Too Hot to Handle

I am melting. You see this:

Screenshot from my phone. Last night's "low" was 20 degrees. 20! That would be a nice "high" temperature in London. And the humidity isn't even that high yet. I may actually expire. Or just melt like that hard done by witch in Alice in Wonderland. Or the Wizard of Oz. Whatever. Too hot. My sister screeched at my complaining on Skype yesterday when I said I didn't feel it appropriate to put the air conditioning on yet. I'm British! We didn't conquer and downtread large parts of the world with air conditioning. We did it wearing flannel vests. So I'll just sit here and complain instead.

All this sun avoidance has given me a lot of sewing time so I have been getting on nicely with the voodoo doll of my sister, eventually to be given to my niece. She has a face.

The blue pen vanishes in water. She now has hair.

Before she even had hair she had her first outfit.

I feared the dress looked a bit too much like a hospital gown so added an elasticated waist and some pom pom edging around the collar.

All patterns have come from this book:

...which you can buy here (no affiliation) or on Amazon. You can also buy e-patterns individually. I've submitted a review to the site but I don;t know if they'll publish it. Essentially this is a wonderful book if you know how to sew garments. If you are a beginner or inexperienced sewer you'll have no trouble with the doll but some of the garments have steps missing, presumably to make the text fit the template. These don't matter so much if you know the basics of what you're doing but to a beginner they might be rather disheartening. If you can sew and want a handmade doll with a handmade wardrobe then this is 100% the book for you.

I was shopping for bits for the outfits when I met up with Natalie from The Yarn Yard on Monday. We had a lovely time shopping at two of the largest craft shops in Shinjuku - Yuzawaya and Okadaya. I picked up red pleather for the doll's rain boots, denim for her dungarees and oil cloth for her rain coat, as well as a variety of trimmings.

We had lunch at a Choco Cro although we were very restrained and had a savoury. This is an actual Choco Cro which I picked up yesterday and managed not to eat until I got home.

It's a small, straight croissant cone filled with nutella consistency chocolate goo, although without the hazelnut. They are rather nice and seem to go down a storm here.

I have a few more posts to catch up with since it's too hot (did I mention it's hot) to have my laptop on all the time. Poor thing keeps overheating. As, in case I haven't mentioned it, do I.