More bits and pieces

1. Originally, before I was felled by illness, I was going to do Me Made May for sure this year, photos and all. However, it's not going to happen this year. To be honest, though, pretty much every month is Me Made Whenever Possible. True, I don't have a 100% Me Made wardrobe, and I doubt I ever will, but even if it's just my PJs or a bag I'm carrying I use or wear something Me Made almost every day. So, I am kind of doing Me Made May this year in spirit but not really with any effort behind it.

2. I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of making a knit maxi skirt. I mentioned this in a previous post. I probably have a pattern somewhere in all my millions of Burdas that I could adapt, but a quick search on the internet turned up a dozen easy tutorials as well, although they seem to be of varying quality as usual. Has anyone made a knit maxi from a free tutorial that they can recommend? Or a very cheap pattern? I don't want to pay £10+ for a Big4 but on the other hand the urge to do something really easy is quite strong.

3. I am also obsessed with making a Deer & Doe Chardon in denim chambray for summer. D&D patterns are stupidly expensive for what you get and I wasn't wholly impressed with the dress I made from the one other pattern I have, but I looked at the Chardon and looked at it and looked at it for MONTHS and when I decided to buy myself a mini-gift at the end of April for surviving all my teaching hours, I decided I had wanted it for long enough that I should buy it as an indulgence. There have been quite a few chambray versions made and posted and I just fell in love with the idea. I have some chambray and it's perfect for the skirt -- although it's going to crease like hell, I can tell already -- except it's just a TINY bit too lightweight. So I was going to line it with blue polka dot cotton, but I am struggling, in my currently fuzzy mental state, to visualize how to line a pleated skirt (it doesn't come with a lining pattern). I have a great little e-book about adding linings but I read the instructions on adding a lining to a pleated skirt and then everything I'd just read all leaked immediately out my ears again, so I suppose I'll have to read it again when I feel less fuzzy.

4. That skirt is probably too complicated to work on right now, so I've been trying to think of really genuinely easy projects I could make and spend 15-30 minutes on every day for May. So far, if my replacement sock knitting needles ever turn up (I put my bamboo needles in my bag on a recent flight and they snapped :( and then nobody had any metal 2.25mm locally so I had to order them from the internet and they are taking FOREVER to arrive :( ) I have my sock knitting on the list. Also: some PJ shorts and the knit maxi skirt already mentioned, and also maybe a little tote bag. I've been sort of thinking of buying one of the Alabama Chanin books and doing some handwork on a project like that as well. Anybody made anything from those books?

5.  Also not arrived: my May Burda magazine. I swear the delivery to Ireland gets slower every month. It's actually May! The previews for June are already up! WHERE IS MY MAGAZINE. I WANT IT NOW. Actually, I have no idea why I'm being so vehement because there is nothing in there that I had to make NOW NOW NOW and I'm too sick even if there is. Mainly it just annoys me when it takes like 2 weeks for stuff to arrive. The June issue, meanwhile, looks pretty good for a change, too. I can't decide whether to be cautiously optimistic that Burda might not be having the usual outbreak of insanity that it suffers in summer or whether this means July will be twice as goofy and ridiculous to make up for June being halfway decent.