But it can't be from Dolly Clackett. She gave me an Easter egg!

Hello you lot, what's up? Things are grand here in Clackett Towers. Or at least, I'm feeling no pain. Work is still stressful as shit but Nic and I had a wonderful weekend celebrating the wedding of two very dear friends, and what's better than that? Not many things, that's what.

The wedding was a long day, but a really lovely one. The ceremony was held in the UK's oldest working cinema, The Electric and the reception in a village hall in Warwickshire. I was a bridesmaid, and Nic an usher, and the wedding had a rainbow theme. Seeing two people who are so important to us get married was very special and it was an emotional day. And, needless to say, I danced my ass off!

After the ceremony, we all boarded a Routemaster bus to take us to the reception. This was a lot of fun but, although I don't generally get motion sickness, the rickety suspension made me feel pretty bokey. I liked my green bridesmaid dress, which came from Vivien of Holloway. I have a few of these dresses already but, since I learned to sew, I've become very aware that the bodice on this dress is too long for me. Ah well. It was a fun bridesmaid dress and certainly beats the standard peach tulle nightmare.

Inside the village hall. I helped to decorate this! The wedding had a rainbow theme and this room looked even better in real life. The bride's father made the light-up letters and the groom's parents put together most of the multi-coloured paper hearts on the backs of the chairs. They also made the centrepieces, which were tea-light holders and helium balloons.

Each guest had a personalised place-setting made from a record. These were chosen to have some significance to the guest - mine was 'Loving You' by Brian Harvey. It's not because I'm a fan (or ever was a fan) of East 17, but because I never stop finding Brian Harvey eating too many jacket potatoes and running over himself funny. He's a national treasure.

It was a long day and my old housemate, who was one of the DJs, stayed with us so we sat up into the early hours of the morning catching up. Miraculously, none of us were hungover on Sunday but I must admit to still being pretty tired now. I'm getting old, what can I say?

I spent Sunday watching Law and Order UK and knitting - I really am getting old - and yesterday I got briefly out into the sunshine to take out a new dress that I finished recently. A dress that I made on a Sunday when I did have a slight hangover. Ugh, I'm so predictable. The dress is pretty cute though. At least, I think so:

Beeswing dress - By Hand London Kim bodice with a circle skirt in printed cotton poplin from Hill-Berg fabrics, worn with Swedish hasbeens 'Mimmi' sandals

This fabric fits in well with a post about Rick and Lauren's wedding because the first time I saw it was on a day out in Banbury with them. There are a couple of fabric shops in Banbury, nothing too exciting, and this fabric made me laugh because the print is pretty random. Even by my standards:

Okay, so a teacup, a teapot and some cherries. Nothing new there. A butterfly, some daisies and a shell? Right enough. Pepper, peas and onions... what the hell kind of shopping list is this, anyway? I can't quite explain why the fact that this print had onions on it made me laugh so much, but it did. I didn't buy the fabric that day but I couldn't stop thinking about it, and when Nic and I were in Bristol in March I went to Fabricland on one errand just to find it. It was £2.99 a metre, which was cheaper than it had been in Banbury, so I guess it was worth the wait. Also, in the meantime, I figured out why it had made me laugh so much - it reminded me of a few things we'd had in my house when I was growing up. Things such as this mug:

Children of the 80s. We all had these, right? Did any of you ever have soup out of them though? I never did - ours were used strictly as ornaments and also to put coppers, old batteries and sewing needles in. I keep seeing them in charity shops but nostalgia has never pushed me over the edge into buying one. Also I'm pretty sure Nic wouldn't allow me to. I'm not allowed to buy any more mugs.

ANYWAY THE DRESS. Pretty soon after I saw this fabric in Banbury, Amber blogged herself wearing a dress made from the very same fabric, but in a slightly different colour. On her, it looked less funny and more chic and I mentally filed the look away for later use. Eventually, I remembered Pinterest and pinned it. Which is all a long way of saying that Amber's dress inspired this one. I initially thought of using the Anna bodice and a full, pleated skirt but a combination of the Kim bodice and a circle skirt is what called to me. God, that was boring, sorry! Have another picture instead:

I'm not sure why I look so serious in these photos! I've gradually tweaked the fitting on the Kim bodice to a point where I'm happy with it, although I think I'd like to make the sweetheart shape on the neckline slightly more pronounced on a future one. Possibly.

There's really not a lot to say about this dress! I haven't sewed that much with novelty fabrics this year, which wasn't a deliberate choice. I was just feeling the florals. Despite that, I can't help but be pretty tickled to have not only a pair of onions on my bust but also a spoon pointing directly at one of my breasts. If you can't have fun with your clothes, what is even the point?!

I was working from home yesterday and wore this to have a little cruise around town in the afternoon. I have to push myself to get out of the house on working from home days as I feel huge guilt for leaving my computer even to make a cup of tea, and it's not healthy. This little walk in the sunshine at lunchtime did me a lot of good, even if the shop I needed to go to was closed. Sadly, the sunshine was deceptive and it was too cold in just a cardigan and a strappy dress so when I got home I put on a big cardigan and got out the fleece blanket. It is still only April, I suppose.

Anyway, I must go here. Nic has put on Jurassic Park and I have the second sleeve of a cardigan to knit. I was worrying about knitting the sleeves on my Hetty cardigan but the first one went well, so I will hopefully have a new purple cardigan before too long. So goodnight!

Evening all! I've emerged, blinking, from a lovely bank holiday weekend to another week at work. Dramatic sigh. It was a very good weekend, in which I was able to find the time to do lots of my favourite things. I bought (and drank) some gin, made a dress, did some knitting and spent time with friends, laughing and eating tasty food. It's a hard job, but someone had to do it!

I had had a very long day on Thursday - a 12-hour work day followed by dinner in the pub with friends - so I sacked off work at lunchtime on Friday, the better to get the value out of my bank holiday weekend. It's a lovely feeling and I'm looking forward to having a proper break at the end of the month. It was really cold on Saturday - or at least, it felt really cold - so I spent the afternoon holed up indoors, sewing. It's been ages since I spent a whole day sewing and I really enjoyed myself. I was feeling inspired because, when she was in Paris a few weeks ago, my friend Emily bought me some amazing fabric from Petit Pan. It was a complete surprise and typically thoughtful of Emily. the fabric came to me via her sister Amy (who I happened to see before I saw Em) with the message, "I hope you're not offended by this!" Errrr what. The fabric is awesome:

Grenadine Menthe fabric from Petit Pan

I did a little dance of happiness in my chair when I unwrapped this and immediately started plotting what to do with it. The print obviously called to mind a 60s-style shift dress, but I had 2.5 metres and I wanted to make something I would wear often. I wanted a full skirt, basically. So, on Friday I went and bought a bunch of yellow buttons and I made myself another McCall's 6696 shirt-dress.

Telescope dress and Swedish hasbeens peep-toe sandals

Holy bright sunshine, Batman! I was running late for a party at Amy's house when we took these photos, so we didn't have time to find a better location. In a way, though, the dazzling sunshine kind of works with the ridiculously loud print.

This is the fourth McCall's 6696 that I've made and I'm finally happy with the fit. It's still not perfect, but it's as close as I'm going to get, I think. I didn't get any photos of the back but it still blouses a bit more than I am strictly happy with - but, you know, I can't see it so I've decided I'm not going to fight that good fight any more. I have shortened the bodice by an inch and a half and, on this dress, I sewed the buttons on off-centre, and that helped. I also did my own button placement around the waistband, sewing three buttons close together to keep the fabric closed over my widest point - my stomach!

I bought the yellow plastic buttons in a local fabric shop. Green might have been a better choice, but all I wanted to do was accessorise this fabric with yellow and, indeed, I wore it with yellow button earrings (which I annoyingly forgot to get a photo of.) I think it also looks great - in a totally kitsch way - with my yellow Agatha cardigan:

You'll not lose me in a crowd

Annoyingly, this is one of those projects that doesn't photograph as well as it looks in real life. I really love this dress. The fabric is beautiful - it's a very high quality cotton lawn and it is really enjoyable to wear. Also, I think the shirt-dress shape shows it off really well - I like the fact that it's quite a demure shape and style in such a wild print. In any case, I hope to wear this a lot over the summer.

Here's a wee close-up of the bodice. I'm not entirely sure why I'm so dramatically not looking at the camera but I was honestly very hungry when these photos were being taken so my mind was elsewhere. The gaping there between the second and third buttons isn't there when I am standing straight, just so you know. I think having my hands on my hips was pulling the fabric a bit oddly.

I'm still not finished with McCall's 6696. I have another Liberty Carline one to make in purple, and I have plans to make one from the same wax cotton that I made the Bedelia dress from... and, no doubt, other fabrics will present themselves as being perfect for this lovely pattern. I'm really proud of the finish I achieved on this one, particularly the collar:

I found Andrea's tutorial at Four Square Walls to be particularly helpful, and following it made sewing this collar enjoyable. There's something very satisfying about the precision required, I think.

I spent most of Saturday sewing this dress, because I knew I'd be seeing Emily on Monday and I wanted to be able to wear the dress. Nic and I were out for most of Saturday - we went to Coventry with Amy and Barney to go to Ikea and the Coventry Transport Museum, and to go for a meal in Cosmo. I'm not usually one for all-you-can-eat places, because they're not usually too good for vegetarians, but the food is pretty good in Cosmo and the whole experience is charmingly insane. As our friends were driving, and were kind enough to park in Ikea, I finally succumbed to the siren call of the Tastrup rug and now our bedroom is approximately 300% more colourful:

After such an exciting day, I was in no state to do anything other than lie on the sofa and watch trashy TV, so it was just as well that I had finished the dress on Saturday. Also, after eating so much at Cosmo, I'm pretty certain I'd have had someone's eye out with flying buttons. HEALTH AND SAFETY FIRST, PEOPLE.

Emily seemed delighted to see the fabric made up into a dress, and she even got to see a blog photoshoot in action, as Nic and I attempted to take some photographs that weren't completely sun-drenched:

Here it is in its natural state: drinking wine

This dress was perfect for drinking wine in the sunshine with friends. It's a very happy dress - I enjoyed making it, and I am so touched by what a thoughtful and kind gift it was. I'm already looking forward to wearing it again! Maybe next time, I will try accessorising it with green. In fact, I have some bright green yarn on its way to me for another cardigan, so that's a distinct possibility!

Right-o. I'm old these days, so right now I want nothing more than to go and put my pyjamas on and have a nice cup of tea. So that's what I'm going to do!

Hello! How's the form? I'm mostly very well, although I have a bit of a sore throat that is annoying me. I mean, really, throat? Again?

I had a very stressful and annoying week last week at work. I was let down very badly by the senior leadership in my team and, after all the hard work I have put in over the last few years in my job, it was a massive disappointment. Having been told that I had met the criteria for a (small) bonus and a small (not even at the level of inflation because I work in the public sector and we're in a pay freeze) pay increase, this was then withdrawn on the basis of issues in one project that I am responsible for. It was extremely frustrating because, despite the issues, the project was signed off on time, and it was signed off on time because I put in a huge amount of work to rectify the issues. It made me very angry that, rather than considering my good work and my many achievements throughout the year, I was punished for fixable errors in one project.

It was very upsetting on the day I found out, but since then I have been able to take a bit of a step back. I'm constantly stressed about work. This is, in large part, because I work in a stressful job, but it's also because I have been putting myself under huge pressure to be basically perfect at all times. To do this, I have worked long hours and made myself ill by pushing myself to the point of exhaustion. It's made me suffer physically and the anxiety has, at times, been crippling. And it's stupid, and it's still clearly not enough. So, in a weird way, although it was incredibly discouraging to see the evidence of that first-hand, it's also curiously freeing. I'm not going to stop trying hard to do a good job, and to do my job to the best of my ability, but I do feel now like I no longer have an impossibly high standard to live up to - because I know that the standard is totally bogus.

There are still so many things that I genuinely enjoy about my job - my colleagues and my line manager are fantastic and I find the job challenging and interesting. But I'm not going to let it dominate my life in quite the same way. So that feels weirdly good. I sincerely hope that I'll have far fewer reasons to write here that I've had a stressful week or that I've been too busy to enjoy my life. I even have a week off coming up to look forward to, so that will be good!

Anyway - that's a non crafting or shoes-related digression, so let's bring on the crafting and the shoes, right?! Those are the much more fun things in life. Nic and I had a little day out in Birmingham on Saturday and I took the opportunity to get some photos of my most recent hand-knit - an Andi Satterlund Hetty cardigan. This cardigan seemed very daunting to me because of the all-over lace pattern. I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep track of the pattern while I was knitting the decreases at the side, and I really wasn't sure if I was going to be able to manage the sleeves. However, this was much less difficult than I had anticipated and Hetty turned out to be a really interesting and enjoyable cardigan to knit.

Andi Satterlund 'Hetty' cardigan, Frog Princess dress and Swedish hasbeens pearl braided sky high sandals

Purple cardigan! The yarn is Cascade 220 (obvs) and the colour is called Iris, although I think it has been discontinued. There are little flecks of blues and pinks in the yarn that make it very pretty, although it feels slightly scratchier than the other colours I have knitted with. It's grand to wear, though.

I knitted the size small and, as I said above, I largely found this to be a really enjoyable cardigan to knit. I had to rip it back to the armholes twice because I had made stupid mistakes but, by the time I had done that, the lace repeat was very firmly implanted into my head. This is a good thing - one of the reasons that I find knitting appealing is that my short-term memory for numbers isn't very good, and knitting is helping to improve that. My tip for knitting this cardigan is to memorise the lace repeat because, if you can read where you are in the pattern, it makes it much easier to keep the pattern straight and to know when to begin and end the lace repeat when you're knitting the short rows at the sleeve cap.

I have bought some pink yarn to knit another Hetty cardigan and I will make a few small changes. I really like the overall length but I would like the waistband to be deeper, so I will stop knitting the lace a few rows earlier and knit more ribbing instead. This will also allow me to fit another buttonhole and button in at the bottom! I'll also do as quite a few people have suggested for binding off the sleeves, and switch to a larger knitting needle for doing that. I did use a stretchy bind-off technique but the hem (is that the right word?) of the sleeves is a little bit tighter than I would like.

Those are only minor things though, and I've already worn this cardigan quite a lot since I finished it. I wasn't sure initially if the lower and wider neckline was going to be practical - so many of my dresses have higher necklines than this - but actually, I like how it looks. I love the shape of the neckline, and I think my ribbing there is really pretty and neat! I am very happy with how the cardigan fits - basically, I have learned to stop worrying about the button-bands pulling a bit because, as I gather, this is not unusual on cardigans that are designed to be worn with negative ease. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that. Whatever.

Here's the back! I'm standing awkwardly, I know, but this way you can see how lovely and straight my lace patterning is. Yay! I do think this would look better with a deeper waistband ribbing though, so I am definitely going to do that on the next Hetty cardigan.

And here's how it looks unbuttoned. Yay! So, although I have been broadly happy with the other cardigans I have knitted, this is the first time I have been straight-up totally delighted with one. It's partly because I feel like I learned so much with this project and it really built my confidence - it was genuinely very pleasing to realise that I understood where the pattern was going and what I needed to do to get the lace repeat to work evenly on the sleeves. That felt like a big breakthrough. I can understand why so many bloggers start out by knitting Andi Satterlund's patterns because, while the instructions don't hold your hands, the designs allow you to learn techniques in a very manageable way. I can knit a lace repeat! And, as I discovered at the end of last week, I can do cable knitting! Yes, I have already cast on my next project - a Marion cardigan in bright green yarn.

I didn't sign up officially for Me Made May 2015. I wear handmade clothes almost every day and I knew that I would have too many things going on this month to make taking daily outfit photos anything other than a chore. I do often instagram pictures of my handmade clothes though, and tag them as such, so I decided I would unofficially play along. It's felt good, on days like Saturday, when both my dress and my cardigan were handmade!

Also, I like to instagram things that make me laugh. So there's that, too.

Birmingham shops have a strong pun game. I like the honesty that Mother Cluckers bring to their marketing.

On that note, I'm off to eat dinner and then crack on a bit further with my next cardigan. Maybe I'll even start thinking about my next sewing project. I do still sew, you know! Catch you on the flippedy-flip, my friends!

Hello! What's the craic, boys and girls? I'm grand - I'm just back from a few days working in London, which were pretty good days, all in all. Although, man, TIRING. I was staying in Bloomsbury, and walked everywhere, and I have the legs walked off myself. Nic joined me so that he could get in some research time at the British Library, and we managed to replenish our energy with pizza from Homeslice and pastries from Maison Bertaux. I'm a country mouse through and through so, all things considered, I was glad to get on the train back to Leamington this afternoon.

So that's the craic with me. Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment and get in touch about my last post. Since then, I have been feeling a lot less stressed about work, which is a good thing! It helps that I only have a few days before I have a whole week off, but in general I am feeling much more in control of my work-life balance. I could have ended up working over the weekend on a project that isn't going well (to put it mildly) but, instead, I recognised that I had done everything that was within my power to do and I put my work laptop away. Nic was out during the day on Saturday, and I spent the morning cleaning and the afternoon sewing. It was a sunny afternoon, I put Silk on autoplay on my laptop (that show is such, such balls, but I love a bit of Rupert Henry-Penry) and I got cracking on a sewing project that has been bubbling away in my brain for a few months.

Mostly, I think pinterest is kind of pointless, but a few months ago someone I follow pinned this dress from Lena Hoschek's 'Hot Mama Africa' collection:

Lena Hoschek Nairobi dress

It's gorgeous, isn't it? It has a beautiful v-shaped back and a midi skirt. Lush. It's way, way beyond what I would be willing to pay for a dress but then, that's the beauty of being able to sew. I pinned this image to my sewing inspiration board and then I kind of forgot about it until I saw it on Liebling Vintage's instagram, and it went right to the top of my list.

The fabric is one of the things that makes this dress so beautiful and, unfortunately, I didn't have that fabric. But I did have some lovely lengths of wax cotton sitting in my stash, because I find it very difficult to resist when I come across it. Now I really want some in this gorgeous shade of yellow, and I will be hunting for it, but I did have this unusual brown and orange print...

Filthy Names dress - modified By Hand London Flora dress in wax cotton, worn with Swedish hasbeens Suzanne sandals

So, given the shape of the neckline of my inspiration dress, the bodice of the Flora dress was an obvious contender for this dress. I also liked it for this print, as the high neckline would allow me to show off maximum print. It wasn't very difficult to alter the back of the pattern to give this dress a v-shaped back - I just retraced it, drawing a diagonal line down from 5/8 away from where the straps go to the height where I wanted the zip to start. It was very easy, but I stabilised that diagonal edge with some cotton seam tape.

The v on the back of my dress comes down lower than the one on the inspiration dress and I like it, but I don't love it - I think I will experiment with this shape a bit further to get it just how I like it. But this will definitely do for now!

I bought the fabric in January or February from Shepherd's Bush Market. I bought two lengths from one seller and the other one was completely un-usable because it was so badly off-grain, so I was a little bit worried that this would be the same. Thankfully it wasn't - it was slightly off-grain, but as it was only £10 for 5 metres, I think that's fair enough! At the time I bought it kind of because the salesman talked me into it, but now I am very glad that I did, because it's so vibrant and bold.

Here's a close-up of the print. Actually, I think that the brown is more of a very dark purple, but that orange is very definitely orange. I'm having a bit of an orange thing this year - since January, I have bought an orange sofa, orange lamps, orange sandals (the lobster ones!) orange yarn, and an orange satchel. I blame Nic - he bought me an orange anglepoise lamp for Christmas. I do want to get some orange clogs now, because I am predictable.

The Lena Hoschek dress has a matching belt and, based on the close-up photos, it looks like it's one of those where it's a length of elastic in a fabric tube, with a metal clasp on the end. Like the kind that come with those puffer coats? Anyway, those belts give me the creeps... no, I don't know why, so obviously I didn't make one. I don't really do belts, especially not superfluous ones, but maybe this would benefit from a belt. What do you think?

I wore this on Sunday with my orange Myrna cardigan...

I'm still not totally convinced by the sleeves on this cardigan. Maybe I need to knit another orange cardigan with sleeves I like a bit better?!

So, all in all, I'm really happy with how my experiment turned out. I wore this dress for a very long day on Sunday and felt great in it. I'm tempted to make another one from some more of the wax cotton that's lurking in my stash. I'm also going to start lurking the Lena Hoschek shop for more sewing inspiration. I mean, I need to make something inspired by this, right?

Lena Hoschek Makeba Sunflower dress

Anyway, I'm going to head off here. I have a potato to eat and a cardigan to finish. I told you I was a country mouse.

Hola pups! How's everyone doing? I've just had a lovely, fun-filled weekend with family and I have the rest of this week off to recover, thankfully. For their Christmas present this year, rather than try to buy something for my parents, Nic and I decided we'd treat them to a little mini-break by the seaside, and we all agreed that arranging it to coincide with our first wedding anniversary would be a good way to do it. They arrived on Thursday evening and on Friday morning we drove down to Folkestone so that we could all spend a few days by the seaside with Nic's family. It was a very busy few days and we managed to fit a lot in. We stopped for lunch and an explore around Windsor and Eton on the way down - we had chips next to the castle and Nic had his photo taken outside Frank Marker's office on Eton High Street. On Saturday we spent the morning with Nic's grandparents in Dover and the afternoon strolling around Folkestone and on Sunday we all got a little bit sunburned on Sandgate seafront. After wanting one for years, last week my dad bought himself a Canon 5D MkIII camera and, understandably enough, he wanted to really experiment with it. I was happy to oblige, as I had a new handmade item to photograph! Good old Daddy really got into the spirit of the shoot, bless him!

The item in question is another cardigan - this time, Andi Satterlund's Marion cardigan. I was keen to learn how to knit cables - mainly so that I would know how to do them, to be honest, and I had the Marion pattern in my stash as I won it as part of Andi and Lauren's Outfit Along last year. It's a lovely pattern, almost completely knit in stockinette, with some inset cabling at the neckline to add interest. I knitted this very quickly - I think it took under two weeks, all in all - but sadly, the finished item just doesn't work on me at all.

Andi Satterlund Marion cardigan, worn with the Together Alone dress (By Hand London Kim dress) and green Swedish hasbeens peep-toe super high sandals

So you know the way some projects look better in real life than how they photograph? This cardigan is totally the opposite of that. It looks pretty cute in the photos - hell, I almost like it in this photo, but it's a mess in real life. This isn't due to the pattern, I should add. This is me. Here are the things I did wrong with this cardigan:

I knitted it too long. It's not cropped and it's not full length and it looks sort of odd, and the ribbing at the waistband flips up in an annoying way
I used a very stretchy cast-off technique for the waistband and the cuffs, and it makes them both sit funny
My buttonband is a total mess and is much tighter on one side than the other, so the neckline pulls in a funny way
I'm not sure I knitted the right size. I think a size down would give me a fit closer to the fit that I like in cardigans - which is to say, very fitted.

The other issue I have is a fitting issue, and one I have noticed on all of Andi Satterlund's patterns on me, which is that they are a little wide across the shoulders and the shoulder seam is at the top of my arm, rather than on my shoulder. This is especially pronounced on this cardigan and it's something I'm not sure how to fix. I bought a knitting book but I'd be really grateful if any of you knitters could point me in the direction of good resources for fitting in knitting?

Side view! This is why I think I would like to knit a smaller size - or at least to grade down to a smaller size around the waist decreases - as I think the fit on this is a bit on the frumpy side.

WINDSWEPT. Here's where Daddy decided he wanted to get a bit experimental with the photos! You can see more clearly in this photo the issue that I am describing with the fit across the shoulders.

Initially, I had asked Nic to take some photos as I didn't want to bother Daddy, but I ended up with two photographers shooting me. It's a pity this was for a garment that I don't even like, but these photos do make me smile. We had a lot of fun and I know Daddy really enjoyed playing with his new camera.

I would say this is the least flattering photo of me ever (except it isn't - there are worse photos*), but this is such a happy memory it doesn't matter!

I love this photo. Also now I want a DSLR...

As for the cardigan... well, I have it on time out at the moment. I wore it for most of Sunday but I didn't feel good in it. Well, you know, I felt good because I was having such a lovely day, but I didn't enjoy wearing the cardigan. I'm trying to decide whether it's worth frogging it and re-knitting it with some modification or just chalking it up to lessons learned and moving on. I did enjoy knitting it though, and I am very happy to have learned how to do cables, so even if I do just relegate it to the island of unloved handmades for it to become the Mandy Hampton of knitwear, it was still worth knitting.

I've moved on for the moment and, in the car on the way down to Kent, I cast on my next knitting project - Andi Satterlund's newest pattern, the Vianne cardigan. I'm going to take part in this year's Outfit Along and pair it with a dress I'm planning to make from some fabric I bought in Birmingham earlier this year. I've been making an effort to wear my hand knitted cardigans as part of my unofficial participation in Me Made May, and I've been enjoying it - even with the odd bum note like this cardigan, I'm certainly finding knitting a worthwhile pursuit.

We left Folkestone on Sunday afternoon a little bit tired and sunburned after our adventures on the beach, and drove back up to Leamington. We had planned to stop at High Wycombe on the way up but a diversion instead took us to West Wycombe, and we had the chance to climb the hill to the Dashwood Mausoleum. The mausoleum is visible from the train on the journey between Leamington and London and it's a landmark I always look out for - I've been throughly curious to visit it ever since I first noticed it. We didn't have time to visit the Hellfire Caves, sadly, but the amazing views over the Chilterns more than made up for it.

I love this photo... for some reason it reminds me of Clip Art, and that really makes me laugh!

My parents went home yesterday afternoon, but not before they took us to the shops to buy us a new television set. Nic and I have very little interest in having access to live TV, so we had been holding out on replacing our very old CRT TV. I didn't want the hassle! However, as a belated wedding present/first anniversary present, my parents wanted to upgrade our technology and bought us a lovely 32 inch smart TV. We still don't get live TV to it but we are able to watch DVDs and whatever we would have been watching online on it, so that's fancy. It makes the flat feel very posh! We've been celebrating by watching episodes of the original series of Star Trek - which I am thoroughly enjoying trash-talking my way through. Like seriously what the fuck is Bones's problem? What a miserable bastard. Lighten the fuck up, dude. YOU'RE IN SPACE.

Anyway I'm away here to watch that and crack on with a bit more knitting. Hurrah for holidays!

*So the photo above really isn't the least flattering photo ever taken of me. THIS one is. I've cropped everyone else out of the photo to preserve their dignity but I think that I was expressing sympathetic dismay over the sad state of Dover High Street. Whatever I was doing, this photo really made me laugh because I look so much like Lynn Benfield.

Here's me, watching Poirot on UK Gold. I'm dead to the world.

Hellllooo! Actually no I should say, "howdy y'all" because Nic and I have been watching Nashville again.

That's how finding out that S3 is online made me feel

Anyway. I was back at work today after a pretty blissful week off and, all things considered, it wasn't too bad. I sweetened the deal for myself a little bit by making sure that I would have a shoe delivery waiting for me when I got home from work. I also made sure that I had some carrot cake waiting for me when I got home (my friend Amy baked some for us over the weekend) so I'm basically winning right now, right?

Having a week off work was really good. After we got back from the coast and my parents went back to Northern Ireland, Nic and I decided to really rest and relax. It was brilliant. We didn't really go anywhere and mainly spent a lot of time dandering around in the sunshine, watching stupid films and chilling out. I spent some time knitting and sewing, and we were able to hang out with friends as well. I hadn't really realised until I wasn't at work how much I needed the break - I slept well for the first time in months and all the tension that I've been carrying around in my neck and shoulders suddenly lifted. It was very valuable and a good reminder of how important it is to prioritise life over work. I went back to work today feeling totally refreshed, which is excellent! Of course, it helps that I have a long weekend coming up next weekend - Nic and I are going back to Northern Ireland for a few days to go to a gig and to spend some time with family, which is going to be lovely.

I'm looking forward to seeing Daddy's cheeky face again next week. Nic took this photo of us on the beach at Sandgate last weekend - Daddy isn't as serious as he looks here though!

I'm hoping that I can keep carrying this good mood and positive attitude towards work with me over the next few months, but I'm sure that I can. Life is really very good right now, with lots of very exciting things on the horizon.

So, as I mentioned, I spent a little bit of time sewing this week. My desire to sew has really been subject to ebb and flow this year, but last week inspiration struck. I decided to take part in the Outfit Along being hosted by Lauren Lladybird and Andi Satterlund and the other night I was hit with inspiration as to which dress pattern to use: an old favourite, Simplicity 2591. I don't have any photos of that to show you yet, but I so enjoyed sewing it that it prompted me to revisit another favourite Simplicity pattern - this time, Simplicity 2444.

18th Arrondissement dress: Simplicity 2444 in Michael Miller 'Gay Paree' fabric, worn with my Hetty cardigan and Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes

Sewing this was honestly sort of weird to me - you know, another Simplicity 2444 in a Paris-themed fabric - and, I must admit that immediately after I finished it, I berated myself for stepping in the same stream twice. But of course, you never really do step in the same stream twice.

In any case, very few of my Paris-themed dresses fit me now, and similarly few Simplicity 2444s, so it really was high time to revisit this lovely pattern. What I should do with this fabric, which I had bought on impulse back in January, had been bugging me for a while. Going old-school Dolly Clackett on it seemed to work!

There isn't a great deal to say about sewing this. I sewed a size 8 basically straight out of the packet - the only alteration I made was to use a larger seam allowance at the shoulder seams, because this is an alteration I always make, and I omitted the pockets. I hardly ever sew pockets in dresses now, especially not if they're side-seam pockets. I didn't look at the instructions but I sewed pretty much to them - I really like the way the instructions have you sew the front, then the back, then sew them together (rather than sew the bodice and then sew it to the skirt). I used white bias binding for the armholes and a white concealed zip, both of which I had in my stash.

This fabric had hung around in my stash for a while because I wasn't sure whether the white background would suit my intensely Irish skin but, as I've taken a bit of sun recently and my skin is less blue than usual, I think it's okay. Obviously, I was charmed by the print also...

Nic actually picked this fabric out. I bought it on impulse, but mainly because he liked it so much - probably because it reminded us both so much of one of our favourite places in the world, Montmartre. We didn't exchange gifts for our first wedding anniversary but we have been talking about going back to Paris at some point this year. We might not make it as there are other travel opportunities that might take priority, but in case we do, I'm happy to have another Paris dress in my wardrobe. Even if it does mean that I'm increasingly becoming a pastiche of my blog personality.

Mainly it felt good to sit down at my sewing machine again, you know? So much so that I have another two dresses cut out to sew in the near future. As always, I have more plans than I have time, but I'm getting better at making that time for myself.

I wore this dress on Saturday afternoon - we had been out on Friday night, so Saturday morning consisted of pyjamas and nothing else - to have ice-cream in the park with Nic, drinks in the pub with friends, and dinner round at the house of different friends. It was a very lovely day. On Sunday, Nic and I went to Coventry with Rick and Lauren to a record fair and I found further evidence that I am becoming a parody of myself:

Yes, that IS in fact a 12inch record featuring the Cagney & Lacey theme tune and "other American television themes". Actually, the version that they have of the Cagney & Lacey theme is not that which is used on the show, but it's still totally amazing that such a thing exists. What's even better is that side B is just Mike Post incidental music from cop shows. My love of Mike Post is well-documented, so this was a completely awesome find. I mean, he's my favourite composer. Nic laughed when I told him that, but I'm totally serious. You tell me the man who wrote the theme to Murder One isn't a stone cold genius.

Right, anyway, that's enough of that. I'd need to slide on here because I'm tired, and the rest of that carrot cake is calling to me. I'LL BE RIGHT THERE CARROT CAKE.

Did I hear you say cake?

Hey everyone, happy Friday! It has rolled around more quickly than I expected it would, given that I was back at work this week. It was helped by the fact that Nic and I booked a holiday to Paris for later in the summer. YEAH BOI. We're going to have ten days in Paris and we're staying in a beautiful apartment in Montmartre, although it is a different one to the place where we have stayed for the last few years. Maybe we'll grow tired of Paris eventually, but we're not tired of it yet. In any case, it's really good to have a holiday to look forward to.

It's been a decent week, all in all. Work is in a quieter spot at the moment, which is nice. There are a few important activities coming up over the next couple of months, but it's much less frantic a pace than it is throughout the rest of the year. The office itself is horrible in the summer months - it's one of those modern buildings that's all glass and steel and where the windows only open by decree from estate management, who are based on another site. Luckily, I'm able to work at home, and that's what I've been doing this week.

One of the really good things about working from home is being able to use my commuting time for other things. Often that's sleeping, but this morning it was a little bit of sewing. Although my commute is short, it can be very draining all the same (you know, the public) so not having to do it also usually leaves me with more energy in evenings. Nic was out on Tuesday evening and I made a dress - a nautical Cambie/Belladone combination that I will try to photograph over the weekend - and this week I also finished my Andi Satterlund Vianne cardigan. It's blocking away as I speak. So, it's all been very productive!

I've been sewing away but recently I've bought or been given a few lovely RTW dresses. Last month, Tom from Carousel Clothing in Dublin got in touch with me and asked me if I would be interested in learning about his own brand, Circus, and choosing a dress to try out. I don't often accept these sorts of requests but I was interested by the brand. Their patterns are cut in Dublin, and their fabrics are printed in India, where their clothes are made. I had a look through the catalogue and chose the Brigitte dress, which is €65.

Circus clothing Brigitte dress*, worn with Swedish hasbeens Frederica sandals

I used to buy a lot of dresses. A lot. Nowadays I don't, and when I do, it's usually because it's a fabric or a cut that I either wouldn't able to replicate or just wouldn't replicate. This is the latter. I've only rarely seen a striped fabric that I would want to buy, and even if I did - well, my attention span is genuinely not sufficient to faff around with stripe matching. So this dress is kind of perfect for me!

I'm uncomfortable with ragging on the quality of RTW clothing - after all, ALL clothing is hand-made - but I don't like buying or wearing cheaply made clothing. I was pretty impressed with the quality of this dress. It's made from a good quality, medium weight slubby cotton. It isn't lined, but this isn't an issue for me with a summer dress. The neck and armholes are finished with self-fabric binding and the dress fastens with a side lapped zip. The zip is really lovely, actually, if you can believe that - it's a very high-quality metal zip. Thumbs up all around for quality. The dress comes with a self-fabric sash belt which - well, look, I guess other people can make those work, but I can't. I always end up looking like a sack of potatoes that has been badly tied around the middle. I think this dress looks grand without it, but I will be looking out for a nice shiny patent red or navy belt.

I went full-on nautical when I wore this the other day, pairing it with another Lobster-themed garment...

Collectif Lucy Lobster cardigan

I bought this cardigan as soon as Char pointed it out to me and I am pleased to find it will work with dresses other than my lobster dress. I bought the Punky Pins necklace over the weekend from a shop in Leamington... and I'm very tempted to go back in and buy the lighthouse one as well. I also have the matching earrings. I'm a sucker for anything nautical, basically, because I am lame.

Hold Fast! You can see the dress fabric in more detail in this photo

The Brigitte dress has the sort of silhouette that I gravitate towards - a fitted bodice with a gathered skirt - and it fits true to the size chart on the website. I asked for a size 8 and I think it fits very nicely for an off-the rack dress. It's very lovely all round and it's a dress I'll wear lots in the hot weather - it's breezy and cool and cute.

This awesome vintage handbag was a gift from my friend Louise, and I bought the red hasbeens on deep sale over the winter

Thanks to Tom from Carousel for sending me this lovely dress. I like it so much I have my eye on the gingham Ava dress... which seems to be in the perfect large-scale 100% cotton gingham that is basically impossible to find:

Right-o, lads. My uncharacteristic burst of energy this morning has me seriously flagging now, so I'm away here to brew up a massive pot of coffee and get my head back into checking spreadsheets. WOO YEAH.

Disclosure: I was sent the dress featured in this post for free for a review. I was not otherwise compensated for this post and none of the links in this post are sponsored. My opinions are my own.

Heeeeeyy you guys! It's Wednesday afternoon and I am utterly exhausted after a three-day event at work. I can't promise this post is going to be any too coherent, sorry! They've been good days, but very long and very tiring. Nic is out for the evening, so I am recovering in the best way I know how at the moment: knitting, drinking gin and watching trashy TV. I'm pretty predictable, but then you all know that, I guess.

And, speaking of predictable... I sewed another dress with anchors on it!

Lolita Elle dress - Sewaholic Cambie bodice and Deer and Doe Belladone skirt, worn with Red or Dead 'Shirley' shoes

I wasn't feeling well on Sunday, when we took these photos, but I thought that getting dressed up and going out into the sunshine would help. I think I look grand apart from my face, but who worries about your face when you have whales on your dress?!

It was going to be difficult to avoid ending up with a whale on my boob. So, there it is.

Anyway, yeah, the dress! I was in a local fabric shop last week with Nic, when I saw this fabric. It's a Michael Miller print from the Ahoy Matey range from a few years ago. I sewed a few dresses from that range and none of them fit any more, womp womp. There was only 1.4m left of this fabric - which was kind of the one that got away - but I thought, well, I can make some cushions out of it or something. So I made a dress. Lol.

OBVIOUSLY I wore it with my lobster cardigan and my fish bag because duh, and we went to Yo! Sushi for lunch. Vegetarian sushi, though.

Not having much fabric to play with, I needed a skirt pattern that didn't eat up a lot of fabric. I've made a Cambie dress with a pleated skirt before, but I remembered that Liz had paired the Cambie bodice and Belladone skirt to excellent effect, so I decided to give that a go. And, Liz was right, they pair beautifully together! I had just enough fabric to cut everything out on grain as well, which was surprising and pleasing given that this print is directional. I omitted the waistband - I find that the length of the bodice works better on me without it - and I didn't have enough self-fabric for the hem facing. But, yeah. 1.4m of fabric. BOOM! I will definitely be using this combination again.

I made two slight adjustments to the Cambie bodice. I curved the waist darts (again, a suggestion that Liz made to me last year, and it's now an adjustment that I often do) and I redrew the bodice front piece so that the neckline comes up a little bit higher. It's not that the Cambie dress is low-cut or anything - it just ends up a little bit low on me as drafted and, you know, flashing my bra. Ain't nobody got time for that. This was a simple adjustment to do, and I'm pleased that my bra isn't hanging out, but I think it possibly gives me a bit of a uniboob vibe. I think I can get away with it a bit in this dress though, because there's a whale on my boob, you know?

I like this dress a lot. I was really feeling like crap on Sunday - after taking these photos, I had to go home and spend the afternoon lying still on the sofa - but I felt like I looked pretty cute. I really like the shape of the Belladone skirt and it's nice to get the old knees out for the summer, right? I think it will look more casual and summery with sandals instead of closed-toe shoes, but I just got these shoes and I had to wear them...

AWWWW YEAH. Red glitter shoes. Not much more to say than that, right? I have a pair of red sequin shoes Irregular Choice shoes, but I ration how often I wear them because they're old now, and I don't want to wear them out. I bought these Red or Dead shoes on ebay, as the style is a few years old now. They're silly and fun, which is why I like them, but I also like seeing how much little girls on the street love them. It's really cute.

Yeah. Dressing in a mature fashion isn't really for me. Oh well.

Right, lads and lassies. I'm going to peace out here. I've started knitting the Audrey in Unst cardigan and, man, that twisted ribbing is NOJOKE. If I want to finish this cardigan before I'm too old to wear it, I'd better crack on with it! Goodnight everyone!

Hello everyone! How's it going, there? Everything is grand here - Nic and I are just back from a lovely long weekend at home in Northern Ireland. It was brilliant. I had been feeling ill all last week with an annoying sinus infection that just wouldn't shift, but being at home made me feel better. I slept well and of course it helped that I had my parents to look after me, but whatever it was, it was great!

We arrived on Thursday evening and came back yesterday. The thing that prompted the visit home on this particular weekend is that I had bought Nic and I tickets to see Christy Moore, who was playing with the Máirtín O'Connor band in Dungannon Leisure Centre. I've seen Christy live before, at Warwick Arts Centre in 2006, and it's something I have wanted to do with Nic ever since we've been together. Christy Moore is an artist who means a lot to me, and he is absolutely brilliant live. When my cousin's husband told us he'd seen Christy live in the leisure centre, Nic declared that this would be the only way to see him. Luckily for us, this declaration coincided with Christy Moore touring and so, on Friday night, Nic and I joined my cousin and her husband on the basketball court at the leisure centre for an absolutely brilliant gig.

It was quite strange to be back in the leisure centre: the place where I tried (and failed) to learn to swim, where my friend Davina and I ate chips while we waited for the bus home after school, and where I (very occasionally) went to basketball matches on a Friday night. That said, it really was an excellent venue. The audience was small and engaged, and the sound was brilliant. It was a very emotional gig and thoroughly wonderful to see this living legend in an Irish crowd. Thankfully, Nic loved the gig as much as I did, and we had a splendid evening also. Before the gig, all four of us had dinner together in Cano's and we saw the night out in The Square Bar. A great Dungannon night out, even if Nic has never really managed to get over the disappointment that the bar itself is not actually square (it's in The Square.)

It was one of those holidays that felt longer than it was because we managed to fit so much in - mainly spending time with family and eating, but we also made it to the Armagh Show in Gosford Forest, which was every bit as much like an episode of Father Ted as I hoped it would be.

There's one out-and-out winner and rather than waste time with a speech I'll get on with the job of announcing the winner who, today, has come first in this competition to see who the winner is in the King of the Sheep competition that we have all come to today wondering who indeed will it be, who wins the prize of King of the Sheep.

We were very lucky to be able to spend so much time with our gorgeous nephews, who change so much every time I see them. My mum is always telling me that Joe reminds her of what I was like as a baby and I must say that I'm beginning to see the resemblance myself...

His shoes have giraffes on them and mine have birds, but I think we can all agree that Joe's footwear is totally awesome.

We were also very lucky with the weather. In a shocking turn of events, we were even able to sit outside in the sunshine at my sister Colleen's house! I brought home summer dresses and wasn't even cold. High summer indeed in Northern Ireland! The weather was so beautiful that I was able to take the opportunity to photograph a couple of finished projects.

As I've mentioned before, I decided to take part in the Outfit Along organised by Andi Satterlund and Lauren Lladybird. The idea is that you make complete outfit by sewing a dress (or a skirt or whatever, I guess) and knitting a cardigan or sweater to wear with it. There are suggested patterns but it's really up to you what to do. Anyway, the suggested cardigan is Andi's newest pattern, the Vianne. I'd been hanging out dying for this to be released ever since I saw Andi's completed one on instagram. I loved the lace pattern insert on either side of the button band. I didn't even know at that stage about the lovely lace work across the back.

The pattern is designed to be knit with DK weight yarn. I bought a few balls of Cascade 220 Superwash in a colourway called 'flamingo' which I hoped would be a really shocking pink. It turned out to be a bit more subdued than I hoped for - and pretty close in colour to the pink of my Dilly Miette cardigan - I still need to find the perfect shocking pink yarn. Still, this colour is lovely and I have already worn this cardigan a lot:

Andi Satterlund Vianne cardigan, Doralee dress (Simplicity 2591) and Swedish hasbeens Mimmi sandals

This photo is such a goofy one of me, but it's the best one of the cardigan! I cast the Vianne on in the car when we were on our way down to Kent with my parents and it knit up really quickly. Actually, after that weekend I frogged what I had done - I can't remember why, but I did - so I think this was only really on my needles for a few weeks. I was a little bit hesitant with this pattern and enjoyed it less than I have done other projects but this was nothing at all to do with the pattern and everything to do with the fact that the Marion cardigan fit me so badly. Vianne is a similar shape to Marion, so I was a little bit worried, but I decided that it was worth trying anyway. I'm pretty happy with the outcome but, as ever, there are a few things I would change...

Here's a a close-up so that you can see the lace pattern around the neckline more clearly. I really love this stitch pattern, even though you can't see it especially well in this photo.

I knit the smallest size, which I think is a really good fit around the shoulders and a pretty good fit across my bust. I think I could stand to go up a size at the waist, maybe. I'm not really at my fighting weight in these photos - something about the food at home (potatoes) makes me a bit (potatoes) bloated (potatoes) and I think that a few days back on my regular diet will make the fit around the stomach a little more forgiving! I like wearing the cardigan open, anyway:

Nic caught me mid-reaction to a giant bluebottle dive-bombing my face, and this photo keeps making me laugh!

This pattern was very easy to follow. The back looks very complicated, but actually the stitch pattern was easy to memorise and so knitted very quickly:

I panicked about the cardigan a bit when I joined the back to the front, because the armholes seemed absolutely massive. I tried the cardigan on after knitting a few more rows of the body and the armholes just seemed impossibly long, and it looked like the cardigan itself was going to end up being much longer than I would like if I continued to follow the pattern to the letter. So I busked it a bit at this stage. I looked ahead to see what the stitch count should be on the last row before the waistband ribbing started and took a stab at how many more rows I'd need knit to get to my desired length, and then I worked the decreases closer together over that number of rows. It didn't work out perfectly - I should have had fewer rows and more ribbing - but I was pleased to have cobbled together a solution. Once I picked up the first sleeve, I was hugely reassured that the finished cardigan would be a decent fit. I powered through the sleeves and am happy with those, too. They're a much better fit than the ones on Marion.

I love how the pattern around the neckline is mirrored on either side of the mesh on the back, and I think that I'd like to knit this cardigan again with those details and a stockinette back. Andi has written a post on how to knit the back plain, which I will have to try to modify to my own ends at some point!

So, I don't totally love this cardigan but I am very pleased with it, and it's definitely a worthwhile addition to my massive collection of cardigans. Judging by how often I wear my Dilly cardigan, I know another pink cardigan will see lots of wear and I'm pretty happy with how this one looks.

I wasn't keen on the suggested dress pattern in the OAL - after my last Belladone dress, I decided that open backs on dresses isn't for me - so I was a little bit lost as to what to sew to match my pink cardigan. Then, weirdly, inspiration just hit, late at night. When I was trying to fall asleep I decided to try revisiting Simplicity 2591, which was one of the first dress patterns I sewed from, and I even knew the stash fabric to make it from. Isn't it funny when that happens?!

So, Simplicity 2591 is now out of print, but it was one of the first patterns I sewed from when I started sewing four or five years ago. I've changed size and shape a little bit since then, and after checking out all the measurements, I decided I'd try going a size down. I didn't toile this - but as my fabric had only cost me £4.99 per metre, I thought it worth the risk.

Doralee dress - Simplicity 2591 in rose-print cotton poplin from Birmingham market

I don't think I made any alterations to this one, so this is basically straight out of the packet. Man, I think I even hemmed it to the suggested length! I bought the rose print cotton poplin from a stall in Birmingham market when I had a shopping trip there with some sewing friends in March (I think a few of them might have bought some too - I can't completely remember) and I had 2 metres in my stash, which was the perfect amount for what I needed. This was a completely no-fuss project, which I sewed on a sunny morning on my week off a few weeks ago.

As with the cardigan, I'm pretty happy with this dress, even if I don't completely love it, and if I sew another 2591 there are a few fitting tweaks I'd like to make, such as lowering the armholes very slightly and reducing some of the bulk there, and also giving myself a bit more space in the bust. These are only minor things though, and not enough to prevent me from wearing this particular dress.

It's a shame this pattern is out of print now, because it really is cute and unusual. I no longer have any of the ones I sewed when I first started out, so there probably is room in my wardrobe for another 2591. I like the gentle gathering at the waist and the usual design of the pockets. My mum was delighted with the pockets and pointed them out to my granny when we visited her on Sunday, which is when I wore this dress. My auntie Jeanette liked my shoes, which was also pleasing:

Yeah, that's right. And I got another pair of clogs in the post today. Insert Ron Swanson Don't Even Care gif.

It was a beautiful day on Sunday and I was able to put this whole outfit through its paces by wearing it to play in the park with my nephews, visit my granny, eat lots of sandwiches and sit outside in the sunshine with my sister, brother-in-law, parents and Nic, watching the dogs play and catching up on local gossip. This dress is already full of happy memories, and I ended that day full of noodles. You can't beat holidays, lads.

Anyway - you've had to tolerate seven million photographs of me, and also it's getting pretty late here and I have stuff I need to do before I go to bed. Before I go, here are some photos of the dogs of the weekend...

My sister Colleen had a difficult start to the year, but Lola joining the family has helped put a smile back onto her face. She's a shih tzu, apparently, but I think she's actually an Ewok. She's ridiculously cute, at any rate.

...and who can forget our Mini?! My parents were trying to work out how old she is, and we came to the conclusion that she must be seven, because we've had Nic for longer than we've had her. Certainly, she's finding it more difficult now to jump up onto the sofa and she's become tolerant in her old age. I saw her allowing Joe to stroke her and she even tolerated Lola in the house. She still barks at the postman who, more than once, has threatened to stop delivering to our house. It would take far more than her being cheeky to the postman to knock her from her pedestal in our house, however. She's top dog by some long way...

Pupstagram

Hey hey! Hello everyone! I hope you're all well - the craic here is ninety-one, as usual. I had such a thrilling work day that my line manager and I are considering making it a weekly competition to see who has completed the most tedious task that week. Luckily for me, this week I think she would actually take home the prize but it's still only Monday. There's time for me to have the arse bored off me yet, right? It's weird in my job in that the summer months are so quiet in comparison to all of the rest of the year, which... well, you have heard me complain about it before. It's not that I miss that frantic pace - I don't - but as it's how I am forced to work for most of the year, it's hard to get used to having a bit of downtime.

The good thing is that, as I'm not so horrendously busy I have a bit more energy to sew, which is really nice. As well as that, I had some completely awesome fabric to sew with - this Kokka Echino linen fabric:

Kokka Echino 10th Anniversary stag fabric from Plush Addict*

Plush Addict got in touch with me a few weeks ago and offered to send me some fabric to make a dress. They've also sent me something for you guys, which I will tell you about shortly. Anyway, it's difficult to resist free fabric so of course I accepted. I spent ages browsing their frankly massive selection before deciding on this Kokka fabric, which I have wanted for ages. I've had it pinned on my sewing inspiration board on pinterest for about a year! Plush Addict sent me 2.5m so that I could make another McCall's 6696 shirt-dress. What can I say? The idea of a hipster shirt-dress was too hard to resist.

I was surprised by this fabric when it arrived. It's a cotton-linen blend and it's a heavier weight than I was expecting it to be, with a far less loose weave than I normally associate with linen. This didn't pose me any problems, but I was a little bit concerned that it might be a bit bulky when it came to making the collar and the buttonholes. I needn't have worried though. The fabric doesn't have much drape to it, but I had no problems at all when it came to making the dress.

Where I Come From dress - McCall's 6696 in Kokka fabric, worn with Swedish hasbeens heart medallion sandals

The only problem I had was one of my own stupidity. 2.5 metres turned out to be just enough to cut this dress out and I was so focused on making sure I had everything the right way up and on the straight grain (I'll often take low-risk risks with grain, but I didn't want to with linen as I really didn't want it to warp) that I didn't pay any attention to the print placement on the bodice. Which is how I ended up with stag headlights, so to speak:

Yeah. Those are some Stag Boobs, right there. Whale boobs one week, stag boobs the next. WTF Roisin.

I tried the dress on after attaching the button bands and before attaching the collar and it wasn't until then that I noticed the placement of the stags. I ran into the living room and asked Nic if he noticed anything unusual about the dress. He's a pretty observant guy, particularly when it comes to my handmade clothes, and thankfully he didn't notice the stags! This gives me reassurance that people won't be pointing and laughing in the street - well, not for this reason anyway - but of course, people reading sewing blogs are likely to notice! It's not ideal, but it could definitely be worse. It hasn't put me off the dress anyway, which is definitely one of my favourite dresses I've made this year.

Despite my initial reservations about the weight of the fabric, it turned out to be lovely to wear. Perhaps because it is a cotton-linen blend, it doesn't crease as badly as linen does, but it is cool and breathable to wear. It was gorgeous to work with too - it pressed well and didn't fray. Also, looking at the stag's cute little face made sewing this a treat. I didn't want to gather the fabric, though, as I did think it would be too hefty for that, so instead I pleated it at the lower back:

I didn't have any issues with the buttonholes, but elected not to even attempt sewing one in the collar stand, as you usually would. I mean, I'm never going to wear this buttoned up to the neck anyway. The only other way in which I deviated from the pattern was that I top-stitched the button bands rather than hand-sewing them. Nae bother.

The finished dress feels a little bit on the big side, but I think that this is because it's the style of the dress, and it's also that I'm more conscious of it because my preference is usually for slightly more fitted dresses. It might be more flattering if it were a little bit smaller, but I know that in hot and humid weather a slightly looser-fitting linen dress is going to be invaluable. I'm thinking that it's likely to be hot as balls in Paris in August, so I'm sure this dress will be really handy then.

It was a bit chillier than that on Sunday, though, so I wore it with a cardigan. Obviously.

I have one of these Hell Bunny cardigans in teal now... and it seems they they also come in navy. Cardigan Rainbow! I wore this yesterday when I was feeling a bit delicate thanks to a horrible atmospheric pressure headache. Nic and I went out for a long walk to get some fresh air (and to go to Lidl to buy cinnamon buns) and then I spent the afternoon knitting. Basically every time Nic looked over in my direction he told me how much he loved my dress, so I'm calling this one a big success. You know I'm all about the compliments, yeah?

Thanks so much to Plush Addict for sending me this gorgeous fabric. I really couldn't love the finished dress more!

And, as I mentioned earlier, Plush Addict have also sent me something for you guys as well. I have a £25 voucher to give away to spend in their online store. The giveaway is open worldwide - Plush Addict ship internationally - and all you need to do is go and have a look on Plush Addict's site and leave me a comment to let me know what you would spend your £25 voucher on and what you would make with it. You can gain an extra entry by tweeting a link to this post - just make sure to mention me in the tweet so that I can see it! Please make sure that it's easy for me to find your contact email address in case you win.

I will keep the giveaway open until 9pm BST on Tuesday, 30th June 2015.

Have fun browsing Plush Addict's massive selection. It genuinely took me ages to pick out the Kokka fabric - here are a few of the runners-up!

Makower yellow tulips poplin... this was also in the running to make a shirt-dress, but then almost every fabric is at the moment!

I love this Michael Miller chain link print cotton. For some reason it makes me think of The Crystal Maze! I think it would make a beautiful sun-dress. I'm pretty sure it's the fabric that Simplicity used for the sample dress on the envelope for the Cynthia Rowley Simplicity 1607, so you could do that with it!

Because if I like it, I want it in every colour... the Kokka Echino stag fabric in orange and purple.

Right - good luck. May the odds be ever in your favour, or something. I must go now - I have plans that involve a cocktail and the last two episodes of Mad Men. Goodnight!

Hello hello! Happy Heatwave to my British readers and just, you know, happy Wednesday afternoon to all the rest of you all. I'm currently hiding out in the flat. The lovely warm weather is good and all, but I have hay fever and the constant sneezing when I'm outside is doing my head in. Happy days!

Firstly - a massive thank you to all of you who entered the giveaway for Plush Addict. I expect they're feeling pretty loved! I put all your names into a spreadsheet (you know I love a spreadsheet) and chose a number with the random number generator. Mrs O - you're the winner! I will be in touch with details.

So anyway, that's the craic there. I'm grand here, hay fever notwithstanding. I had a bit of a mad end to the week last week at work and ended up working very late on Friday night and throughout Saturday morning. Such fun. Ugh. After I finished work on Friday night I poured myself a massive gin and tonic and lay on the sofa for a while before deciding that I needed to do some sewing to clear my head. In my gin-fuelled wisdom, I thought the best thing to do try out a whole new pattern - Cynthia Rowley for Simplicity 1801.

I'm honestly not really sure what possessed me to sew this, a little bit drunk and late at night. Earlier in the week I'd had a go at another Cynthia Rowley pattern - 1607 - which ended up being a total wadder. That particular pattern is currently on time out while I decide whether it's worth making the necessary adjustments. Anyway, mostly I find that Simplicity patterns fit me reasonably well out of the packet but I guess the Cynthia Rowley patterns are drafted from a different block or whatever - it's not so straightforward with these ones. So anyway, I sewed 1801 to the point where I needed to do some hand-sewing and hem it and tried it on, and hated it. In fairness, it was very late at night and I was a few gins in. When I tried it on again the following morning and realised it could potentially be saved with a small adjustment, I didn't feel quite as annoyed. I'm thinking of this as a wearable toile. Maybe. It might yet go in the bin.

3 O'Clock In The Morning dress - Simplicity 1801 in wax cotton, worn with Swedish hasbeens braided sandals

This dress certainly turned out a bit cuter than I thought it would but, yeah, I am still pretty unsure about it. You can't really see it in this print (I'll get to the print in a minute too) but I just don't think the wide, curved waistband really suits me. I have a pretty short torso and the waistband bisects it in a weird way! The bodice and waistband ended up being too long and the on-the-fly adjustment I made to fix this was to significantly shorten the shoulder yokes, which brought the whole thing up. I think that, if I am to make this pattern again, I will want to do that and decrease the width of the waistband slightly too.

The combination of the wide, low waistband, the gathering AND the fact that I used a fairly weighty wax cotton means that there is a lot of room in the stomach area. I am definitely - very definitely - NOT pregnant, but this dress sort of makes me look like I am pregnant. In 1995. Because the fabric has a sort of 90s board shorts vibe to it, doesn't it? In the 90s, I wanted to be Clarissa but maybe I'm actually Sam:

Actually I still kind of want to be Clarissa. I thought I was immune to the current 90s revival but maybe I'm wrong about that...

I bought the fabric on Goldhawk Road in January - I think it came from Fancy Fabrics - and Nic actually picked it out. He liked it so much that I also bought it in blue. So I have 5 metres of that kicking around too that I'll have to decide what to do with! I think that I do like the fabric, though, even if it is a bit 90s in the worst way.

Nic still likes it and he really likes the finished dress. I wore it on Sunday and he kept telling me how much he liked it - partly, I think, because he didn't want me to put it in the bin! He thinks that I'm unsure about it because it's a bit different to my usual style and he might be right. I don't know.

It's slightly more flattering from the back, maybe!

I did enjoy wearing this dress on Sunday. I think that if I can work out the fitting issues, it could be a good contender for a maxi dress pattern. I have some polka dot cotton lawn that would work well and in a softer, drapier fabric the whole preggo effect would be lessened as well. So I'll have to see.

It was very hot on Sunday and Nic and I had a very lazy morning and early afternoon. I had a bout of insomnia at the end of last week and over the weekend so, in an attempt to give me some energy and to tire me out for later that night, Nic and I took a spontaneous walk across the fields to the Saxon Mill. I tried to get some good photos in the barley fields but it was too windy and I looked like a dick in most of them. Ah well, it was still a lovely walk!

So, considering I made this dress while stressed, slightly drunk and in the middle of the night, it turned out all right! I still needed to do a little bit of relaxing sewing, though, so on Saturday afternoon I did as Karen described, and hit up a well-loved and familiar pattern. Look out for another Emery dress on the blog - at some point when it's not too hot to put on a close-fitting dress. Not that I'm complaining about the good weather. I love it. I bought two more pairs of sandals yesterday, which brings my total up to 13657 pairs of sandals. I'm ready for the good weather to stay on indefinitely.

I'm also ready to eat enormous meals in this dress. It might not have to house a human baby but there's every possibility that it'll have to house a food baby at some point.

Speaking of enormous meals, I must draw this to a close so that I can go out and buy supplies for a picnic dinner in the park this evening. See you all later!

Hello everyone! Happy Monday my loves! I hope everyone has had a lovely, lovely weekend. I'm a teeny bit - a teeny tiny bit - hungover after a weekend of (relative) excess. It was nice, actually. Since I had that alcohol poisoning at Christmas, I have found it difficult to ever drink more than a few drinks at a time. That's still the case, actually, but over the weekend I found the sweet spot where I could feel pleasantly tipsy without freaking out about being drunk, and that was nice.

I had to work over the weekend which was annoying (especially when it meant dealing with rude and condescending emails) but otherwise, it was perfect. I had Friday afternoon off, which I spent in the sunshine with Nic. I sewed a toile of a dress I wanted to make and prepped my pattern pieces, and I got down to sewing on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon I had a new dress to wear for a walk in the countryside with friends. Don't you love it when that happens?!

The pattern in question is the Sew Over It vintage shirt-dress, which I bought last week. While I was buying the pattern in their online store, I also strayed over to their fabrics section and bought a couple of metres of their anchor print chambray. I'd seen some buttons with anchors on in a local haberdashery - in fact, every time I've gone in over the last few months I've tried to find an excuse to buy them - and I finally found my reason!

This summer has sort of unofficially become the Summer of Shirt-dresses, given my ever-increasing love of McCalls 6696. I was charmed by the look of this dress, though - I was lucky enough to have had a preview of it, having seen Emmie's test version in person when we went to Fashion on the Ration exhibition at the IWM in April. I knew then that I needed to add this to my wardrobe. The anchor fabric was just a happy coincidence. You know that in the summer, I am constantly looking for ways to emulate my hero, Mayor Larry Vaughn:

I might never actually get around to making myself an anchor print blazer because, realistically, I might never wear it. I haven't got the same pizazz as old Larry here. A shirt-dress seemed like the next best thing.

Going by the finished garment measurements on the back of the pattern envelope, it was looking like I'd need to sew a size 8, but I wanted to toile it to get an idea of ease. It turns out that there is a fair amount of ease built in around the waist - fairly standard with shirt-dresses, I'd say - and I needed to take it in by around an inch overall at the waist. I did this at the side seams but I'm curious to see if it would work better by increasing the size of the pleats.

I had set aside Saturday and Sunday morning to sew this dress but ended up whizzing through it very quickly on Saturday morning, which was a very pleasant surprise. I was able to wear it that afternoon! The instructions are very thorough and I stuck very closely to them, which made sewing the notched collar a breeze. I've been lucky enough to work with Lisa and her team at the John Lewis 150 day last year and I know how knowledgable and thorough they are and this is fully reflected in the quality of the pattern instructions and the drafting. This was an absolute pleasure to sew and I'm already looking forward to sewing another one!

Larry Vaughn dress - Sew Over It vintage shirt-dress in anchor chambray, worn with Miss L-Fire 'Cherry Pop' sandals

The pattern calls for eight buttons but I bought ten, and I think I could have even done with twelve, to be honest. This is personal preference more than anything else, I think, but I would like to have added a couple more buttons towards the bottom of the skirt. Maybe this is also because I think the anchor buttons are the actual bomb. I'm going to go back and buy more to put onto a cardigan. They come in red as well. ONE IN EVERY COLOUR, LADS.

Here's my sunshine and prosecco-fuelled crazy face. We had friends with us when Nic was taking these photos so I felt a little bit self-conscious - sorry there are not closer-up photos of the buttons!

There are so many things I really like about this pattern. The notched collar is very sweet and I love the shape of the neckline. This is a pretty short and sweet summer dress so it's a little bit low-cut. When I make another one, I will have the first button a little bit higher up to preserve my modesty! I love the shape of the skirt and the way the pleats on the bodice and on the skirt create a subtle and interesting shaping. It's a really beautiful design - as is the way the shoulder seams curve to the front and join with a gently gathered seam. It's lovely!

The skirt hits me just above my knee, which is a really good length for a summer dress. My preference is usually for a longer hem but, you know, getting the knees out the odd time is fine too! I didn't manage to get any photos of the back, but the bodice fits me very well across the lower back - I usually need to shorten bodices somehow, but that wasn't the case here. The waist seam sits at my rather high natural waist, so this is something you might want to watch if you're sewing this dress for yourself.

Following on from my last post, there's something about the chambray that makes this dress feel quite 90s as well. Maybe I just have the 90s on my mind a lot at the moment - Nic and I watched two series of My Mad Fat Diary very quickly so we could watch the final episodes as they are broadcast, so I've been listening to a lot of 90s indie! Still, I guess the 90s are officially 'vintage' now, so maybe it still fits. In any case - I love this dress!

Nic has been updating his summer wardrobe and he bought this stripy t-shirt the other day. While we were waiting outside the flat for our friends to arrive, he said to me, "I look like I work on the boat you're the captain of!" Our matching outfits were accidental, but pleasing all the same.

Anyway, that's my Sew Over It shirt-dress. I'll definitely make more. I'd like to make one with sleeves and with a slightly longer skirt for when the weather is cooler. I think I'd like a polka dot one - maybe in navy - but I'll wait to see what fabric speaks to me. In the meantime, I'm going to be finding every available opportunity to wear this one. I'm nowhere near the sea, but I do have a river nearby...

I was warned, "If you fall in that river, I'm not going in after you" which, fair enough. I didn't stay up on that wall for long!

I did this, instead:

Sailors drink rum, so...

It was a good weekend. I earned this little hangover, I did. But now I need to go and medicate it with lunch and coffee, so I'll catch you all later. Bye!

Oh HELLO! I hope everyone is grand. I'm not too bad here, even though it's a) Monday and b) extremely dreary. Things aren't too bad, though. I worked at home today and Nic and I were able to go out for a walk at lunchtime and I found something awesome in the Myton Hospice shop...

It's a tennis-themed Snoopy sheet. I thought I was mostly over novelty prints, but who am I kidding? I am going to have to make myself a little Snoopy dress. Maybe I'll even be able to wear it before the end of the tennis season. I don't often get lucky when it comes to finding fabric in charity shops, but this was pristine and too much fun to pass up. Also, I don't think Nic would have forgiven me if I had left it in the shop!

So that's the craic with me anyway. The fair is in town at the moment so on Friday night, I got to go on the waltzers a few times, and yesterday Nic and I went to Banbury with Rick and Lauren to do a town trail challenge thing. There was a genuine challenge element to it - it was a bit like a treasure hunt, but with no treasure - but it was also a good opportunity to check out some of Banbury's pubs while we dodged rain showers. It was a good day!

On Saturday (yeah, I'm jumping around in the timeline. I'm crazy like that) Nic and I dandered about town and I took the chance to get some photos of my most recent knitted garment. Having cut my knitting teeth on Andi Satterlund patterns and worsted or DK-weight yarn, I decided it was high time to move onto another designer and a finer yarn. My friend Charlotte recommended I try out some of the yarns from West Yorkshire Spinners, as she thought I would like their Signature 'Sweet Shop' range. She was right. I did. I had a tough time choosing - I really liked the 'blueberry bonbon' colour, but I thought a yellow cardigan would be more practical, so I bought three balls of butterscotch. The pattern I had in mind was the popular Audrey in Unst by Gudrun Johnston, as this is pretty much what I go for in shop-bought cardigans - cropped, and in bright colours. I was helped along by the fact that there are so many lovely Audrey in Unst cardigans out there in blog-land - most recently, Heather B knitted a totally gorgeous green one.

The pattern is designed for DK-weight yarn and what I had was 4-ply, but I wasn't worried by this. A quick cast around the internet showed me that lots of people had knitted it in sock yarn, so I cracked on ahead. I had to size down on my needles to get gauge but otherwise it was all good. I was taking a bit of a risk when it came to choosing a size, especially as this pattern is knitted from the bottom up, but the size small worked out fine. Anyway, enough yammering. Here's my cardigan!

Audrey in Unst cardigan, worn with Emily and Fin Isobel dress

So, this cardigan is not so cropped on me. I just couldn't tell what the length was going to be like - well, I mean, I suppose I could from the schematics provided on the pattern - and this is a wee bit longer than I would normally like. However, I'm really happy with it. For one thing, I think cropping it too much would work against the lovely deep band of ribbing at the bottom. For another, I think it works with the way the fabric drapes. It's a bit outside of my standard fit-and-flare silhouette, but only a bit. It works with my dresses, and that's what's important!

Length aside, I love how this cardigan fits. I decided not to add buttons to this one because the yarn is so fine that it becomes a little bit see-through when pulled closed. I thought I'd never wear it buttoned-up, and didn't fancy sewing buttons on that would never see any use. It does fit buttoned-up though - as best as I can tell from pinning it - so the next one I knit will have buttons.

Here's the back - I actually really like the length through the back so I'm trying to focus on that instead of my shocking bread-back! Let's have a look at the front again instead...

One of the great things about knitting this cardigan was learning a few techniques. So, as well as trying to keep my tension consistent across yards of stockinette in 4-ply yarn (something I still need to practise, yo) this was my first bottom-up cardigan. I also learned how to do a three-needle bind off (fiddly. as. fuck) and i-cord binding for the neckline. I wasn't sure how much I would like this and it was the one design aspect that was putting me off the cardigan, but on the completed cardigan I love it. I think it's really elegant and unusual, and it works so well with the pretty shetland lace on the bib.

This picture is essentially identical to one above but I've put it in here because I've just been talking about the neckline. Isn't the neckline pretty, though?!

I thought that knitting this cardigan would take significantly longer than the cropped cardigans in heavier yarn that I learned on, but it didn't really. I had a couple of train journeys to knit it on, which helped I guess. The bit that took the longest was the twisted 1x1 rib, but you get it over with nice and early. Also, once I got into it, even that was kind of satisfying - although my poor old right shoulder didn't massively agree with that.

Since I finished this, I've cast on another Miette cardigan - I bought some pretty blue Cascade 220 superwash for one, as I've been wearing my Dilly cardigan loads. But after that I'm knitting another Audrey in Unst in some beautiful hot pink - really hot pink this time - 4-ply Merino yarn. Fuck yeah knitting!

Both of the cardigans I have lined up will also look great with the dress I'm wearing in this post, which is an Emily and Fin dress I bought a few weeks ago. I don't often buy dresses these days, but sometimes one comes along that is just impossible to resist, and this was one of them.

The style is called Isobel and obviously I fell in love with the bright floral print. One of the things I really like about Emily and Fin dresses is that they have pretty classic shapes but with interesting details. This one has sweet little pleats at the bust and a really interesting curved waistband. It made it totally worth buying, although I did wait until I found somewhere selling it at an el cheapo price.

Anyway, that's all the craic I have this evening. I need to go and put some washing on - that Snoopy fabric needs to be pre-washed! Have a great week, everyone!

HELLO! Twice in the one week, what? That's not like me, eh? But, the dinner is cooking and I got a few photos today of a recently-finished dress and I thought, why not. I'll be a badass this week.

Anyway - no craic with me. I have been working at home this week, writing and monitoring a project that is nearly finished. It's hardly been thrilling, if I'm totally honest. Still - it's better than being out of my head with work stress, but it'd be nice if it wasn't all or nothing. I haven't been sewing this week, although I did have a little surge of productivity at the end of last week, when I had one of those things where inspiration struck and nothing would do only I had to make what was in my head STRAIGHT AWAY. So I did!

I've been looking for another great maxi dress pattern. I'm still not totally convinced by Simplicity 1801, although I like the idea of it, so I had temporarily called off the search. Anyway, as I was putting on a handmade dress - the Stone Flower dress - one morning last week, I was hit with inspiration. What if I just took a skirt pattern I liked, and lengthened it to a maxi? So that's what I did...

Instant Street dress - By Hand London Kim dress bodice and lengthened skirt from Deer and Doe Belladone dress

More star-print wax cotton! You've seen this before in the shape of the Bedelia dress and the Thelma dress but I liked it so much that I bought some more of it on eBay. I actually bought this with the intention of making a shirt-dress out of it - which I may yet do as I have lots of it left over - but this dress kind of barged into the queue.

Having already paired the Kim bodice and the Belladone skirt, all I needed to figure out how to do was lengthen the skirt to maxi length. Now, I'm sure there's a proper, pattern-cutting way to do this, but here's what I did. I pinned the skirt pieces to the fabric and simply drew a line, continuing the side-seam line down to the length I wanted the skirt. There was some method to my lazy way of doing this, in that I wanted the skirt to be pretty flared, and I didn't mind the hem on the maxi dress being wider than that of the original skirt pattern.

I decided to hem the dress so that I could wear it with lower heels or with flats - but I am tempted to make another one with a few inches added to the hem so it can be worn with heels. I'm really pleased with how the dress has turned out and how the silhouettes work together. I think my maxi-fied Belladone skirt might work well with other bodices too... I can see it with a sleeveless Emery bodice or Elisalex bodice too!

I wore this today as it's really good to have comfortable but pretty clothes for working from home. It cheers me up! Nic was at home today too so we went out for a walk at lunchtime and again after work. It's really muggy here at the moment and I felt cool and serene in my dress. Okay, no, not serene. My hayfever has been really bad and the anti-histamines mess with my head, so actually I've been feeling pretty spaced out. At least I looked nice, eh? And, even though I can't see it, I was happy to know that my *white* invisible zip was actually invisible:

HO YEAH. Wrinkles c/o the sofa.

One of the features I really like in the Belladone skirt is the slash pockets on the hips. I wasn't sure if these would still work on a maxi skirt, but I think they do. Also it's handy to have somewhere to stash my tissues as I'm basically sneezing constantly right now:

POCKET ACTION SHOT

That's the craic with this dress. I took an admittedly low-risk gamble (I have loads of this fabric and no immediate need for another dress) and I think it paid off pretty well. Happy days! Here's a wee out-take of me looking extremely goofy with happiness about my dress:

I genuinely can't remember what I was doing when I was captured in this moment of natural beauty and effortless elegance but I thought I'd treat you all to it.

Right now, on that note I'm off. Tonight I'm going to eat some ice-cream and watch a film. This film:

And then I will be like this...

HELLO! What's happening, folks? I've reached a happy end to a weird Monday - I had a bad case of the mean reds today for no reason that I can really articulate. It's weird when anxiety kicks off for no reason you can place - especially when life is otherwise good. I've been suffering from insomnia again and today I had all those other delightful symptoms - palpitations, an inability to eat, dizziness. Lucikily, I was working from home, so I was able to take it relatively easy. I'm feeling a lot chirpier now - when I finished work for the day, I spent some time finishing a dress and then Nic came home and we went out for a walk and a few drinks. When life gets like this it can be nice to have something to pull me out of it, you know?

And it's self-indulgent really because life is pretty good and I've just had a really lovely weekend. One of my big work projects hit a major milestone over the weekend, which means I can go off on holiday soon in good conscience. Amy came to visit on Friday night and we went to a gin festival hosted by Leamington Wine Company with a lovely group of friends. You might know that I'm a big fan of gin, and I have been somewhat enabled in this by Leamington Wine Company. Over the last year I've been going in on payday or thereabouts every month and buying a fancy bottle of gin - usually after a long conversation with the staff and numerous samples. When they announced they were going to be running a mini gin festival I was very excited and the night did not disappoint. We were joined by Rick and Lauren and, as well as the chance to sample a number of gins, we had dinner and entertainment provided by a DJ who thought it was a good idea to play a set that was composed of Blue Velvet, Moon River and Blue Moon - in that order, even though Blue Velvet/Blue Moon/Moon River would have made more sense!

I somehow dodged a hangover the next day - I seriously have no idea how - and we set off for a day of fabric shopping in Birmingham with Marie, Kat and Helen. I managed to go quietly wild and ended up buying a LOT of fabric and doing a lot of gossiping. Most of it is awaiting pre-washing but one piece skipped the queue - it's some Hill-Berg cotton poplin that I bought from Fancy Silk Stores (the lovely owner said to me how nice it was to see us all - "You ladies, you're always so happy") so I took a calculated risk and dodged pre-washing it to make this...

Melody dress - By Hand London Anna bodice with a pleated skirt, worn with Red or Dead shoes

Yeah. More anchors. I don't care. It's summer!

I bought this fabric in Fancy Silk Stores. I was on my way to the back of the shop to have some beautiful Liberty lawn cut (£11.99 a metre SAY WHAT) and I spotted this. I actually bought this exact fabric over a year ago after I saw this dress:

STOP THE BUS. Isn't this jaw-droppingly fabulous?! Now, in my defence, my dress is not as much of a straight-up shameless copy of Melody's dress as it might seem. She made this dress last year as part of Sew Dolly Clackett... so really my dress is a weird telescoping. Like, the human centipede of sewing blogging, only less disgusting? I don't know. Anyway - I saw some of this gorgeous fabric last summer on Goldhawk Road and bought it so that I could make a Melody-inspired dress but then I washed it with some navy cotton and the colour ran and it was ruined. RUINED. It's been sitting in the bottom of my fabric stash box ever since because I was too sentimental to get rid of it. I'm glad to be reunited with it.

I wore it with my Tatty Devine anchor necklace, which I bought when I was in Liverpool in March. It's kind of like anchor camouflage on this print! I also wore these nautical earrings...

They're little paper boats, and they're by Punky Pins! I got very dressed up for going to the pub, but in my defence, I'd been in the house on my own feeling rotten all day. This cheered me up. Also this is a reminder that I need to hit the henna because hello grey hair.

So...yeah. The dress. It's one of my staples - an Anna bodice - with a pleated skirt. I've attached pleated skirts to the Anna bodice before - I've used the skirt from Simplicity 2444 and New Look 6824. This time I went with the skirt from Simplicity 1419 and it was kind of a serendipitous combination because the pleats on the skirt front match up exactly with the pleats on the bodice. I lengthened the skirt a bit and I moved the pleats on the back of the skirt a tiny bit, but otherwise these patterns came together with the minimum of fuss.

The only other change I made to the pattern was to scoop the front neckline out a bit. I didn't want to sew the v-necked version because it didn't seem right with the stripes on the print, but I thought the slash neckline as drafted wouldn't work either. It's a minor change, but I like it. It shows off a bit of collarbone and no bra straps. To me, that's a winner. Nic's a fan too, which is always good.

This dress is pretty fitted, which is fine by me. I usually like my dresses with a minimal amount of ease around the waist because it works with the silhouette I like. It's not to everyone's taste and I must confess to daydreaming recently about trying new things. I can't get the the Xerea dress by Pauline Alice out of my head and I think it could make a very cute alternative silhouette for a summery nautical-inspired dress.

Anyway, that's the craic with this dress. It was pretty grey all day and I managed to catch a brief moment of daylight in which to take a few photos. It started to rain just as we were finishing...

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS WITH THIS

By the time we got to the pub, the rain was blowing sideways. July! Still, it gave us an excuse to stay for an extra drink. Now I'm in my pyjamas and getting ready to watch an episode of The X-Files. I'm thinking some Scully side-eye will shake me out of my funk. Night, all!

Well lads, what's the craic? She's ninety here, as usual. You know I live a wild life.

Ha ha, no. Not really. Nic was away over the weekend and I mainly spent it knitting and watching documentaries. Oh, and being sick, because I had food poisoning, and sleeping. Food poisoning sucks at the best of times but it's especially horrid when it's cold and rainy and you're on your own. I was very lucky, though, because my friends Rick and Lauren invited me round to their house and, once I was well enough to go over there, I spent Friday night sleeping on their sofa while they periodically brought me cups of tea. I have good friends. On Sunday, I went to Coventry with some other friends to visit The Story of Children's Television. I was feeling well enough by then to eat some noodles, and to be a Dalek:

EXTERMINATE, etc.

I did a little bit of unselfish sewing on Saturday, making a skirt for my friend Lucy. I don't usually do sewing for others, but Lucy is awesome and she always gets super excited when I make something for her, so it's totally worth it. She had asked for a skirt made out of the wax cotton I had made my Filthy Names dress, so that's what I made:

It was very simple to make. Lucy had given me the measurements of her favourite skirt - I asked her to measure the waistband and also the length of the skirt - and she told me that it had six box pleats across the front and six across the back. I drafted a simple curved waistband and then just box-pleated the width of the fabric for the front of the skirt and again for the back, but with a centre back seam. I used a 9 inch invisible zip and top-stitched the hem. It took a few hours to make and was very satisfying, and she loved it! I gave her all the leftover fabric so that she could make a skirt for her daughter if she wanted one.

I was too tired to do any sewing for myself over the weekend. I'm hoping to catch up this week - I'm hoping to find time to sew a new dress to take to Paris - but, as ever, I have a few projects backed up to blog about.

So, long-time readers might remember that a few years ago, I made a dress from some Cath Kidston home dec fabric - the Madarch dress. I loved that dress, but it doesn't fit any more and the fabric faded really badly, unfortunately. I'd been keeping an eye out on ebay for the Cath Kidston dress that inspired it, but any time one came up in my size it sold for far more than I'd be willing to pay for a secondhand dress. Also, the fit of those dresses is a little bit odd on me - the bodice is really boxy. Luckily, I found an ebay seller who was selling the lovely barkcloth that the original RTW dress is made from (rather than the cotton canvas that I made my dress from) so I bought a couple of metres. And, boom! I made a dress out of it...

Bearaigh dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress in Cath Kidston fabric, worn with Swedish hasbeens Lacy sandals

There are a couple of differences between this fabric and the canvas I made my original dress from. One is the fabric itself, which is a really soft and drapey barkcloth. It's really lovely quality and was great to work with, and it has held up really well to washing. The mushroom print differs slightly between the two, though - the mushrooms are slightly bigger and more widely spaced on the canvas than they are on the barkcloth. That's about it, though.

For reference, this is the Cath Kidston RTW dress:

Obviously the Emery dress was the first choice to recreate this. Also, I made this dress the day after I made the 3 O'Clock in The Morning dress, when I just really felt like sewing something comforting and familiar, and that is Emery. As you can see, I added sleeves, because I could.

I think I might need to drop those waist darts a bit, though. They're coming up a bit high. But still, I love you Emery. I love this fabric too, as it is ridiculously twee. I wish I had bought more of the mushroom print range when it came out, but this is the way Cath Kidston sucks you in. Like, I love a lot of the prints but then I always sort of hate myself for buying into it. BUT I STILL DO. It's cool having found that eBay seller though - it's Pretty Chic Fabrics, in case you want to know - because now I am going to stalk them for a couple of Cath Kidston dress fabrics, if they eventually come into the shop. Like this cowboy fabric and this penguin fabric. I feel a little bit less self-hatred if I have made the dress myself.

Twee bastard

I actually took these photos a few weeks ago, on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Nic and I went for a walk and then met some friends for happy hour in one of our favourite pubs. I think I might have been feeling self-conscious about the overwhelming tweeness so I tried to be a badass by drinking prosecco and behaving badly...

This leads to this...

Don't worry, guys. I never really fell *out* of love with pizza. I wore this dress to work yesterday and then out to dinner with Nic, but I behaved much better on both of those occasions.

Anyway, that's the craic with me. I have stuff to do so I'm going to dander on here. Catch you later!

Hello! How's Sunday treating everyone? I'm not too bad - a little tired out after a very sociable weekend. Nic and I ended up spending nine hours in the pub with friends yesterday. It was brilliant - one of those times when you sit down for a drink and a chat and the next thing you know, you're in the middle of a lock-in and the landlord is giving you free tequila shots to acknowledge your longevity. You know. One of those. Nic and I are off on holiday soon though, so I'll have time to recuperate!

I had a weirdly stressful and annoying few weeks at work. I'm having some issues with a more senior colleague who is going out of her way to be negative and critical of everything I'm doing at the moment and it's been pretty exhausting and occasionally quite upsetting. I'm not massively helping matters by pushing back in a pretty sharp way when I think a line has been crossed: I could probably find a more diplomatic way to deal with it, but at the same time it's hard when you're the more junior person in the exchange. I have two weeks off work now and I'm looking forward to having that time to regroup and I'll hopefully return feeling far less annoyed, and better able to deal with it! I hope that it won't become a big problem, but I have let a trusted colleague know how I've been feeling and she's been watching it out for it too.

Anyway. I'm on holiday now. Yay! And I've been dealing with work stress by knitting, sewing, watching 90s TV and drinking gin. I think I have fairly good coping strategies. I've had a productive week - I finished a cardigan and sewed two dresses. Boom! I sewed one of them yesterday morning and, when I finished it, I put it straight on and wore it to the pub. I sort of love it when that happens.

The dress in question is a bit of a departure for me. In my last post, I mentioned that I had been considering buying the Xerea dress by Pauline Alice. I've done a bit of pattern testing for Pauline in the past and I really love her designs, even though most of them are outside of my usual style. Something about the Xerea dress really appealed to me though, so I was really delighted when Pauline offered to send me the pattern. It arrived on Friday morning and by lunchtime on Saturday, I had a new dress!

Bend of the River dress - Pauline Alice Xerea dress* in swallow print cotton poplin, worn with Swedish hasbeens Flora wedges

I bought this fabric when Nic and I were on honeymoon in Paris last year. It's cotton poplin and I bought 1.5m of it from Dreyfus. I didn't have anything in particular in mind for it and I didn't totally love it, so I thought it would be good for a wearable toile of this dress. Just prior to hemming the dress, I tried it on and thought that I looked like I was wearing a pillowcase, and I think that's at least partly due to the colour and the print of this fabric. Nic told me to hem it and see what I thought, and after I did that, I liked it a lot better. I think it still sort of looks like I'm wearing a pillowcase, but also that it's fine.

I sewed view A, which is more of a shift-dress shape than view B (which is described as a 'tent dress'.) I love the look of view B, but didn't have enough fabric. I only really had enough fabric for view A by omitting the sleeves. To be honest, I don't think I'd like sleeves on this dress made from this fabric - I'd look like I was wearing hospital scrubs. One of the issues I have with this dress, though, is the armhole area. There is a bit too much ease there without the sleeves and, if I make this sleeveless again, I'll redraw the armholes to remove that. I'll also lower the front neckline a bit, although I'm happy with the back neckline.

Again - I think it will look better from the back with a little bit more shaping around the armholes. It's a wee bit sack-like, but I'm honestly not massively bothered by that.

It's a bit weird to get used to looking at myself in a dress that isn't at all form-fitting. It's sort of why - fitting issues aside - I wasn't sure if I liked it when I put it on. This isn't anything to do with the pattern, which is great, but rather that I'm such a creature of habit that moving even slightly out of my comfort zone feels very strange! Do you know what, though? This dress isn't perfect, but I kind of love it. I felt fabulous in it all day!

This is at least partly because Nic liked the dress so much, but it's also because it was cool and comfortable, and I liked wearing something (admittedly, only a bit) different.

The detail of this pattern are kind of lost in the print, here. The front of the dress has two side panels with front pockets, and it's a really sweet detail. I'd like to make this dress again in a more graphic print that would show this detail off. I'm also really looking forward to trying the tent dress version, and I think that both would work in slightly heavier fabric to wear in winter with boots. This dress is kind of what I hoped that the Francoise dress would be, but with more easily solvable fitting issues. Hurrah!

This dress was very quick to sew. It's not lined, and the armholes and neckline are finished with bias-binding. There are no closures. The instructions were brief and to the point, but very clear and helpful. I think that Pauline is a really interesting designer and I love that she is doing something a bit different and that the quality of the drafting and instructions in her patterns is very high.

I've already ironed and packed this dress to take on holiday. The five-day forecast for Paris is looking like it's going to be pretty hot, so this will be a great dress to wear on one of those hot days.

Anyway. That's the craic there. Something a wee bit different! Now I need to get back to those pre-holiday chores of ironing and packing. See you on the other side!

*Disclosure: Pauline Alice sent me the Xerea dress pattern. I wasn't asked to review it or to do anything in exchange for receiving it. Thank you, Pauline!

Hello lads, what's happening? It's been a while, but I was on holiday and then I was not on holiday. I'm back now though. Being back isn't all that bad - it's weirdly nice to come back to normal life - but we had a bit of a nightmare when we got back because we had some bathroom-related drama. While we were away the plumber came to investigate a leak into the flat below. The estate agents let us know he would be coming, but we came back to find he had 'fixed' the unreliable flush on our toilet. Instead of intermittently not flushing it now flushed, but the cistern constantly emptied itself. He also ripped up the skirting boards behind the toilet and left a hole in our floor. A hole big enough to see light from the flat downstairs. Oh also, he left all of the broken skirting boards and bits of wood and old nails on the bathroom floor, but he had lots of room to do this because he had piled everything else in our bathroom into the bath. And then I guess he went to the pub, or something. The worst thing is that the girl in the flat below us - the one who almost set fire to our whole building in March - well, she smokes very heavily and the hole in her ceiling/our floor meant that our bathroom and most of the flat absolutely stank of smoke. Like, you could see the smoke in the air in the bathroom. Our lovely flat smelled like a train station toilet.

It's mostly fixed now - the toilet flushes and the girl downstairs has been told by the estate agents not to smoke (it's a non-smoking building) and the hole has been temporarily filled in. But it was pretty depressing to come home after a lovely holiday only to have to spend the first few hours back at home with my hand in the cistern trying to fix the toilet. GRRR!

But back to happy thoughts. We had a brilliant holiday. Paris is just as lovely in August as it has been all the other times we'd visited. I'd been treated to some hyperbole in various travel books about how Paris basically completely shuts down in August, but this wasn't the case at all. It's true that lots of shops and restaurants were closed. We couldn't go and listen to jazz at Autour de Midi, for example, and the place that does the amazing vegetarian bobun was closed because they were extending it. But mostly everything we wanted to do was open for business. So were the fabric shops. Hurrah! We stayed on rue de Clignancourt, in Montmartre. Our flat, which Nic found for us on Airbnb, was incredible. It was on the top floor of a building set way back from the street and it was spacious and light and incredibly chic. It was the perfect base for a relaxing holiday of sitting at cafes, exploring and, of course, fabric shopping!

I won't bore you with holiday photos. Also mainly our holiday photos were of me pulling faces at things - you can see them on my instagram if you want - but we did take some photos of a dress I made before we went. It was another McCall's 6696 because, well, I don't care. Also: anchor buttons. More anchor buttons. All the anchor buttons.

Encore Tricolore dress worn with Swedish hasbeens lacy sandals

Yeah basically nothing more to say about this dress, so let's talk about the fabric. I sewed this with some lovely cotton sateen from Barry's in Birmingham, and the buttons are from a local haberdashery. The sateen has a slight stretch to it and it's really good to work with. I wish they'd had it in more colours, but maybe I'll go back and investigate what else they have the next time I'm in Birmingham.

Obviously the star is kind of the buttons, which are the same as the ones I sewed onto the Larry Vaughn dress (and also onto a cardigan I haven't blogged about yet) I have a lot of patience for repetition. You might not have noticed that yet, like, but that's the case. I did have a wobbly moment just before I sewed the buttonholes, when I wondered if I should use some hot pink buttons that I have in my stash instead. The struggle is real, you guys. But anchors it was and, while it's pretty fucking twee... well, so am I. I like it.

Here's an over-exposed close up. Buttons!

I'm really happy with this dress. I think it looks fab from the front and I felt great in it the whole day I wore it. The only slight criticism I have is the one thing I'm still not totally sure how to fix on this dress, which is a little bit of excess fabric across the back. I'm kind of loath to over-fit this though, as it is meant to be a bit more relaxed. If I remind myself to stand up straight, I don't look like too much of a hunchback.

I think I still need to take a bit of width out of of the lower back. Maybe. I think it looks grand, all the same.

We had good craic the day I wore this dress. It was on the Monday of our second week in Paris and, after having been closed the whole week previously, my favourite fabric shop (the branch of Toto on rue de Clignancourt) opened and I did some fabric shopping. Nic and I pottered around Montmartre and bought a few presents, and then we went for lunch on rue Paul Albert. We had couscous at a little restaurant at the top of the steps that lead down to rue Andre del Sarte, and the owner gave me a little Eiffel Tower keyring as a gift! It was only a little thing but it made me very emotional, because it was so kind. I have heard so many people say that the waiters or the people who work in shops in Paris are rude, but this has never been my experience.

Being a flâneur was the object of the holiday, and I'm proud to say we achieved this aim handsomely.

There's really not a lot more to say about this dress. As with the Where I Come From dress, the collar worked very well in the slightly weightier fabric. I used correspondingly weighty interfacing on the waistband, the button bands and the collar, and it gives this dress a lovely crisp finish which I'm very proud of. My machine had no bother with the buttonholes either, although I made sure to test them on a swatch that replicated the thickness of the button bands. I didn't sew a buttonhole or a button onto the collar stand, though.

So, yay dress! And I know I said above that I wouldn't bore you with too many holiday photos but, eh. I lied. I'm going to give you a couple and then I'm going to peace out and watch an episode of Murder One, because Daniel Benzali's burning rage is really cracking me up at the minute. It's making me feel better about the fact that I totally wigged out about the bathroom shenanigans that I described above.

We went to Belleville and Ménilmontant on the Saturday of our stay, and we both really loved the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get up on top of this little cliff thing to the Temple de la Sibylle as it was all closed off for repairs. The landscape of the park is completely stunning and we had such a lovely time walking around it.

The view from the highest point we could find in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

The same day, we went to La Défense. I've always wanted to the the Grande Arche in real life and I'm so glad that I did, because it was pretty fucking surreal. As it was a Saturday, the esplanade was pretty empty because the offices were closed, which just heightened the effect. This would be a great place to film some kind of post-apocalyptic film. It was a little overwhelming to stand at the top of the steps into the arch and see the whole way to the Arc de Triomphe (which is, to my shame, another landmark I have yet to see in real life. Maybe next year.)

We really put the strolling into being flâneurs. Even on days when we didn't plan to go very far, the pedometer on my phone clocked up eight or nine miles, so there were a few evenings when we were just too tired to go out. Nic took this photo of the sunset seen from the kitchen window of our apartment. You can just see the very top of the Sacre-Coeur between the chimney pots on the right of the picture.

On one of the days we wandered down through Pigalle and into Batignolles, in the 17th arrondissement. It's a really beautiful area and it always takes me by surprise the way the different arrondissements look and feel so different, yet still have that architecture that is so common across Paris. All we did was to stroll the streets and have a drink in a cafe in a little square. We chatted for a long time about François Truffaut, as I had just bought Nic this copy of La Nuit Américaine in Gilbert Joseph. As we walked back towards Montmartre, we turned onto rue Truffaut. Truffaut was born in the 17th, but it turns out this street wasn't named after him. It was still a nice co-incidence! Actually, there is a rue François Truffaut in the 12th arrondissement, near the Cinémathèque, and it's not nearly as picturesque as this one.

And here I am in the living room of our lovely flat, just as we were leaving to catch the bus to the Gare du Nord. What a lovely holiday!

Okay, you'll be pleased to know that's it. Au revoir, mes amies!

Hola boys and girls! Has this week not been the longest week? I think this week has been three weeks long and it's still on Thursday night. WTF? It hasn't been a bad week or anything, just long. Some weeks are just like that, I guess.

Anyway, it's all good here. The landlord did an inspection of the flat on Tuesday and a carpenter is coming to properly fix the hole in the bathroom floor and the skirting boards. Old Smokey McBitchcrackers downstairs (yeah, I've decided that I hate her) had been smoking her head off and even though the hole had been filled in, the bathroom was still stinking of smoke. We put a note through her door asking her to go outside, as we had discussed previously, but she didn't acknowledge it.

I think this was the most annoying thing of all, actually, because it's one thing to be inconsiderate and not know that you are, but once it's been pointed out to you - well, it was just RUDE! Obviously, she didn't smoke at all on Tuesday morning because the landlord was coming, but her flat must reek and the landlord told me that she was on a warning - any more complaints or any further evidence of smoking in the building and he'd be giving her notice for breaching the terms of the letting agreement. It has worked - to a point. The smell of smoke is back (although not as strongly) as of this evening, so I'll have to see how it is over the next few days. This whole situation sucks, and although I enjoy a bit of recreational complaining, it's really not nice to have to complain about a neighbour in this way, you know? But anyway, the toilet is still working so things are a great deal improved on how they were when we got back from Paris. Phew!

So anyway, that's the craic there. Apart from being long-ass, this week has been grand. I've mostly been working from home and have been getting out for walks with Nic whenever the random weather we're having allows us to. At the weekend, I finished a knitting project that I started before we went on holiday and today I was able to get some photos of it. The project in question is another Audrey in Unst cardigan, in some hot pink Drops 'Baby Merino' yarn that I bought from Wool Warehouse:

Pink Audrey in Unst cardigan, Profoundly in Love with Pandora dress and Irregular Choice Can't Touch This shoes

I cast this cardigan on while Nic was in Amsterdam at the end of July, but I took a break from it when we went to Paris. I did consider bringing it with me, but in the end I decided that it would be good to have a complete break. Then, when I got back, I had more to do on it than I remembered! But all the same, this time around it came together very quickly.

I knitted the same size as I did for the yellow cardigan, but the result is not quite as drapey. The Drops Merino yarn was very lovely to work with - soft and springy, and I love the colour. I decided to shorten the body by a few rows, although I left the ribbing the same length as specified in the pattern. The only other change I made to the pattern was just in the order of construction. After I had knitted the body, rather than moving onto the sleeves, I did the button bands and the neck binding. This is just personal preference - I have found in the past that I rush the button bands when they're the last bit to do, and this way I enjoy them a little bit more.

I was a little despondent after I blocked the cardigan though, as the fabric seemed to have lost some of its bounce. I had a little whine about it on instagram on Sunday morning but it was misdirected anger - I was really bummed out about the disgusting smell of smoke in the bathroom and the whole situation with the neighbour was making me feel really sad and angry. Nic and I went out for a walk and when we came back I sewed the buttons on and felt a lot better about it. I'm very grateful to everyone who gave me suggestions on how to put the bounce back into the finished cardigan, though! I had the buttons in my stash and I still have loads of them - I won a massive bag of them in a giveaway that Karen held a few years ago - and, in truth, they're a little small for the buttonholes. They're such a perfect match for the yarn though, and they do hold it closed!

Here's how it looks from the back. Hey, that is never not weird to me. But I love the fit of this cardigan through the back!

I used some ribbon to stabilise the button band but the buttonholes were so small that I didn't attempt to do the same for that side. The buttons are very small and light, but because the yarn is still pretty fine - it's another 4-ply rather than the suggested DK - the buttons do drag a little bit when I wear the cardigan unbuttoned. This annoyed me a little to begin with but it's something that I also experience with shop-bought cardigans, so I'm feeling better about that now too.

I really enjoyed knitting this cardigan - even with my minor tantrum at the end - and I'm very happy with the outcome. I am going to wear this a lot, and I'm super-happy to have found the ideal shade of pink! The pattern is a little bit fiddly to knit - I'm not sure that I like knitting seamless when it's bottom up because the bit where you separate out the front and the back is a bit irritating. When you're working up one side, the other side is flapping around. It's only minor, and I will knit another Audrey, but it's not my favourite thing to do. I'm thinking of knitting it in the recommended DK, in maybe a dark green. I just need to find the yarn!

I wore this today with a dress I made months ago, but which I never got around to blogging...

It's a By Hand London Anna bodice with a circle skirt in Liberty Carline poplin. Yes, it is VERY similar to my wedding dress! Weirdly, that's sort of the point. I do wear my wedding dress - I wore it on honeymoon, on our weekend in Bristol for Nic's birthday, on our wedding anniversary and again when we were in Paris - but it is something I want to keep for special occasions. This isn't because it's super-formal or anything - it's not - but mainly I don't want to drop food or spill coffee on it, and because I am sentimental about it. Obviously, I'm sentimental about it!

Anyway, this dress is subtly different because the roses are a different colour. These are bright pink, and the ones on my wedding dress are more of a purply pink. Seriously! I didn't realise that when I bought this fabric. It came from Classic Textiles on Goldhawk Road, and I bought it in January. The variation in colour might be down to the fact that my wedding dress fabric is tana lawn and this is poplin, but anyway. The colour is different. IT'S A DIFFERENT DRESS TED, IT'S A VERY DIFFERENT DRESS. IT'S A DIFFERENT SHARK.

So yeah. This dress didn't seem to warrant a post of its own and also, I never got around to getting photos of it, but it does go perfectly with this cardigan. BOOM. It's probably silly, but I do really enjoy the fact that I can pair up my handmade dresses with handmade cardigans and knitting has become a little bit addictive. Since finishing this cardigan on Sunday, I have already cast on another cardigan. It's useful for me to have a variety of colours and styles available but it is getting a bit out of hand now. It took me a good fifteen minutes the other night to put all of my cardigans away. It might be time to start some unselfish knitting.

Right lads. I'm away here. Goodnight all!

Hello strangers! It's been a while, yeah? It's been a difficult week or so. Nic's grandfather died suddenly last week and... well, yes. That's been very sad and very difficult for everyone. He was a great age and thankfully hadn't been seriously ill, so although it was a great shock at least it wasn't the case that he had been suffering. His funeral won't be for a little while yet so I think the next couple of weeks will be similarly difficult. Ahhh, I tell you what, being a grown-up is pretty hard sometimes.

So, anyway. That's what's been happening. I've been busy at work and trying to squeeze in crafting and general life around that. Weirdly, when I'm busy elsewhere in my life I become a bit better about making time for sewing - I suppose because I need it more for my sanity! I've made a few dresses and I've made great headway into knitting another Agatha cardigan, so that's good.

Last week, I cut into the first piece of the fabric that I brought back from Paris and I made another Vogue V8998. The fabric is pretty amazing. It's a printed cotton that I bought from Moline, which has gold foil in the print:

Birds, flowers and gold foil. This has a little bit of everything going on! The selvedge says 'Japanese 40s by 40s superfine cotton lawn' by Miroto Great Flower Designs, just in case anyone wants to try to track some down. They also had it in pink, which I kind of regret not also buying. I'm not sure what the birds are, possibly cranes? Anyway, it was very pretty and I immediately envisioned wearing it with gold or silver shoes.

I initially thought about making another Emery dress with this but when the time came to cut into it, V8998 presented itself, so off I went. I've tinkered with the fit of the bodice of this dress each time I've made it, and this time around I decided I needed to shorten the bodice. This was a good idea, but I think I still need also to shorten the shoulder seams and maybe pinch a little bit out of the neckline. Hmmm...

Birds of Paradise Farm dress worn with Swedish hasbeens 'Cobra' sandals

I have to be upfront and tell you that this dress was absolutely horrible to photograph. I wore it on Saturday and I don't know if it was bad lighting, or the fact that the gold foil reflects badly or what, but Nic seriously had to take about 3000 photos just for me to get four or five that I didn't totally hate. Needless to say, this meant that I was an absolute delight to work with! You'll just have to take my word for it that this is much cuter - and much, much less wrinkled-looking - in real life! Even if you don't (which, fair enough, I could be totally fully of shit) once I got over my tantrum about the photos, I did enjoy wearing this dress!

Dolly Clackett: Possibly full of shit

The fabric, while pretty, was kind of a pain to work with. Even with a press cloth, it was difficult to press the seams because of the foil. This has probably also contributed to the wrinkled look! I can only hope that washing it a few more times will make it easier to iron, even if it makes it look a little bit less shiny. Maybe I don't actually regret not buying the pink version of this, come to think of it!

Isn't it funny how your feelings about a project can change, though? I loved this as soon as I finished it, and then was totally raging when I saw the photos... and now I'm not sure. I'll wear this dress, but it's definitely not by best work. Anyway, I think it looks good with my pink Audrey in Unst cardigan...

Who is more awkward than me, then? LITERALLY NO-ONE, THAT'S WHO.

I wore this on Saturday to go down to Leamington Food Festival with Nic, Amy and Barney. We pottered around trying to find the vegetarian options for a while before Nic and Barney went fabric shopping and Amy and I went up to Berylune to bring Emily and Amy some banoffee toasted sandwiches. It was a pretty nice day, so my dress already has lots of lovely happy memories attached to it.

So anyway, that's the craic there. I've had a busy day at work, and my brain has sort of run out of words. I need to go and knit and watch some trashy TV! I'll catch you soon, though. Since making this dress, I have sewed two more dresses that I feel much more positive about, and which I can't wait to show you! You can see a preview on my instagram if you're curious.

Now. I have to crack on with my second sleeve and with binge-watching The Good Wife. Yes, five years after everyone started watching it, I've finally moved past my irrational hatred of Juliana Margulies and got really into this show. Look, it is actually kind of awesome. Carol Hathaway totally sucks in S1 of ER but, subsequent to that she's awesome, and Alicia Florrick is okay too. The star of the show is really Christine Baranski though. I could have a drink with Diane.

Goodnight!

This wasn't amateur hour, Phil. People died because of your lack of supervision. There were raptors all up in the kitchen, Phil. IN THE GODDAMN KITCHEN.

No wonder he changed his name. You don't get many Nigel the Greats, do you?

I'm a panhandle hick and my wedding will be just another panel on my mother's family history back tattoo.

Charlie, tell the president he will eat his salad, and if he doesn't like it, he knows where he can put his salad.

Malcolm McDowell is trapped in the future. He's being pursued by a cyberpunk from the past, played by Rutger Hauer. Erm, terrible idea. No one will watch that. I've not thought it through, Lynn. I'll call you back.

I know I look square, but I'm like my father's tractor. I take a while to warm up, but once I get going I can turn your topsoil till the cows come home.

I only hate sunburn and hangovers. This is just business.

We have to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles and work. Or waffles, friends, work. But work has to come third.

As I sat looking up at the Guinness Ad, I could never figure out how your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout

You've a lovely voice. Very like Celine Dion!

Bobby and me have decided. He's going to stick vegetables up his nose. He's not going to take over the family gas station.

There’s something missing, something wrong. It’s like a pretty girl with short hair.

He drank a whole bottle of champagne out of one of my pumps. My charcoal pads filtered out most of the alcohol, but he still got tipsy enough to sing me a Chuck Mangione song.

We were getting four pounds a day and all you could eat. But sure you couldn't eat all day, Garda.

Oh, honey, you are not trash just because you grew up in a trailer and your mama's in prison.

Have you seen 'Pretty Woman'? It's about a prostitute called Richard Gere.

All the professional actors write their lines on each other's clothes. The longer the play, the bigger the shirt!

Ooh, 'sofa'. Somebody got all flouncy when I wasn't looking. What are you going to do, put on galoshes and eat fruit like a Frenchman?

Why are we watching a foreign movie? You'd think if it was any good they would make an American version.

I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.