Summery stuff

Spent a lovely lovely morning out at Muriwai with Hazel's friend Suzie and her family (also Canadians). I'm beginning to appreciate that beaches are best enjoyed with friends, especially other kids. It adds an extra sparkle to everything - the water is more fun, the rock pools are more fun, the sand is more fun. Spot the surfer out there in the waves, they were like seals, bobbing about in the surf, dozens and dozens of them.

I took the chance to snap off a (slightly late) addition to my growing portfolio of 52 Fridays self-portraits. Sure I look slightly feral squinting into the sun (where were my sunglasses?) but you can't beat that backdrop. Tamer beaches might be a bit better for the kiddies, but the wildness of the West Coast black sand beaches are glorious.

I finally got around to photographing my first foray into serious knit sewing. It's a dress from McCall's 5423. It's not perfect but it's definitely wearable and I'm really enjoying it. Sorry for the appalling first photograph, I didn't realise how dark and grainy it was until I came to run it through Photoshop.

It's a very light knit, a bolt end from Marc Jacobs according to the tag, and it's quite lovely. I don't think it was stretchy enough for the pattern though, which is why the gathering rides up a bit in the middle there - it's less obvious when I don't wear the sash. Can anyone tell me what 'cross-wise stretch' is for knits? I swear, I've googled the term and no-one explains it in a way that makes sense to me! I think this is where I went wrong estimating whether the fabric was stretchy enough. The pattern itself was very easy to follow and came together nicely which was such a relief! I love the sleeves, they're really effective and very simple - just a band sewn on but they look like set-in sleeves.

Can you see my Amy Butler 'French Wallpaper' dressing gown on the bed behind me? It's so garish and full-on but I love it! I feel all louche as I trail around the house in it martini in hand. I made a nightie from this orange fabric awhile ago that is fairly marginal in wearability (needs to be reworked asap!) but the orange looks fabulous with the dressing gown.

I decided that the next project would be from Twinkle Sews so I got the CD out and had a look (after removing the small slip of paper that Hazel had posted into the slot that was resulting in awful noises when I put in CDs. Thank goodness it wasn't broken! Anyways, I discovered that if you're in a country that uses A4 standard size paper rather than the US letter size you need to be able to open them in Illustrator and change the paper size. Big minus for it right there, because if you don't have that option then you are stuck with trying to print a pattern sized for Letter on paper that is about a cm narrower - screw up your pattern sizing much? On top of that it'll take 64 - yes 64 - pages to print it out. At this point I'm somewhat undecided whether to fell a small forest to even get a pattern to look at...