You're Getting Good at Sewing

I don't give many homemade presents beyond my strict, and very well defined, list of people who understand the meaning of - and appreciate - a handmade gift. I know you understand what I'm saying. I'm particularly critical of my skills and have been known to knit and finish an entire baby cardigan only to put it away in a box because it's not perfect enough.



The majority of people I know are on the exclusion list. It's not that they're not nice people and don't deserve receiving handmade (actually some of them are on the list because through past behaviour I know they don't deserve handmade), it's mostly that I'm embarrassed of my level of skill and not sure how it will go down.



I'm less concerned about gifting handmade to kids, especially if they're related to me in some way. I've made a few things for the nephews, but mostly kept them small.

So for one of the newphew's 3rd birthdays last week I thought I'd do a backpack. I'd fudged my way through making one recently without a pattern, but this time I used the Made by Rae one, and it's pretty much exactly what I'd already figured out - but with nice instructions and good measurements.



I was pretty excited by it. I think a backpack is not a bad present for a three year old. The Smurf is not far off three and he loves carting his wordly posessions around with him. He loves his backpacks.

I decided to line the backpack and add some side pockets - which aren't included in the MBR pattern. But they're very simple to do.





I was pretty chuffed with the outcome (although I'll remember to snip stray threads before taking photos next time).

The three year old loved it and the Smurf has demanded an exact copy of his own.

But what do I make of the comment "you're getting really good at this"?

I know it was meant nicely, but I'm a bit confused.

Was I right to be embarrassed of earlier presents? Am I shit and maybe getting better? Is it a "keep up the good work, you'll get there one day" kinda thing?

Or, is it a wow you're not that bad at this, in future I needn't be so concerned about whether you'll make some kind of twee looking piece of crap and wish that you'd just do the normal thing and buy something like everyone else."

What do you think? Am I paranoid? Do you have an exclusion list? Or do you merrily make and give and to hell with what they think - at least it's not another piece of plastic fantastic!

On Comments

Argh. I'm cranky. Have you commented on my blog lately? Been greeted by the annoying JS Kit comments system? Sorry about that. You see a few years ago I uploaded the Haloscan comments system to my blog. It was free, simple, stable and allowed me to reply to people by email. It really was the perfect commenting system for a craft blog - at a time when blogger didn't attribute email addresses to profiles.

Last year Haloscan was bought out by JS Kit who recently decided to lay Haloscan to rest - without any consultation of their users. They gave little warning, no useful way to import existing comments into blogger and therefore no real options other than to sign up to their paid (and lousy) JS Kit service - or lose all comments from your blog. Nice huh.

I've always hated commenting on blogs with JS Kit, I found it clunky and annoying.

But, faced with the possibility of having no historical comments on my blog or paying for a service I hate, I've chosen the service I hate. When I started this blog I did so for me, as a way to keep track of my crafty pursuits, projects tried, failures and fun. That's all, just for me. But some lovely people have dropped by over the years (PS did you know my blog is....GASP...5 years old this year!) and left some nice comments and well I don't want to lose that history - and ahem ego boost.

So, I'm desperately sorry for subjecting you to the shyte that is JS Kit. I am holding out in hope that the community comes up with a fix for loading comments into blogger. If you hear of anything, let me know.

Now I'm off to cheer myself up by making some banana icecream, meringues, falafel, beef kofta, hommus and tabbouleh for a BBQ tomorrow.

Tweak Tweak

I accidentally left my (new) camera in the back of a hire car on Thursday as I made record time getting to the airport and checking in after a marathon work trip (new personal record negative 5 minutes to check in close and I still made it including oversize baggage) .

Bugger. Someone car cleaner got an ace tip that day.

I'd show you photos from the Sunday Craft Room, but I have no camera. I'd show you photos of my amazing score from Lulu Carter (she with the new chooks) but I have no camera. I'd show you photos of the scrumptious bake-orama results displayed ala Royal Easter Show style at today's Craft Room, but I have no camera. Sick of this yet?

Instead I did a little blog tweaking over there in the side bar. Nothing special, but you can find my recipes a bit easier now. And if you're ever trying to find me and I'm not about? I'm probably lunching with one of those ladies in that list over there.

Dining out

...is over for us*. Hopefully for the time being only. Last night we went to an old favourite (a nice reason to be back in Sydney). We went at kiddie hour and everything but it was no help. The Smurf ate a scarce few mouthfuls of lentil rice (yum!) and none of the endless delicious yum yums on offer (although before they all arrived at the table he was of the opinion that he simply must try the pickled chilli).

He preferred touching up every table in the joint and playing peekaboo/chasing/hide and seek with the very sweet and awfully obliging waiter. I've never eaten dinner so fast in my life (and yet I still enjoyed it).

Don't cry for us, turns out daytime trips, to the likes of the Museum of Australia, will take the place of dining out.

Falafel? NO. Dinosaurs? YES!


Hummus and tabbouleh? Gawd no. Skeleton room? Shit yeah!


Lady Fingers? Blag. Train rides? Woo yeah!


I found the camera, obviously. In my work bag. I swear I already looked there many times before I actually found it.

* We'll be back at Abduls, we love it too much to stay away. Everything else we'll be ordering in though.

Project # something

I whipped this up (using the Softies book) this week as a present for the horses birthday approach to birthday celebrations at mothers group ie one first bday [party and present] for all the kids. Despite my excitement about the unveiling, it went down a bit like a lead balloon amongst all the piles of plastic fantastic fisher price crap. Oh well, like I said.

Anyway enough about that. About the pattern. I picked it because it was quite simple and I had no time. I approached a couple of parts of the pattern slightly differently for the sake of simplicity; I didn't pre-cut the legs or the wings. Instead I sandwiched the uncut pieces and sewed around the cut out pattern piece and then trimmed. Same for the wings. Makes softie making quicker and easier. I tried with the face and body piece but discovered through trial and error that those pieces are best cut before sewing.

Anyway, I loved the finished little bee and the Smurf cracked the biggest smile when I did my market research.

Now, look at this bottle brush tree.

Makes me feel happy when I spy it through the kitchen window. Although it freaked me out when I took the photo of the softie bee above. I could hear this really loud buzzing sound. When I looked up it was swarming with hungry bees. I didn't stick around to see if the softie cut it with the real gang.

Confessions of a teenage love rat

Hmm I'm not a teenager, nor am a I love rat (what ever that is?), I just thought that sounded like a good blog title.

I do have a confession though. There has been very little crafting going on round here. When we moved we decided to temporarily stay with my parents so we could save money for another house deposit. So, our belongings went into storage and I streamlined my craft supplies to a travelling stash of 2 green bags. TWO green bags, are you proud of me? But my crafting mojo seems to have been put into storage too. Boo. I'm over having no mojo (and no where to set myself up to craft). And so my blogging mojo is also in storage. More whinging to come in a later post.

Although, there was a teeny tiny bit of knitting at Easter in the car on the way from Melbourne airport to Warnambool


Did you know that Warnambool has this weird illuminated cross on top of a factory?


And Warnambool's a good base for a day trip to the Great Ocean Road


And at the Port Campbell community shop there is ridiculously under priced crafts made by local women

that's a $12.50 handknitted baby cardy there.

And Warnambool has it's very own Cheese World!

Which I insisted we MUST visit. And look, it has it's very own big Milkshake complete with straw!

And we were reminded that while it has been raining (and raining) in some parts there's still lots of drought about.


Now if you could send me some 'get your craft mojo back' vibes that would be great. That or tips on how to live harmoniously with your parents after moving out of home a very very long time ago. Thanks, all tips appreciated.

I see Red

In my non craft life I'm seeing red at the moment - a lazy builder who I've come home early from work to meet 2 days in a row without him showing, bastards (of all genders) who won't offer me a seat on the stinking hot overcrowded tram - despite their eye contact and secret peak at my belly (interestingly mostly young women wearing ipods - or maybe that's eyepods? Darling just cause you've got earphones plugging your hearing holes doesn't mean I can't see you looking at me - may the karma goddess hit you with her pointy stick if you ever need a seat on a tram when you're 7 months up the duff), and meanie bobeanies at work who despite being high powered successful women are acting like a pack of high school girls bitches.

In my craft life however I seem to be seeing pink...

Umbilical hat from Stitch n Bitch (not for my bump). And I've cast this on again in another shade of pink for a different girl bump.


A beautiful cotton beanie from Sam at Wizz Me together with her ace pattern for a baby beanie in 4 ply cotton that I can't wait to try out (just need the right size needles) - sent in response to my weak pleas for help. Oh and Sam I was overly excited by the duck shaped paper clip. Sam has an etsy shop by the way.

At least the pink can cheer me up and I have been right into the pinks lately- even though I'm not a pink girl. Ingrid and I were discussing over email how the bun in my oven may be trying to send me some signals. Maybe but we'll all have to wait another 10 or so weeks to find out. Shit 10 weeks, really??!

Oh and this too can cheer me up - I forgot all about it and found it in my pile of bday cards (surprise bday bash I never told you about way back in March).

Care of Brownpants who can jump on my bed any time! I think I will get a proper frame for this and put it on the wall over our bed.

Oh and did you hear the Up the Duff bug is going around?

Stop hogging bloglines

I jumped on bloglines this morning and it seems the site is busy and I can't get anything to show up properly, just half loaded photos and sometimes even weird code. Same with blogger. So I kindly ask that you all get your arses out of bloglines and blogger so I can get my fix please.

It would seem that after receiving my ultimatum of choosing only a couple of projects for the move I've had a spurt of craftenergy, mostly directed in the way of knitting.



*
And of course the clap is also progressing nicely as the tram only project. I will celebrate tomorrow on the tram with a little dancing on the inside as I finally make my way into the decreasing section. Of course others are putting me to shame with their prolific knitterly ways, but I don't mind. No photos for show and tell yet.

And there's a small bit of energy being directed towards the sewing machine for this


and another ongoing project that contains strips and strips of fabric.

And I found the perfect pouch for carting around smal projects on double points

I love this pouch. It was from Justine at 62 Cherry as part of the Melbourne blog meet up in February. I can't put my finger on why I love it so much, it's just one of those things.

Now I'm buggering off to the sewing machine while Mr S+L packs another box of books - by the way pregnancy (and it's crazy ailments like random wierd hip pain that make it next to impossible to walk up and down the 2 sets of stairs in your house) are perfect excuses for getting out of packing to move house. Highly recommend it to you for next time you move.

*I'm sorry Brownpants I know I asked you to knit a pair of these for me only a matter of weeks ago cause I thought I'd never get to finish them before winter finished. But it turns out some Debbie Bliss crossed my path and I couldn't resist the urge to get these suckers on the needles and off again asap. It seems a similar DB Cashmerino Aran might have strayed into your path too? Maybe even in the exact same colour even???

Whoops

I finished the beanie, see

(like my professionally stuffed beanie ready for photographing? I actually think it looks dicky but couldn't work out a better way to photograph it to prove I had in fact finished it completely)

Even sewed it up and weaved in the ends - something I usually leave for ages ever. But look what happened when I held it up to brag about my fabulous finished Rowan cotton creation to Mr S+L.... it grew!


Yes, it grew. How inconsiderate of it. It grew from being for a baby's head to at least a 3 year old (in my uneducated guess) and at a stretch should I wish to look like a crazed fashion victim it could even fit my head very very snuggly.

Serves me right for using cotton and not wool as the pattern specified. My knitting skills combined with my prego brain don't bode well for me adjusting the pattern to suit the cotton either so I don't suppose any of you can recommend a good pattern for a baby beanie using 4 ply cotton? I need another one of these babies off the needles within 2 weeks.

Nothing special

Just a quick post. I've been neglecting my blog as I have been wilting in the heat here - but so has all of Melbourne but a week-ish of 30+ degree days culminating in 38 degrees 2 days in a row will do that to people. But in the background there has been a last minute dash to finish 15 gifts (more on that later)







and some requisite fabric shopping (naughty naughty)




And even some cake baking (with the expert of assistance from the 2 year old nephew).


Now I'm off to enjoy sleeping in the relative comfort of a 25 degree celcius bedroom - as opposed to last nights effort of 'sleeping' in the 'comfort' of a 33 degree celcius bedroom. (remind me of this rant mid winter won't you?)