A Crochet Bouquet

Hello Lovelies,
How I have missed blogging. Reading your blogs and writing my own. Hopefully (keep your fingers crossed), I will have some time very soon to get on to my regular crochet happiness. The academic year has started off with a bang, and things may be starting to fall into place. Just when I think things are in balance, something happens to throw it off ... and majorly off. Lots of late nights and tired mornings, but life is good so I cannot complain. My new sewing machine arrived a few weeks ago and I still have not been able to try it. This weekend I hope to get it threaded and hem some pants.

We have had some cloudy days which makes it feel like autumn is coming. I enjoy the cloudy days here in Florida, I've been lighting my autumn scented candles and feel like I can see the leaves changing colors (except of course my trees are palm trees!).

Well, lets get on with what we really care about, CROCHET! My new book Crochet Bouquet arrived and I was able to make two of the flowers so far. I used a hook that was a tad bit too big, because the daffodil is quite large.

Of course I couldn't find my yarns in the orange shades to make a proper daffodil/narcissus flower. I like this book, but I also think I need to get 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet. I really want to make one of Alice's garden tea cozys over at Crochet with Raymond.

Prior to the school year beginning, I started to knit. I had to watch some videos to remember what to do. My mom taught my a very long time ago when I found her old knitting needles in my parent's basement. I never made anything but I used to be able to knit a few rows. I still need some more practice but hopefully by Christmas I will be able to make the "body" part of the tea cozy. Unfortunately, I have not been able to practice for many weeks now. Maybe this weekend will be perfect for some knitting practice.

I hope you are having a fabulous week! What are you working on?
xoxo Susan

Edison & Ford Winter Estates

Hello Friends,

Over the weekend J and I visited the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, FL. This was my second time visiting the lovely grounds and J's first time. I love visiting historic homes and seeing how people lived. Thomas Edison had over 1,000 patents!  He is most well known for inventing the light bulb, but he really created the entire system in which we still use for electricity throughout the world. On a side note, his original light bulb will soon be a thing of the past in the United States as the government is regulating the sale of incandescent light bulbs by phasing them out and then banning the sale of them. 

One of the reasons Edison came down to Florida from the Northeast was to find domestic sources of rubber. During the war, rubber was scarce. Edison, Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company), and Harvey Firestone (Firestone tires) were looking for a way to make rubber here in the United States. Edison planted a variety of plants in his quest to find rubber, and the plants are still on the grounds for us to enjoy today.

Thomas Edison purchased the grounds for a winter home in Fort Myers. Thomas Edison was good friends with Henry Ford and persuaded him to purchase the house next door. Edison created many components needed to run cars. They were very close friends and the Ford's visited their winter home primarily to visit the Edisons.

One part of Edison's Winter Home

The original buildings on the property were for Thomas Edison and his wife Mina and Edison's good friend and partner Ezra Gilliland. Edison had plans drawn up for one house, then flipped the architect's plans over and had a second home built with everything in the opposite direction. Later Ezrea sold the home and Edison purchased the home and considered the two buildings to be one home.

After Thomas Edison passed away his wife Mina continued to visit the home. She later sold the estate to the city of Fort Myers for $1. She left all of the furniture and belongings in the home to the city of Fort Myers. The grounds has a museum with artifacts and original inventions from Edison.

Many of the light fixtures are some of the first electrical fixtures ever made. They are still in tact and working.

The antiques throughout the house were lovely too!

On the far left of this photo you can see the end of one of the homes. Just to the right of the tree on the far left is trellis walkway connecting the two homes.

This is one of the homes. There was an open walkway between these two structures connected by the porches.

The Calosahatchee River is in the background.

I have many more great photos to share of the grounds including Henry Ford's winter home. If you are ever in the Fort Myers area, I highly recommend stopping by the Edison & Ford Winter Estates. Further north in Sarasota is the estate of John Ringling which is even more AMAZING.

Happy Day!
xoxo Susan

Flowers Around D.C.

Hello Lovelies,

I hope you are having a great week. I had some time to walk around Washington, D.C. today and caught some photos of the beautiful flowers in bloom. At some point I would like to visit during the Cherry Blossom Festival because it looks like a gorgeous site to see. But, for now I will settle for the beauty all around the city as spring moves into  full effect.

There are also a lot of pansies around the flower beds and tree skirts. I will try to snap some photos of those tomorrow. I know this is a short post but I promise to make up for it in the weeks to come. Summer vacation officially started for me yesterday... well just summer vacation for one week from the university. Summer session starts on Monday and I am teaching a class during the 10 week session.

I also have an update on my cardigan but I need to get to sleep, so you will have to wait for tomorrow!!!
Have a lovely day  : )
xoxo Susan

Slowly but Surely

Good Morning,

Photos are now back in action on blogger! For the last two days photos were not showing up on the blogger blogs, which makes posts not as lovely. Now we can all see what everyone has been up to. I think photos really help viewers get a feel for the pieces of life being blogged. I have been waiting to share some updated photos of my flower blanket.

Very early this morning I made a fast movement in my sleep and pulled a muscle along my spine. I ended up having to get up at around 5:00am because it was too uncomfortable to lay down. Luckily I can still type so I can get a lot of work done today, and hopefully crochet this evening too. My back has done this before but luckily at last three months have gone by since my last episode. Fortunately, I have some fabulous sun flowers to cheer me up!

I hope you have some real or crocheted flowers in your life.
Have a fabulous day!!
xoxo Susan

Embraceable Wraps - Helping Women Who are Experiencing Cancer

Good Morning Lovelies,

My childhood friend Colleen is visiting me this week, the one who learned to crochet with me when we were around 9 or 10 years old! I couldn't wait to show her my current WIPs as neither of us crocheted for many years and we are both back at it. Her mom taught us both to crochet and we both picked it right up and went to town.

Due to Colleen's arrival, I realized I did not share the Embraceable Wraps info in a timely manner. Embraceable Wraps is an organization consisting of women helping other women. Women who are experience woman cancers are provided with shawls, scarves, hats, and blankets knitted and/or crocheted by other women. I love the idea of women helping other women by showing your love and support through knitting and crocheting! If you are interested in finding out more information, check out their website.

Here is Southwest FL, we are starting a chapter of Embraceable Wraps. This will be the first formal chapter of many more to follow. Are you interested in knitting or crocheting a shawl, scarf, hat, or lap blanket for a woman who is experiencing cancer? If you would like to be included in our email group please send an email to: KnitFL@gmail.com. You do not have to live in Florida or even the USA to help out!

Before I pop out for today, many flowers are in bloom in my garden and I wanted to share some with you. Although we have been experiencing warm temperatures for quite some time now, Spring really is here and the flowers are letting us know.

My hanging plant basket near the front door



Morning Glories are always a delight




And of course a friendly bird strolling around the pond

Well I hope you have a fabulous day. I am trying to squeeze in as much time as possible to work on the Japanese flower blanket, because that deadline is ticking away... I should have some updates for you soon.
xoxo Susan

Variety of Crochet Flowers

Good Morning Lovelies,
Another weekend is just about here and I am looking forward to it very much. Although I was on spring break this week, I feel like the days are slipping away quickly. Our spring break was a week later this year which means we have one week less to go before the semester is over. J and I are trying to decide where we should go for our summer trip this year, any suggestions???

This afternoon I have a crochet meeting with one of my colleagues at work. We have a new project brewing and we are both very excited about it. I don't want to spill the beans yet, but I will be sharing all the lovely details because you may want to be involved.

Over the last several weeks some great flower varieties have been showing up on the Flower Bed blog. I've been wanting to try the layered Japanese flower and yesterday I finally did. I started with the back petals first and worked my way forward with the middle and inner petals, is this how other people do it? As I was making them I thought it may be easier to do the inner petals first, I will try this for the next one.

The layers do take quite a bit of time. Since the petals take up the most time when making a regular Japanese flower, the amount of time to make a layered one is at least doubled. I am not sure yet what I will do with the layer one(s) but as you know, I just love making flowers!

I was trying to make more Japanese flowers for my cover so I made five inner circles in five different colors (I like the assembly line method sometimes for these things). Well, I accidentally used a hook one size smaller than the one I used when I made the existing flowers. This meant the circles I made were a tad too small and the petals would not line up for connecting. So I have one slightly too small Japanese flower, and four slightly too small centers. I decided to try a combination of other flower patterns I have seen (the one came from Le Monde de Sucrette's blog) and made the flower below with the periwinkle middle and pink petals (top one). Her original pattern didn't have such a large middle. I will make one following her pattern to you can see the difference, it is a lovely little flower and her scarf is beautiful.

Well, we had a nice sky last night as the sun was going down and I couldn't help myself, I had to take a photo to share. This is the sky opposite the sunset. The trees were in the way so I couldn't get the actual sunset. 

Oh, one last thing. I forgot to share the photo of McKenna's hat after I added a few more rows. She looked simply divine!

I hope you have a fabulous Friday today. Today I am having lunch with a friend at our favorite Mexican restaurant, a meeting about a new crochet project, and then a presentation on action research for some of our undergraduate students, a nice Friday.
Take some time to enjoy the outdoors.
xoxo Susan