How many ways can I write my name?

I am still working on my website revamp and have been playing around with layouts in photoshop.  I always get a bit obsessed with the type - I absolutely love drawing type. I could do it all day long!  With some breaks for knitting of course.

I can barely contain myself!

I am so excited about my new sewing machine! As I said we went to John Lewis on Wednesday night and picked it out. I didn't even take note of the model number in my excitment but it is a Janome one. It gets delivered on Wednesday, hooray!


I need to decide what to sew now - I definately am going to order something from Built By Wendy, maybe this one.


I also happened to notice whilst in John Lewis that they now do VV Rouleaux ribbon and have the latest Amy Butler fabric collection! We didn't have much time as we were going out for dinner so I am looking forward to having a nice long browse through alone!

Birds

I am posting early today as I am going out this afternoon to meet my mum and choose a sewing machine!  I am so excited!  I can't wait to sew some stuff.

I thought I would post some photos of this beautiful print that we bought a few weeks ago as a wedding present from my grandparents.  It is a 1930's Japanese hand printed picture of a bird on snowy plum blossom and we are both in love with it.  We want to get another to go with it but unfortunately the artist is unknown so we will just have to look around and find another similar that we like.  It looks lovely in this big frame with lots of white space around it.

Here is a close up:

I learn from my mistakes

I am having a break from cushion covers to make a start on the vintage Vogue baby dress I mentioned.  It was coming along very well until I realised I had done forty rows wrong. Aaarghhh!  So now I have unravelled them and am ready to reknit that bit later on.  Oh well, it has taught me to read instructions more thoroughly from now on!

I would also like to mention that the yarn I am using is soooo lovely.  It is unbelievably soft and a gorgeous colour that this photo doesn't quite do justice.  It is RYC cashcotton 4 ply and I think I will be buying some more as it is so nice.  Except that as I am knitting bits of fluff fly around and get up my nose.  But that is the only negative thing I have to say about it.

Hooray!

I have finished my first cushion cover! And I am quite pleased with it.  Its not perfect (as with all my knitting so far!) but it looks pretty good in our living room.  Now all I have to do is make two more....

It is a day of finishing things as I have also finally finished my Little Red Riding Hood book.  I just need to make a few more copies then they will be available in the shop on my website.

The end is in sight!

Well on the first of three cushion covers anyway.  I have finally finished the knitting stage of cover number one and have wet blocked my pieces ready to stitch together when they are dry.  How exciting!

I'm going to knit a bit of the vintage Vogue baby dress as a reward before I start the next one!

Paper massacre

The handmade books are still a work in progress so a little behind schedule!  I must be a bad workman because I blame my tools.  Since we got our shiny new mac a couple of months ago the printer and scanner have been very temperamental.  The computer is brilliant to work on but getting anything into or out of it has been a problem.  So I spent Friday trying to scan things in for my new website design, then all of to day trying to print things out!  At last everything seems to be working so now I can actually get some stuff done. (Without dragging the old mac out from the back of the cupboard!)

I'm back

Well, I've actually been back from an extremely wet and windy Devon for nearly a week but have been busy catching up and thinking up some new projects.  I have decided it is time for a website redesign so have been looking through all the illustrator websites I have bookmarked for inspiration.  It reminded me how much i like the work of Christopher Silas Neal.  His colours are lovely.

I'm afraid I still haven't finished the cushion cover I took with me to Devon.  We spent far too much time making up ridiculous lies in Absolute Balderdash and getting sand blasted on the beach.  I am now on the back though so should be finished soon...