365 Project

Morning,

A quick post before I try and force myself to sleep. Swapping back to days tomorrow, and I already know it's going to be horrible trying to make it to work by 8.30!

I've started a 365 project today with Leah and G. They are both on day 4, so I'm 3 days behind but that's not such a big deal. I wanted to do one back in January, but a 52 version - one for each week instead of each day. I thought it would be much more manageable, but I just wasn't getting the 'big' pictures I thought it needed, and I also struggled to motivate myself to use Lightroom as it involves fighting my laptop. But I want to get into my photography more, and I need to get into the habit of using my cameras more often.

So I've decided this time that my 365 is going to be random. As in, it's not going to restricted to anything. Some purists would argue that a 365 project has to have at least part, if not all of you in the pictures, a self-portraiture 365. I'm not quite ready for that yet!!

I'm going to use it as a way of charting the days, almost as a visual diary. If I've done nothing but drink miso soup all day, I'm gonna take a picture of miso soup, or it could be something totally different. It depends on my mood! I'll also be taking pictures on my phone and uploading them straight if I'm out and about and nowhere near my laptop. If I don't, I'm not sure I'll remember to upload them and then I'll fall behind.

Fingers crossed with the three of us doing it, that will be enough prodding to keep us on the straight and narrow!

xx

Travelling Squares

Morning,

I've just finished watching The Prestige (really good, I'm getting into Christopher Nolan films now!) and while I was watching it I made 3 squares for my blanket. I have a lot of individual squares from travelling to work etc, I normally make 1 a day at least when I'm not reading my kindle all the time! Had to finish The Book Thief before I could do any more though, but that's all over now (awesome book btw). I'm up to 55 squares in the blanket, which isn't quite wide enough yet, and 21 individual squares that are set aside to introduce colours randomly all over the blanket and to widen it further.

So I've ended up picking out 10 balls of yarn from the travelling bag. Here's a quick picture of them all:

First up, I made a square of the sparkly rainbow yarn you can see at the bottom of the pic. It's quite funny, since buying a Colinette creative pack and noticing how much thicker Colinette Jitterbug yarn is to 'normal' sock yarn, I've been able to spot the Jitterbug yarn balls in the travelling bag a mile off! This is one of them :)

The sparkly thread running through it doesn't really show up in the picture, but it's there :) It's quite subtle, I love it. I might have to buy a little more...

Next I decided that an area with predominantly purples, pinks and blues needed a different colour. I was gonna go green but didn't have any to hand. So I went for this ball instead. It's so small that my scales didn't want to register how much it weighed (they are only 1g scales) and there's definitely not enough left for another square. Nice though. Not Jitterbug ;)

This one is Jitterbug! Went with orange to brighten up the area. I'm aware that my favourite colours are blues, greens, pinks, purples and turquoise/teals so each time I get a ball of yellow, orange or red yarn I make doubly sure to keep hold of it and put a few squares in!

Not a bad haul I don't think! Night all!

xx

Travelling Bag

Morning,

The first of two travelling bags arrived this morning. Had a slight moment of panic when I realised that both were headed my way and I wasn't sure which one this one was due to it not being labelled! I guess that's what you get for being greedy!

All trussed up in the bag. 

Spilled out onto my bed. I've picked out 8 balls so far (most of which are out of view) that I'm going to either whittle down, or replace with some of my own. I haven't 100% decided yet.

xx

Finished!

Afternoon!

So last week I left it as a half finished bag with up to the handles sown together. This morning I got back from Watford and seeing as it was all nice and sunny decided that it would be a good day to throw open the curtains and do some sewing in natural light!

I sewed the handles together in three different ways in the end, not very good at this reversible malarky! I got there in the end though, and ended up with this...



Yay! A fully reversible bag! I turned it back inside out though and went over the handles again as there was one area where I'd run too close to the edge of the polka dot lining and I was a bit concerned it would run.

So after doing that, I then turned it back to the right way around, and then decided that I couldn't be arsed to hand sew the handles because I never intended to actually make it reversible anyway. So I did the lazy option of sewing straight across and doubling back across the top of the two handles, making a loop. And got this...



Ta dah! My first finished sewing machine project! Regardless of the fact I actually started it in January then ran aground, I reckon I could make one of these in a few hours if I started another one. It's surprisingly roomy - I don't really pay attention to those 1/4 inch seam allowance notes yet :S - and believe it or not, there's a full skein of sock yarn sat in the bag in that picture. This is my knew knitting bag (see what I did there?) and it's gonna be awesome :)

xx

Productive Morning

Woke up today bright and early, and the sun was streaming in. Thought it was a good time to dig out my sewing machine again and make progress on the Japanese knot bag I started back in January!

I cut out the fabric wrong and then had to order another fat quarter, only for it to get lost in the post and then sort out a replacement...

Anyways, with fresh eyes it was a lot easier. And I realised that I had only cut the fabric wrong in the main fabric pictured above, which I have 2 metres of. Hadn't needed to order more after all! It's a pretty blue polka dot fabric though, and I'm sure I'll use it up.

Cut out new fabric, ironed on the interfacing, then did the same for the circular base except that I cut it out of the incorrectly cut fabric to save on time and fabric as I'd already ironed the interfacing on back in January.

Then it was simple to pin the fabric twins right sides together, and sew up the sides from the bottom. Trickier was pinning and sewing on the circular base!

I've done both now, so all that remains is the handles I think! I'm using this tutorial here which is fab :)

xx

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Mam's Socks

Morning,

I promised to have these finished this weekend before I left, so just adding a few more rounds of ribbing and then casting off.

xx