Tomatoes Out the Wazoo

End of Week 35

I LOVE this one. My fave so far. The expression on the guy's face is just hilarious.

Lovely Buttons...

...from Lovely Gretel. Thank you very much.

Just Genius

Youngest Sister knitted these for me for my birthday this week from a pattern of her own devising. The bonus packaging plus googly eyes made me ROFL:

Sunset, 7.55pm Yesterday

End of Week 34

Catch Up

I haven't got all that much to share this week. I'm hanging about waiting for verdicts on roughs and colour tests and sewing a bit inbetween. So I have a new dress to share, but it's not quite finished yet, and I still have the back end of THE COLD FROM HELL, which just won't go away and leave me alone, dagnammit.

I've worked up a new promo postcard, which I saved in stages so I can show you step-by-step how I built it up, but I think I'll wait until the actual postcards are here and ready to be sent out. (Not sure when that'll be; due to NOT BEING PAID YET by a client, I don't have the funds to get them printed at the mo. Grrr.)

But I will share part of the colour test I finished over the weekend, the one I'm waiting on a verdict for:



I'm pretty chuffed with how it's turned out. I've been using a bit of a new technique for putting it all together and the new-ish Wacom has been invaluable; I'm so glad I bought it.

Right, I'm off to drink more Lemsip and work my way through my third box of tissues in seven days!

End of Week 33

Sunset, 8.26pm Today

So Much Going On...

...at the moment.

I've been scribbling away like nobody's business for the past week or so getting roughs done for two projects and waiting on a verdict on the roughs for a third. The next day or two should be a bit more relaxed round here, though, mainly because I have THE COLD FROM HELL and am off from library work til Friday, when hopefully I will be feeling better. (Thanks very much to the girl working in England at Home on Ship Street on Thursday who was keeper of THE MOTHER OF THE COLD FROM HELL and spent the 10 minutes I was in the shop sniffing loudly and tidying, and therefore transferring all her germs to, the displays. I said to Boyfriend as we left the shop: I bet I get a cold now. Bah.)

So yesterday I finally updated both my Etsy shops here and here, and my Folksy shop here, mainly with prints. Take a look at the little Etsy Minis in the left sidebar there. My Alice giclee prints I did for the Open House back in May are finally up there for sale. There are a few more prints to go up, which hopefully I'll get around to later this week.

I also have a fab new charity shop to share, although I'm kinda torn between sharing its greatness with everyone and keeping it selfishly to myself. I have loads of pictures both of the shop itself and my purchases to upload off my phone first, though.

There's lots of knitting going on and we've been harvesting more tomatoes from our vines (see below). I'm also very happy about the fast-approaching autumn, particularly lovely new coats in the shops and the prospect of whipping up a batch or two of blackberry jam. (Although if autumn rains could just hold off until we're back from Cornwall on 25th September, that would be fab.)

Here are a few photos to be going on with of colourful things that are making my eyes happy at the mo:

End of Week 32

Poppy

I took this on my phone on Saturday lunchtime in the churchyard of St Mary de Haura in Shoreham. The sun was shining directly on the screen so I couldn't really see what I was doing, so the fact that it's come out like this with the fabulous contrast between the red and the grey and the little flashes of blue is totally amazing. I've just upped the contrast on it a bit, no alteration to the colours at all. Isn't that red just gorgeous? It literally glows.

I love it when happy accidents like that happen!

Sunset, 8.16pm Today

The First Tomato

We shared him on Monday night. Bless his lil' egg-shaped cuteness. He will soon be followed by many more. Homonoonoonomnomomomom.

I'm On a Knitting Roll

Finished these babies over the weekend; they only took me a month. Heck yeah.

End of Week 31

This one is just plain surreal. Awesome.

Signs of Approaching Autumn

No1: Blackberries.

It. Is. DONE.

It's only taken me 14 months, but the Cardigan of Joy/Doom (delete as applicable) is DONE.









The pattern is from Men's Knits by Erica Knight, but in the book it's knit plain in bamboo yarn. I made the stripes up and, after some shaky and hurried maths, just crossed my fingers that they would work out OK. I think they do. The yarn is my fave, King Cole Merino DK, in Mauve and Bottle. As Boyfriend is still a raver dude of the 90s at heart, I left part of the cuffs unsewn so he could put his thumbs through and keep his ickle hands warm. He chose those colours, the width of the stripes and the buttons, which came from The Eternal Maker in Chichester when we went back in April. For a guy who mainly wears khaki green and various shades of sludge, he ain't afraid of colour.

I'm pretty chuffed with it. The only other jumper I ever knitted came out waaayy too big, but then, in my defence, I had only been knitting for a couple of months at the time and had no idea about gauge or making a swatch or any of that. I am glad this one is finally finished, though. I'm back to knitting socks and small, portable, quick items for the forseeable future!

VERY Exciting

My New Dress a Day

I mentioned in the last post that I got an awesome 70s tray from Oxfam's Vintage Day last Saturday. I also found this fab 80s skirt that had made its way over here all the way from Australia. ('Tis true; label says so.) I like the colour and the pattern and the buttons (squee!!) very much, but the length was a little dowdy. Check it:





So I decided to take a leaf out of the amazing Marissa at New Dress a Day's book and get busy with the scissors and the sewing machine to tweak it to my liking.





I cut off a good three (rather wobbly) inches off the bottom and hemmed it up just underneath the two buttons at the bottom there. Et voila! Really, really easy.







Eric and Ernie think it's fab, see? I just twizzled it around a bit so the buttons are on the side rather than the middle. I may remove the bottom two buttons - they're only decorative - to make it balance out a little better but I'm pretty happy as is. Yellow happy skirt! Woo! And it twirls very nicely too, in that little-girl-in-a-too-big-skirt kinda way.