Loving the freedom

Well I can honestly say I LOVE DRIVING!!!

I am loving the fact that my life does not revolve around public transport timetables...if I wanna hang the washing out before I leave, I can lol.

I am so enjoying that I can buy as much as I like and not just what I can carry home in two arms...you should see the amount of clothes and shoes I have bought in the last few weeks lol...I have found out the pitfalls of clothes being sold in supermarkets! It is still a novelty going shopping and using a trolley when I am on my own and not a basket!

I love that I can run stuff to the charity shop or tip on the day I think of getting rid of it!

I love that I can go to the nursery on a whim and bring back tons of compost and flowers and not have to rely on DH and wait for the weekend.

I love that I can take my friends out to lunch.

I love that I can go to scenic places to exercise. DS and I go running together... first Sharp End gets his go and then while he waits in the car we go and do our bit. It is wonderful to not be confined to fume filled A roads!

I love that on home-ed friend meet ups we don't have to worry about what time to catch the bus and leave our friends early.

I love that I can take DS to places in the evening and Mr Doxie can relax in the bath instead of rushing to run DS around.

I love that I can go to the beach just for lunch because it doesn't have to be an all day event.

I love that I can stay out after dark on my own if I want!

It's all the little things that most people probably take for granted that I am appreciating.

Doxie

Top number 2

Last night at about 11pm I had a creative urge ( read as some thrifted fabric and sewing store purchases teasing me from the corner of the room )...so I started on another top. It started out as one of Rae's tops but ended up as a bit of a hybrid as I wanted try something new too. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to try when I started out, but it ended up as my first attempt at shirring. It looked a bit plain on the first fitting so I decided to ditch the straps and try some shirred angel wings instead. I was very pleased with the result, nice and girly. ;o)

The tutorial for the angel wings can be found here

It has been a productive day, not only did I manage to finish this top but I also got 11 trays of seedlings pricked out...it would have been more but I was beginning to feel as if I would burn in the sun if I stayed out any longer. Mr Doxie was productive as always...he has been tweaking our wardrobe arrangements...or should I say strengthening them since the pole collapsed under the weight the other day LOL. Thank you Mr Doxie you've done a grand job, it looks lovely.

I have a million and one projects in my mind for this week, but the ones I am really keen on getting done are the re-designing of some bought tops.

I did it!

I passed my driving test today and first time around!

I will never be in.

To celebrate my friend invited me out to lunch, there was Asti but I couldn't sample it for obvious reasons lol. I've been invited out tomorrow with someone else, it will be so brill to just jump in the car and GO...and I can take my heels to change into! No more waiting at bus stops in the rain, woohoo!...and I can buy whatever fits in the car!

Yay life is brill!

Dox

Old vintage sewing pics on the web

If they were thrilled with this machine, I'd love to show these ladies the new Bernina 830 LOL BTW if you haven't seen it yet, the launch party presentation is well worth a look if you can find it on the web...if I remember I will put up a link sometime...it is somewhat cheesy, quite long, BUT really pulls you in, I certainly wanted one after watching it but seeing as it is £5,700 at the time of writing, I won't be getting one this side of Christmas! ( or the other side lol ).

Awww ain't they sweet!

Is this one of "The Borrowers" practicing recycling? Apparantly that is a rabbit...I thought it was a Red Setter Dog.

Ahem, apparantly not all little girls are sugar and spice!

There are some lovely "vintage" sewing pics out there on the web. I can't give you permission to use these as they are not mine.They were found at the following site...

©2000 Denise Van Patten - http://collectdolls.about.com

Realising that you have to let fabric give up it's former guise

I have a very large fabric recyling box...erm, translate as about 1/4 of the craft room. I have been playing around tonight trying to find the right fabric for a project but have got nowhere...then it struck me...the reason is that I have been looking at things thinking is this worth cutting up for said project. It's daft really as the recycled stuff is just for personal use ( gifts have the luxury of having fabric bought especially for them) so it is of no consequence really...this makes me think that I ought to have a session of cutting up old clothes etc, taking off arms and jjust making lots of large squares of fabric, then I will see it for what it now is FABRIC and not it's former self. How silly it is that the simplist of things can cause such a barrier to getting on and actually DOING stuff. Ho hum.

Rae's top

Okay I finally got around to taking a pic of Rae's top that I made...keep in mind this started out as a muslin, so there is probably quite a few stray threads etc ...but I liked the fabric so much I have made it part of my wardrobe...Next time I WILL take more care. The way I put it on the hanger makes it look a bit lop-sided but luckily that is not how it is when you wear it.

Doxie

Forgotten things in the loft

I was having a tidy in the loft the other day (translate as trying to make more room for my crafting stash and must have more fabric addiction) and I came across a couple of items I had forgotten about. The first is an old UFO ( groan!). It started life as a patchwork bag...I was never really interested in it as a bag though as the challenge was just to see if I could decipher how to make a bag in this design... once I had achieved my goal I lost interest and was on to the next thing...I am rather proud of my pink bullion roses but goodness knows what possesed me to put those hideous blue ones at the bottom for, they are just not working. I can clearly see that my patchworking skills have improved since I did this too, which is encouraging.

Mmm I think I may have uploaded this as too poor a quality to appreciate the bullions...note to self to take a close up of yellow panel at higher quality.

cheery isn't it?

The Sylvester cat was from a home-ed project...the brief was to find a picture of a famous person, copy it and then use it to make a Andy Warhol style painting. I can't remember exactly which site we got the picture from, but I do remember it was a kiddie's site with "tutorials" on how to draw well known cartoon characters. :o) Okay so ours was not a famous person but it was close enough eh?

I did come across another pic that I painted of a couple of my pets, I will keep that under wraps for now as I may make it into an embroidery design at a later date and I don't want to spoil the surprise LOL. Gee dunno when I'll have the time though.

Doxie, who achieved little in the loft that day because she was so distracted by all the interesting ( to her ) finds!