A Short list of things I have been doing:

- picking berries (though not as many as W, the berry picking master)
- hiding from the heat (the spare bedroom is the coolest place in the house at the moment, but the duvet cover is slowly getting covered in ice-lolly stains, and must. be. changed.)
- watching Supernatural (i came late to the party, but i’m definately there.)
- trying to keep up with Tour de France coverage (i have hours of the stuff still to watch/edit/archive <- yup i’m a big geek)
- abandoning projects (my sister’s jumper is on hiatus till the weather gets cooler, a top down silk top has been ripped and restarted with a whole different pattern, 3/4 done pair of socks were ripped out and re-balled)
- being turned down for jobs (x2)
- applying for job (in the next hour)
- cycling (monday morning, bright and pretty early)
- roasting beetroot (about 3 times in the last 7 days)
- working on the website (my only paying gig at the moment)

I have been in such a craft blah recently.
Maybe it’s because the workroom is like an oven at the moment and is still home to piles of dvds while we sort out shelving for the built-in cupboard in the TV room.

I went through a really good creative period, but right now nothing is working, and i can feel my knitting cofidence eroding.

Of course it’ll come back, and i’ll keep plugging away at this top (because i can handle knitting silk but not wool right now) and listening to the crafty mom podcast for quick crafty inspiration.

(i’m not sure why i feel the need to lick my wounds here right now, except i’ve kinda abandoned this blog recently and i feel bad about it. there is plenty of good stuff going on in my life too - i get lots of time to hang out with W at the moment since he gets to work from home for much of the week - and recently i’ve had some fun hanging out with various friends, and meeting members of W’s family that i haven’t met before.

I’m trying not to feel downhearted or embarrassed that i’m still not working, but it’s hard.)

As you read this I am hopefully sanding the floors in our lounge. Assume the ‘publish later’ typepad thing actually works.

but here goes:

W’s mum and I went to Boden, because we both love the catalogues, and have bought stuff in the sales for childen we know. But the clothing isn’t cheap and I wanted to know if their style would suit me or not. (I mean I also love Jigsaw, but NEVER has a piece of Jigsaw clothing fitted me properly.)

So since there is a store in London (though when I say ‘in’ london, i mean, near Royal Park tube, and thus miles away from any other shops you might want to shop in), we decided to give it a go.

And you know what? It was great! We grabbed big armfuls of things we wanted to try, and even snagged a big family sized changing room so that we didn’t have to whip in and out of tiny single booth changing rooms all the time to see what the other person looked like.

The sizes actually did what the said on the tin, for the vast majority of the time, and everything was really good quality.

To be honest I had been planning to try on a load of stuff and then buy nothing, but safe in the knowledge that I could order online once I’m earning again. But then I found a few things that were either too lovely on me to leave (B *made* me buy them. ;) or stuff I needed anyways - like a new swimming costume.

Thus I bought:

This shouldn’t work for me. Ruffles across the hip? No way!

But the first ruffle is actually low down - where your hips turn into your thighs, and at least for me, that bit goes in a bit. Plus the cotton is thin and flow-y. In fact i’m wearing it now and it’s lovely.

These two are to go with the skirt, but will go with lots of other stuff I have. I’m really working hard this year on wearing colour. I’ve been a black tee shirt girl for too long, so it’s nice to have some more ‘go with everything’ tops in pretty colours.

This i never expected to work, but actually I really love it! I have a long body, so swimming costumes can look a bit weird. Plus they are a pain if you want to go for a wee. But these is cute, (polkadots!) and in my favourite colour, and when the top rides up a little bit, it’s kinda sexy - but in a ‘but i’m actually covered up’ kind of a way.

In fact I loved it so much that I rang W while I was on the bus home, and got him to meet me at the new local pool so I could try it out, and have a splash around for a while. 

So yes, I spent money, and maybe that was bad, but it’s all great stuff, and it was nice to have a good clothes shopping day for a change.

On a related note, I never posted a picture of the skirt I made, just before we went to france.

It’s munki munki pool party fabric which I love because it’s turquoise AND lime, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

Keeping with my ‘wearing more colour’ theme, and because B had made me re-think my whole ambivalence to yellow, I picked up the yellow vest at one of the charity shops near where we live. Afterall i’ve been wearing a livestong band for the last two years, and it looks pretty good on me.

Turns out this outfit is so cute that some lads shouted ‘hey sexy’ at me from their car window while i was walking home from seeing friends last night. *rolls eyes*

Also - You know, all the colours in that photo are pretty much correct apart from the colour of the wall. If it actually was that colour it’d be great!