Working with Wool

Hi all! Hope you're having a good day. So far so good for me. ANOTHER long weekend this weekend - can never have too many of those!

So I've been busy sewing. I've come up with 2 new bag designs. The one shown in this post is my new messenger bag (I've named her "Maggie" just because "Maggie" starts with an "M" as does "Messenger" - creative? Maybe not...). I love her. She is made of wool, both on the exterior (a charcoal wool flannelet) and on the interior (a black heavy weight wool).

She is so sturdy and durable - I had a hard time sewing some portions as she was too thick to fit under my sewing machine foot. Alas, I got through it!

Her strap is long enough to fit across the chest like in the pic above, but not to long to wear over just one shoulder.

I made the little flower too - it is removable and could be used as a broach. I got the instructions for the flower from Wise Craft's blog. So pretty!

The inside has lots of pockets. Two for cellphone, keys, sunglasses (I lined the inside of the pockets with cotton so as not to scratch glasses) and three little pockets made especially for pens/pencils as I can never find one when I need one).

I plan on making more Maggie's in different colours. I have some nice sky blue wool that I' m thinking will morph into a Maggie.

This was fun bag to make, although it was alot of work. Hopefully the next one will go smoother now that I've got the pattern worked out.

Weekend Photos

My brother, sister-in-law and my nieces came for a visit on Sunday. We decided to walk to the harborfront (did I spell that right? I think my spelling is becoming worse with age.) to see the "goings on". It was a beautiful sunny day. I took these pictures. Above is a fancy old boat that you can pay big bucks to take a ride on. We decided to stay on solid ground and save some money. We got ice cream instead.

This is a picture of all the people trying to cool off in the shade. The sun was quite intense yesterday.
The weekend goes by way too fast. Honestly, where does it go? Don't you think it would be great to have a 4 day workweek? I think we should all rally for that.

~sigh~ back to work today. More tomorrow!

Lazy Days...

I know, I've been lazy and inattentive and not a good friend. I'm sorry. Will you forgive me for not posting? I have no excuse. Is anyone checking in anyway? It seems everyone is in summer mode.

I whipped up this bag on the weekend. It is a total girly bag, complete with flowers. This is the first time I've worked with linen, and what a pleasure it was. Such a beautiful fabric! The navy flower appliques are linen as well. I've named her "Cecilia".

So my bike got a flat tire the other day, which was completely my fault. I went to my local gas station to put air in the tire and I guess I filled it up too much. I keep my bike in my apartment (so it doesn't get stolen) and got quite a scare in the middle of the night when the tube suddenly burst letting out all of the air. It scared the beegeezes (how do you spell beejeezes?) out of me and the cat! Anyway I am getting it fixed today, because I miss it greatly. City transit is even worse in the hot summer weather. Ick!

H.H. my manager (he appointed himself - because all of us sewers need a manager...er....yeah...) has suggested that I model all of the bags that I make so that you all can get a sense of the scale of the bags. Gosh he's a smart cookie sometimes! Here I am, modelling the bag:

Swap-pa-roo!

Well, I have participated in my first official swap. The swap was put on by Ellia and it was a lot of fun. Thanks for all your hard work Ellia. I received my package in the mail yesterday from Dawn waaaaaay out in Cal-i-for-ni-'a'! She did a really fabulous job. Take a look at at all the goodies I received!

I especially love the little spiral notebook on the right hand side of the picture! I will keep this in my purse and use it for all of my design scribbling! I also love the flowered fabric. For all of you crafty types - If you haven't picked up an issue of Blueprint magazine, you really should. Its full of great ideas. Thanks again Dawn!

In other news, the heat wave here in Toronto (and most of Southern Ontario) has finally let up and I am thanking my lucky stars. A window unit air conditioner is just not the same as central air, I can definitely attest to that. I was actually tempted to spend more time at the office because of this very fact (I know, shocking isn't it? Me spending additional time at work? Doesn't happen very often.). They said that the temperature got up to over 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) with the humidity. Ugh! Sticky and yucky! Now it is a nice and breezy 25 degrees.

Just a Ramble Today

Good morning! Hope everyone is well today. I noticed that I am not the only one sparse posts lately. I think some of my fellow bloggers must be taking vacation and having fun this summer, which exactly what we all should be doing. I do miss the updates though. It is pretty neat to get to know people from all around the world that I otherwise would never have met. Makes me realize how alike we all really are.

The pictures today are of a new bag I made a few weeks ago. I love this one. I actually posted it in the shop, but it's going to be hard to let go of - I really do love it.

Note that the fabric was already embroidered - I am not that good!

On another note - every year a group of us at work enter a Dragon Boat competition. Last year was my first year and I had a blast. Practices for this year start this week and I am totally pumped (in spirit, but I'm sure my arms will be pumped by the end of the season) about it. It is quite a workout and there is nothing better than being on the water. We have 8 practices this year, compared to 3 last year. I'm hoping this increase in practice will allow us to place higher than last year's 2nd place....er ...2nd last that is......out of like 100 teams....anyway POSITIVE thoughts right???

Here is a pic taken at the event last year.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

For some reason, the computer gods are not letting add a title to this post. Argh! A post just doesn't look proper if it has no title.

Well, that was a short break wasn't it? I guess I'm addicted to this blogging thing. It has kind of become an outlet for me, like the little diary I had when I was a kid - with a lock and key...except this time I have no lock and key and am airing all of my laundry (whether it be dirty or not) to virtually the world if it's interested.

So I've been busy sewing. I have all kinds of ideas for fall and winter bags (gasp! I've said the evil word! My apologies - I could have said worse though, like snow for instance, but I won't do that to you), but it is much too early to be starting on those, so I made this instead:

A nice summer scarf! Pretty eh?

So I since I opened my Etsy shop, I have met quite a few nice people. One in particular is a fellow seller on the site who suggested that I swap items with her. What a great experience! I sent her one of my 'groovy' clutch bags and she sent me these earrings:

I absolutely LOVE them! You can check out Teresa's Etsy shop here. She has lots of beautiful items. Thanks again Teresa if you happen to be reading this.

Taking a Little Break

Hi all. No sewing news today, but I thought I would post a picture from my Canada weekend. We had such a nice time.

My Dad surprised us with a Croquet Set - he can be very random in his ideas, I don't know where this one came from, but it was a hit just the same. Please note that I am a croquet star - 2nd place next to my brother! Also note how most of us are wearing red - to be patriotic of course - except for my niece who loves blue and the 'Colombian' who is concentrating on his game in this picture!

We went to town on Friday night to see an old car show - this pleased the men. Saturday morning I headed out with my Dad at 7am to find garage sales. We found quite a few and I hit the fabric jackpot! Got a huge pile of stuff! Also spent a day at the beach.

As a result of the pile of fabric I bought, I would like to focus some energy on sewing as opposed to blogging for a little while, therefore; I'm going to take a little blogging break. Talk to you in a week or two!