I've been busy sewing today, making a Christmas present for Niece#1. A few weeks ago Jenny and I went fabric shopping, theoretically to buy material for a dress she wanted to make, but of course I couldn't resist browsing the pretties myself, which gave me the idea to make Niece#1 a patchwork elephant like the one I made for TheLetterC. And amazingly, I'd not only kept the template I'd drawn for it, but I'd actually put it in a sensible place where I could find it again!Today seemed like a good sort of day for sewing, so I dug out the fabric scraps I'd chosen, and got to work. My approach to patchwork is pretty rough and ready - I don't have the patience (or skill) to spend months carefully hand-stitching each piece accurately into place the way you're supposed to, so my technique just involves cutting out rough squares, sewing them together into strips, then sewing the strips together without bothering to try and match the seams up. Wouldn't work for a quilt, but for a project like this it comes out ok.
Lots of squares (or squarishes)
Sewn into strips
Strips sewn together
Two elephants and four ears
Finished ears
Ears attached
Ready for stuffing
And the finished elephant:
Isn't he cute?
Yesterday I got a phone call from otakuu. Not quite out of the blue, because she'd mentioned she was going to be passing through Christchurch sometime, but she hadn't been sure whether she'd get a chance to meet up, so it was a nice surprise to hear from her. She and her sister were on their way into town to do a bit of shopping, so we arranged to meet in town for coffee. I sent a message round the BCNZ Yahoo group just on the off-chance anyone would see it in time, but obviously nobody did. That's ok though, because we still had a really nice chat, and added a few more books to the OBCZ shelf (yes, of course we went to The Coffee Club, where else would I arrange to meet visiting bookcrossers?). And I even managed to remember to bring Cat in a Kiwi Con, which I've been promising to return to otakuu for about a year now.
Afterwards I popped into Farmers, where they had 30% off their kitchenware, and found a set of silicone bakeware for a really good price. I've been wanting to try it out for a while, but all the stuff I've seen has been expensive. So I was very pleased with my purchase.
I haven't actually tried out baking in it yet, but I did make a tortilla for dinner last night in the cake tin, and it worked really well. So I might have to break out the recipe books sometime soon.
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