The heat is on

I was rather hoping to get a photo from the play itself, and I know there were plenty taken; but none of them has circulated back to me yet. I live in hope. So here's a rehearsal photo, so that you can see what I mean about some

Geometric progression

So I made that accidental olive green skirt, and, given that the hot weather looks like persisting for a while, a few more summer skirts seemed like a good idea. I bought some more fabric (reduced, naturally), and I'm now having at it in odd moments. Deciding that,

Midsummer madness

Noel Coward was a wonderful lyricist, but he hadn't quite caught on to inclusive language. So when he wrote that "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun", he probably didn't intend to exclude Englishwomen or, for that matter, English children... and

Bead soup

So on Wednesday I took a trip out to Haddenham with young Hezekiah, his mum, and his granny (wasn't expecting his granny; I thought she was going to be looking after Hezekiah's older brother, but possibly daddy was doing that as he does work from home

Parkin meter

It's been a little while now since I developed the accidental parkin, but I've since made it a few times - deliberately, of course! - and tweaked it a bit as I've gone on. I'd say I now have the final recipe,

All change!

OK, so... you know that bead-organiser-organiser storage bag I was going to make? I normally edit my weekly Ocado order on a Tuesday (it comes on Thursday morning, and I have a thing called Ocado Reserved, which means I have a regular weekly slot and they try to predict what

THIS isn't obvious

When I was six years old, I discovered where meat came from. At which I was very upset and wanted to stop eating it. However, this wasn't allowed at the time, because it would have been inconvenient for the adults; and, in any case, as I've

Better by design

Designing is a weird business. Sometimes the idea you have in your head just comes together with no effort; you start noodling around and it all seems to fall into place naturally. Other times, it's annoyingly difficult. The two test pieces in the feature photo are ample evidence

Organised chaos

The thing with having enough beads to run an earring business is... you need somewhere to put them. And it is astonishing how many commercial "storage solutions" actually aren't. When I was just making stuff for myself (and friends), I didn't have many types

Full dress

I was determined to get that petticoat finished in time to take it to last night's rehearsal along with the dress; and I did, even though 'twas brillig and I was still hemming madly. I do, however, have a little confession to make about that petticoat; let

Mixed feelings

I don't get it. Pink, after all, is quite a popular colour; not one I tend to go for myself (unless it's full-on film-fogging fuchsia, in which case bring it!), but you do see quite a lot of it about, and not just on infant girls

Alice is at it again

I rolled up at church yesterday and started putting food out (because we have a church lunch on the first Sunday of the month, usually, though for reasons that weren't entirely clear we didn't in May); and pretty much the first thing that happened was that

Here be more dragons

My family and friends are somewhat scattered; of course I do have quite a number of friends locally, but the Three Musketeers don't live anywhere near (and, of those three, d'Artagnan is quite likely to be out of the country at any given time - he&

From Montana to Siam

First things first: I have a shop. It is not on Etsy, because Etsy are still unknotting themselves (though there may be an Etsy shop as well later, if and when they manage to do that). It's on Folksy, which is a UK-only equivalent (and strictly limited to

Full circle

You can buy patterns for full circle skirts. Or you can design your own, because that is really not hard. I'm not sure exactly when I wrote these instructions, but I found them the other day and they're worth posting here. How to design a circular

The moment of truth

Whew. It fits! There is a reason it looks a bit rumpled. I didn't have time to wash it before the rehearsal (it needs washing to get rid of the remaining traces of blue dressmaker's chalk), so our Alice will need to wash it next time

Identifying issues

On Monday I took a deep breath and plunged into Etsy. It was a slow business. I'm quite impressed with myself that I still managed to make five pairs of earrings that day. To be fair, that wasn't entirely Etsy's fault, although there is

For all I'm worth

Let's talk a little bit about the economics of making bead earrings. It does vary a bit, but generally it takes me a little over an hour to make one pair, from when I start to choose the colours up to the point where I drop it into

HMS Pinafore

Butterick 5509 is a bit of an undertaking. Although, despite that, I'd be quite tempted to make one for myself... if it came in my size. It is listed as "all sizes in one envelope", but that is for certain values of "all". It&

Educated guessing

As I mentioned last time, I needed to design at least two more styles (ideally more, but certainly two to be going on with); and I ended up doing that on Monday. You see, I was also cutting out Alice's pinafore, but, as I've said before,

Alice springs

Well, actually she doesn't. I do. Metaphorically, of course, my physical springing days being a long way behind me now; but this week I shall mostly be working on Alice's pinafore and petticoat. Not, thankfully, the dress. The budget for the drama group took ages to

The good ship Mongoose

When I was in my early twenties, someone rather ill-advisedly referred to me in my hearing as "a little fluffy thing". At which I grinned, and said, "OK. I'm a little fluffy thing. But I'm a little fluffy thing with teeth!" Someone

On strands of purl

I was quite convinced that almost all record of my original attempt at The Embroidered Waistcoat had, like the waistcoat itself, vanished without trace in 2016. But the other day I was trying to find something in my documents folder; and, several subfolders down, there it was. An entire folder

Minding my own business

Things happened on Friday. For a start, I made this pair of earrings; they're exactly the same design as the white ones I posted the other day. I thought they'd photograph better than the white ones (which, to be honest, weren't bad, but these