Slow week ...

I had a slow start on Saturday due to a near death cocktail experience on Friday night at a new find on Lordship Lane called the House of Tippler.  It made a nice change to the usual pub evening, but the following morning was as close to death by drinking as I’ve ever come.  I really can’t handle my booze anymore and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d almost rather not drink at all.  Saying that, we had a fantastic time and a good gossip.  It was so severe, however, that still nothing stronger than water (and tea) has passed my lips.

Yesterday I went to an incredibly interesting presentation at the Indonesian Embassy about a new Orang-utan sanctuary that the International Animal Rescue fund are in the process of building.  The work the IAR and Indonesian Government are doing around education, rehabilitation and release is absolutely amazing and, for an animal (and especially the Orang-utan) lover it was very interesting stuff.  Of course I love Orang-utans (and animals in general) because they’re beautiful and fascinating, but it’s so important to over ride those instinctive “must make those things mine” instinct and recognise that healthy, respectful distance is the most important thing which is why the education aspect is so crucial.  They don’t have a voice, they’ve typically been around for a lot longer than people have, and they’ve become victims of our insatiable drive to consume.  The Indonesian ambassador made a great point, though, which was that it is important to balance the needs of the Orang-utan (the man of the forest) with the needs of man, Orang-Biasa so finding routes for the palm oil trade that avoided the lives of the Orang-utan could make the future of the species more sustainable.  I’ve always wanted to see the Orang-utans and have been thwarted a couple of times.  The OH has now said that, although we are getting married in November, our honeymoon can be next March so we can go to Borneo to see the Orang-utans in the flesh.  Hooray hooray.

So my last week has been quite crafty and very restrained.  On Saturday, despite feeling the world move beneath me in a very discombobulating way, I managed a trip to Oxford Street.  The place was overrun with buses – have they closed it to normal traffic at the weekends?  Very bizarre but quite a spectacle.  I started reading Vogue’s Ultimate Sock Book a few weeks ago and despite last year only making it halfway through one sock before getting fatigued by the knowledge that finishing the one meant starting the other, I was hooked by this book and have decided, in a very sincere demonstration of my affection, to knit the OH a pair of socks to wear at our wedding.   I know this perhaps makes the idea of gifts from each other on the morning of the wedding rather banal, but I really like the idea of getting married while knowing that I’m helping keep him warm and comfortable.  Anyway, he chose a very natty dark purple self-striping yarn and I spent yesterday evening measuring his feet which, again, rather dulled the romance the of the idea.  Understanding the technical stuff has also helped – once again the marvellous Catherine Hirst has given me the low down on socks.  This is the second time but at least this time I actually understood some of the whys and wherefores. 

I realised this week, as I was again trawling through Ravelry and some of the several (hundred) knitting books littering my shelves (which are nearly full now which I suppose signals that I shouldn’t get anymore craft related books) that I have a substance abuse problem.  That substance is anything stitchy, be it knitting or sewing.  I currently have no fewer than five projects on the needles, and a list as long as my arm of other things I want to knit.  Waking up on Sunday I decided it was time to diversify so I broke out Bobby (the trusty Janome) and got to work on a muslin of a Wiksten Tova top, which blog-land has been all agog about and I’m not one to resist a trend (actually, that’s a fib – I normally have an aversion to anything popular but it is a great looking top). 

The muslin was a new thing for me – typically I’ll dive in on a wing and a prayer and hope for the best.  I don’t always have very successful outcomes.  With knitting, I have learnt the power of the swatch so it seemed to make sense to apply that Zen approach to sewing too.  On the muslin I worked an extra small around the top and shoulders, grading up to a small around the empire line and tummy and then a medium around the hips.  Recently I’ve had a tendency to buy clothes on the big side apparently “just in case” I suddenly expand to epic proportions overnight so it was really nice to try on the muslin and see that it fitted perfectly.  Having clothes that fit right is presumably the reason most of us start trying to sew our own.  I only bothered doing one sleeve on the muslin, just to check the technique.  Still managed to make exactly the same booboo on the real thing (sewing the cuff to the wrong side the first time) but I blame the incredibly busy pattern, the fact that it was virtually impossible to tell the wrong from the right side on the fabric as there was almost no variation to the colours, and the fact that once I got going I couldn’t quite stop so ended up pushing through both the muslin and the top all in one day. And managed to get about an hour or so of knitting in too although that also went wrong – don’t stitch when fatigued is the answer as that all had to be ripped back on Wednesday night and having read the instructions properly and with a clear head, there was a bit of an “ahhh, that’s why it didn’t work” moment.  Wally. 

Actually, the “a-ha” moment was fairly short lived as it still didn’t look quite right and one side of the front yoke was decidedly longer than the other.  I took to the ether-land and found a couple of comments on Ravelry about mistakes on the pattern (which I know happen to everyone, although it would have been handy for the website to contain errata – that was my first port of call and there was nothing on it).  Having completed one side correctly, I then had to unpick the cast off edge on the other side and re-do that again.  Again, I didn’t want to leave it as I want to get the sleeves done this weekend so I ploughed on through it last night.  Fitting in the day job around all these projects is tricky!  It’s looking good though so am excited to get the sleeves done, get that bad boy blocked, sewn up and given to the boss for her mother’s birthday.  A week of lots of re-dos then.

Anyway, I’m so happy with the Tova that wore it to work today and at least two people have said they like it.  My office mate is deeply unimpressed with the fact that on Wednesday I said I wanted it to cool down a bit – that whole one and a half day of sunshine was quite challenging – so that I could wear my new, long-sleeve top.  The fact I said it was bad enough apparently; the reality of waking up to a deluge was even more galling.  The instructions were fantastically clear, right down to explaining when to serge the seams etc so now I really want to invest in an overlocker.  I am also quite keen on the idea of machine knitting too.  Who said gadgets were just for boys.

Not deliberately coordinated with my living room decor

Ah, and back to my substance abuse problems.  I think I’m addicted to patterns as well as buying wool.  The OH was pretty embarrassed by my reading a sock book in public, although he’s going to have to be more resilient as I intend to use sock knitting as a train activity, and he keeps stumbling across craft books in funny places.  Mary Thomas was found lurking on top of the dresser in my bedroom; photocopied patterns with my scribbles were tucked behind a cushion on the sofa, and the dining table has been colonised by the swift and wool winder which have been put to a lot of active service recently.  And that was when I realised the extent of my collection.  Er, it’s extensive.  And that’s just yarns. My fabric stash is also pretty sizeable given the length of time I’ve been really focused on being crafty.  And it’s disproportionate given the things I’ve actually finished.

My next challenge is to finish some of my WIPs (or WONks (work on needles!) before moving onto new things.  Unlikely, but would be good to feel the weight of unfinished things lifting off the shoulders.  The answer really is to win the lottery so I could make things full-time but given the unlikelihood of that (in that I never buy a lottery ticket) getting some projects completed would be a good start.

Whole lotta stitching goin' on ...

I’ve not had time to write for the last few weeks for the simple reason that I’ve been knitting, knitting and more knitting.  And also a little bit of wedding planning as November looms.  I had a little go on the sewing machine as well the other evening and did a beautiful job on a zipper for a knitting bag but, sadly, a bodge job on the bag itself.  It was supposed to be a box bag to store my needles, yarn etc for a project, but ended up looking more like a Dachshund.  This I have put down to the fact I was rushing and not really thinking about what I was doing; however, it actually works quite well because my super long KnitPro needles fit like a charm in the “nose to tail” section of the bag.  And honestly I’m so darned chuffed with how the zip turned out that I still believe it is a thing of beauty.  Stick some ears and a tail on the bag and just admire that zipper people.  Everyone loves a Dachshund after all.  I haven't included a picture, however, for shame.

Anyway, the knitting is going well on the jacket although my natural perfectionist tendencies (as not demonstrated by the bag) coupled with the fact that it’s for someone else, mean I had to rip back a couple of times at the outset as I got the lace pattern (which is really quite simple) memorised.  Note to self for future projects: start on a smaller front panel first as it’s less galling to rip back than the full back of the jacket.  The only later slip-up was mother-in-law related – she was watching the Jubilee celebrations but, apparently unimpressed by the actual commentary, decided to offer a non-stop (she must have been a didgeridoo player in a previous life) warble through all the of the intricacies of the four hours of footage.  Knitting was supposed to be a happy distraction from both the Jubilee kerfuffle (I’m not really a fan of mass social outpouring) and the delicate politics of spending time with someone else’s mother.  In the end, the fiddliness of trying to pull back a piece that is at least 25% yarnover was quite distracting.  I am now happily inserting lifelines at crucial parts of the knit.  I won’t be fooled again (sorry, CSI is a big part of the soundtrack to my knitting – nothing says “lovely Sunday afternoon of knitting” better than murder and mayhem in Nevada after all). 



The bed jacket so far

Close up of the lace pattern

The other thing I’ve learned is that using my Royal ball winder when ripping back means there’s less tension on the yarn then if I make a ball myself so in principle it is less roughed up (for want of a more technically accurate phrase) when I come to re-knit with it.  I also found my yarn swift, which I bought many moons ago and had never taken out of the box, and decided to ball up all those skeins I had lurking around the place.  My God, it’s a revelation.  Whenever I’d open a new delivery of yarn my little heart would sink if it contained skeins.  Often, I wouldn’t buy a yarn at all if it only came in skeins.  I still have flashbacks of the many hours spent with numb feet, yarn wrapped around them, trying to maintain an even tension as I rolled skein after skein into balls.  Horrifying.  And the ball winder on its own, it’s fine and a bit quicker but you’ve still got to use one extremity or another to perch the skein on and inevitably it will un-secure itself from the table and plop straight off the side.  I was often crestfallen.  With the swift the whole combo is magic.  Within half an hour I had eight new neat, central feed balls of yarn to play with. 

It was almost too much for me and I vacillated wildly between casting on one thing or another – doing absolutely nothing in the meantime - before remembering that I had to restart the front right of the bed jacket again.  I’ve bagged up all my goodies though with a note of what the yarn is for.  I’ve also created a “knit list” so that I don’t lose track.  I’ve drawn the line at setting up a spreadsheet although I was tempted.  And I’ve booked him indoors a golf lesson (which I only last week described as “the least sexy hobby a man can have”) to get him out into the fresh air to de-stress and allow me some valuable knitting time.  Golf – both altruistic and incredibly self-serving.  The ideal gift.  Perhaps I could knit him some Argyll socks for Christmas to encourage him to keep up the new hobby.

I have a couple of other projects on the go including a dress from Claire Montgomerie’s Knitting Vintage, which I think will test my flea-like patience to the limits but it’s just too beautiful and will go very nicely with the enormous petticoat I bought the other day.  When on earth a woman in her thirties will be able to wear this combination I don’t know but if I do wimp out of wearing the petticoat with it, the dress itself is absolutely gorgeous.  



Lacy New Look Dress by Claire Montgomerie (picture from Ravelry)

The other thing that launched itself onto my sticks this weekend is the Frost Flowers Frou Frou which I have decided to knit in Rowan Kidsilk Haze in Amber for my wedding to wear under a vintage fur coat and over the following fabrics which will, at some point, be fashioned into a dress although not by me I should add.  I have a feeling I’d get hold of these lovely fabrics and end up with another Dachshund and while I believe everyone loves them, most of us aren’t keen to head up the aisle dressed as one on a day when all eyes are likely to be if not on me, then certainly on my sartorial choices.  So I will leave that to someone else’s capable hands after I manage to translate the image in my head onto paper.


When you see your dress, you just know - now it just needs to become a dress!

Top of the knit-list currently then is the bed jacket (need to get that finished soonest), the “It cannot fail to please” jumper from Susan Crawford, a Milo dress for my niece, and then I have to start finishing some of my projects including my de-reindeered Christmas jumper, the baby blanket that I lost interest in when I decided I didn’t like the colour although I’m now well over halfway, and then the Paper Dolls jumper which I have cast on and failed to go anywhere with due to a deep-seated and irrational fear of knitting in the round, which I am in the process of conquering.

The City Lit continues to impress with the great short courses it offers.  The last three Sundays I’ve attended an “Improvers Hand Knitting” workshop which was good fun.  Although the techniques were things I was broadly familiar with, it helped me tweak some of my bad habits, built my confidence (in particular the section on knitting in the round), and also got me started on the painful road to learning to flick rather than throw when I knit English style.  If the yarn is fluffy or there’s a good solid lace pattern, then I knit Continental style.  However, if the tension needs to be just-so, I have to throw and it’s not very quick.  Starting to learn to flick has been an eye opener and I’ve had to adapt it slightly as holding the right needle like a pen when the needle is loaded with stitches really wasn’t working for me so I hold the needle under my palm.  Still not quite mastered the pivot or managing the tension of the yarn but perseverance is obviously an important part of the journey.  What was that about flea-like patience again ...

Stitch glorious stitch

Having spent a few days in France apparently to perfect the art of the parallel turn on skis, only to come down with a chest infection the day before we flew, I spent a good deal of my time near the slopes if not on them, snoozing, coughing and generally being a bit of a horror for other, less ill-inclined tourists and proper skiers.  An American may have referred to me as a CHAV, presumably unaware of what it actually means or assuming that my dusky cough was related to 100-a-day cigarette habit.  It wasn't.  I suspect it had nothing to do with smoking (because I don't smoke) and everything to do with a fun but germ-filled weekend with my sister and her children.  Anyway, there are worse places to be poorly than a sick bed with a view like this.

During that weekend, I went to a Rowan workshop at Poppy's on Colliergate in York.  During a break I had a wander round and realised that within a ten minute walk there are at least four craft or textile related shops.  Grace and Jacob, Craft Basics, and Ramshambles, and Poppy's of course.  I was sad to hear that the Poppy's in Pocklington is closing down and the one in York is moving to new ownership.  Given the resurgence of craft activity, it's a shame that there still isn't sufficient business to keep these shops afloat.  The craft revolution was at least partly down to the idealised notion of a new age of austerity and perhaps as people have realised that making your own is not actually cheaper than buying things from the cheap high street retailers - and are actively encouraged to keep these retailers afloat - the movement was always likely to slow down.

I keep harping on about this, but ultimately making your own shouldn't really be about thrift.  Mending is one thing, upcycling another altogether (and I'm fairly dubious about that) but the pleasure of making something yourself is really pretty special and despite the cost, it's something that will be loved for a long time to come, especially if you invest in the raw materials.  I'd rather spend the extra money on really good yarn (and then why would you skimp on needles, they'll last you a lifetime after all) then have another top cluttering up the dresser when after a mere 20 hours of knitting (or so) I could have a lovely garment that I'd made myself.  I'm going to slide past the fact that I haven't completed my jumper yet - it's too warm to wear a shetland wool sweater anyway - and say that the knitting process has significantly cut down on my knitwear spend this winter as I've been anticipating my own creations.  It WILL be ready for next year.

Aside from that the course was great - it was really good to sit in a room full of knitters with varying numbers of years experience, and chat about yarn, needles, and our own trials and tribulations with finishing.  It has encouraged me to keep a record of all the things I have made so I can chart my progress a little.  I can also report that the bonnets and booties I've made for a couple of friends whose babies have arrived at last both look very professionally finished (in my view) so lots was clearly learnt.  So much so, that I'm planning to attend another Rowan workshop soon - probably in colour work (more on that below).

Apparently Rowan also offer a Knitwear Design workshop (two-days at the Rowan Mill) but try as I might, I've not been able to find it.  Rowan - if something gets booked in, please could you let me know!  Might be a stretch but you never know with this world wide whatnot. 

While in York I was lucky enough to have a look at a wall hanging my sister has.  My maternal grandmother (the crafty one) made it and looking over it, it looks like a type of crewel work.  Thick wool embroidered onto a diagonally stretched piece of linen.  It was hanging in the house throughout my childhood and I always loved it - the heron on the right always looked to me like a fairly knowing chap and the scale of the piece felt exhilarating to me, particularly because of my relative smallness to the piece itself.  More than ever, I can't wait to start the crewel work module at the RSN now.  It will be an amazing experience. 

I am due to start swatching for my first commission this weekend – I’m knitting a lace bed jacket from Susan Crawford’s Stitch in Time.  For the first time, I’m also really looking forward to getting swatching.  Deborah Newton’s Finishing School has inspired me to think about the swatch as a working test fabric that has a life of its own throughout the construction of the garment.  I think my boyfriend thinks I’ve completely lost it (actually “addicted” was his exact phrase) as it’s an unputtdownable read and having to put it down to do things like, I don’t know, go to work etc has caused some irritation.  So I’m looking forward to actually thinking about the swatch rather than suffering through it, and using that as a working document if you like as I knit my way through the bed jacket.

(Susan Crawford; A Stitch in Time)

To test a few skills I thought I might need for the bed jacket I've been working on a baby cardigan.  As you can see from the change of colour on this baby cardigan, I’ve grasped the concept of seamless colour change but haven’t quite mastered doing it perfectly consistently; and I really want the inside of something I make to look as neat as possible so I already know that this is going to niggle me.

Inside of front left

Nervous as I’ve not set a sleeve in before on a knit garment, I finished off the baby cardigan I’ve been making, which is a MilliaMia design and will now be given to a friend’s newborn to road test. 

Sleeve pinned and ready to sew

Given that came off the needles a couple of weeks ago it has taken me a while to do the finishing and I’m now itching to get started on a new project.  I’ve also missed the sewing machine so want to start on a top (for me!) as soon as I have time.  Cutting something out and putting it together is such a different sensation to making a fabric yourself with needles that it will be nice to try something else. 

Ta-da! (MillaMia cardigan)

On that note, I had a go at free machine embroidery the other day.  Results were patchy but what a liberating way to use a sewing machine.  If the word “addicted” was bandied around before, I’m not sure this is going to help the situation.  Saying that, I could do with a few weeks just to focus on making so a sojourn to some kind of rural retreat (for my own good) might be quite timely.  Sadly, unlikely.

In the meantime, my father and his wife have been clearing through some of their family things and have found lots of embroidery related bits.  I was a very grateful recipient of a Mary Thomas embroidery dictionary and a Coats stitch dictionary, and boxes of beautiful embroidery silks in every possible shade of green, pink, blue, orange and brown.  I started reading the dictionary as soon as I got home last night and it’s impossible not to be boggled by the 300-odd stitches to master.  I’m going to take Thomas’s advice and start a sampler so that I can practice as many of the stitches as possible before the RSN.  It’s a lovely book; particularly touching is that it’s got an inscription “May 1952” inside the front flyleaf.  This book has been used and loved for sixty years, pretty much since the moment of its printing.  As my birthday is in May, I’ve taken that as a sign it was meant to be passed from an expert embroiderer to a fledgling starting out on their stitching adventures. 

I’m on a bit of a high after spending Saturday morning with Catherine Hirst who I first met at a class at the Make Lounge during which she refreshed the memories of rusty intermediate knitters about pattern jargon and pushed us past the safe confines of the flat square knit item.  Much as I’d been knitting since I was little, it was sporadic, always square, and never useful.  Since that class, I’ve had several 1:1s with Catherine and it’s probably the reason I’ve started attempting to make actual things.

So, on Saturday we had a whistle stop session on the ins and outs of designing knitwear, specifically a pencil skirt.  Catherine has an amazing way of cutting through the complicated bits and making it sound very simple.  It must work because I had to knit another tension swatch and I was able to translate what we did on Saturday to my new gauge on my own which was reassuring. 

I probably shouldn’t say this out loud but here I go.  It’s all maths, and I loved it (less so the measuring part but it did push me out of the door running this morning so that's something).  I’ve always enjoyed maths but have a pretty instinctive ostrich response when called upon to use it; this was very fun if a bit confusing at times.  I spent a very happy 90 minutes on Sunday evening tootling around measuring things and doing calculations.  I have realised that owning a calculator would be quite a handy thing especially when using the calculator on my mobile which switches to locked mode the minute your gaze shifts; and I'm not so confident that I haven't emailed asking Catherine to check my maths. 

Also don’t try and avoid blocking the tension swatch – I didn’t with the first one and felt very sheepish when Catherine arrived.  I did with the second and it definitely helped with measuring up and to get a sense of what the finished knit fabric will look like.  Obviously knitting the correct number of rows would also have helped but I had enough and the sums all worked out proportionately but next time I would make a note of how many rows I should have done rather than remembering that it was 40-something and working to that.

Having knit the first swatch Continental, the comparison with the English knit second swatch was also interesting - I don't have any pictures but I've got to figure out a way to even up my tension on both knit and purl sides with Continental.  It looks quite lumpen which is fine on the jumper I'm (still) knitting as the yarn is variegated but on something like the skirt yarn, which is a smooth and consistent colour, it looked pretty choppy.

Catherine brought Debbie Abraham’s book “Design your own knitwear” and that had some incredibly useful hints and tips in it.  I’m going to pick up my own copy and I can already tell it’ll be something I end up reading cover to cover.

In the meantime, with the Olympics looming (boo hiss) I’ve been very lucky that my boss has allowed me to take some unpaid leave in the summer to do one of the RSN certificate (in Technical Hand Embroidery) modules full time.  I haven’t studied full-time since I was 18 (I did my degree part-time at Birkbeck) so am really excited about being a proper student again even if it is only for two weeks and a rather painful commute.  Can’t wait.

The creative writing course is also paying dividends – it’s rekindled my dormant love of reading, which I think was put into hibernation by the turgid academic material I had to read for my HR Masters; and I’m starting to write again, not just the homework but all sorts of new ideas are floating around and finding their way onto a page.  It’s been really interesting reading the other students work, although it’s daunting having to put your work out there for others to read.  We have a workshop this week so it’s quite a gentle introduction to the world of criticism but for most of us it seems to be the first time we’re letting others see what we’ve written.  There were a lot of raised eyebrows and panicky exchanged glances.  All good experience though.

Quilty pleasures

I’ve been having such a great time crafting that I’ve not had a chance to update the blog.  I’ve finished a second quilt, again a really simple set of squares with diamond quilting which I plan to give to my niece, and am currently plotting a larger quilt with a saw tooth star motif in the centre.  Over the weekend I also had a dabble, admittedly after a glass or two of wine on Friday night, with an alternative log cabin style pattern.  There may well be a name for it, and I’ll take pictures once I know more where it’s going, but the block will be made up of four sections and a central square (turned on its side).  So far, it looks really interesting as I’ve not been cutting straight and using slightly wonky off cuts to make the edges with a view to squaring the block once it’s sewn together. 

The jumper is taking shape but I’ve slightly lost motivation at the end of sleeve one and as spring starts to thaw given I know the jumper won’t be wearable until next winter.  I’m also halfway through a baby cardigan – pattern from MillaMia – and have completed the tension swatch for a skirt I’m planning on designing then knitting.  Am having fun and games with Excel trying to figure out how to make graph paper based on my own gauge and the resources on the internet have been less than helpful.  I’d ask for comments/suggestions but honestly, if I get one more comment from a Russian Mail Order Bride service, my blood will boil and leak from my ears.  Don’t know why it makes me so cross but SERIOUSLY, what benefit can they possibly think they’ll get from spamming a craft blog.  Some people, pah. 

Prioritising the creative writing has also been a struggle but I’ve started blocking twenty minutes in my lunch breaks to do writing and hopefully that will get me to the forthcoming assignment deadline.  I had several ideas for stories I wanted to write but the tutor’s feedback (on a short piece I’d submitted for comments) was so helpful I’ve decided to develop that – will be a good change for me too, pushing past the first 750 words and actually developing an idea, narrative, story and characters.  Literally, I love the abstract.

My first submission for the Writers’ Hub is nearly finished so I hope that will go up soon and my little blurb about vintage is now on http://vintagebrighton.com/2012/02/what-vintage-means-to-me-the-bloggers/ (and I wasn’t kidding, I love that yellow tank top).

Does anyone else (not mail order bride websites please) find that the more they know about something the less confident they feel?  In some ways, when I started doing crafty things a couple of years ago (not knitting, I’ve always been a knit(ter)) I would just have a play.  Now, I tend to research myself into total paralysis and then have a sudden spurt.  So it was with embroidery until I just realised that, the worst that can happen, is that someone else says it’s rubbish.  It really spurred me on and I’ve been motoring along now.  I am thinking of investing in a stand for the slate frame though as the best place for me to get comfortable with my current home set up is to sit backwards on the sofa resting the frame on the back.  Not great for the lower lumbar at my age.  Anyway, I’ve attached a couple of pictures of work so far. 



"From a distance... la la la" etc



The detail ...

 

... and with the original image

 It was very slow going but think I’ve now spent about eight hours in total on the whole thing, with about three of them totally on my own without the wonderful Lizzy who's been teaching me; albeit I have admittedly been faffing about, unpicking things, stepping back to look from a distance, threading needles (tricky), choosing colours, tidying stuff and other displacement activity. 

I took that to an extreme yesterday when having spent an hour sewing I went to get started on writing before deciding that my embroidery thread could be tidier.  I attach a picture of four hours of labelling, tidying and sorting by colour/value etc.  No writing was done.  Satisfying but much as I resisted leaving the house for the office this morning, I also realised the value of being out in the world and not being at home alone during the day to go more quietly OCD.

From two boxes and threads everywhere, to order wonderful order

Saying that, I potentially have two craft classes of my own to teach – subject to lease regulations at the venues – and am pulling together work sheets on paper piecing and learning to knit.  If they don’t come off, I might just post them on the blog for people who might be interested (again, no mail order shenanigans – see, that’s the OCD side of me coming through again).  And from a learning perspective have signed up to a creative textiles course to start in April - hopefully that will be some compensation to not being able to do the RSN course this year.  Am really disappointed but with a full-time job there's just no way I can give it the attention that I want to.  One for the future though ...

Ongoing projects include craft room blinds, the Colette Ginger Skirt and the Sewaholic Renfrew top for which I bought the most lovely John Kador fabric primarily because I thought it was in the sale.  It wasn’t.  A good lesson learnt – always check all the tags and not just the one that you think tells you what you want to hear.