Sewing class

So this week saw me do the first of three sewing classes at the sickeningly gorgeous Ray Stitch on Essex Road. I met Mrs Ray, not her real name, at a Selvedge Magazine Craft fair in June 2010 – I’m not quite as stalker-y as I sound I just remember because the fair was held across the road from a friend of mine and having not seen her for a while I thought it an opportune time to pop in on her too only she had buggered off to Glastonbury Festival (a distant memory for me now, expect I won’t go there again). Anyway, Mrs Ray and I got to talking about selling wool amongst other things and she said she was looking for premises for a shop but had recently lost out on somewhere.

Jump forward a year, and my not having made any purchases from the Ray Stitch online store whilst still lusting after the just so Ray Stitch lifestyle or even just style, and my friend J (a very cute hip young slip of a girl) knowing that I liked all things sew-y and knitty told me about this shop she’d noticed that was due to open soon that she thought I’d like. Well, even though I was excited about the prospect of Ray Stitch in the flesh it still took me a couple of months to visit the shop – all I can say is I need a new better paid job because it’s like fabric porn in there and the little café is pretty good too with a lovely and very friendly young man behind the counter – their flat white was even, dare I think it, better than the one I get from Shoreditch Grind!

Desperately wanting to take one of their new sewing courses, and yet able to sew from a commercial pattern already so definitely not a beginner and maybe not really an improver, I plumped for the make a blouse improvers course run over three weeks. I reasoned  that I lust after the Ray Stitch look because on the clothes and projects they feature the lines are so clean and simple and they only work because they are beautifully made. I can make more or less anything but I’m not the most careful crafter on the block so I thought that this lesson would get me back on neatness track.

I’d gone in to the shop the week before and bought some beautiful Anna Maria Horner fabric from her Little Folks range so that I could pre-wash it (shown below at the cutting stage) and now I was ready for my class.

Cutting out the Anna Maria Horner fabric

The lessons take place in the basement, a lovely space – though I found it not big enough for cutting out the paper pattern and the fabric, set up for six students one of whom turned out to be Mrs Ray!!…hehe. We were offered wine and there were nibbles including some delicious bruschetta topped with a sweet red onion relish and a generous couple of slices of meltingly soft goats cheese and smoked salmon and cream cheese.

We all introduced ourselves and got on with measuring ourselves, deciding which version of the blouse we wanted to make, cutting out the paper pattern, one of the cult Colette patterns, and cutting out the fabric. That’s as far as I got because there wasn’t quite enough space for us all to cut out at the same time and I’ve realised that I tend to think because I’m the biggest person in the room, usually, I need to try and make sure I take up as little room as possible so I preferred to let the slip of a woman sitting opposite me and the one to my side (both of whom seemed really pleasant) have first dibs at the space. In other words I didn’t finish everything we were meant to by the end of the night so I’ve got homework!!…Serves me right for being all – I do know how to sew you know.

 

I’m really looking forward to the next class and I promise I won’t leave my homework until the very last moment.

Lovely new flower stall

We’ve got a lovely new flower stall on Saturdays at Archway Market and when I was last on the market, it’s my turn again this Saturday, the stall holder gave me some beautiful Amaryllis at the end of the day because she said they were too open and she couldn’t sell them.

White Amaryllis - dining table cheer

One week on and they’re still going strong and brightening up my dining table.

Fruit picking and jam making in Deal

Hmmmm, this post was meant to come after this one – nevermind.

Whilst in Deal recently we went fruit picking and whilst we initially thought there were slim pickings we did manage to get enough redcurrants to make a few jars of redcurrant jelly and enough raspberries to make a good number of jars of raspberry jam with extra left over just for eating.

Weighing the raspberries

We also got gooseberries but those were destined for the freezer. I cannot tell a lie though, when I talk about we here in terms of the jelly and jam making I really mean my mother and father-in-law. I didn’t do all that much to help, washed jars;

Jam jars drying on a rack

poked fruit around a bit, added my twopence worth when we had a problem with the sugar  – you get the idea.

Here’s the sugar warming on the hob!

The wrong way to warm sugar perhaps

And here’s the resultant caramelised sugar – YUM

Burnt sugar sweets

Redcurrant juice dripping through cheesecloth

Redcurrant jelly drop by drop

Raspberries all ready to be boiled down

Raspberries in a pan

Filling the jars

Ladling the jam into jars

Summer in a jar

Raspberry jam ready to be given to friends

 

A couple of strange sightings

Whilst at the beach on our weekend trip to Deal we spotted a trio of people walking on water

Walking on water

Ok, so you can see in this picture that they are on boards and they have paddles but when we first sited them we couldn’t and it was very strange indeed.

The other strange sighting? Having a quick drink at a canal side drinkerie for a colleague’s leaving do Dr M and I decided to take a wander up a pathway along the canal running beyond a closed gate. I thought this rather daring of us as I suspected the closed gate meant no entry (ok I admit we asked permission before we set off) in any case it was very tranquil and green. There was a disused pedalo hauled onto its side propped against a wall and then this…

Canal side loo

I guess if you’re a barge or narrow boat dweller this won’t be an unfamiliar site to you? But I’m not one and to happen upon a proper flushing toilet on the banks of the canal – this was it, there weren’t any doors or walls for privacy, and the hole is rather high up so I can’t really imagine you’re meant to sit on it waving to passersby as you do your business – was a cause of much mirth to Dr M and me.

A ripe and juicy plum

I’m just rather pleased with this photo. I am trying really really hard to be better about presentation. The plums were a gift from one of my customers at sosusie yarns market stall.

A sweet treat from Claudia

Well well well. Busy times

I’ve been up to loads of fun things in the past couple of weeks, a couple of which I shall touch on here:

I have been to a meeting at our local knitting group pub, The Stapleton Arms, about starting up a new Women’s Institute group in our area. This excites me so much as I tried to join an almost local one about a year and a half ago. I went along to a taster meeting, they were just doing a social night and were going bowling, and I was all fired up to join when they informed me they were disbanding. Disappointed but not so much as to set up my own group I went on my merry way casting dreams of WI aside. And then, a few weeks ago there started to be rumblings about setting one up in Stroud Green spearheaded by the lovely MissAnnie and my jam making fantasies (not really fantasies – see my next post) were reawoken.

I’ve bought some excellent crafty/lifestyley/cookery books recently most notably Supper Club by Kerstin Rodgers and this little beauty -

Crafting the old-skool way.

Both were bought from the very charming and rather excellent The Book Barge which, I have to say, wasn’t the book barge I thought it was going to be. One of the other stall holders at Archway Market, J who runs the secondhand book stall, has started up a bookshop on a barge but he doesn’t deal in new books and The Book Barge does. Both shops are very interesting, J’s will tour London only and TBB is in the middle of touring England.

Crouch End Barboot Sale and two lovely new jewellery designers

So last Friday found me meeting up with B to check out the Barboot Sale event in Crouch End. Barboot Sale is held on the first Friday of every month, a few shops open up their doors after hours to stall holders and shoppers and some provide drinks and nibbles. Whilst I really enjoyed myself it wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting, I thought there was going to be food and drink aplenty and I’m sure I saw somewhere that there would be live music (A informed me there was live music at The Haberdashery).

A couple of the shops didn’t have much in the way of stalls and it felt more like they were hopping on the Barboot Sale bandwagon. The Haberdashery, kind of the Barboot Sale HQ I think, did it well and had stalls out front, inside and in the back garden – including my friend A and her beautiful kindle cases. Another shop that did it rather well was Little Paris, a shop I adore in any case but try not to go in to that often.

There was quite a bit of beaded jewellery of the type that I could make, ie not particularly inspired, and then there were two designers (sharing a stall in Little Paris) who just had an eye and touch for what they were doing – dear oh deer and Respice Finem. Both designers were absolutely lovely which also helps.

Below are a couple of pictures that absolutely don’t do the jewellery justice, really must work on my presentation – see!!..I just tried cropping the photos and now I look at what I’ve uploaded it’s the pre-cropped photos – doh, so please do check out their links.

Action Against Hunger

Well, since I left my last post boasting about all the photos I was going to put up on here I haven’t even looked at this blog once. As I said on my sosusie yarns blog, I think that it is time to get back on track with my life in general and part of that is getting back to the blogging. So, after updating the ‘work’ blog, I came on here to have a little ramble and found a comment that had been left a few weeks ago re a fundraising project that Action Against Hunger is working on at the moment. Having been involved in a fundraiser for Action Against Hunger I’m quite keen to get involved with this, I’ve not looked into what exactly it entails but I reckon I’ll be doing it anyway – Love Food Give Food. Let me know if you host a dinner too.

Darn it

I was just getting into the swing of uploading photos and updating this blog and my sosusie yarns blog when I had to go to visit my dad who had been taken ill whilst out in Dominica. I’ve been gone for almost a month but happily my sister (who was out with me) and I were able to bring our dad back yesterday so life returns to not quite normal but as close as can be expected. Lots of photos to put up in the next few days.

Absolutely loving this make do mend style blog

Have been following this blog for a while now, in so much as I regularly follow any blogs – KristenMakes – I spent ages catching up with it last night and what struck me was how many things Kristen has knitted for herself. I’m just coming to the end of the first full garment I’ve knitted for myself in ages and I feel inspired to hurry up and make something else now.

Kristen is taking part in something called Me-Made-March which is all about appreciating homemade things and wearing them and I believe that you pledge to wear at least one homemade, from scratch, sewn, knitted, crocheted, upcycled or refashioned, or whatever, piece every day in March. I wouldn’t be able to do it but maybe I’ll work towards that for next year.

There are also links to other making clothes-y blogs that are excellent and, again, that make me want to get on with clothes making.