There has been some more vacation sewing going on here. Never quite enough but I try to stop before I get too stressed. Right now I should be finishing up my packing and deciding when to set the alarm for and trying to sleep ... but I can never sleep well the night before we travel - I'm too worried I'll sleep late.


We're not going far but we are going to 'the big city' which means plenty of shopping and knitting in coffee shops and browsing bookstores (and way more people than I am comfortable with). Oh, and shoes. I need some new shoes. We'll be gone for a week and I hope to return with some fun things to share (including some action shots of finished objects).


See you next weekend  :)

We are going travelling next week and this was a required sewing project for the trip. My old wallet was starting to really fall to bits and I wanted to replace it. I had been looking for a new wallet to meet my needs: I wanted something handmade with pockets for sorting receipts and slots for cards. Nothing I found really fit the bill though and I ended up deciding to make my own. It turned out to be a remarkably quick project (once I had all the math done).


The print was a fat quarter of linen I won in the Crafty Slacker Give-a-way. I really wanted the pattern to be centred and for the pattern on the closure to line up; I miss-cut my first piece and ended up with just barely enough to make the wallet. I'm glad I took the trouble to centre the design though - I think it gives my wallet a more polished look. The plain linen was cut from a dress I found at the flea market a few weeks ago (one of my best finds yet). There are two layers of interlining: one canvas for structure and one muslin for stability while piecing.


I did all my cutting on Saturday night and sewed my wallet (except for hand finishing the binding) before we went out for lunch on Sunday. I spent a whole evening earlier in the week working out exactly how big everything should be and how to put it together (many diagrams were involved).

I've been giving my new wallet a thorough testing since Sunday and have found it very satisfactory. Now I just need to make a little coin purse to match.

We can now cook outside.

Rob brought home our first barbeque on Friday afternoon and spent the evening putting it together. He was sternly reprimanded by our squirrel for getting to close to the peanuts and was a source of complete fascination for Abby. So much so that this happened:


Rob called me outside once everything was ready to go and we both watched as a collection of little blue flames lit up the inside of our (very shiny) barbeque. It was really pretty exciting. Rob went out to get stuff to cook after that and came back with everything needed for both hot dogs and banana boats.


We stood outside and watched them cook (banana boats aren't all that exciting to watch but it was nice to be outside anyway). We brought Abby out with us and I let her explore the wilderness at the back of the yard. Rob called us to go back inside when he figured the bananas were hot.


I know a banana boat doesn't look great but it smells and tastes fantistic - all warm and gooey and full of mini marshmallows and Reese's Pieces and Smarties. It was so lovely to be eating food we'd barbequed ourselves. Meal planning for the week is now so much more exciting and full of all sorts of things we don't usually bother to cook because they are really only good when barbequed.

A barbeque is also a great excuse for having friends over and that's what we did last night. It was so fun and summery to all be standing on the back deck and smelling steaks cooking on the fire.


Everyone brought something and we had so many yummy things to eat. We did make one important discovery though: we've added a door onto the back deck to our list of future home renovations - walking all the way around the side of the house to get something you can see through the window gets annoying really quickly (especially when one staircase is broken and you have to go to the far one).