Well, things seem to finally be coming together, making it possible to actually go on our planned road trip. The dolls that will be coming along are a contemporary 'family' group, and includes Leona & Owen (JIDs), Lonnie & Milo (KIDs), and Holly & Coco (BIDs)....

They are looking forward to all kinds of adventures, although I won't be able to post any pictures until after we get back home. I shoot exclusively in RAW, which means I have to process everything in PhotoShop, and we won't have access to that while we are away. In fact, I don't know if I can even make any updates here. We will be staying within Canada, and unlike in the USA where every couple of miles there's another little town that has a McDonalds with free WiFi, Canadian towns are few and far between, and only bigger cities have fast food places with WiFi.  And we avoid cities like the plague.

Yesterday was the Cambridge Doll Show, and we took the time so I could go. Unfortunately there wasn't much of interest as far as props for my dolls. I did come home with two new little Teddies. I gave them to Ringo, in an attempt to compensate for the indignity of having taken his coveralls for Coco to wear sometime on the trip. Coco's jeans look all nice and good, but they are so tight, he won't be able to do much in them - hence the need for something with a bit more comfy fit.

"How come I can't go?"

"I know you'd like to come along, and you are going to miss Holly, but there are lots of others 
staying home too, and they'll keep you company"

It's been four weeks since the girls were here on a Saturday morning. Teagan brought along school and art props with her doll today, and that inspired some 'art' pictures. So we quickly set up a couple of pictures before it started to rain. 

The Pony Portraits quickly drawn by me, and coloured by Natalia...

..and flower with tiny Ponies done by Teagan....

It's time again to bring my plants inside again for the winter, and to help with the shock of moving indoors, I pick all the flowers off my geraniums and fuchsia. The girls wanted to make bouquets out of the beautiful discarded flowers....

Milo needed a nice warm sweater for his fall trip, and I do have quite the selection of interesting sock yarns. But I didn't feel like messing with different gauges and experimenting with stitch numbers, so went with what I know. Which meant going with the same brand yarn that my KID sweater pattern was written for, and the only ball I still had from that brand was the same colourway as Owen's sweater. So Milo now has a sweater like his big brother....

I'm still working on the matching toque.

I finished reworking the hoodies, and three of my kids were eager to try them on. 

I think they turned out great. So much better than they were. After all, I don't want my 
doll's clothes screaming "this was purchased from Iplehouse!", and looking the same as 
every other BID or KID who owns the same hoodie. I'd rather mine had unique clothing.

They had fun picking out their pumpkins for this year's Hallowe'en...

Now to take off those warm hoodies, since we are into another heat wave.

I'm continuing to very slowly work on my doll stuff. 

Back in the spring when I ordered Milo, Iplehouse had a lot of their doll clothes on sale for half price - or less - so I bought several KID and BID size hoodies for them to wear on our fall trip. Only thing was, I wasn't thrilled about the patches on the front of the hoodies. One of them said "I Love Iple", which I do, but I don't think a five-year old would care to be a walking advertisement. And I have no idea what the fronts of the other two hoodies meant. The patches were just machine sewn onto the fronts, so i figured I could remove them and replace them with something more age-appropriate, and more unique.

So I picked them off, and bought some cute embroidered animals at the big half-price sale at Fabricland last week. Only problem is, the stitch holes from the patches on the yellow and blue hoodies are rather large and unsightly. The stitch holes in the cream hoodie were fine - it must have been a slightly thicker fleece than the white fleece of the other two. So I've cut a new patch out of  white cotton to sew over the holes. I figured I might as well add some colour to the background patch behind the animals, so I've added some matching coloured paint and now they are drying......

After the patches get sewn on, the animal embroideries will get ironed on.

I also replaced the cord ties the hoodies came with. They were way too thick a scale, so I pulled them out, and inserted new cords made from twisted embroidery thread, and also added a brass bead to simulate the clasps on the ends of most hoodie cords.

After a whole week and holiday weekend of weird toothaches, last week was spent being referred from one dental specialist to another - I saw three in all - and on Saturday morning I underwent a difficult tooth extraction. An old root canal had cracked and my jaw was infected. That tooth just had a brand new crown put on back in May!  What a waste of money!

Anyway, I followed their suggestion of ice pack for 15 minutes alternating with thirty minutes off, for the first 24 hours, so the swelling is minimal, and the pain wasn't even that bad. The worst were/are the prescription drugs and their nasty side-effects. One pain killer was more than enough, and I'll NEVER take that one again.

Today is the third day, and everything feels worse - just like they said it would.

Now our long-anticipated trip is also in jeopardy, due to a second issue which presented at the exact same time as the tooth, but had to take a back seat.  Hopefully things will work out this week, and we will still be able to go on a shorter fall trip closer to home, staying within a day's drive of home. Totally sucks!  I'd so been looking forward to doll photos in the mountains.  And visiting our son in Vancouver too, of course. 

There were so many wonderful things to eat at Elin's party, that it was 
difficult to choose what to try first.....watermelon, or donut?

"I like the blue candies. Which are your favourites?"

So many yummy things....

Well, it's been a rough two weeks since Elin's birthday on August 30th, 
but she was finally able to have her friends over for her party today. 

I've changed her eyes. I really liked the light blue ones she had when she came back from the 'spa', but they photographed very 'glassy' and with her lightly blushed nose, she always looked like she'd been crying. So now her eyes are a medium blue. Almost all her friends came....

Tillie and Cinnamon couldn't make it, so the only other one missing was Ringo. But he's still pretending to be Robin Hood, and waiting for his studio portraits, so he can switch back to his contemporary persona.  

Elin and her two best friends admired the cute duckies all over her cake....  
...while the boys were more interested in the treats....

With the heat wave finally passed, I was able to set up for a few more 
pictures of Lily before she goes into the cabinet....

I've finally made a decision about the dolls I'm planning to take along on our fall trip, and it will just be a contemporary group. They are so much easier to find settings for, plus I'm ready to get everyone out of their Fantasy costumes that they've been in for the past few months.  Which means I need to take studio photos of them all while they get undressed. In the meantime, I'm working on knitting a new sweater for a doll I'm thinking of taking along.

Today is finally supposed to be a nice day, and I'll see if I can get to some long-postponed doll photos. It all depends on how much time is left over after the dental specialist today.