Anyway, I’m experimenting with making a face washer from beautiful organic cotton yarn, which I bought in the sales. Many of the examples I found online use garter stitch, which wasn’t really inspiring me. But I found a pattern on ravelry (of course) using seed stitch. Nice little uniform lumps. Looks a bit like crochet perhaps? So the work in progress looks like this:

Here’s my ravelry project page. And here’s a photo of the progress:

I’m also part way through knitting ‘hobo’ gloves for my sisters. Fingerless gloves were my own first project, which I worked on while on the plane to Perth to visit family. My sisters thought this hilarious but promptly asked for their own. My wonky ones are here:

I have two pieces of liberty printed cotton, the first of which was purchased to make a blouse – but I’ve not yet found a pattern I’m happy with. The second is black with green flowers and I bought it purely because it was on sale and I thought it fun. And so the fabric stash grows…

I want to make cushion covers for a couple of cushions hanging around our lounge and I bought a remnant pile from ink & spindle to help… Plus a little red velvet for accents! I’m hoping for something that looks a little like the picture above.

I have a lovely woollen A-line skirt that I started sewing about 3 years ago in a class at Thread Den. I loved it then, although it was a bit of a squeeze, despite help with the fit. Unfortunately time passed without ready access to a sewing machine, so it sits unfinished in my stash. It is now completely beyond help (fit-wise) so I’ve decided to sacrifice the front panel of the skirt, insert a bigger panel and make a completely new waistband. It’s such beautiful fabric and I’d love to make it up for winter, now I have a sewing machine to hand.

My Colette Sewing Handbook arrived early in the new year and project #1 is the meringue skirt. I have bought grey wool to make the skirt with and I’m looking forward to starting on it.

Finally, I have barely started a botanic illustration course, so I’ve got to put a bit of time and love into the first assignments so that I can progress to assessment two. I’m doing the remote course with Leonie Norton, which allows me to take my time and fit in the practice when I can. But I think I need to try harder.

So – that’s probably only the tip of the iceberg. I’d be grateful for a bit of peer pressure to make me finish some of these bits and pieces and avoid becoming a fabric hoarder.

Clockwise from top left: Burnt red rayon velvet dress, c.1930s/40s, purchased from Friperie St Laurent in Montreal, 2009; Sage green 1950s/60s cocktail dress, purchased from Clara Fox in Melbourne 2011; purple pencil skirt purchased from Uniqlo in Soho, NYC, 2009; Second hand silk scarf, collected from the same friperie at the same purchase in Montreal as the velvet dress, Christmas Eve 2009; Cue deep green silk blouse, purchased at the beginning of 2006 with a voucher from my old work mates upon leaving the LHMU to commence work full time in a proper ‘law talkin job’.

I’ve also attached a few detail shots of a few of these.

It’s probably clear that I’m attracted to texture and deep colours. Purple, red, green. Velvet is my absolute favourite fabric of all. I like things feminine, but not too pretty. The sage green dress is possibly an exception to this, but I protest any connection with girly prettiness by saying I wore it with a brown velvet (homemade) fascinator and a deep brown shiny Czech crystal necklace, also vintage. I like tailored and structured, not too flowy or flouncy.

I spent Christmas in Maldon with family. Australia’s first notable town. In the last couple of days I enjoyed meandering into town, buying a few bits and pieces from the funky shops that have sprung up on Main Street.

One purchase, my ‘comfy dress’ (sounds inelegant, doesn’t it?) has large pockets. Of which I heartily approve. It always makes me chuckle, finding pockets in a dress, because it takes me back to my old arts honours days, finding little gems on microfilm during the winter weeks I was holed up in Battye Library. It takes me back because of this comment piece from the Westralian Worker in 1914:

WE OPPOSE POCKETS FOR WOMEN.

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.

2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did, they would have them.

3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.

4. Because women are expected to carry enough things as it is without the additional burden of pockets.

5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.

6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry towards woman if he did not carry all her things in his pockets.

7. Because men are men and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.

–”Public.”

I located the quoted section in the cached archives of my now husband’s uni blog. He was at the time studying the coverage and political positioning of the Westralian Worker between the wars. I was studying Irish female migration to WA. Both of us spent most of the year crouched over microfilm archives in the state library.

CW from top left: Christmas pudding (Stephanie Alexander recipe); fruit mascerating in cherry brandy for the pudding; fruit mince pies (my Nanna’s mince recipe with an almond meal sweet short crust pastry). Apologies for the poor quality.

I made these for a friend who gave birth to a little girls a while ago. Idea and instructions from Purl Bee.