Saturday, November 30, 2013

Relax

I'm back!


I had a wonderful holiday week and lots of awesome meetings with so many nice people in Australia. I'm so glad that I decided that I'd go. Nice weather, beautiful places, interesting exhibitions, fantastic foods, and of course, awesome people! Now being home and sitting in front of my MacBook to write something on my latest creations, I just don't know how to start, I feel as if I'm still in the dream. It was that great. I am greatly thankful to everyone I met on my trip, for their kind friendship and help, and I wish that they know that I believe they made my little adventure an unforgettable experience!!

with Carolyn, and a very cute furry boy
 As for self made garments, I had brought three new handmade clothes (and wee plus) with me for this holiday and managed to take proper photos of only one of them, which is this white pullover with contrasting sleeves. The pattern for the pullover is Relax, so is the title of this post. I casually loved the name "Relax" and thought it would be fun to bring it to my holiday to get more relaxation. However, it took me nearly a month to finish this pullover and I have to say, it was tough. It seemed forever (for me, because I'm tortoise) but it could end just in time. That muttered, I think that the result turned out pretty lovely. I think it's clever pattern too! If you are interested in the pattern, please find my Ravelry project page for more info and photos.


When I was staying with Carolyn in Perth, I asked her for some photographs and she was super kind to give me these beautiful shots on the beach. I even had my handmade bathing suit photo session after the pullover session, because the place was seriously beautiful and I felt I had to try harder. Thank you so much, Carolyn, for being a great photographer, an encouraging friend, and above all else, a very good friend.

I totally made up this retro kind of bathing suit by tracing my old suit ;)

Other than the pullover, I had a new tunic blouse and a new dress in my baggage too. I didn't have any chance to use the tunic during this holiday, so I'd leave it for the next summer as a new garment without any words here. That seems totally OK. On the other hand, I had a mini-disaster with the dress, I regret to say!


I sewed a Nicola dress from Victory Patterns using a light blue cotton/silk fabric with flowery print for this holiday. Because I had been interested in their patterns for some time and also because I knew that Kristiann was going to join one of the meet-ups that were organized by Tj in Melbourne (a big thank-you to Tj and Maria, I cannot survive this world without you!), I thought it was the time for me to try one from their range. And I did. I purchased Nicola, chose size6, used 1.5m of wide fabric, made narrow shoulder adjustment, closed the front wrap and installed a long zipper on the left side, really loved the result, and could wear it when Kristiann was there. However, I couldn't ask anybody to take its proper photographs for my blogging. The reason I was not ready for taking pictures of it was I had an ironing crisis the night before. I was going to iron the dress, which was vacuum packed in a travel pack and much wrinkled, the day before in our hotel room, but I just found out the iron they had was the most despiteful thing I had ever seen in this world. And, oh, the ironing board. That was similarly evil. The iron and ironing board couple tried very hard to mess my pretty dress even worse, and I totally had to give up everything about nice presentation of the dress. How sad. I'll press it neatly and present it here soon, as I think it is a pretty dress and some of you might be interested in other's make, so I promise. Until then, please help me to pretend that the dress is still in the pipeline and hasn't been finished quite yet! Well, I know you're really kind!!

Please visit Tj's photo essay on "The Perfect Nose" if you'd like to have a look at some photographs from the meet-ups! You might find my dress in the pipeline in the blog post...

Take care everyone!

Love,
yoshimi

Friday, November 1, 2013

travel


Hello!

I've been working so hard and too busy to write blog posts for some time. The reason why I'm working like a frantic beaver is that I am going to take a week-ish holiday away in mid November and I feel that I need to collect some additional data to mentally earn a certain frame of time before being absent from the lab (typical scientist). And I've been sewing a lot and knitting a lot as well, as I just can't help handcrafting some of new clothes for my big event. I do take some days off my work occasionally but this holiday is going to be a big one, alone, to Down Under, for the first time.

Yes! I'm going to visit my friend Carolyn who is the co-author of my another blog, photomaisonette. I met Carolyn once in Tokyo when she stopped at Japan during her family holiday about three years ago, and it was revealed that she was not only talented in sewing&photography but also she was such a nice lady in person. I'm so looking forward to our reunion and my adventure in the southern hemisphere! My heart beats so fast with happy ideas whenever I think about it. Perth totally seems a beautiful place, and I hope there I can take some pictures of my recent sewing and knitting creations in action, and I'll write about them in the future blog post.

Until then, I'd put some pictures of my new very ordinary looking pants and hand-dyed sneakers here as my latest results. I sewed a pair of semi-baggy pants in cotton twill in very light gray-white from my trusty pant pattern and dyed a pair of white sneakers in grayish blue, for my flight comfort. My holiday theme is blue and white this time, so are my garments. Though they bark very 'work-clothes' in these pictures, you can kindly imagine that it is because I work a lot these days, and that they will be looking OK in a different meaning under the holiday sun :)

you see I'm (pretending to be) active.

I'm also scheduled myself to join two meetups(Modern Love at Bendigo Art Gallery and Kristiann’s Big Day Out. Thank you Tj and Maria for organizing them!) in Melbourne on my return way home. I'm going to see a few lovely Melbourne sewists and Kristiann from Victory Patterns there:) This travel is going to be an utterly wholly grand event to me. One of my wishes is that I won't get burned-out by too much many heartbeats afterwards... I'm praying for me the indoor feeble old nerd hobby sewist squirrel... to survive.

I sincerely wish you a very happy new month too.
Take care everyone!

xoxo
yoshimi


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Almost white semi-baggy pants
pattern: Joker from Tamanegi-kobo, styleA, lengthened but not much altered
fabric: Cotton twill from jean manufacturer

DIY dyed sneaker
Converse All Star canvas hi-cut sneaker in white and Simplicol dye for natural fiber No.22(grayish blue)
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