Successful sewing this time

Another weekend at the beach, another clothing attempt ... but more successful this time, with two garments that I might actually wear. And I had fun, listening to random Spotify playlists (1971 Rock Hits! Alternative Folk for Thursdays! Music to Wipe down Skirting Boards To!) Note - I did not wipe down any skirting boards. I read a couple of books, went for a couple of walks, had one swim. The weather was beautiful, but no clouds and not a breath of wind = no waves at all, so I had to float about. It gets chilly quickly. 

I know that some people out there have a straight line from "need black dress, buy black fabric, buy pattern appropriate for black fabric, sew black dress, wear black dress". Not me. I think that my garment making is actually four separate hobbies that have no relationship to each other. I buy fabric that I think is pretty / interesting / a bargain. I buy patterns that I think are different / on sale. I wear clothes from my cupboard that are appropriate for the day I plan to have. I sew the combination of pattern and fabric that I already own that I think will be fun / challenging / suits my current mood. So fabric-buying Lynley doesn't talk at all to clothes-wearing Lynley. Sewing-Lynley shakes her head at the decisions of pattern-buying Lynley and rejects anything with welt pockets. Clothes-wearing Lynley picks up the latest efforts of sewing-Lynley and says 'thank you' politely and puts them at the back of the cupboard.

Having reached these conclusions, I can also say that it isn't a problem. If the clothes work out and I don't wear them they can be donated. There is some wastage but less than my appalling fast fashion habit. I do a lot of shopping on-line on my lunch break and I find it a soothing time out to think about pretty material. I have pots of money, it is hardly going to break the bank. I don't mind spending the weekend on something I end up not wearing. Time sewing is time enjoyably spent. So that is how I ended up wearing a woollen cape to work today. It is awesome! Photos at some point....

Cognac in the espresso

Here is the scrappy solids quilt that I finished the binding on over the weekend. It is very scrappy! I did not plan any of the colours, as you can probably tell, just whatever came first out of the bucket. Or off the shelf, I had to go to yardage in the end as I used up the big scraps. 

I took the photos this morning before work ... it was a rainy morning and the sun wasn't properly up. The light looks very blue! The towels on the back are dripping wet.

I'm not sure if this is a traditional block. I know that if you are careful about colour placement then you get a very strong secondary pattern, and I think there's a version where the alternate squares are the same rather than scrappy which looks more coordinated. If I cared I would do a reverse image search ... but I don't. It's triangles and squares, what more do you need to know?

At least those squares make it easy to do a regular 'kite' quilting pattern, that was very fun to do. Now I just have to pin and quilt the next one before I get too distracted with the current solids I'm doing out of the scrap bucket! It was still very full....

Super-chilled weekend

This weekend was a much needed do-nothing weekend ... the usual chores of course but nowhere that we had to be. I had intended to tackle the mountain of dirty washing on Saturday morning but it was incredibly windy and our power went out at about ten. Bummer! We have power outages very infrequently but when we do it is almost always because of wind in the trees. Three suburbs were out so I figured it would take a while to fix and went for a long walk. 

I consciously tried to pick up my pace (from 'amble' up to 'stroll') and did the normal route in two hours 50 minutes, which is about 20 minutes quicker than last time. Which shows that it's possible, so I'll keep trying to speed up, and that should make it more like proper exercise than just an excuse to get out of the house. And give enough time for the power to come back on.

There was an enormous flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos in one of the parks I walked through. Hundreds and hundreds of the noisy bastards. I tried to get a photo of them all taking off at once, but really the only way to do it is by running shouting into the middle of them with your camera ready ... and I think that would be Frowned Upon by other park-goers. They are large, squawky menaces but spectacular when they all take to the wing.

The rest of the weekend was filled with excitement such as taking number-two for the very first driving lesson (did very well, calm and collected (both of us)), finishing the binding on the latest solids quilt, picking up a week's worth of clothing strewn across the floor and dyeing a fair bit of fabric. I also took a photo of my cardigan drawer - according to this blog I first kon-mari'd it in June 2016 and I have kept it like this with the cardies all rolled up ever since. It is awesome, and a wonderful way to store them. A neat drawer gives me a sense of satisfaction. Just the one though, don't want to go crazy, the other drawers look like they've been stirred with a stick.

Fog

Goodbye sunshine, hello fog ... Canberra winter mornings at their finest. This was the dim spectre of Parliament House as I walked up from the overflow carpark yesterday morning. It is a parliamentary sitting week so foggy mornings, shouty days, late nights and not much else. 

Exam and assignment stress is over for number one for this semester, which is lovely, and number two is nearly on holidays as well. The government has decided not to give the astra zeneca vaccine to those aged between 50 - 59 because of the blood clot risk - except for those of us who have already had the first dose (i.e. me) you'll be fine to get the second, off you go. However those of us who haven't quite got round to having the first dose yet (i.e. husband) have had their appointments cancelled and will have to wait until there is a pfizer dose available. It is a freaking dog's breakfast.

I am still trying to figure out the portrait settings on my new phone. Here I am looking perplexed. It is a very clear photo - with interesting depth of field - of me looking perplexed, but not quite what I was going for. At least it's Friday ... last night I completely gave up, we had chinese takeaway for dinner and I spent the entire evening on the sofa in front of the fire watching bizarre factoids and Korean dance moves on Tiktok. 

Beachy beach-face

Another long weekend - Queen's Birthday - means another couple of days at my favourite beach. Saturday was cloudy and I went for a drive to see some places where we might live when we retire. I veer between absolutely-miles-from-anywhere-no-people-in-view to sensible-small-cluster-of-habitation-close-to-town. I don't know where we'll end up, retirement is not happening in the immediate future, but it's nice to day dream. Sunday was a beautiful sunny day and I went for a good long swim. I think the water temperature has dropped five degrees in two weeks ... and it will keep dropping until November. 

But it didn't stop my happy swimming. It's just the difference between getting out because you're tired and getting out because you can't feel your toes. There was a decent swell that kept me occupied but not much wind, so perfect.

I did some sewing that was mostly unsuccessful. Not in the making or the fitting, just in the production of things that I will probably never wear. Because I just make what I feel like sewing for the fun of it - rather than with the aim of making a wearable garment - then I end up with some strange end results. This is compounded by my habit of buying fabric because I like it as fabric, and not because I want to make something in particular from it. I will post photos of them all at some point. Normally I wait until I wear something to take a photo but with these ones? Probably never going to happen.

Pinned up a quilt

I don't think I've shown this quilt at any stage of its construction - but here is a shot when I was pinning it up on the weekend. Ongoing theme of solids - lots and lots of colours - in a reasonably traditional layout. I don't know what this block is called. When you do it in restrained colours (and use the same colours in the same spots in each block) it makes an interesting secondary pattern ... but I thought it was a bit boring. So went completely scrappy.

No dog 'helping me' with the pinning this time :(

And now on to the quilting. Because it's all the same size squares I've gone for the grid-based 'kites' again. Easy!

More sewing! A shirt this time

I made this shirt a couple of months ago - and have worn it a few times - but this is the first time I got myself organised and took some photos. Some bad photos, but you should be used to my appalling clothes photography by now. Part of it is a failure of photography, but mostly it's because you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and anything showing me in all my glory is never going to look that good. Chins, mostly. 

This is rayon again, but a heavier one that is easier to work with. I bought it randomly last year when I went to Spotlight with a friend and it just appealed to me. From memory it was the only halfway-decent print in a full row of ghastly florals and animal print. 

Long sleeve, loose-fitting, pussy-bow. Shouldn't be my cup of tea at all but it is lovely to wear and I like the look. It was also fun to sew because it was different! Interesting pleating round the neckline and one of those patterns that look like they shouldn't work but it all comes together. It was McCalls 7436 which is one of the ugliest stylings I've seen on a pattern for a long time. I have no idea why I bought it - I suspect it was the third in a "3 for $20" deal - but the line drawings were good and I'm glad I tried it out. I might even make it again with the full-on bow in View D not the restrained tie from View C.

I bought a new phone a couple of weeks ago too and I've been experimenting with the "stage lighting" portrait feature. I thought it might be useful for when I had to take a photo of myself in a new shirt in the toilets at work! In reality? Just creepy.  

Another sack dress

Before I failed at making a shirt down the coast I did successfully sew another sack dress off the same pattern as the rayon blue and black one. It is not actually a sack - it has a raglan sleeve - but it's loose and unfitted and comfortable.

That is a terrible photo but I was ready for work and couldn't be bothered doing anything fancier. And it's not like anyone needs to see the seams because there are no seams, which is the whole point! Just a triangle. Perhaps less crap in the background might help? But that is the honest state of my sewing room, sue me.

I got the material from the most recent craft de-stash sale at a local church. It cost $5, appears to be some kind of lightweight poly/cotton blend (yarn dyed and doesn't crumple) and is perfect for this dress, which I was very happy to wear. It is a bit colours of the woodland but after wearing black and white like a penguin for all the parliamentary sitting days it is nice to branch out. 

Lemon tree ...

This is a before shot from last June ... our wonderful enormous productive lemon tree down the coast needed a proper prune - and we had let it get so enormous that a professional was needed. Apparently lemon trees can take a fairly robust cutback but CHRIST ON A BIKE LOOK AT IT

I don't think we'll be getting any lemons this year. Although it is valiantly blossoming! What a tree. 

On the plus side the kitchen is getting way more light, and the lawn might stop dying. We are going to pressure wash the bricks, get rid of those piles of pavers (the plan is to use them to pave the top part of the driveway, but that may also require professional intervention), remediate the grass and wash the windows. It is perhaps mankier under there than we had realised. And replace the side fence! I didn't see my neighbour last weekend but it might be time to knock on the door.

Beach again

Another long weekend, another three days at the beach! Saturday and Sunday were cold and windy but Monday was beautiful, so I went for a lovely long swim. The water temperature was cool, but not as icy as it will be in October, and best of all there was Dangerous Surf. 

Certainly from the headland it looked very dangerous. Hard to tell from a still photo but the swell was massive, the waves were crashing and there were quite a few people just standing up there watching! Apparently caused by a low off New Zealand - very big waves all up the east coast.

Dangerous translates to 'mildly interesting' on our sheltered beach so I very much enjoyed the swim and caught some fabulous waves. I made a dress on Saturday and half a shirt on Sunday before I realised that it was going to be AWFUL and stopped sewing. Honestly, sometimes you realise it is just irretrievable and it's time to go and read a book. I felt a bit bad about binning it but it wasn't expensive fabric and it's better just to ditch it than have it hanging about making everyone sad for the next forty years.

There were lots of very happy puppies about and I patted as many as I could, and that was my weekend.