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Thursday 27 March 2014

Quilled Mother's Day flowers


I've been at it again with the paper and glue. It doesn't exactly look how I imagined it (more tree-like than bunch of flowers) but I still think it looks nice. I used some of the tips on Ann Martin's blog All Things Paper, as well as her very handy e-book, 'Creative Paper Quilling'.
I bought some quilling paper at christmas because trying to cut out the strips straight was driving me mad, but it was quite cheap and very worth it. That's the only special buy I've had to make; I made my quilling 'tool' out of a couple of needles stuck in a champagne cork - they're different thicknesses so one provides a nice tight coil while the other is a bit looser. Also, after faffing around with stick and pen glues, I can highly recommend getting something that you can squeeze a blob onto a bit of scrap card/plastic with, because that and a pointy skewer made applying glue a whole world easier. I had some fabric lace sticky tape from Tiger that I've been itching to use on something, but followed my sister's advice to exercise restraint and only use it along the bottom.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Oh pants!

My sewing spree continues. Big news; I have finished my dress. My lovely, lovely Anna dress. You can have a sneak preview of what it looks like, but it will get its own post at some point, giving all the details of my beautiful french seams, and adventures with the zip... Here it is next to the lavender fields embroidery that is now framed and ready to take home for my mum at the weekend;


Monday 17 March 2014

Knitting and Stitching Show, and another Bushy 10k

We're experiencing some much needed sunshine here in the UK at the moment, and it's been a glorious start to spring for the past week. Couple that with the fact that I've got 2 weeks off from uni and I'm in a very Good Mood.

On Thursday I took a break from preparing for a uni presentation and pootled along in the sunshine to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia. I've never been to something like this before, but to say I enjoyed it would be something of an understatement. Text to the lovely boyfriend a couple of minutes after stepping through the door; "Oh. My. Goodness. I've died and gone to a sweet granny-filled heaven." There was yarn and fabric and sewing stuff and sweet little old ladies everywhere. It was indeed heaven. I spent a blissful couple of hours wandering around and abusing my bankcard, before I decided it would probably be in my best interests if I left. I bought some alpaca yarn and a jumper pattern from PurlAlpaca, a couple of embroidery sets from Rowandean Embroidery, some fabric from Fabrics Galore, and some really sweet little heart scraps and buttons from NaturaLeigh. Watch out for progress on those projects soon.
Actually, I already finished one - the Rowandean Lavender Fields embroidery kit. It took less than 24hrs, and will be framed and gifted to my mum for Mother's Day.

Thursday 13 March 2014

Long runs


Yesterday I managed my longest long run ever. I ran 18km. It took me over 3 bridges along the Thames. The sun shone but wasn't too hot, lots of other runners smiled, and things felt good. "Maybe I can run a half marathon after all!" I found myself thinking. And then I hit 16km and my legs felt as though they no longer belonged to me. It felt as though the last 2km took an hour to complete, my sweaty despairing face desperately hoping it would be over soon. And hey, it was. I just had to keep plodding. The end always comes, sooner or later. Just keep plodding. I got home, sat in a cold bath and drank a protein shake and felt like a Propper Runner. I'm really starting to enjoy it all...

Tuesday 11 March 2014

The sewing bug bites

I've been saying for a while that I'd show off my recent sewing efforts - namely, my lovely Cath Kidston-esque bag. Well, the time has come (the walrus said)....


Saturday 1 March 2014

Listening to legs

So, I've finished week 5 of my marathon training programme. Sort of. It suddenly got very mile heavy, and I decided things would go very wrong if I tried to stick to it religiously. When I say 'I', what I really mean is 'my lovely boyfriend made it clear to me'. Personally I felt torn between wanting to follow a programme because 1) I'm new to this and don't really know what to do otherwise and 2) I really want to run well on Race Day. But since the lovely boyfriend HAS done it all before and did indeed run well on his Race Days, I listened to him about listening to my legs.