Sade's Blog

It’s quite easy to turn an old t-shirt (actually, you only need the sleeve, as long as it’s a big t-shirt) into a phone pouch.

If you want to see the tutorial, please click here, or you can find it on the right, under Patterns and Tutorials!

PS: Edited cause the link was wrong. It’s fixed now. Thanks.

It seems like lately I don’t feel like updating much or often. It might be because right now I have nothing to update on. Life is mostly boring and routinely for me. I’m not in classes or have a work (yet, I’m looking…). I actually was supposed to be working now, trial period, but got called that they were going to hire someone that had previously worked at the place and wanted to work full time, instead of lacking experience me that wanted to work part time cause I’ll be in classes hopefully soon.

Last week I went to Knit Flanders. And I forgot my camera so I didn’t take any pictures. Mostly we knitted, had some drinks, and some people had cake too. It was fun. I had to leave early because I wanted to go to UCT and ask about enrolling in the intensive Dutch courses. I have to go again this week after I filled some paperwork so I can enroll and take a placement test.

I also won the Free Fabric Friday over at Sew, Mama, Sew’s blog. Which means I got a yard of the fabric of my choice. And I chose a lovely Japanese Floral Blue Full Blossom:

Picture Credits: Sew, Mama, Sew.
Click on the picture to go to the store and buy this fabric.

I still don’t know what I will do with the 44″ wide yard (110 x 90 cm approximately) . Options that come to mind: easy peasy A-line skirt, some sort of top, bag of some kind, or just thought of decorating a bulleting board with it to hang in the studio.

Maybe next week I have more news, maybe not. Stay tunned!

I know I haven’t posted in a month and a half. Life hasn’t been so hectic as to put it as an excuse not to post, to be honest. I just haven’t been in the mood to post, and didn’t really have that much to talk about either. I still miss Macchiatto dearly, our little cavy, it makes me sad thinking about all that we could have done and didn’t know to do in time.

What has been going on since then? Not much, I have been getting used to living in Ghent with Jan, me mostly been at home doing stuff, as it was pointless finding a job for two months, then come back to Madrid for another month, then finding another job when I get back to our home at the end of the month. Officially, I’ve been marked as house-wife, never mind I’m not a wife! And that’s actually what I’ve been doing most: grocery shopping (thanks given that we have two shops within easy walking distance), cooking, cleaning, laundry, ironing, and so on and so forth.

I’ve also been preparing more paperwork to enroll at UGent. I need to fill in a lengthy application form and give them ton of information from my previous University. I’m hoping they’ll accept me and also transfer my credits. It’d be a great help if I only have 1 to 1.5 years left to get my Bachelors, and then another 2 for my Masters. The end is near, way closer than at my previous University, which is sad. I’m also going to enroll at UCT for either the preparatory year of Dutch, or only the levels I still need to take (3rd to 6th) preferably.

On the cooking and baking front, I haven’t innovated much or made up any recipes worth posting. I’ve kept to my staples with the savory, and not done much baking either. I made curry, and stir fries, some baked casseroles and the usual. I baked some muffins and was planning on cookies but forgot to buy cookie sheets!

I did get three balcony rectangular planters, and filled them with dirt, put some seeds in, and patiently waited for them to grow. I have Lettuce, Rainbow Chillies, Rocket, Leaf Beet (or Perpetual Spinach), Land Cress, Basil, Rosemary, Marjoram, Chives… All ready to pick when I need some. Nothing better than a sandwich with lettuce right off the plant. Or a pesto with such fresh basil (crossing fingers it grows enough that I have enough to make pesto soon).

Craft wise, I finished a beret (no pic), that still needs the ends sewn in. And I started on a lace shawlette using the Luna Moth Shawl free pattern from Elann, and a fingering weight yarn that’s a bamboo / silk / cotton blend, in creamy white. Since a post without pictures is boring, I’ll put one here of the shawl:

I also got a set of funny giraffe rubber stamps. I made some thank you notes and gift tags that I plan on putting up for sale. I sewed a beach dress for me, using my brand new sewing machine that I plan on use a lot (Promise!). I’m right now waiting on an eBay auction to finish, and hopefully I’ll be the owner of 3.5m of MacKenzie Seaforth tartan to make a high waisted skirt.

I think that’s about it. Hopefully next time it will be sooner than with this post.

Cheers!

It’s a smocked dress!

There is this contest where you can win a (nice and expensive Singer) sewing machine or a (nice and expensive Singer) dress form. All you have to do is sew a “swimsuit cover-up”, and post a picture on the flickr group, and you’ve entered. So I decided to make a summer dress that can double as cover-up and enter the contest. The result:

I used an Ikea remnant of Bomull (100% cotton, unbleached). Costed me 2,30€ for approximately 2,25m (normal price: 1,99€/m). A spool of elastic thread (3€), and a spool of matching thread (2€).

Yesterday I traced the pattern, loosely based on the Mendocino Summerdress free pattern, which I had to grade to my size (I am, sadly, not an L). Then I decided I didn’t like in-seam pockets, and I had fallen in love with pleated patch pockets. And finally today I cut all the pieces and got to learn how my sewing machine works (new one, cause otherwise I had to borrow one, and it wasn’t that expensive). And a few hours later, I had the dress above!

It’s not quite like MaryPoppins’ Carpet-bag, not because I don’t like hers, but because I’m looking for instructions to make one ;) It also doesn’t fit a lamp, or a night stand or an umbrella, but it does fit all the stuff I carry on Mondays to school¹.

It’s a simple zippered flat bottom trapezoid bag. Bottom is wider than top and the sides are straight. It has two long wide sturdy straps so you can hung it over your shoulder to carry all the stuff. It’s fully lined, and there is a (giant) hole on the lining to insert a cardboard base to make it stiffer. It also has two small pockets inside, for tissues and other small things that I don’t want to have floating around.

Read more »

So, I’m signing up for Iyengar Yoga in the end. I’ll go tomorrow to enroll. The pilates class is all full. And the Integral Yoga is too spiritual for my taste. I’ll only have one class a week, but it’ll be nice.

I needed a bag to carry my mat, so today I sewed one, from a bit of cotton canvas from Ikea. Less than a meter of Ikea Bettina (discontinued) cotton fabric, one 80cm zipper, and some black thread later, I got this:

Now I can take my mat along with style :)

I love reading, love it. I used to read one book per week, now with university and work, I’m down to about a book every two weeks, more or less. So, I was running out of reading material, and after I asked Jan for a few books to read, I decided to order some other books. What did I buy?

• The Secrets of Jin Shei, by Alma Alexander.
• In the Company of the Courtesan, by Sarah Dunant
• Empress Orchid, by Anchee Min
• Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, by Isa Chandra & Terry Hope
• Cocina Oriental (Asian Cooking), from IKEA cooking book series
• Cocina Vegetariana (Vegetarian Cooking), from IKEA cooking book series
• Cocina Festiva (Party Cooking), from IKEA cooking book series

(click the pic for a bigger view)

On top of that pile of books, my first Moleskine notebook. I fell in love with these expensive notebooks a while back, and finally I caved in and bought me a large blank one. It’s being used for random writing and doodling, for collage, for memories, that sort of thing. Where did I buy it? Altaïr bookstore stocks all the notebooks in Madrid! I’m pondering getting a City Notebook for Madrid as well, so I can note down all our finds.

On a side note, I have a five day weekend! The first of may is Workers’ Day, the second is City Holiday, and I’m taking the 30th of April off school (classes have been changed, anyway – so I’m not missing anything). Plans for this loooong weekend include: knitting, sewing (I have some pretty Ikea fabric to make a yoga mat bag and a weekender bag), studying (gotta boost up the study time, exams are coming up, dammit!), taking care of sweet bunny and pet sparrow, cooking, reading, sleeping, working on freelance project, and doing pilates (Yay I’m being a good girl and doing pilates and it shows!)

And now I am back, but I won’t be very prolific with posts either this next month and a half, since it’s the last leg of the semester: lots of studying and exams galore.

So what have I been up to? Uni vacations were spent mostly with Jan, in Belgium. You can read a recolection of the events in our shared blog and you can see pictures in our gallery.

I finally took a pic of my first skein of yarn spun on the wheel. Or the first skein of yarn spun by me evah, as you prefer:

That you see under the yarn is a stuffed hippo from Ikea:

I did some sewing as well, “pimped” my wheel, so to say, but of course I forgot to take pics of it. The pimping consists of a cotton cover (for all those days when it’s unused) and adding a cute carpet under it, so my feet won’t freeze while I’m spinning.

Stay tunned, I might pop in between studying sessions and exams!

So, here I am, already one week into this semester, and next week I start labs in the afternoon. That means I have to take my food to university, because, to be honest, the cafeteria isn’t anything to call home about. And they don’t have a vegetarian menu *pout* So, this year I decided, instead of eating salad every time I have to stay, taking my own mjummy food, heat it in the microwave there, and eat healthier.

However, this whole “take your own food to uni/work” is not very stablished here, and there are no proper lunchboxes, or bags, or anything. And ordering would take at least two weeks to get here, and be expensive. So what’s a girl got to do? Think! Take some fabric and make your own lunchbag:

That’s 110cm of a 45 cm wide Ikea fabric made into a drawstring bag with handles. Of course, this bag hides things. I’ll take my food in two Ikea tuppers, and my drink in an Ikea thermos. Of course, I’m also taking cutlery, and I made a pouch out of a scrap of (more Ikea) fabric to hide it. Wanna see it?

What did I learn with this? First, plan your sewing project. I just went to Ikea, bought the tuppers and the thermos, and then guessed how much fabric I’d need. Yes, I was in a hurry! I could have used 50cm more for a couple pockets, maybe. Second, the sewing machine hates me. It’s a cheap machine my mother got years ago, and she’s never sewn with it, it’s only me who started using it recently. This time, I had to clean it because the tension was very wonky (weird, but just cleaning worked like a charm, didn’t take it to the repair shop like last time), and a needle broke mid-project. And third, I can make an easy bag in a morning if I need to.

This Easter I was in Belgium (see full post on our blog, and all the pics on our gallery). Since we have a big garden and room to work, it was the perfect time and place to dye the fabrics I had bought for making our medieval costumes.

We bought our dye and chemicals from Zijdelings, a workshop on textile design and mailorder service from the Netherlands (part of the site is English, but if you want to order, get ready to browse in Dutch). We got pre-reduced indigo, soda ash and thioureum dioxide. Fast service, and average prices – indigo is expensive, no matter what.

We did a pre-bath mixing 4 tablespoons of indigo, 4 tablespoons of soda ash, and 8 teaspoons of thioureum dioxide in 700 ml of tap water. Mix well and carefully(!), you don’t want to stain anything blue, like your fingers (I did *ahem* skin washed off in two days tho). Remember you are using chemicals, so be careful, work in a ventilated area, don’t touch the chemicals with your barehands etc etc etc . We let it rest a whole day in an airtight closed jar until it turned greenish.

The next day we filled our big bucket from Ikea with about 30 l. of (cold) tap water, and poured the pre-bath in. Mix carefully and let rest a bit. If you are careful and do not introduce much air in the bath, you’ll be able to dye right away. Else you have to wait until it turns greenish away. Now, put your fabric in and let it under the water (the fabric will have air bubbles and you have to push it down constantly) to catch the dye for some 5 to 10 minutes (I really didn’t time this process – the colours are totally non repeatable). Fish the fabric out, wring out well without splashing much using gloves, your hands will thank you ;p and extend your fabric so it gets aired and it turns blue. Keep dipping the fabric in the same fashion until the colour is slightly darker than desired (it will wash off a bit). With this bath and white linen fabric we got a pretty dark blue shade after three dips, that will be Jan’s tunic.

We did let the dyebath rest overnight, and used the nearly exhausted bath to dye the tan linen fabric as well. Two dips later we got a blue-greenish shade that I love and that will become my dress. Want pics? See here a couple:

For the whole set, please visit the photo album in our gallery.

Sade