Knit and sew.

I am so behind - so many things to share! Firstly, I finally finished my most recent cardigan - the rising-up-the-ravelry-charts Manu, by the lovely Kate Davies. I have been following Kate's blog, needled, for only a short while now, but in that time, I and her many other readers were shocked to learn she'd had a stroke. It looks like she's on the road to recovery now, and back on the knitting track, and since her stroke she's not only been able to make such achievements as being able to walk and knit again, but has managed to get a pattern published. Impressive indeed.

I love the cardigan (you can read my detailed notes on the pattern and process on my ravelry project page) and it's absolutely perfect for spring. The yarn is lovely too, and while I wasn't sure about the bright green colour at first, now I just can't stop looking at it, or wearing it, for that matter. I was sure that I wouldn't have anything to wear that would actually go with the cardigan, but it turns out I was wrong about that too - it goes with almost everything!

In particular, I would like to think it goes well with this skirt I made. I got the limited-edition Liberty print fabric from the recently opened Quilts exhibition at the V&A. Feeling inspired by the sewing skills of KristenMakes, I checked out the BurdaStyle website (an almost-ravelry for sewing) and found a "novice" level pattern that worked out perfectly. Seriously, I can only use my sewing machine for straight lines, and that's all this was.

Speaking of the Quilts exhibition, it was huge. I could have spent hours in there. I don't think it was the greatest exhibition ever, or even the greatest quilt exhibition ever (that remains the Quilts of Gee's Bend exhibition I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2005) but it was still amazing. Among the critiques I have are that it was so dark! It was probably to protect the quilts, but still - I wanted to see that stitching. There were also a few rather "arty" quilts thrown in there. I felt a bit like these were there to somehow justify the presence of quilts - gasp - being in a gallery. Come on now, can't we appreciate the inherent beauty and history and craft of quilts? All that aside, there were some stunning examples in there. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed, but here's a snippet of a lovely one from the exhibition booklet.

And one from a postcard from the exhibition:

And the good stuff from the shop:

I went to the exhibition with my friend Lara, and she and I both don't work Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so we're trying to get to another exhibition, historic house, etc every week! Next up: Leighton House Museum in Kensington.

Over the river and through the woods...

Okay, so more "across the pond" or even really, well, across the Atlantic Ocean for that matter. We're off to the western hemisphere tomorrow and I wanted to be prepared.

See, travelling to and from the US and the UK is a bit of a hassle for us because we have 3 passports and one visa between us. (The Australian carries Australian - duh - and British passports and I have American citizenship and a UK visa.) All this requires us to carry an ungodly amount of identification with us when we travel. Seeing as how immigration procedures make me nauseous, and I have a panic attack at least five times in any given journey thinking I have dropped or lost something, I decided this time I wanted all of our docs super-safe.

Of course, I didn't decide this until today (flight's tomorrow - gah!). So I felt the need to whip something up myself. Basing the design on this very cute tutorial, I improvised a bit and added an extra bit of security so that nothing can fall or slide out. I also made it so that it can accommodate "his and her" documents. One other modification I made was to add a few sheets of newspaper as a lining so that it's a bit sturdier.

So I think it came out ok for a last-minute project that took less than an hour. I might make some more of these in the future - I can see using quilting techniques - and hey, maybe even cutting in a straight line next time so it doesn't come out quite so wonky ;)

Cheating on knitting.

I got the sewing machine out today instead of the Noro Striped Scarf I'm working on. I feel so guilty, especially since I am just a few rows and a bind off away from finishing the thing. But before I even bothered eating anything this morning (however definitely not before coffee, mind) I lugged out the machine, which was a lovely wedding present from my friends here in London, but sadly not much used since I received it.

When I was a kid, I used to sit in my room making and sort of half embroidering pillows (both skills that I just improvised - I don't recall ever being actually taught either of these things) - I remember really enjoying doing crafty things like this, but I'm afraid my skills haven't really moved on since then. After much nervousness and pacing around my new beloved sewing machine last year, I finally sat down and made a dress from some gorgeous Liberty fabric that I had bought on sale. Still not the cheapest fabric, I was panicking that I was going to cut or sew something wrong and ruin it completely. Well, it didn't go really well, but it's a dress and I can wear it in public without people staring and pointing. Which is good.

So having discovered the very cool Threadbanger website, I put making this t-shirt dress pretty high on my list of crafty things to do. It's made of just three £2 t-shirts, so if I screwed it up, it would be a loss of time rather than money really. The website claims this should take you 1.5 hours. It took me at least twice that. But it was actually pretty gratifying compared with knitting, an art in which instant gratification is not the object, especially with dresses.

Now this doesn't look amazing, and I am still pretty clumsy with the sewing machine (I should take a class maybe?) but I am pretty happy with the result considering it's only my second somewhat real sewing project.

Unfortunately you can't really see the bottom of the dress in these pics, as I use the photo booth feature on my Mac and couldn't really move back far enough to get it in. But you get the idea. I think maybe it needs a belt around the waist.

Apparently my mother's mother was a real seamstress. My grandfather also owned a men's clothing store back in the day. I got a lot of my grandmother's old sewing notions when she died, and there's her gorgeous antique Singer sewing table that's waiting for me back home (you know the ones where it just looks like a regular table, but then you can open it up from the top and out comes a sewing machine...!) but unfortunately I never got any actual sewing lessons from her, which would have been nice. This sewing stuff, turns out, not so easy!

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Listening to: Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker)

Eating: Winter Cobbler