Back in the saddle

Thank you to everyone who left comments on my last post. I usually try to respond to comments straight away but my success rate in doing so the last few months has not been good. If I don't get around to replying straight away it always seems weird to come back to responding to them a fortnight later. So, yes, sorry for not responding, but your thoughts are honestly much appreciated!

Leaving aside the state of the world (which is frankly awful) on a personal level my news is almost all good (again!). I suddenly started to feel better about a week after my last post and over the last 10 days have started to feel as well as I have all year. Things are definitely looking up! :D As a result of feeling so much better, I resurrected quite a few of my summer sewing plans and got stuck in.

As I often do, I eased myself back into sewing by working on some easy knits with familiar patterns, starting with two t-shirts:

Two easy tees. Pink is Cosy Little World Jasmin; Red and white is Ottobre 02-2013-02

I actually cut the pink tee out a month and a half ago on a rare good day but then never felt up to doing anything with it. The pattern is the Cosy Little World Jasmin Tee, which was a pattern I used for the first time last year and made three times. I still love the two blue tees I made with this pattern and wear them often (the third one I made using a cheap white knit and, even though I pre-washed the fabric, it shrank and distorted horribly the first time I washed the finished tee, boo).

The red and white tee is made using a pattern I was obsessed by in 2013/2014 but haven't made since January 2015, Ottobre 02-2013-02. It's a really nice little kimono sleeved top that is intended to catch and puddle at the hip. I added a little rolled over cuff to the sleeves.

Neither of these came out perfectly -- the pink has a little mistake in the neckband, and I managed to just catch the tiniest snippet of the fabric of the red and white one in my overlocker blade and had to do a little repair. I would have preferred if they had come out perfectly, of course, but I'm not going to worry about invisible-from-a-metre-away mistakes on inexpensive t-shirts.

StyleArc Estelle cardigan in a slightly weird hole-y knit

My last easy knit for the summer was made using a slightly weird olive green knit. I dithered about what pattern to use but to be honest it should have been a no-brainer. I absolutely love the StyleArc Estelle pattern, and have worn the three I've already made to death. This version probably doesn't have quite the same all season usefulness that the previous three versions have had, seeing as how it's full of holes, but I still think I'll get a lot of use from it this summer. The hole-y fabric was actually the cause of my only problem making this garment, insofar as it took a very long time and three complete re-threads of my overlocker to find the right tension settings at which it would actually, you know, sew the damn thing together and not snap the threads/stop stitching/snarl up. I got there in the end, but not before I earnestly considered what would happen if I flung either the overlocker or the pieces of my cardigan out the window of my sewing room.

My new cross-stitch kit is underway

Next up: Garment-wise, the next thing I want to make is a couple of fairly straightforward woven tops. I need to spend some time tracing patterns though before I can get started with anything properly interesting (and I promised someone I would trace a pattern for them as well, so I must get on that ASAP). I've also started my new cross-stitch kit, the very first little bit of which you can see above. More generally, though, I am just sort of picking up the threads of the rest of my life that I let fall in March-May, so I feel busy busy busy all day at the moment after months of barely getting out of bed. Time passes so much more quickly when you have stuff to do, so I'm really enjoying it :D