Another summer top (just waiting for actual summer)

Yesterday, at the start of this stormy long weekend, I made this top. It's made from a Liberty print fabric that was on sale at the Fabric Store.

I used Kwik Sew pattern 3161 (I've used this to made three other tops already); this time instead of having slits in the lower portion of the sleeves I sewed them closed, and I widened the neckline slightly for more room around the neck.

This is a great length for me as it ends at my upper hips (a proper tunic length just makes my legs look shorter). It's got the practicality of a shirt, without the bother of buttons or the discomfort of a shirt collar.

I'm so glad we went north for our holiday as thats really the only time we got to be in summer temperatures. Yesterday I was wearing corduroys and socks!

Three nights in Roto-vegas

In the second half of our family week 'o' fun, we stayed in a two bedroom, two bathroom motel unit (Ascot on Fenton) that was close to town, the supermarkets and the shopping mall.

 Not that much non-food shopping was done though. The fruits of our shopping labours from this time is limited to:

• one pair of tramping trousers with zip off legs for TLM, to replace the ones she'd paced because they are now too small.
• one iPhone USB recharger because I mistakenly thought the boy was looking after packing the rechargers ("they're only, like, two bucks" he said. No they weren't. They cost 25 freaking dollars).
• A Nintendo DS game for the boy because he finished playing the one he'd brought with him, and he'd foolishly neglected to pack any reading material.

The highlights of our time in Rotorua:

• swimming in the Blue Lake
• walking around Lake Rotorua
• visiting Wai-o-tapu thermal valley
• going up in the gondola and taking the luge down

We did also stop off at Huka Falls on the our first day coming into Rotorua - it was before that guy was arrested for boogey-boarding down the falls.

I'll leave you with a photo of the Champagne Lake...

One night in Turangi

On our way to Auckland we stopped off in Turangi for one night. Our motel (Judges Pool) was just across the road from the Tongarairo River so I had multiple walks along there. At this part of the river it was relatively calm and quite a few people were there sunbathing and swimming.

Unfortunately the long drive didn't do the boy's back any favours (yes I did some driving, but not as much), so he missed out.

Two nights in Onehunga

I haven't seen my elderly aunt in many years so the aim of our summer holiday was to go see her before it becomes impossible. We'd never been there before, but when we found her house and peered through the glass in the door it was pretty obvious that an elderly Chinese lady lived there.

It looked like a much tidier version of my mum's place, plus I could see some chairs that had been covered by a protective layer of plastic. A yellowing photo of her late husband had pride of place on one of the low tables which were otherwise decorated with doilies and Chinese ornaments. The remote was covered in a layer of clingfilm.

Once we were inside I was amused to see that she - like my mum - had a second fridge. It was in the garage, along with an assortment of pots, pans and woks, a cupboard full of dried ingredients and a couple of gas cooker thingies. The sheets on our beds smelled like the parcels we used to get from Hong Kong when I was a child and were decorated with florals on a peach background.

Needless to say we were pretty well fed those days, on pork ribs, soy sauce chicken, stirred green beens, almond cakes, coconut jelly and lashings of Chinese tea.

In case you were wondering,  I didn't get a chance to go to DressMart, which came up at the top of Google's list of things to do in Onehunga.

A new hat for summer

After my hat got covered in ice cream at the beach yesterday, I decided to make another one so that I could have one to wear while the other is in the wash. TLM is modelling the new hat.

The crown is made from strips of linen/cotton that I've woven into a grid (after first tidying the raw edges). The band is made from super-stretchy denim left over from my jeans-making and the brim is made from non-stretch denim also left over from jeans-making.

As you can see, I topstitched here and there in bright yellow but left the brim edge unfinished. I've encouraged a bit of fraying so that I could do some pre-emptive fray-trimming.

I won't show you the underside because it's pretty rough.
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There's no getting away from the fish-eye dart

The last pair of jeans I posted about were wrinkly at the backs of the legs - as you can see if you scroll down a bit to look for the blog post. But I was able to fix it, by taking in the inseams by about a centimetre all the way down and by resizing the back pockets.

When I say "taking in the inseams", it sounds like a simple thing to do - but it's not if the inseams are flat fell seams. Because they are, it meant unpicking the topstitching and seaming of the inseams, then unpicking the outer leg seams in order to restitch the inseams and re-do the flat fell stitching. In other words I practically took them apart and put them together again.

Unfortunately I don't have a non-blurry photo of the improved back view, so you are left with the saggy old lady butt view in the last post.

I made a second pair of jeans, this time using some rigid (but not raw) denim. It was way easier to work with than the super-stretch denim because the rigid stuff doesn't stretch out when you stitch over it.

Unfortunately I have not learned from all of the pants-making that I must do a fisheye dart on the back leg pattern piece in order to remove all of the excess fabric that results (which comes from having an apple-shaped body) -

Because it's rigid denim, simply taking it in at the inseams will make them uncomfortable to wear, so I'm thinking of just sewing a massive dart in the back of each leg so that they look a bit like this -

See - they are much less wrinkly now. But there is a crease under each bum cheek (which will become a seam if I proceed with my possible plan).

In the meantime I have been wearing them in and they are pretty comfortable now, though not as comfy as the leggings-like fabric of the stretchy jeans.

Time slowing down

For a long time now I've often felt that time was going way too fast, that I was running out of time to do all the things I want do in my life. Its made me anxious, panicky and sometimes (when I feel that time really has run out to do some thing) sad.

But I haven't felt this since I started working from home (due to our office closing down until certain repairs are done to make it quake-safe).

I'm not sure why, but I think it's to do with there being slightly fewer or different events to mark out the different points of my day - mostly not having to travel to and from work.

It's also helped by the fact that we are in the middle of Christmas and New Year holidays, and aren't doing anything much during this period.

The effect is probably going to wear off in a while, but in the meantime I'm happy with the feeling of time slowing down and allowing me to relax more.