June

MOAR visual diary!

FYI this cake was WEIRD. And not entirely good.

Tried another self portrait then I got a mini migraine that nearly made me fall off my bike. Boo.

Sorry this year's Brighton illustration and graphic design graduates. The show just... wasn't... that... great. Had fun going round it with Alex on his birthday though.

And I haven't even had a chance to take it off yet!

Decided to go on an ADVENTURE cycle home from work! A Hove adventure!

Alex got a new boardgame but I was more excited about my amazing new crayons.

And now it's gone forever!

Time to spend a couple of pointless hours on Rightmove then...

And with THAT! Off on our Scottish hols. I took a makeshift visual diary and a few pens and bits with me, and managed to do some drawings while I was away. Here are some of them...

This might seem like a fairly unremarkable line drawing, but I'm really proud of the correctness of the perspective going on here. Things are not at the heights you expect them to be, but I concentrated really hard and got this right! Naomi's caravan where we stayed.

This is me, in a beautiful wild garden. Alex took a photo, and I draw this later on with the photo for reference.

This is Alex in Rhi and Stoo's beautiful Glasgow flat. Such amazing huge windows.

There were lots of beautiful purple jellyfish in one of the sea lochs.

Sheep!

And then we came home and I went to Nandos. It was a lovely evening and the food was alright, but... I just don't get why everyone is so crazy for it!

Alex made Elderflower cordial, and it was lovely. But we froze some of it and the bottles shattered and now our freezer is really sticky and full of tiny shards of glass.

June was nice. Now it's time for July!

May

Visual diary continues! It's an interesting exercise. While they're still all pretty rough and frequently a bit rubbish, it's forcing me to think about things in new ways, both in terms of my creativity and my life. I've read saccharine articles about optimism that suggest simply writing down a good thing that happens to you every day in order to feel happier in the long run. Well this is kind of what I'm doing here. Except they're not always good things. But um... overall there's an optimistic tone? Anyway.

Not much of worth happened on May 1st so I did a pattern. The sun did come out though. Which makes a change.

 

On May 5th we went on a lovely walk from Glynde to Lewes. Well, I say lovely... It was a lot of fun but I always forget how ridiculously hilly it is. When we got into Lewes we went to a pub and I had a bag of cheese and onion crisps and an appletiser and they were just the best tasting bag of cheese and onion crisps and bottle of appletiser I've ever had.

Oh man. Candy Crush Saga. Just say no.
(As a side note, although it's a bit skitchy sketchy pencil, that background drawing has all it's perspectives SPOT ON and I'm pretty smug about that.)

So this was me pondering on how my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for my emetophobia was going. I had my final session last week, and I'm pleased to say it has been worthwhile. So I'm still absolutely terrified of vomiting myself, and have the associated slight obsessiveness regarding avoiding germs. But my fear of seeing vomiting in films and on the telly has totally disappeared, and my fear of others being sick around me has lessened by probably about 90%. It hasn't yet been tested, but I do feel totally ready to face that now, which is good. So yes. I just hope it's not all an illusion though.

It's the exciting time of the year at work where we start work on the year's brochures. This year I have total creative control! Ooooh!

So we went to the bead shop, and I got ridiculously excited and carried away and made ambitious plans about how I was going to start making loads of jewellery and it was going to be great and I'd get fimo and make my own beads and and and and.... and then I basically forgot about it. Oh well. Maybe one day. Beads do excite me in quite an irrational way. As I child I inherited a whole load of biscuit tins full of buttons and beads from my Nan and decided I was going to set up a button and bead shop. That ambition also failed to materialise. Hm.

Bought these ridiculous trousers and I'm pleased to say they're SO GOOD I actually went out and bought another similar pair today. I don't care if I look silly. I love them.

This is Lara. She came to stay with our housemate David. I tried to do a super quick drawing of her. I still can't do faces but other than that it's okaaaaaay...

Lots of stuff on at work. So I went for a big cycle by the sea and felt better.

Had to go on a work trip to Oxford. Messed up. On the train to Gatwick I popped to the loo, leaving my bag on the seat where I had been sat. I looked at the two ladies next to me, and gestured to indicate what I was doing, and they nodded to indicate understanding. Went to the loo, came back, women had gone, bag gone too. WHAT. The women had got off at Three Bridges, loads of other people had got on, no one knew whose the bag was, so they assumed someone had forgotten to take it with them, and they chucked it off onto the platform before the train left Three Bridges. I was gone TWO MINUTES. I was visibly stressed, although in a bizarre twist, there was a CLOWN there, and he offered me a magic trick to make me feel better. I declined. Anyway. I had to get off at Gatwick, go back to Three Bridges and get the bag, thus missing my connection and seriously grumping me out. Here's a drawing of the bag. (It's one of my favourites, so I'm glad it's not lost forever)

CAKE CLUB! Well, baking club. A group of friends decided it would be a fun thing to do if we all occasionally bake stuff then meet up at someone's house and share it around. It was great fun but about three cakes in it did become a bit of an effort. A delicious effort.

This isn't a particularly good entry, but I just wanted to discuss how great virgin bloody Marys are. It's like delicious cold tomato soup! Perfect when you're a bit hungry and a bit thirsty! I have to be in a very particular mood, and they do vary dramatically from pub to pub, but I'm definitely into them.

Feeling a bit rough for no apparent reason, but in quite a good mood regardless.

Had a super fun day full of lots of good things so decided to comic-style it. It's very evocative to me, but probably to no one but me. Still, good practice at drawing things from memory.

Did a typographic thing for Alex. It's not amazing but the tracing paper folded down looks quite pleasing to me...

Went to the Design Museum for their Designs of the year show. Well worth a visit if you get the chance - and the other shows on at the same time were just as good. A selection from the archives including some of my favourite classic utilitarian designs (National Rail logo, 'Transport' typeface), and a fascinating (if somewhat high-brow) future UK life scenarios construct.

This is how it goes. (I'm stuck on level 92. There are over 350 levels in total. It will never end.)

I know it's silly but I kind of love going to the supermarket with Alex. I mean, I kind of love going alone too. I kind of love the supermarket. Don't love the inevitable uphill walk home though.

Hopefully to be continued...

Mad sewing skillz and some pictures of our chicken

So I've kind of been procrastinating this blog for ages. I started going to sewing classes nearly a year ago, and I've been wanting to write a blog about my creations for at least 6 months, but thanks to the ETERNAL WINTER, photographing them has been something of a struggle. It was dark every night when I got in from work, and even at weekends when the sun was out, the house was so ridiculously cold that I didn't particularly relish the idea of changing in and out of lots of different outfits.

But finally, spring is here! So this morning I nagged Alex to come out in the garden and take some pictures of me, and I've finally managed to snap (almost) all of the things I've made, so I'll share them here with you!

First though, here's a few pictures I had knocking around already...

When I started really making things, Christmas was coming up, so I decided to make canvas bags for lots of people. Unfortunately I gave them all away without taking pictures of them. Mum got an old iphone for christmas, so I asked her to try and take some shots on it.

She took the task quite seriously, and got a whole range, including one of my Dad modelling it (with some flair), turned inside out (so you can see the lining) with a ruler for scale, and others. Here's a montage...

I wish I'd managed to get pictures of the others, so if you got a bag from me for Christmas, send me a picture of you modelling it!

As it was Christmas, I also made a present for Alex. This one requires some explanation...
Before we were going out, we went to a craft fair together, and there was a lady there selling giant (and in my opinion a bit hideous) stuffed swans that cost about £100. Alex (and Hannah, who was with us too) spent the rest of the fair asking me to buy them a swan, and in future, whenever Alex wanted something ridiculous, he'd always append it with '...Oh, and get me a swan'.

So I got him a swan.
Well, made him a swan. And it's better than the ones that lady at the craft fair was selling!

I made the pattern up, which is probably not the generally accepted way of doing things, but I've discovered I'm possibly not the best sewer in that I'm not very patient, and generally prefer to fling myself into projects and hope for the best. No tacking or pinning for me! Tacking and pinning is for losers! Who needs a pattern?
Well it turns out tacking and pinning is sometimes for winners, and sometimes a pattern is really quite a good idea, and this is all probably why I will never be a Saville Row tailor, but ho hum, the swan turned out well, anyway. Alex was pretty pleased.

Here's him and our other housemate David hanging out on my bed with the swan. The swan is pretty social.

I also made a Christmas present for Hannah... I found this gorgeous floaty fabric at Fabricland, so I made a kimono style dressing gown out of it! I'd already made one for myself (which I haven't photographed). Again, no pattern, although this was based on a kimono which Alex owns. I'm really pleased with it! Hannah kindly took a couple of pictures for me!

 In other Christmas endeavours, I got my boss' name in the work Secret Santa. I was pretty stumped for a long time. For some context, I work in a very small office, and my boss is a lovely guy, it's not like he was some distant figure in a glass office on another floor. In emails, we generally refer to each other by our initials, and he's AG. So I decided to make him an AG cushion.
Possibly he was ever so slightly tipsy when he recieved it, but there was definitely genuine delight there. (He isn't normally wearing a ridiculous hat, by the way)

But anyway, Christmas fun aside, my main aim in learning to sew was wanting to make clothes. My first BIG project was to try and make a dress. I fell in love with this pattern...

And it says 'very easy'! Super!
LIES.
But with the wonderful assistance of Wendy at MIY Workshop, I managed to work my way through it, and actually make the dress! However... well, I'm not a massive fan of the end result. I totally picked the wrong fabric for it... it's a gorgeous teal corduroy, but in such a solid block it's just not very flattering! I made the dress with the longer sleeves and longer skirt, which also may have been a mistake, as it's probably a bit frumpy. But I still consider it a success, as I managed to construct what seemed like a fairly complicated bodice, and put in a long zip! Here it is...

A slightly more successful project was this jersey skirt, using one of Wendy's patterns. I like it because it's basically just a couple of rectangles sewn together in a clever way! I've had a lot of compliments for this one. The fabric is a bit ridiculous, but great!

 I'm probably doing things in the wrong order here, but anyway... My first simple project was this skirt. I made the pattern myself, based on a wraparound skirt that Alex owns. The fabric is gorgeous!

However, I'm pulling a bit of a silly face in this picture, so I decided to ask Alex to take some new pictures of this, and other things I've made. We did it today, now the sun has finally come out! Every time I went in to put on a new outfit, Alex took loads of pictures of our chicken, Mildred. So you can have some of those too. In fact, here she is right now.

And here's a better picture of that skirt!

 Here's the first thing I ever made using stretchy jersey fabric. A lovely sleeveless top, perfect for summer! Another pattern by Wendy!

I like it so much I made two! This one is stripy!

This one was made without a pattern on a bit of a whim, and it's kind of terrible... or at least, it's so loud I don't think I'll wear it much, but I kind of loved the fabric when I saw it, and it was super cheap!

One of the best things about sewing is that you can make things to solve very specific problems that no manufacterer seems to have thought of. My problem: I like cycling to work. I like buying ingredients for dinner during the day and carrying them home. Sometimes I need to carry A4 folders or papers. Panniers are big and heavy and slow me down. I want a bag that folds down nice and small so I can carry it in my handbag when I don't need it, but when I do need it, it'll sit across my body so as not to swing about annoyingly. So I made this! I gave it a nice bright red strap which might make me more visible in traffic if I'm wearing a dark coat. It'd be cool to make another one of these with a reflective strap for winter months!

Anyway. One last thing to finish this somewhat avian themed sewing blog... I made an owl cushion. Out of owl fabric. Meta.

P.S. Just want to give another mention to MIY Workshop, I treated myself to a load of classes there, and it's been incredibly helpful in generally getting me over that intial 'my sewing machine is terrifying' bit. I inherited the sewing machine about 3 years ago and had mostly been too scared of it to use it! Glad I've got past that now :) Wendy is ridiculously patient, and very good at helping pick out the right projects to work on! She also has the patience of a saint, which is always a plus in someone teaching you stuff.