Today with my dutiful sewing wife Emma (a.k.a She Loves to Make) I hosted the final Devon Sews meet up of 2020! Like most things, the first year of Devon Sews hasn’t quite panned out like we imagined. After a fab launch in October 2019 with sewing and afternoon tea in Plymouth, we looked forward…
The Cape Before Christmas
Ok, so a while ago I posted about a midi dress I wanted to recreate. Spoiler alert – I haven’t done it yet. Why? Because I am crap at sewing out of season i.e. something I cannot wear immediately. And as much as I’d love a sleeveless midi dress, it isn’t the weather and I…
The Art of Letter Writing
In some ways, I’m a bit old-fashioned. As you already I have the hobbies of a 1950s housewife, but I am also quite old-fashioned when it comes to manners. This week I received not one, not two but THREE beautiful bunches of Get Well Soon flowers from Bloom and Wild, sent to me by various…
An interlude
Mama wasn’t here yesterday. I don’t like it when Mama goes away. But it was okay, because she came back. Mary, we’ve been through this. We said that I’d be doing the introduction. But the youngest goes first when Mama plays Monopoly. I’m the littlest — No. Mama told us you’ve got to listen to…
D&D, M&M and Me
As you may know, I’m kind of a nerd. I like Lego, comic books, and I play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). It has been pointed out to me that playing D&D is a very on-brand™ thing for me to do, but in fact I’ve only been playing it for a couple of years. I wanted…
Smear Campaign
Confession time: I’ve always been a goody two shoes. I always told the truth. I never got in trouble. Well, there was that one time I called Tom Finlay (not his real name) a bastard for not letting me be part of the year 9 poker ring at school. But generally, I went to school…
Navigating the Lockdown labyrinth
So the UK is going in to another lockdown. And, yeah, it kinda sucks. But in the dystopian world we now live in, we have to do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable amongst us. I know lockdown is a scary prospect for all sorts of reasons, whether they be financial worries, health…
Bias, microaggressions and the rose-coloured glasses of privilege
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the disparities of the world we live in. The UK is up in arms about the Government’s decision not to provide free school meals over the holidays in England. Let’s be clear – this is an attack on the poor. It is a clear sign that this…
Silence, kindness and thank you
Apologies for the blog silence last week. My younger cat Mary got in a fight and had to have surgery, so wasn’t up to much other than cuddling her last weekend. She’s doing ok, and will be wearing the ‘baby-gro of shame’ for another couple of days before her stitches come out. Ironically, I was…
How I cope with a Fibro flare
After my grand (or midi) sewing plans last week, I was ready and raring to go. The problem is I haven’t touched my sewing machine since last week. Why? Because I have been having a flare-up of my Fibromyalgia symptoms, or ‘Fibro flare’. Long time readers of my blog will know I suffer from Fibromyalgia,…
Grand (or Midi) plans
One of our greatest joys as sewists is seeing something RTW that is out of stock or too expensive, and being able to knock one up ourselves. Right? Oh yeah, but it’s not *always* that simple. Because you can’t always find a pattern close enough to the original, or you can but it requires hours…
Practically Perfect Pilates
If you follow my blog, you’ll know that I’m not always the healthiest person. Amongst some of the standard joys (asthma, depression…), I also have arthritis and fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a chronic health condition characterised by widespread pain. The way pain works in ‘normal’ people is that your brain fires pain signals to tell you…
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