Pen & paper tangling

This was a bit more than doodling - I started off with pencil outlines and a bit of guidance after reading this post over at Pin Tangle and following one of the links provided.

I think this is a slightly more organised version of my doodling from the other day.

A trial mandala

Created with the aid of a set of compasses and some inspiration from Daisy Yellow.

Drawing

Drawing has, for some reason, eluded me for some time, some would say it has always done so and that I am a doodler.  The time came for me to start again - and if my first efforts are more doodling (with a little direction) then so be it.

My intention here was to just fill the page with pattern and doodle, to reacquaint myself with pen and paper.

A Quartet of Spectacle Cases

At first appearances these seem a little bit of frippery - I needed all of these:

• a case for old trusty I got married in them 6 years ago sunglasses
• a case for my car/sporty sunglasses
• a case for my replacement but not quite the same sunglasses
• a case for M's glasses when he wants to pack light for a long bike ride and I don't want him swiping my glasses case case

 The fancy case took a few nights of hand sewing in front of the TV.  The other 3 were overlocker experiments, one of which involved the piping foot.

A trio of pin cushions

I return to stitching with a little bit of procrastination - pincushion construction.  I justified my endeavours with the reasoning that ever since my oversized pincushion went to the sofa heaven in the sky and that new one (leather) could no longer be classed as such, that I needed alternative means to park my pins and needles.  Although I already had a few pincushions (one here and one from this forthcoming book) they have already got permanent places on the ironing board and next to my sewing machine.

This big one is the pincushion caddy from Seams to Me by Anna Marie Horner (Craft magazine had this as a pattern podcast a while back) this is also handy for keeping various bits in one place instead of half scattered under aforementioned sofa.

The next, medium sized one I made after catching the tutorial over at CraftyPod.  Perfect excuse to make more use of my Clover yo-yo maker.

The last and littlest one and now, I find, the most useful of all is this pointer finger pincushion.  I find it best placed on the pointer finger on my non-sewing hand.

2 skirt weekend

Returning to work meant having a look at my wardrobe.  Trousers are still not comfortable, and one of the key skirts I have been wearing is a little - shall we say - short.  As I was up for a little more gentle pottering I treated myself to a new Clothkits skirt kit.  The kit I had been hankering after for a while from as long ago as last summer, but I was not considering wardrobe additions then.  Luckily they were still selling the kit and at the nice price it was previously.

With my first ever skirt kit from this company I had the skirt received, cut and sewn in an evening, but this time I paused.  I was not happy with the rather dull white lining they had provided.  So a short trip to John Lewis' fabric department to find an alternative cotton lawn.  If had been up to it I would have launched myself up the loft ladder to look at my own fabric stash but those kind of acrobatics are currently out.  I found a fairly tame pink which I thought would work well - which I show below with the cute but relevant facing.

Whilst in the fabric department I found some stretch denim and bought double the amount I ended up requiring to make a more work length appropriate denim skirt.  This I designed myself by taking the previous skirt as a base and adding pockets and top-stitching whilst jettisoning the lining.

3 week recovery

I have spent the last few weeks signed off work with a week's leave to finish (and was grateful for I needed more time off).  The first week I spent sleeping and in front of the TV.  I read a few books on creativity and documented my week by making a doll for each day of the week. The doll template which I styled to be a slimmer and taller version of me I got from the book that I found most fun to flick through Mixed Mania by Cheryl Prater and Debbi Crane.

Notice the lack of jeans - trouser wearing that week (and even now) was not the most comfortable option.  As a habitual trouser/jean wearing girl it was stretching my wardrobe to find enough skirts to wear, but the addition of a comfy dress helped.  Two of the skirts - the red one, and the patched one - were skirts I had made previously, one from a Clothkits kit and another by appliquéing some of my mono-printed patches on to one I had derived from the former skirt.