Wedding Dress

I think I have found the dress I'll wear to my sister's wedding in December.

It's been a touch choice but I wanted something vintage and with long sleeves as it will be fricking December. Looking at the photo I can't help noticing it is pretty much transparent so I'll need a slip from somewhere. Can you get long sleeved ones? Intriguing. I got it from Etsy.

I'll have to maintain vigilance in looking for a suitable belt. The one in the photo was just the closest to hand. A dark brown leather one would seem suitable.

Yesterday I picked up a UFO which I started as a wedding present for friends who have just celebrated their third anniversary. I was making a double bed sized blanket in squares but doing it in strips so the only joining was lengthwise along the long strip edges. "Only". This "only" joining was my epic task yesterday. I had done four strips but have only sewn three into the blanket (now single bed sized) and will use the other to make a matching cushion. Once I had mattress stitched those bad boys I found myself needing to do an edging so have picked up at least a gabillion stitches, possibly two gabillion, around the edge on single Denise needle. I used one of the interchangable crochet hooks for the task and when I went to swap in the 4mm tips remembered I hadn't got any as they had vanished into a pile of WIP and were proving hard to locate.

I gave in and went to Denise's website. I did look in the UK but couldn't find anyone selling just the tips without the cords, of which I have many. I adore Denise needles anyway but then to order from them in america and find they only charge $3.50 international postage if you're just getting tips? That drives it into frenzied adoration. A UK blog I follow was promoting some delectable gradient dyed fabric and I went over to etsy to have a look. A FQ of the fabric was about £4.50 which is pretty steep but it is artisan. I then looked at the postage - £11 (not $11 even). Hello? £11 postage for something that weighs perhaps 30g? Goodbye etsy shop and potential sale. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of a way to quantify how excessive postage decreases sales. Actually I don't really wonder. It's kind of a boring topic really. Forget I mentioned it.

This has been a pretty expensive weekend, although in a pretty good way.

I joined! I had a free day pass on Tuesday and checked out how busy the gym was at 7.30 am (eek) and 5.30pm and the answer was 'not very'. It's a Council run gym so reasonably priced and a month at a time so no mental contracts. I went again this morning (sunday at 9.30am I would have thought was a pretty peak time) and there were only 3 others there. I can't run (boo) but the cross trainer means cardio while keeping my feet flat and there's no impact. I'm back on the Couch to 5K system I was using last year and it's easy to simulate running and walking speeds on the cross trainer so is working well. I've done 1.1 and 1.2km respectively and am pretty happy with that, despite Pooch telling me his boss does 23km every weekend. Some people *are* just weird. 

It seems weird not to have more photos to post when I've been crafting so much but then the other things I've been doing are a surprise in cotton and a surprise in cross-stitch so no blogging about those. Plus I continue on the shawl for Nic's wedding which is basically looking much like it did before but more voluminous. Meanwhile in London we are on final countdown for the Olympics. I am very pleased about all the regeneration that has gone on but wish we could have just done that without spending all this money on drivel.

They still look like wisdom teeth to me. Boris's voice BOOMS out of the station intercom when you travel making everyone jumping and encouraging us all to be cheerful about the impending disaster which will be rush hour. The tube system barely copes as it is. The mind boggles at how it will be. Which is why I am very happy to be going away for the first week. I offered my flat to p/hop for the week having had no luck renting it out. Someone has taken it so in return for a donation will be in residence for that week. It is the daughter of a knitter rather than the knitter themselves and so I fairly confident my stash is safe.

I am very keen on the idea of home swaps for holidays and so on and don't worry about security on the basis that you're much more likely to die getting out of the bath than you are to be involved in a terror attack, and therefore in my mind you're more likely to be subject to a home invasion by a general robber than have all your stuff stolen by a house swapper. The only time this does worry me is when I wonder what would happen if I swapped with a knitter. Could they seriously resist my stash? Would any of my books be safe? Should I hide the needles?

Source: someecards.com via Alex on Pinterest

A Little Etsy Love

Got to love a coupon...get 20% off by entering COUPONLOVE at checkout. 

Putting your New Foot Forward

My journey to conquer the tibial tendinitis (not "labial" as spellcheck keeps trying to change it to - can you imagine) has reached a new stage. In between causing bruises on my calves the Podiatrist gave me these yesterday.

If you knew how much they cost you'd be as excited as I am.

He had created a cast of my feet a few weeks earlier and measured my legs and these were the result. They force me to walk properly rather than tipping outwards with each step. What suprised me though is how the highlight the differences between my legs.

The one on the right is about 5mm higher than the other to make up for the difference in length. I know none of us are truly symmetric (think of the men you know) but it's still quite surprising to see it illustrated like this. I'm to wear them for an hour extra each day until I am wearing them all the time and should expect to feel quite knackered for the first few weeks as my body is forced to work harder than usual when walking. But on the plus side it should stop the pain so bring it on.

I received several things yesterday of a less practical nature and far more aesthetically pleasing. Pooch's birthday present for me arrived from Canada.

Di-vine. I've had it on my etsy favourites for years and am utterly thrilled with it.

I am going to wear it with pride at work to do and see it as my new go-to ring.

This is the seller. She is a real artist.

Also arriving chez Byrne was something else I'd favourited on etsy an age ago and decided to treat myself to as a birthday present.

A vintage children's book called "What Makes my Cat Purr?". Some might think that starting to buy children's books was a sign of impending intention, but no. This is purely for me and I read it out loud to myself last night. #cuckoo

The illustrations are so lovely.

One day....one day I will get to live out my crazy cat woman dreams.

Meanwhile I content myself with being the crazy wrestling woman. The CM Punk - AJ - Daniel Bryan love triangle continues. Needless to say CM Punk doesn't want to be in the love triangle, everyone keeps telling AJ she's nuts or 'needs professional help' depending on whether they are a heel or a face (bad guy / good guy for the uninitiated) and Daniel Bryan only cares because AJ is the special guest referee at his and Punk's title match on sunday (woop woop). Having snogged them both last week (and really snogged - OMG I'm so jealous as I would happily give a decent sized portion of my yarn stash to snog CM Punk) she this week proposed to CM Punk, was proposed to by Bryan and then ended by slapping them both - and proper slaps too. Their reactions were quite telling. CM Punk (face) was annoyed but would naturally never hit a lady so just pulled a real mean face.

Daniel Bryan (heel) was astonished AJ didn't want to marry him and pulled what I think of as a margaret-rutherford-as-miss-marple-upon-being-told-to-go-away-by-an-impertinent-young-upstart-face.

Come on - which one would you rather snog?

Five Inspirations

1. Onesie with some awesome motto printed on it - could use foam letters and fabric paint rather than needing to be fancy about it.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

2. Woven patchwork using a jelly roll. Instructions are for a rug but a baby blanket would be nice too.

Source: modabakeshop.com via Alex on Pinterest

3. A Galaxy Dress using bleach and fabric paint. You know how much these are usually? Where can I get a black shirtdress for cheap?

Source: starsforstreetlights.com via Alex on Pinterest

4. Rolled Paper Vase (from Mary Jean's Things Etsy Shop)

Source: imgfave.com via Alex on Pinterest

5. Use the base of a poundshop laundry basket to make polka dot walls

Source: thelilhousethatcould.com via Alex on Pinterest

I love Pinterest for keeping track of all these ideas although you do need to make sure you credit things properly - not least so they link back to the original tutorials. There is so much craftyness out there! It makes me happy to know there are so many of us making away in our spare time out there. But I don't find all these already on Pinterest and just repin them. Here are some blogs that have been inspiring me lately...

• True Blue Me and You
• Sew Many Ways
• Inspiration and Realisation

To help keep up with blogs I've developed an addiction to the Flipboard app. It's free and you can set up whatever you want to keep an eye on. I've got UK News, Technology, Science which gathers all the top stories from social media and the internet and lets me skim through them. Then I've also got Google Reader as another with all the blogs I read set up. Google Reader is free too and is soooo easy to use. I've then got the CRAFT website as a separate section as they update so often it floods my other blogs otherwise and then Flickr as another one again. I now read the latest blog posts on my way home each evening. I've been catching up on so many more posts than I would usually be able to read and with less effort than looking at the sidebar on my own blog to see who has updated. Result. It can only leave more time for crafting. 

I wish someone would pay me to endorse stuff I love anyway. 

Bleh. I'm off now to watch Volcanos LIVE and tear colourful pages out of magazines to make into a vase. And possibly a mess. 

The Theme of this Week is Brown

I am not amazing at sewing straight lines. My mind wanders. This was therefore not a natural project for me - but was something I'd been wanting to try for a while. Bargello Patchwork.

I have loved Bargello Embroidery for a long time and became intrigued by the patchwork after seeing some at the Festival of Quilts. The larger pieces are pretty mental.

The one above is actually quite 'normal' compared to the ones I've been looking at with the assistance of the "Twist and Turn Bargello Quilts" book (non-affiliate link) and if you look at that click on the extra images for more mind bending examples.) It all starts with strips the same width being sewn together going from light to dark in your chosen colourway.

There is also much emphasis on ironing your seams one way or another.

I stuck with this for this stage but regretfully failed to follow through and am seeing the consequences now. Luckily my aim for the finished object doesn't succeed or fail on the basis on lying completely flat.

I envisage a set of four placemats. But that's enough sewing for today so we shall see if it becomes something else in the interim.

I seem to have a lot of projects on the go in different crafts at the moment. As I see it the list is...

• Bargello patchwork possible placemats (as above)
• Wedding shawl in amazing handspun silk (about 2/3 done)
• Yellow Opal socks in garter stitch (almost finished second one)
• Wedding waistcoat for Andy (need to make second trial one)
• Wedding quilt for Sian and Mark (at the quilting stage then needs binding)
• Bunting duvet for Sian and Mark (still being planned)
• Secret cross-stitch (half of the chart designed)
• Succulent garden (bowl, soil, gravel and one succulent acquired)
• Letter wallet (surface embroidery on top of crazy patchwork almost complete)
• Bunting for Sian's wedding (fabric cut out)
• Wooden painted houses (paint, brushes, houses acquired)
• Pickled swedish herring (mason jar, vinegar, herbs acquired - being thwarted by lack of herring)
• Cat embroidery in straight stitch (half done)

I think this list says quite a lot really. I've always marvelled at people who work on one thing at a time and I used to think I craved that at work. But this really is how I work best. A little bit of patchwork, a few rows of knitting, an hour of embroidery, back to the knitting, look at succulent types online, design a bit of cross stitch. I do wonder if I have some compulsion to never be still and put myself under pressure to do all this stuff sometimes but then I do seem to really enjoy it. And having said that, that's enough blogging and I think the shawl deserves an hour or so of my attention. 

Yesterday, when blah blah blah

Pooch took me out for an extremely posh and nice dinner last night. I basically killed it in knee high red boots and an original 1964 clutch bag Mater had given me for my birthday.

Because yes, it was my birthday yesterday. I had a pretty awesome day. Multiple presents (that's the way uhuh uhuh I like it uhuh uhuh) including a solution to the cat conundrum I had not previously considered from my sister.

Plus the aforementioned bag.

Isn't it amazing? Look at this attention to detail. Little divuts cut out where the shoulder strap finding pops out if you choose to use the shoulder strap.

They don't make em like that anymore. Not in Primark anyway.

The day itself was spent in leisurely pursuit of a tidy flat and a few more rows on the lace shawl. Both achieved and having suited and booted myself I was off to Hawksmoor in Guildhall (near Bank). It was well lush. Lush that is until about 3.30am this morning when I started feeling somewhat uncomfortable. Pooch tells me it can't be food poisoning because we shared everything and he had a lot more of it than I did. But I dunno. Seems like a big coincidence timing wise for it to be a stomach bug.

That said it was a glorious meal for which I am truly grateful. I stand blog before you now as a 34 year old woman, no pets, no kids, divorced and dating her ex-husband.

I have always much preferred even numbers.

Books #27 - #31

So much for blogger saving draft posts. This is the second time I've written this. Curse you blogger!
 

#27 Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance
by Gyles Brandreth

A rather odd story full of juxtapositions - sexuality vs abstinence, poor vs rich, adoration vs loathing, london vs paris etc. Oscar starts the book by discovering a murder but doesn't tell anyone or report it until the body has been removed and the netire room stripped and polished. With beeswax. Conan Doyle again turns up and Oscar's similarity to Sherlock and then Mycroft Holmes is emphasised as he jumps about coming to all sorts of conclusions. The charactors in this are well written but I have some toruble believing that so many of them could be such good liars. Lies are very tiring and hard to keep track of, in my experience.

#28 I am the only Running Footman
by Martha Grimes

A Martha Grimes book and a good one. These books all look like they'll be typical 'cosies' until you get into them. They're intelligent and well written with wit and good character development. By the end you expect to find out whodunnit but it's not always the way with this series and this is one where I ended up reading the ending a few times over because it was so ambiguous. After reading four in a go a few years back I was astonished to find out the author is american and lives somewhere like Texas. She writes of London and the countryside with utter conviction. These tend to be out of print in the UK but are current in the US. If you find one in a second hand shop I'd definitely recommend it.

#29 Bryant and May and the Memory of Blood
by Christopher Fowler

Oooof, I do love these books. Again these are set very firmly in England but usually very much in London and the author is himself a Londoner this time. The last two were based more or less within the underground tube system while this one keeps us above ground and plays around with the Punch and Judy stories. A powerful man - is he being punished or is he living out his own passion? The usual inhabitants of the Peculiar Crimes Unit are in place along with several favourites including the amazingly long suffering Alma who explains very calmly at one point how being Bryant's housekeeper is her way of showing respect to God. I would recommend this series to anyone at great length.

#30 The Case of the Murdered Muckraker
by Carola Dunn

Oh dear. Sometimes an otherwise reliable author drops something like this into the mix. Personally I try to tell myself they had received an unexpected tax bill or needed to pay a ransom or something, because otherwise they never would have wanted this published in their name. Daisy is in some part of america - her husband is in another. I can't remember why now. It's not really important. Except I think they're on honeymoon. I wish I'd honeymooned somewhere different to where Pooch did. Anyway. She sees someone get shot and fall down a lift shaft. And so she drags herself into the investigation and gets in the way and some stuff happens and they end up flying cross country in a plane piloted by...a black woman pilot! I almost stopped reading this one. I'm just glad it was a library book because it would have depressed me to have bought it.

#31 The Lamorna Wink
by Martha Grimes

I only finished this one last night so it is still very much with me and kind of echoing around my head as I go back over what happened. My only criticism would be that there wasn't enough Jury. But in his absence you got to see how the individual characters acted without him so it was quite clever to do that. Melrose has gone to Cornwall to view a property he saw in a magazine and to try and get away from his ghastly Aunt. Two small children drowned there with their bodies found hand in hand four years earlier and now there has been another death and a disappearance and Macalvie is on the case. As with #28 these books are a delight. This one does have a definite culprit but how things were done and turned out the way they did is multi-layered and complicated and haunting. It sounds trite but these are the kind of books where you regret they have finished and miss their absence.

Shoppywoppydoodah

Sister 1 came to visit this weekend. It has been pretty epic and is not over yet. The goal was the acquisition of her wedding shoes (she gets married in December). Goal acquired.

We celebrated the finding of the shoes (Irregular Choice) in somewhere I didn't even know existed outside of Brighton. Choccywoccydoodah has a shop and cafe just off Carnaby Street. For the sake of my ever expanding wasitline it is probably best I didn't know it was there.

The shop contains examples of their fantasy cakes. The cafe upstairs is like somewhere vampiric, chocolate-loving, ladies-who-lunch would hang out.

Sian looked like she was about to be crowned by the ludicrous lampshade.

We had accidentally found the wedding shoes in the first shop which theoretically meant game over, go home. But no. Five shoe shops and a Beyond Retro later and my plates of meat were doing the tendinitis tango and I had to head home. Sian bravely carried on. She's a trooper.

She got back to find me knitting. What else. She asked me about cross-stitch. "Is it difficult? Could I do it?" Never ask an enabler if you can do something. Thirty seconds later she had aida, threads and a pattern of a dog that looks like her dog.

She carried on with it this morning and free style embellished.

I am *SO* freaking proud. She's ordered a kit online to do more. This is already the best day ever. My sister. Crafting. Squee.

Speaking of the lace.

Going nicely. No counting either which I am a big fan of. As long as each half ends on the end of a pattern repeat you know you're doing fine and you stop when it's big enough. Nice.

The Sianathon didn't end with cross stitch. We decided to order a little sushi for dinner. I almost passed out with joy when I saw it arrive.

It's from Poppy Hana in Bermondsey which does free delivery over £15. So good. The eating doesn't end there either. This being a blowout weekend we are off in about 45 mins to eat Dim Sum by the riverfront in Canary Wharf. I can almost hear the pork buns calling me from here. My only sadness is that I won't be travelling there dressed like my hero.

:(

Nothing Says Summer Like a Cabled Aran

Finished! The only modelled photo is sans buttons.

But with buttons...

The buttons were from my giant stash. The pattern calls for four but I only had the three. I um'd and ah'd about whether to go with blue or dark brown but am glad I chose these.

The weather in the UK has done one of those sweet little u-turns. Jumped about 8 degrees in one day only to jump back down again the next day.

Sadly these things only seem to happen on weekdays when I have to stay in the office. Heat does not suit heavy yarns which is why I'm glad to be knitting with beauuuuuutiful silk laceweight. There is no point photographing it at the moment because it looks like a haemorrhoid - but the shawl for Nic's wedding is happily underway.

I had a monster migraine on Monday which has put the kibosh on further crafting this week. Plus my medium sister comes to stay tomorrow on the search for shoes for her wedding so that will be more shopping than crafting. However I am sure I'll manage to fit another repeat into the shawl and maybe even pin it out to take some photos at some point.

Craft Wave Keeps Coming In

I'm still crafting away like the zombies are coming to steal my supplies. This weekend I've made the pattern and the rough sample for the Groom's waistcoat for Nickerjac's wedding. No pics but I will share the process after the wedding has actually happened.

I've also made myself a coaster and a swap partner a fabric wrapped bowl.

I love these things and they are so easy to make. Any sewing machine will make one without complaint as long as you have a zig zag stitch (my swap partner likes 'shabby chic' so I'm hoping white and flowery patterns fit the bill).

There is a tutorial here but it's also very intuitive. I made one of these as part of my swap with QuiteContrary but I have also made others before.

I get my clothes lines from the pound shop and go for the ones that look quite raffia-ish as they are a good size and easy for the needle to go through. Then you use any scrap fabric (as long as the pieces are at least 1" thick and off you go.

I have thought a lot about why I've been on such a craft bender for the last few weeks/months. I think Pinterest has a lot to do with it. My 'Crafty Inspirations' Board in particular means I am frequently reminded of creative opportunities and I am still on the site most days seeing what is inspiring others. In fact I repinned this from someone else on Friday because it resonated.

Source: someecards.com via Alex on Pinterest

For instance seeing something like this...

Source: wendigratz.blogspot.com via Alex on Pinterest

...makes me think of this jumper I saw on Flowermouse Blog (which I follow)...

...and how I want to use my own cat motif with the paperdolls jumper on Ravelry. And also how I have a cat embroidery on the go that I haven't even blogged about and so I do a bit more on that.

For today I am hoping to finish the Livingstone Cardigan from the last Interweave Magazine. Half the collar and the i-cord toggle loops to go plus choosing some suitably toggly buttons from the stash. I also made some resin pendants yesterday (I was about to make a sandwich and decided to do the resin pouring instead - you know how it is) so I need to photograph those and list them on Etsy. Then...who knows. I might swatch for the shawl I'll wear to the wedding, or make some more bunting, or do some more cross stitch planning, or....