Autumn Zebra

At the University, when they have the flu vaccinations for the staff, there is also a stall selling stuff to raise money for the University Chaplains, apparently. I spent some money. That's a a bag made in Wales, where the fabric is double woven, in that the weaving creates two joined layers of fabric; two pairs of gloves, one of leather; a leather glove case; an old pattern for a slip which is quite interesting.

So, I don't know what it's like in your country, but here the fashion is (still) tunic kind of tops over tights. This appears to be a significant change in the every-day wear of most people, so it's quite interesting. I made a new tunic top top/dress for my work wardrobe. The colours I have chosen for work are blue, dark red, purple and grey, and I was limited in what knit fabrics I already had in large enough pieces in the right colour. This is what I made, the second or third thing I have made of a knit/stretch fabric. The decoration is sewn on by hand. Imagine the colours are actually blue and red in this photo. The binding worked really well around the arm and neck, so I might make a t-shirt or something out of the same fabric. Since the fabric doesn't fray, the binding edge is not folded under on the inside of the garment. This makes it some-what easier to sew with kind of annoying fabrics like this, and also reduces the bulk by one layer - if you fold under both e...

This is not a terribly good food photo, but all the food in this breakfast is from the Farmer's Market! Egg, tomato, ham steaks, bread. And then I had with it jam that I had made, out of fruit from the Farmer's Market.

I have done a couple more days of "15mins out in the garden". Today was actually 22min out in the garden, and I retrimmed a bit of the hedge that the neighbour had helpfully done, but I wanted to trim it back a bit further, and then I trimmed back some ivy that is growing out over the corner of the path from the fence and hedge. The other day however was more exciting, at least for me. I was clearing the aforementioned ivy where it was growing over the path, and I found.... That's the lid of my thermos which I haven't seen for months and was looking for the other day. It must have blown out the kitchen window sometime while sitting there drying. It is still good, presumably protected by all the leaves growing over it. So that was pretty cool, because a thermos without a lid is pretty useless.

Pretty much everything makes me stressed/nervous/anxious/scared/whatever (which we shall hence-forth refer to as nervous) - getting up in the morning, going to bed, going to work, coming home, doing things that aren't fun, doing things that are fun, the beginning, end and middle of all activities, etc. Sometimes, even doing nothing makes me nervous so that I am about to be torn apart by the anxiety caused by both doing nothing and thinking of doing something. You're wondering what this has to do with mushrooms. I like my garden, but going into it makes me nervous because of all the things I could be doing there. So then I don't go there, and feel bad about it and that makes me too nervous to even think about the fact we have an outside. Even though I really like nature and I am sad I don't get enough nature time. So I thought I would go outside for 15 minutes a day and commune with nature or something. So I don't have to do anything, I could just stand there, but on...

The Farmer's Market was good as usual, but I didn't take pictures of what I bought, and now we've started eating a lot of it! However, what I got is: Lebanese "pizza" - flat bread with cumin and other spices on it, pretty good, I warmed mine up in the microwave and wrapped it around bits of roast chicken Lebanese olive dip and hummus- two little pots go a surprisingly long way giant plums and apricots from my favourite, primarily organic, fruit place - they were about twice as big as normal plums and apricots! And yummy! also from the above people - a big bag of greengages. I was wondering why supermarkets don't sell these - and then yesterday I saw that they do, at nearly twice the price, and the Farmer's Market ones are organic! also one red pear - they have red skins and are yummy and good for preserving in jars. I'll buy some more for preserving later, because they are the best preserving fruit I've found so far again from the fruit place, I go...

When I did the draping class in the fashion design certificate, we obviously had to drape a dress for the assignment. In a way it wasn't much of a class. She just got us to copy a dress she brought in, draping it on a mannequin and basically we just made it up while she supervised. Then she gave as an assignment. Theoretically the brief was a quote (from Vionnet?) about how a dress is beautiful because it is well-cut. This didn't seem like much of a brief to me. Like, it didn't really inspire anything or send my mind off on any ideas... I created a slightly more restricting framework than the one given as it's generally a lot easier to create something within restrictions than within a completely open space (i.e. the frameword given was basically that it had to flatter the body and be well-cut. Not only was this both very open and a completely obvious and expected goal of making clothing anyway, as a beginning draper, I figured we would be lucky if my dress was human-sh...