Sunday, January 01, 2012

Here's to 2012

New year’s day is the time of new resolutions, often foolish, sometimes inspired, mostly not kept and all too quickly forgotten as the year unfolds. Well, I’ve been thinking about resurrecting this blog for a while now (although, browsing through older posts, I’ve found myself shifting between mild-to-severe embarrassment) so here’s to 2012 (resolution no. 1):  after 4 years and a half, I’m back with an emphasis on arts and crafts, because Yours Truly has been attempting, for now some time, to domesticate two left hooves into becoming nimble fingers, and This Year Is The Year I Kick My Own Butt And Really Try And Make Some Progress (resolution no. 2!).

So, how far have we got till now?
For my wedding, I made flower brooches. The official reason was that I wanted our guests to wear these instead of having cut flowers all over the place. The proper reason, really, was that I’d use any excuse to procrastinate instead of working on my PhD.

A couple of years ago, I made the apron below, meant to be used for any new crafty undertakings, but I now realise it’s sat in my desk-drawers since then. I also made one for each of my two nieces (a 3rd niece has now come into the family, but she’s too young still to wear apronsl), and was delighted to find out that they were using theirs!
A little later, I got into patchwork, and started a hand-sewn bed cover. The thing is far from finished, and I’ve made close-to-zero progress in the past 12 months. So here’s a picture of the thing to date, to motivate some more effort on my part.
Admittedly, a double-bed cover is a rather ambitious undertaking for the unexperienced (and lazy), so I also embarked on a couple of smaller, more manageable patchworks,  namely, cushion covers both hand-sewn and machine-sewn.

Then, most recently, I’ve had a stab at the more arty sides of craft, with a short introduction to etching course in November, and some other endeavours I’ll discuss in coming posts.

TTFN.