Fall is Here!! 

The leaves are turning to beautiful golds, oranges and reds and have started drifting down to the ground. On a nice calm day, I love to watch them fall, it is so peaceful and relaxing to see them floating down from the trees. The mornings and evenings are now much cooler and perfect for hot chocolate and making S'Mores by the fire pit. I also spied some bittersweet on our rural gravel road coming home the other day. My mom loved to decorate with bittersweet for the Fall season. It was a yearly event for my family to go bittersweet hunting that we always looked forward to. We would all pile into the car and Dad would drive down many country roads and we would all watch out for it hanging from the trees and bushes. Mom would pack a thumris of hot chocolate, sandwiches and fruit for a picnic after we had picked all of the bittersweet we could find. Those were the days. 

I have been working on designing a small Fall wall-hanging. It isn't turning out the way I had hoped it would. I tried to put a pieced leaf on the bottom border, but when I set it together, well, it didn't fit! Then after I got the leaf on the pumpkin appliqued on, by machine, I didn't like the placement of it either. Not sure what I am going to do with it, just might end up a UFO, for a long time. Below is a picture 

Cross stitching has become a real love for me. I really enjoy sitting down in the evening and working on my WIP's (works in progress). I'm not really into Halloween much anymore. This holiday used to be a fun one, with a bit of spooky. Now it has become so gruesome and grotesque. I did want a little something, so I decided on a dough bowl pillow to add to my collection of the different holiday ones I have made. I am designing one using some aida cloth that I hand dyed with boiled blackberries. It turned out a nice purple color that I thought would be perfect for a small Halloween stitch. I used an older book by Laura J. Conley, that a good friend gifted me with, for thee letters, and for the motifs I am using the Donna Kooler's 555 Fabulous Cross-Stitch Patterns. Here it is still in progress.

I am also doing the Fat Quarter Shop's Christmastime SAL in cross stitch. It took a while for me to make up my mind if I wanted to do it or not, so I got a late start on it. Needless to say, I am behind, but I am working on it every day so I can get caught up. The peppermint will have to be frogged out since I changed my mind on the colors I started with. I decided to use the called for in stead, except for the dark red. All are DMC. The fabric is an 18 ct aida cloth that I dyed a pale pink using strawberries that I boiled to make the dye. This picture doesn't show how pretty the pink color is.

I have several more projects that I am working on, but will save them for another post.

So I will leave you with one of my favorite Fall pictures. If you love Fall and like to look at beautiful pictures that catch it's essence, go to my Pinterest page, "Fall, Best Season of All".

Blessings to all.