Good morning friends! Back to work today. I am ready. It was good to take a longer break, even if I felt guilt at times. It was fun to have an introspective summer camp of sorts here at home – what did I want to work on or explore?

I decided to work through the book I’d recently purchased, The Modern Embroidery Studio by Lauren Holton. I really liked the contemporary pieces she had included as projects. I’ve never been great at working through craft books I purchase, especially with embroidery books. I always struggled with the concept of tracing or ironing patterns, so unless a pattern was pre-printed on the fabric, I wouldn’t try it. I decided to get over that hurdle, and was about to purchase a light box…but then it dawned on me. I could use my iPad as a light box! ::insert heavenly chorus here:: It’s not perfect, and I still struggle a bit with tracing, but it’s a VAST improvement over the technique I’d previously tried, which was using a window to trace (it sucks! No one wants to hold up a piece of fabric on a window and trace!)

Below is my first finished piece from the book, the Sunburst.

You can definitely tell where my tracing skills fell short (i.e. anything involving having to trace a circle), but it was really fun! I’m pretty pleased overall. Also, it’s a great way to use embroidery floss from my stash. I didn’t have all the colors recommended by the book, so I just made substitutes.

This weekend we also went on our customary park outing. We’ve been to this park before, but had never done the whole loop (2.1 mile loop, so 4.2 miles total!) Apollo enjoyed a puppy chariot (yours truly) for most of the way back. We also got rained on; I was worried since we received a severe thunderstorm warning right at the 2.1 mile mark, but luckily it missed us.

I know one day I will shut up about the weather here, but seriously, it’s still so strange to me that the high in July will be the mid-80s, or that we get heat index warnings if it strays into the mid-90s. For example – today’s high? 82 degrees. Austin’s high for today? 105 degrees. Oh, Austin. I miss you so much, but I don’t miss melting every time I stepped outside.

I’d better get to work…I hope you all have a wonderful week!