create the roses on my cardigans. I have an album created on Flickr that contains all of my floral embroidered pieces in case you’d like to see them.

There are 28 pages dedicated to bullion roses in this book! In addition to detailed visual instructions for creating bullion stitches there are instructions for other flowers, foods, nursery motifs, animals, and Christmas motifs.

My second book is a newer book titled “Embroidered Country Gardens” by Lorna Bateman.

This book is dedicated to flower gardens using a multitude of embroidery stitches. She also includes instructions for garden gates, archways, baskets, birds, bird feeders, a birdbath, insects, gardening tools, watering can, old-fashioned lady gardener. She has a dozen projects as well as showing you how to build your own embroidered garden. If you love gardens you will find this book inspiring.

We visited the Chicago Botanic Gardens last weekend. It’s so wonderful to be able to visit again. We went once in July and again in August (last weekend). I took a ton of video on this visit and made a little movie in iMovie showcasing the sounds of water there. It’s not complete as we didn’t get to every garden, but it shows some of the water gardens and the relaxing sound found there. If I can figure out how to get it on You Tube I can share it with you. I will let you know.

Did you have a nice weekend? I hope so! It’s hard to believe it’s September! Thank you for visiting.

WordPress has changed their editor, so I apologize in advance for any weird things going on in this post. I have just now learned the bare minimum to get this post made. It’s so hard learning new things…*sigh*