Sleeping Beauty is starting to emerge....

I'm going to need to make a run for more floss soon - the purples and the greens are running out fast!

There's also a surprising amount of white in the piece; you don't notice it as much with the shading but it's definately there. As usual, the drapes of fabric are coming out great.

I'm getting started on the dress - there's so much going on with the swirling colors (pale greens and pale blues) as well as the beading pattern over it.

Lace!

I come from an English background, and as such, no furniture surface was "complete" without a lace doily on it. Not long after learning how to crochet with yarn, I started playing around with crocheted lace. These are two recently finished projects that will be Christmas gifts. Each is about 15 inches in diameter.

Both are made out of #10 crochet cotton in white (and both are badly in need of a bit of starch and an iron LOL). Patterns are from my favorite crochet magazine, Magic Crochet (out of print for several years now).

An update on "Meeting on the Turret Stairs"

This was where I was in early August. As much as I like the picture itself, the confetti stitching is a bit frustrating at times. I've still been picking at it and making progress though.

Cake!


My neighbors celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last week, so my folks asked me to make them a cake for the community meeting. This is what I came up with:











It's a vanilla bean cake with a chocolate mousse filling, chocolate swiss meringue buttercream, and a dark chocolate drizzle across the top of each layer. The tiers are 8 inch, 6 inch, and 4 inch. I did a few tuxedo dipped strawberries to finish it off; it's been over a year since I did any flowers in buttercream/fondant/gumpaste, so I opted to do the berries instead, since I didn't have a lot of spare time to play with the flowers. I packed up the top layer for the anniversary couple to take home, then served the other two layers - not surprisingly, most of it went. The few extra slices got sent home with people. I really had fun making it.