String Revolution

Why, why, why did I think it would be easy to write blog posts while we were away in California? I even drafted some (of which I managed to publish just one), but all thoughts of a regular habit – of any kind, not just blogging – went quickly out the window once we got [...]

This is my beloved Singer sewing machine, in which I am well pleased.
I think it was my friend Caro who first told me that you can go to the Singer site and enter your machine’s serial number to find out where and when it was made.
Mine’s a 1953 model, it turns out, made at the [...]

I’ve always struggled with the elastic dimensions of future time.
You know – the way Next Tuesday, say, can attain such mythical status in your mind that it becomes a cauldron, a vat, a veritable corrie lake of possibility, just waiting for the giant sponge of your swingeing creative efficiency to come galumphing over the horizon [...]

I was amused, last October, when I asked the Oyster what he wanted to dress up as for Hallowe’en, and he said, “A ghost!” He went on to specify how I should make the costume, by getting a sheet and cutting it into the right size and then cutting two eye holes. Moreover, the Feaster [...]

I’ve finished Alice McAnnally’s bonnet!
My lovely reader Emma commented on that previous post with loads of additional information about Alice: she was apparently born in Louth in 1809, and convicted of robbing a person. She worked as a housemaid and washerwoman, and may have married a man named Manville.
The convict women of the Elizabeth were [...]

Hey, it’s Sunday, and I have Stash! Happy coincidence.
This is a sample pack from OrganicCotton.biz – a total of fifty-eight pieces of fair-trade and organic cotton fabric. The range includes plain woven cottons (solids and patterns), denims, velvets, corduroys, crossweaves, prints, textured weaves, and jersey.
I am making plans. Oho yes. Watch this space.

I’m making a bonnet for a woman I will never meet, a woman who very probably died before my great-grandparents were born. Her name was Alice McAnnally, and she was a convicted criminal.
I don’t know what law she broke (although I imagine that anything I’d consider really bad would’ve got her hanged). Maybe she stole [...]

I live in a bubble. I mean, we all do, obviously, and the Internet allows us to accentuate the effect as much as we feel like. But really. Big bubbly bubble.
It’s kind of nice to be reminded of that, when it happens in a gentle way.
Take the other week. I’ve posted about my recent trip [...]

A week after my visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum’s current exhibition, Quilts 1700-2010 (which, as you see above, occasioned the purchase of some fat quarters, oh yes!), my abiding memories are of shape.
Scallops on an incredible set of chintz bed hangings that opens the exhibition. Feathered quilting on an eighteenth-century wholecloth quilt. Squares [...]

Back in September, I joined the Irish Patchwork Society (Eastern Branch). Tomorrow, a group of us are off to London to visit the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Tomorrow, people! I’ve been squeeing about this for seven months! Eeeeeeeee!
Ahem.
I’ve avoided reading reviews of the exhibition, because I don’t want to go in [...]