Gardening gloves

My dear old gardening gloves had finally done their dash, opening up with holes and cracks in the well-worn fabric.

Before throwing them out, I cut them up to make a pattern out of the pieces.  I then traced the pattern onto some scraps of sturdy fabric and stitched them together.  And here you have it... brand new gardening gloves!

The stitching is a bit rough on the inside, but for their purpose, they are totally fine.

And here's the action shot.  I thought I would attempt growing rosemary from cuttings - I read that if you cut them, take off the bottom third of leaves, dip the stem in honey and poke it in the ground they will develop roots and grow.  I actually planted these little ones two weeks ago - two are a bit bendy looking but two seem to be doing fine.  If I get two rosemary plants out of it, I'll be happy!

Pasta

Lately I have been extremely busy at work.  I generally do one of two things to wind down after a hectic day - sewing or cooking.  A few weekends ago I decided to go all out and make my own pasta and pasta sauce.  I had never tried bottle conditioning pasta sauce before (filling the bottles with uncooked sauce, then putting the whole bottles in water to boil), but it seems to have worked nicely.  Some photos of my pasta making adventures...

Nom.

Tulip skirt (a stash buster)

Looking through my fabric stash (which although gets used in bits and pieces, never seems to get smaller) I lingered on some grey check fabric that I have owned for way too long.  So long, that I can not remember when I bought it (about 10 years ago, me thinks) or what I bought it for.  I have used this fabric in the past, but I still had loads of it left.  I needed to make a decision: use it, or get rid of it.

In a moment of inspiration I flicked through the Burdastyle website and found the Marie 'Tulip' skirt, and immediately set to work.  As always, Snorky was very helpful with the cutting out and piecing together of the pattern...

'What? You want me to get off the paper?  But I just got comfy!'

This is actually a pretty easy pattern to put together, but as always, I somehow managed to make it more complicated for myself.  I am renowned for jumping in to sewing projects with great gusto, thinking "instructions... bah! I know how to sew a skirt!"  As such, I then spent as much time unpicking as I did sewing.  After a few hours of fiddling with a bumpy zip, I put the project down, and didn't come back to it until the following weekend.

When I did come back to it, calmer, and having actually read the instructions, it only took another hour to complete.  And now having stitched it once, I reckon I could whip up another quite quickly.  It's a very versatile skirt and has a flattering shape (I did cut the side curves down a bit) so it's highly likely that I will make another.

Stitchers - do you do this too?  Jump in, make a mess of it, then spend half your time unpicking?  Or are you better behaved, carefully reading the instructions before the cotton is even threaded?

Guerilla Art

You may already know that I have a bit of a thing for guerilla art.  I love it when I'm travelling and I find some yarn bombing around a bike rack, or concrete televisions displaying thought-provoking pictures.  The fact that someone has taken the time to make the street more interesting is a nice thought.

Photo from amoment.com.au

One street art project that I adore (but am yet to witness for myself) is aMoment.  aMoment make little gifts and do mass drops of them in the street for people to find and take home.  For their first drop they planted forget-me-nots in teacups and left 100 of them on the streets of Melbourne with 'please take me home' tags.  How cool is that?  aMoment are actually looking for funding to help their next project right now - do you think you could spare a dollar?  If so, go here (there is a cute video about them too).

Then my lovely friend C bought me this book for Christmas!  It is full of brilliant ideas for guerilla artists, such as guerilla gardening (creating a small garden in an unused space like the middle of a roundabout) and moss graffiti (truly awesome).

I have not chosen my first project yet, but I am scheming.