My mobile phone is basically a GPS; I don´t use it as a phone. When I need it, I like to have it on a string so I don´t misplace it. But my small, slim (and cheap!) phone doesn´t have any place to attach a wrist strap or lanyard.
Photo of a phone showing front with a green screen
and the back of the phone rendered in a purple-ish black.
And neither does the case I put on it.
This bag was a real disappointment when I first made it, and I put it aside while I decided what to do about the failure. Would I try to fix it? Cannibalize it for parts? Use it anyway and hate it every minute?
Photo of a bag made of black Cordura (top) and a gray and
black abstract print vinyl (bottom). The bag has three red
appliqued maple leaves stitched on the Cordura, and long
vinyl shoulder straps. The bottom third of the bag is sagging.
First I had to figure out what I didn´t like about it. It wasn´t the appliqued leaves (though I considered removing them) — it was the waaaay too floppy nature of the lower part of the bag. My bad — this was the first time I´d worked with a heavy vinyl, and I failed to interface it.
This Haralson is rough-and-ready compared to my first one, of an almost-elegant tapestry. It´s made from a fairly heavy weight canvas — which probably isn´t really a good choice for such a small bag. Turning it right-side-out was interesting, and those ´pleats´ at the bottom aren´t pleats as much as they are rigid corners.
Photo of a brown canvas belt bag with dark brass
hardware and a brown webbing strap. The bag´s
flap is decorated with a green/yellow/red and white
embroidered patch depicting a large moth.
But I wanted a much more casual bag, too, so this is what I went for, and it all worked out well in the end. Not to mention that I had the canvas in stash, which counts for so much!
After two disappointing bag projects (not yet blogged), I looked for something more likely to succeed, and found Noodlehead´s Haralson pattern. Noodlehead projects are a favorite of a good friend, so I thought the belt bag would be a good bet — and a useful bag for the summer.
Photo of a small tapestry bag in shades of tan,
gold, brown, dark brown and blues, with brown
webbing and dark brass hardware, and a wide
dark brown webbing strap.
I have a couple of quibbles about the pattern, but over all I´m quite happy with the result.
I made felt slippers! Several pair in gray, and these in red:
Image of a pair of red felt slippers with
green felt swirls, and a pair of red felt slippers
with three ginkgo leaves on each.
Between is a practice ginkgo leaf appliqué.
We have wooden floors, and don´t wear shoes in the house. Most slippers generally seem like too much to wear, yet the feet need something to keep them clean and comfortable. And warm, in the cooler months. Wool felt seemed like a good answer.
Photo of cover sheet for Docker´s Beanie pattern.
I have a small vintage car that I like to drive in good weather, preferably with the windows open — but my hair hasn´t seen scissors since February 2020, and it flies around a bit, no matter how I contain it with clips or rubber bands. I needed a cap. Continue reading
(Note: Thanks to the excellent influence of Jorts the Cat, my images will now show descriptions beneath. WordPress doesn´t support ALT tags for users with limited vision, so this is how I´ĺl accommodate.)
When I first saw the L´Hood Ritza hat, I swooned. It was bonkers in all the ways I love most: wide-brimmed, cape-backed, and had a weird engineering twist.
Image of an over-sized blue Ritza L´Hood storm hat with a
very large brim covering the eyes and upper shoulders of a model.
That twist was a wrap band that allowed the cape-like hat to become a smaller hood.
But . . . the Ritza was perpetually out of stock in my size, even though I waited for months. Naturally, I decided to try to make my own.
My Techo cover served me very well in 2022, and continues to do so in 2023. The Techo is such a small book; it´s really amazing how much can be crammed into that very small space.
This photo is of my completed Techo from 2022, and the new one, for 2023. In between is a neat little slim folder that I use as a bookmark for the front of the notebook.
For the past few years I’ve used a Japanese Traveller’s Notebook as my daily diary. I liked it, and it was a useful tool while I tried to figure out what I really wanted and needed, but this year I ended up with a Hobonichi Techo — the smaller of the Japanese Hobonichi datebooks.
A representative page, with privacy redactions.
I love this thing! It’s exactly the right size for everything I want to record. It’s made of special, super-thin, super-strong paper (and costs like it!), so it’s light and durable. And I can write in it with my tiny fountain pen!
After two failures, it was time to try again. Like the previous two mittens, this pair was made using Suzy’s Addi Pro Mittens Tutorial. This pair were made from double-strands of Lion Brand Fishermen’s Wool and KnitPicks Stroll fingering yarn — a combination that is possibly a little thicker than the Addi likes best, but roughly comparably in weight to the Wool Ease and Kroy Socks double strands.
Knit mittens are always a little problematic — they’re holey, after all! — but this yarn combination yields a nice, tight fabric. You’d still might want to wear some kind of woven liner under in really cold weather, but in most circumstances, these mittens would probably keep hands cozy enough.
