Keith's Jeans

So far I haven't been able to face clearing out Keith's clothes and may not do so for a long time.  But I have been recycling some of his stuff.  This time I turned a pair of his jeans into a bag for Julie and another smaller bag for myself (not yet photographed).  I'd been promising to make her one to take to work that would hold her lunch (and sometimes breakfast) as well as odds and ends.

I've had the handles, feet and clasp for Julie's bag some time as well as the material for the pockets and lining.  So they are recycled as well.  All I needed was the jeans to make the bag from, Keith came to the rescue again.  Apart from the outside pockets, on both sides, there are two more denim pockets inside to hold water or juice bottles.

Julie likes it and apparently so do a couple of her workmates so that should please Keith that his trousers are admired by ladies......

My Kindle has gone haywire.  Don't know why or how.  It was working one moment the next it wouldn't stay on despite the battery being fully charged.  I decided to restart it and return it to factory settings (not that I'd touched those) and lost all my books.  Still it now starts and stays on but I have to re-register it so until I do that I can't re-download the books I bought from Amazon.  So guess what my next job is.  I really miss my Kindle I've had it for approximately four years and its been very, very very well used.  I get through around 3 books a week - mainly reading in bed.  I've had to revert to listening to books on my Ipod.  Problem with that is my eyes don't get tired so instead of putting the book down and going to sleep, I keep on listening to it until the early hours of the morning.  Either that or I drop off to sleep still listening and miss several chapters which means I have to backtrack, not always and easy thing to do.

Went to the cinema this week to see Shakespeare's "Loves Labour Lost" which was being broadcast by the RSC directly from Stratford upon Avon.  It was a completely different experience from watching a film, much more akin to actually going to the theatre.  I loved it and me and my friend Gill are off on the 4th March to see the companion play to this "Loves Labour Won" or as its better known "Much Ado about Nothing".

Spot the Difference

Spot the difference it wasn't until I had uploaded the photo of my French cafe scene that I realised I'd missed a couple of elements off.  Can you find them?

One of the things I had promised myself this year was to make a monthly journal page.  Well it started out as a journal page:

but ended up as:

A pot to stand next to my computer.  At the moment its holding the various cables I use when I want to connect my Kindle, Ipod, Ipad, phone etc to my computer.  Well at least its tidied themup.

French Cafe Scene

Our EG group have been asked to create 5"X 7" postcards depicting France which are to be exhibited there sometime towards the end of the year.  Taking advantage of a 'no dog, day I set off to create something.

I found an image I liked from one of our photos.  This one was taken en route to a holiday in Spain. Going through France we stopped in a small town for coffee and too this photo. I've just noticed that  I've forgotten to embroider cafe on the card and create a menu to go on the wall!!  Must do that as soon as I've finished this post.

I resized the photo to 5 x 7 inches and turned it into a black and white image.  Then traced the main lines.  From that I created pieces and ironed them onto a cream background.  Once that was done I outlined everything in black and tried to create ironwork.  I quite deliberately didn't try to be neat with the outlining, I wanted it to have a hand drawn appearance.  Leaves were cut by hand and bonded onto the background and the bike and table are clip art images printed onto shrink plastic and glued on. I may make another one using much more traditional embroidery later.

Buster is appreciative on his travel rug when used in my sewing room but still isn't too keen to lie on it on laminated floors.

One more thing that has been finished is THE wall hanging, yehhhh.  Marc and Alix were very pleased with it and took it home with them last night.  They had come up to have a meal out with Sy and Julie as it's Sy's birthday tomorrow (2nd).  Naturally I forgot to take a photo but Alix has promised to send me one when its in its pride of place on their wall.