Bags, scraps, legs and turnips.

I've been chained to my old pal Jones again this week. Mostly making bags for the shop (they're up now, have a look!).

When I sew, I have very bad habits. There's the not putting the spare sewing feet back in the tin, not putting the sharp snippety scissors back where I can find them, leaving stuff on the floor (more about that some other time) ...oh, and this:

Pincushion, meet pins. Pins, here you go, it's your friend the pincushion. Now why can't you two get along nicely? Why can't you pins find your way back to the pincushion instead of a) dropping inside the sewing machine b) dropping onto the floor point-up so I step on you c) drop onto my dress so I stand up and drop pins on the floor and then step on them while they're point up d) disappear. I swear I must go through a pinmaking factory's entire output for a year in this house. I have no idea where they end up. Oh, except when I stand on them.

Another bad habit is this:

Can't. Throw. Things. Away. Which is how I came to have this (oh wonderful 35p IKEA plastic) box of scraps. Oh, there's more. There's an attic full of similar boxes of scraps. There's a floorboard-groan-inducing curator's dream of a fabric collection in this house. "But!" I say. "It might come in really handy!" And I keep it. Even if it's only big enough to fashion a gnat's loincloth from. 

Apparently, I am capable of some good sewing habits though. There aren't many of them. But I like my threads organised. It's chaos enough round here without having to hunt under endless boxes of fabric for the right thread. So I use a set of old transparency/slide drawers with the dividers taken out:

And the spare dividers (the numbered bits of wood you can see in the picture) I put in the top drawer so I could use it for bobbins:

The numbers don't mean anything! I am not that organised!! I love the drawers. I think they were old medical teaching slide drawers because when Mr Yaffle brought the treasure home, in one of the drawers at the back there was a slide of some poor unfortunate soul's leg...! Bleargh!

Apart from all these high-jinks I've managed to get my camera out on some walks. Doesn't happen that often because I haven't mastered the art of simultaneous lead-and-camera holding. Maybe there's a course I could go on :) Anyway, here are some fields that had caught my eye during this week's walks.

I love these stripy turnip fields. The colours! The stripyness!! The undulation! It's just asking to be turned into embroidered form! Isn't it?! I think I'm going to have to make a few more bags and get dyeing before I can justify the time spent on such a project but we'll see...Right. I'm off to dislodge a pin from my foot...

 

Yarn update coming soon!

Yaaarrrrrrrrn! Here's a sneak preview of this month's update...they're drying on the line in the garden:

 

There are some scary bright orange and black ones too, but they're cooking in a cauldron at the moment. I'm hoping the update will go up some time next week unless there's an attack of the Thyroids, in which case, send help!

When not dyeing, I've been sewing quite a bit lately. I love sewing! I can't get enough of it at the minute. First there were the cushions (strip patchwork. No straight lines, no measuring, no stress!):

 

Then there was the embroidery...(click for bigger)

This is another one of the hogweeds I've been embroidering (not quite finished!). It's all done on the sewing machine and it's a bit bigger than the ones I did last time, about 10cm across. I'm hoping to get an exhibition together one day, or get a gallery to start selling the pieces. Hmmm. Eventually!

Meanwhile, autumn continues apace out there in the garden...

Sigh. Lovely lovely autumn! Right, better go and check on the skeins in that cauldron before they boil dry! eep!