Blah, or a round-up of a miserable April

Just once, I would like to get to explain an extended absence from my blog with some fascinating tale of adventure and excitement. Alas, I've been absent from public life in general for most of April because, as usual, I've been sick as a dog. On the plus side, I am (VERY cautiously) optimistic about the long-term success of the drug trial I'm on. On the minus side for the last few weeks I've basically just had ALL the side effects, ALL the time, which has been thoroughly unpleasant and not at all conducive to doing anything creative or interesting most days. I'm not really feeling much better now, in fact, nor am I likely to for a while longer. However, I'm starting to get into a bit of a rhythm with dealing with it and I'll continue to try to squeeze in the odd hour of sanity-preserving activities, like sewing, whenever I can.

Here's a quick round-up of the things I've managed to finish in April:

1. Maxi skirts. Amazingly, around the middle of the month I managed a little bit of everyday sewing. These are actually my Wishlist Challenge items for April (I missed March, I'm going to try to catch up with an extra later in the year). For ages I've had a variety of photos, of which this one is a good example, pinned on Pinterest of patterned/border print summer maxi skirts and have wanted some for myself. I went so far as to buy a highly patterned navy/blue fabric with the specific intention of accomplishing this in January 2015. Then at the beginning of this year I bought a second, border-printed piece of fabric. This month I decided that this summer I actually really wanted those skirts to actually exist rather than be flat pieces of fabric and I got on with making them:

Simple gathered waist maxi skirts

These are really the simplest skirts in the world. They're a no-pattern Giant Rectangle, with a hem and an elastic waist in a casing. The blue skirt on the left is almost 3m wide at the hem as I used two complete widths of the fabric. The border print on the right has a total of 2m gathered at the waist, as the border ran along one selvedge and I had a 2m length of the fabric. I probably prefer the wide hem for walking/moving about, but on the other hand, even though the fabric is a very lightweight poly/viscose twill, there's quite a lot of bulk at the waistband of the blue version. Unfortunately the blue print turned out to be totally off grain, which made matching the side seams much harder than it needed to be, and then as it turned out there's SO MUCH fabric that even looking for the side seams is mostly an exercise in futility so that was a waste of effort anyway!.

Regardless, I am pleased with both my skirts, and hopefully when the weather warms up they will be a part of my comfortable, easy summer wardrobe. I am hoping to (but not all that optimistic that I will be able to) knock out a very easy April Magazine Challenge item in the next few days. All the tracing etc feels like a lot of effort right now though!

2. I finished my cross-stitch kit! As a reminder, I started this back at the beginning of January, and I actually finished it on the last day of March. Here's the finished thing: (click image for a larger view)

Finished Mason-Jar line-up; close up left hand side; close up right-hand side; very close up far right; back

I thoroughly enjoyed stitching this kit, which is called Mason Jar Line-up by Dimensions, and recommend it highly. It did take quite a bit of time and I got fed up of switching between the many, barely perceptibly different, shades of aqua blue every so often. However, I'm very pleased with my finished piece of stitching. I do plan to frame and hang it at some point but eh, probably not until I feel better.

I had thought to move on to something different and more original on the embroidery side of things rather than do another kit straight away, but actually these kits are a pretty good level of activity and degree of creativity for me at the moment. I therefore decided to order another kit just as I finished this one... and then it turned out to be coming from Hong Kong and still hasn't got here, so I have actually nothing new to report at all!

3. Knitting. I started April by deciding to frog the disastrous blue jumper that I finished mid-January. Then I wondered what to do with the frogged yarn. I came up with the idea of knitting a small rug for the bathroom, based on a blogger I read doing the same thing and really liking the one she made. All I can say about the outcome of that is: NOPE. In the end, I pitched the whole lot into the recycling, much as it pained me to do so. Sometimes things just don't work and can't be recovered, and this was one of those times.

Purl Soho Seed Stitch Wrap in two shades of Drops Merino Extra Fine (Purple and Light Purple)

I was therefore in the market for a new knitting project. I decided I needed something ULTRA easy and brainless, because I am not up to dealing with complicated patterns at the moment. I'm currently therefore just under a third of the way through this extremely easy Purl Soho Seed Stitch Wrap (Ravelry link to free pattern), which is going to be (a) enormous and (b) ridiculous. I kind of love it already. I admit I originally bought the yarn (which is Drops Merino Extra Fine in colourways Purple and Light Purple) for something else entirely, but I don't care, this is a perfect use of it under current circumstances.

And that's pretty much it for April! Hopefully May will be better and I'll manage to work on some more interesting and challenging things. (Honestly, though, I think be prepared for this blog to be All Simple All The Time for the next couple of months at least.)