Something Old, Something New

It's been a while since I purchased any craft books - I find such a wealth of inspiration through blogs, Flickr, etc - but I still love to leaf through a good craft book. These are two I rediscovered this week, well I found one and searched the other one out as I knew I bought them both together. I meant to have a look at them yesterday but ended up working on my sewing machine all day - well I learnt a few things, and managed to simplify one of my 'tweedie' designs, so hopefully that will pay off in the long run!

I did love my old Singer sewing machine and don't think I've bonded so well with my new one (a Janome) but we were quite 'pally' with each other by the end of the day! It's a good machine really, I'm just a bit of a 'hand-sewing' fanatic - I like the peaceful, meditative nature of a sewing needle and thread - it can be very relaxing. Anyway these are the two books, one is all about doll-making - various techniques, styles, etc - I think I'd managed to teach myself the basics by the time I'd bought the book, but it's an interesting resource nevertheless. The other is really a compendium of crafts - really well illustrated, published by Dorling Kindersley and written by Miranda Innes - I love all the different crafts it covers, from mosaic to quilting, to glass painting, really good fun!

Well that was the old (books) and onto the new . . .

. . . a little set of matryoshka dolls which I made earlier in the week - they are about 3.5 inches tall, so quite dinky - I had a notion for making a set of mini-matryoshkas! I am lucky enough to have three shades of pink Harris Tweed at the moment, so I thought I'd make a 'raspberry ripple' selection of little dolls. They aren't listed yet - maybe later today after I've browsed through my books, as I'm relaxing today after all that slaving over my sewing machine yesterday - I have two 'tweedie' laptop sleeves made as a result though, so I'm feeling quite smug, hehe!

I'm going to start work on an order from my local Gallery shop (An Lanntair) this week - I wasn't sure if I was going to go the 'retail outlet' route this year, but it's good to have a presence in a shop, and even nicer to get a cheque in the post from time to time, so . . . :)

Off to have a nice relaxing day now and browse through some of my crafty books - think I deserve it after yesterday's 'sewing marathon'!

Happy Sunday :)