Vacation - almost over

Only a few more days left, but it has been a great vacation so far. DH takes a lot of pics of me (that I don't like !) but he took this one last week at the Toronto Harbourfront and I do like it - It sums up my feelings exactly about this whole time off, can you tell ? :-)


Last week, it was all about family, friends, food, shopping...you know. For the first time we attended a RibFest - OMG it was good (and I decided then and there to not watch my food intake at all and just enjoy myself) !

Many of our outings were to flea markets. I came across 2 Singer buttonholers, both of which I'm sure will fit one or some of my machines - and hopefully they will work. They always seem to have good reviews, I've wanted to try one.



The couple we visit live about a 5 minute walk from the Ravine (a large park space with walking trails and bike paths, right near downtown Toronto). For the first time, I took the pups one morning for a walk there and was surprised to find there was a packed trail for walking parallel to the paved bike path. Just like walking in the woods - and so peaceful at 7am. Look :

My neurotic Pom, turned into quite the adventurer and just loved the walk - he led the way everywhere :-)

Deceiving - this was high enough to walk under without ducking.

The end of that log from the other side.


The shopping/fabric acquisitions...remember the bag ?...


6 knits from Fabricland - 3 are rayon/spandex blends, the other 3 are poly/spandex blends. The 3rd row includes fabric from the Fabric District shopping - top to bottom are, black twill lining for an upcoming project - if it works, you'll see it. If not, well...Next down is a leaf print in (I think) cotton. Both were from King Textiles. Next one is a rayon print from Downtown Fabrics - I loved it but am not sure exactly what I'll do with it. The 2 pieces on the far right are both wool from Sue who so generously parted with some of her stash to both Connie and I. The top one is in 2 pieces and there is enough to make a skirt. The other is not quite enough to make pants, I don't think.


Last year, we went into Archie Fine (& Sons ?) to find that they cut the ends of their rolls into pant lengths and the more you pick the less $ per piece. I wasn't prepare to spend for a bulk purchase then but intended to check it out again this year. The 7 pieces above were all $15/piece - I can't go wrong with that if they make wearable pants. The colorful print is strips of gauzey fabric sewn onto a lightweight cotton backing. Connie, Reethi & I all bought a bit. This is one repeat and I think I'll just gather it to a 2" elastic for a waistband.

Need a bit of help with today's purchase. Any ideas are welcome.

We stopped in our local thrift store and left with a bag of stuff for $15 ! Including the fabric below. The plaid is a fluffy wool that I figured for a skirt but it might be TOO fluffy - I'll see.

All of the other pieces are remnants, 6 are labelled Zegna, and I DO mean remnants ! They are all half-width and range from 32-40" long. Like, say, really big swatches ! There are 11 pieces and the rolled up bundle was only $2.99. I couldn't leave it there, but have NO IDEA what to do with pieces this small ! What do you think ???


Oh, I almost forgot...the boxes I brought home. Well, one was a Featherweight (given to me by the friends we were visiting - GIVEN !) and the other was a Singer 66 RedEye found on Kijiji - it belonged to the seller's grandmother. It had originally been treadled but she was keeping the cabinet - it was gorgeous ! The machine in the middle is one of the 99s we bought last year.

Ladies who Lunch - Part 4

I'm VERY late to this party - since everyone else posted practically the next day !

But, since this will be my whole vacation post, I'll start at the beginning and lead up to the good stuff. As we often do, we spent some of our vacation visiting friends in Toronto. Normally, we have no plans, it's downtime (& shopping LOL) This year, I had one day planned for me, the rest we played by ear.

In my last post, I mentioned, amongst all the SM pics, that we spend some time visiting antique shops, consignment shops and the like. Last year, we carted home two pieces of furniture - this year one new piece came home with us. As an aside, I don't go "just" to buy furniture - if I could find these kinds of deals in Montreal, I'd snap 'em up !

Our house has NO cupboard space - my tiny galley kitchen in our old apartment has more cupboards than this house does. We've been looking for a buffet/sideboard type of cabinet for a long time. The intention was to take off the lunch counter in the pic below and replace it with storage.

An hour after we got home, the counter was off and replaced with this...please, please ignore the mess !



Now the good stuff !

When I knew we were going to Toronto, I emailed Connie and let her know. Connie, who should list mindreading in her list of talents, absolutely recognized the hidden (but not extremely subtle) message in my email - 'please, please come to Toronto and shop with me!'
And so she left her family to take care of business for the day and did just that :-)

Here we are at the start of our morning. I didn't know that Toronto had their own version of New York's Sewing Man sculpture. We've got a very large thimble, with concrete buttons surrounding trees as seating and a measuring tape imprinted into the sidewalk - pretty cool.





There's no point rehashing the trip down Queen Street as Connie has done a wonderfully complete post on the subject here...The down low on fabric shopping in Toronto

And that's not all ! I emailed Reethi and Connie emailed Sue and they met us for a while at lunchtime. We managed to catch up on the past couple of months, eat and get in some bead shopping before they had to get back to work.

Here's the 'Friends' shot - yes, we all have the same pic. We gave our cameras to a gentleman in Downtown Fabrics and he took one for all of us - we probably should have changed positions a little bit LOL !

The haul (from left to right):

16 yards of black poly/cotton broadcloth (I picked this up at a local thrift shop for $5.99) It's sure to come in handy.

Downtown Fabrics...
The wild print is a Nina Ricci cotton
Below that is a blue cotton, for a shirt and a purple and light blue knit for tees.

The steel blue and red fabrics are technical fabrics. The blue (cotton/nylon) from Chu Shing Textiles and the Red from Affordable Textiles.

The only fabric with a plan is the blue cotton/nylon - I've got a skirt that is just a titch too small and I'd like to try to copy it.

The yarns are both sock yarns, the yellow from Romni Wools on Queen Street and the other from Creative Yarns in Scarborough.

And that was my phenomenal vacation this year - I sure hope we can do it again sometime !!!!!

Brain is mush !

You know the embroidered green linen I wanted ?

Well, I went back to pick some up and guess what ??? It's stretch cotton !

It doesn't feel at all like linen, it's definitely stretchy and on top of it all , the bolt was labeled correctly - My brain must turn to mush when I go in a fabric store LOL

I also picked up a lighthweight polyester that should make a nice pair of summer pants and probably a skirt as well.

I got 3 yards of each.

Will post pics once the camera batteries are recharged and I'm going to need advice. Because now it's cotton and not linen, I don't know what to do with it !

No willpower, and so...

I posted not long ago that my local Fabricville is closing. In response to the comments, I must admit this is not my only Fabricville - only the closest to me. I don't lose all my fabric shopping, just the convenience of having one within 3km of my house.

Anyway, I was trying to exert some willpower and avoid the closing sale. I failed (and there's still 2 months to go).

Today, I was at the door with pattern list in hand, about 10 minutes after opening.

4 McCalls patterns @ $2.99 each (no, that wasn't my whole list LOL)

L. to R. - M5591/M5847/M6035/M6076

And, as I've said before, it's darn near impossible to NOT look at the fabric. There were a couple of displays of 3/1 but nothing on them that I HAD to have. Everything else was marked at 50% off.

There is a green (kind of lime green more than grass green) embroidered linen that jumped out at me as well as the cotton pictured below. They were both marked 50% so I just chose one (aha, there was willpower after all LOL !)

When I got to the cutting table, the girl said it was 3/1 - awesome. So, 3 meters of 115cm fabric for $8.99. It will become a skirt, M5591, above.

Now, it IS only 115cm wide and was displayed with the quilting cottons, but I don't know. It is very similar to the cotton sateens elsewhere in the store although they are wider. The feel is about the same and it has a shiny look to it. It really doesn't look or feel like a quilting cotton - but it IS pretty, no ?

I think I need to go see if there is still some of the green linen left.

A happy camper

A few posts ago, Trena posted a beautiful piece of silk she'd picked up along with a few patterns. 2 of the patterns were on my wish list and yesterday I stopped in Fabricville on my way home from work. The Buttericks were 65% off. The other pattern is a Vogue - I'm waiting for the next sale !

So, they did have the B5382 I went in for...

...but who on earth can go in a fabric store and not browse ??? Not me LOL !

I've got my eye on the lace dress in the March Burda and was looking at the 'good stuff' to see what I could find. So, I looked at the silks, the laces, etc...and wandered the store.

At the remnant bin, I saw a piece of blue (kind of teal) that looked remarkably like the silk charmeuse I'd just looked at. It was marked 1.2 m for $4.00 - I grabbed it and went to check if it was actually the same fabric. IT WAS !!! Then I noticed the sale tag on the remnant bin.

Silk charmeuse - regular price $34.99/m
1.2m piece from the bin - $4.00
Sale on remnant bin - 50% off

You do the math... :-)


Now I'm off to dig through my patterns to see what I can make with just 1.2m of 45" wide fabric.

More Collecting...

I had time to kill yesterday. In my world, that means 'Fabricville' . I CAN browse without buying, really I can ! :-)

But not yesterday LOL.

The sale, ending yesterday, was 4-season, 100% wools for $2.99/meter. They were all marked at least $12.99 regular price !

My collection has wools...mostly heavier weights. The 2 pieces I picked up are lighter - suitweight/pantweight.

1st up - 6 meters - black wool - the weave is a tone-on-tone narrow pinstripe. I think you can see it in the picture. Couldn't get an accurate picture, we all know how hard it is to photograph black.


Next up - 5 meters - black pinstripe - this looked navy in the store & I carried it around with me to make sure it wasn't snapped up. It is a Super 120 wool & I've NEVER seen this in Fabricville. If they carry it regularly, they hide it :-). This morning when I took them out to prep them (and to take the requisite pics), I noticed it's actually black - that's ok, it's still a basic.


I think I done good - I 'should' be able to get 5 pairs of pants (worst case, 4 pairs) from what was less than $40 !

NOW - everyone cross their fingers.

A couple of days ago I read this post from Pam of Off the Cuff - Sewing Style. Her preshrinking wool routine consisting of steam drying your yardage with a couple of hot towels on hot heat is about the easiest and shortest method I've seen so far. So, with confidence in all of Pam's experience, both of these pieces were carefully measured and put in the dryer. It buzzed about 2 minutes ago and I have to go lay them out to fully dry. If this works for me, I see a few dryer loads of wool in my upcoming week.

Quick update - they still look and feel the same. They are laying out cooling and in a while I'll remeasure. BTW - I may be in the minority but I LOVE the smell of wool ! :-)

Picture Update

Thanks for the wishes everyone...I feel much better today, it has been a nasty week. Antibiotics are a wonderful thing when they're necessary.

So, I finally got around to taking a set of the promised pics.

Socks - still at the same point as last week, about 2 inches above the heel. Didn't even feel like knitting these past few days. If I had, I'd probably have 'em done by now.



Yarn - this is the brown, Cascade 220 I picked up at Creative Yarns in Toronto. I really need a new sweater at work, I freeze all the time. This yarn came in hanks. When I mentioned having to learn to deal with the hanks, the owner very kindly offered to ball them up for me. Took him about 45 minutes (3 gave him a rough time !) It would have taken me forever. I'd never seen a Swift and Ball Winder in action before...it was pretty cool.




Fabric - Been considering the Wardrobe Contest at PR - have basics, need a print. Went out today, got this - it was not labelled for content (it was on the discount wall). It's poly/spandex, I think. Approx 50% stretch, good recovery. It does NOT wrinkle. Still need a print - LOL !



Furniture - we bought 2 pieces in Toronto.

a china cabinet - we finished our china set and it all now has a home. We just got the last few pieces in July and they never came out of the bag til now, no place to put them.



an armoire for the spare room - my kitchen does not have enough cupboards, I want to use my linen closet as a pantry. New armoire is now home to sheets, table linens, etc. Linen closet is now a pantry.



As you can see, Skippy very graciously stayed still long enough for me to get a pic. My first attempt wasn't good. He wandered through, just as I took the picture, so I put him on a 'down' which he did very nicely, dont'cha think :-) and snapped another one.

I love this piece. The shelves are cedar lined and the mirror on the inside door will be very handy. No pic, but the drawers were lined with some really old stuff. Well, that's gone. I picked up some new liner today, just have to cut out a piece for each of the drawers.



These are old pieces but I'm not sure how old. They're solid wood and really heavy, the armoire especially. Even after taking out the drawers, it was heavy ! DH spent quite some time cleaning these up and we're quite happy with them both.

Mid-Vacation

I was starting to feel a bit disconnected, so decided to do a mid-vacation post.

We're into week 2 of our vacation and we're are still in Toronto. I think we're going to be here til Thursday. It's our longest visit here with our friends and it's been great. I've been on the run since we arrived !

Antique stores, yarn stores, the garment district...yes, I've picked up a few things, pics later.

Saturday we went to the 'Taste of the Danforth" - a food festival on Danforth St and I'd no idea what to expect except LOTS of people. Oh, yes, LOTS of people !!

Projects / Shopping ?

Well, I did finish the blue bamboo socks before we left last Sunday, but I haven't cast off. One is cast off but it is too tight. I need to put those stitches back on the needles (a bigger needle, I think) and cast off again. I'm hoping that that will be enough to loosen the cuff. First thing on the 'to-do' list once we get home.

Next pair of socks - DH bought me Wendy Johnson's book Socks from the Toe Up. Where to start ? Which to choose ? I couldn't choose. The current plan is to start at the beginning and work my way through the book.

I cast on the first pattern 'Dead Simple Lace Socks' in the car on Sunday. Magic Loop, 2 at once, 64 stitch foot, 32 stitch Turkish cast on, 2.5 mm / 40" needle, Regia 4-ply Solid in green.

This pic was taken Sunday. Today I have only a couple rows to go before I increase for the gusset.

Wednesday, the girls gave the guys a break and went to Queen Street West, Toronto's garment district. I was very restrained. What I really wanted were knits and I bought just that. And only 3 pieces :-)

First up - (darn receipt doesn't have the store on it and I forgot to take note, I "think" it was World Sewing Center) - 2 meters, lightweight jersey, not poly, I think it's cotton.

Next purchases @ Affordable Textiles, Inc., 2 pieces

1 meter - poly/spandex

2 meters - bamboo. I petted this one for a while before I bought it, and if they had other colors, I'd have bought more. None left, unfortunately.

Moving on to the yarn - Romni Wools

More restraint, I only bought one ball. It would be really easy to accumulate a yarn 'collection' to go with my fabric collection, but I think one ball (or so) at a time is best.

That's it for this trip, I don't think there are any more purchases coming up. We'll be home in a couple of days and I hope to have 3-4 days in the sewing room before going back to work.

A few more supplies

Of COURSE I bought something while I was in New Brunswick a few weeks ago !

Today after work I decided to wander up to the Garment District on St Hubert Street - I've only been there once, quite a few years ago. The fact that most things were not labeled and not priced really freaked me out and I never went back. I spent the whole afternoon there today and picked up a couple items - no fabric but that was major willpower in effect - I'm so proud of myself !

Here are the goodies:
From NB - Pink twill (a 1m remnant) and the Toefutsies yarn.

Today's finds - buttons to go with the twill, a Clover double tracing wheel, 2-6000m spools of KAVA thread (The name of the store is Kava - don't know the actual origin of the thread)

I've never seen a double tracing wheel, so I grabbed it when I saw it.
The thread is new to me but the lady assured me it was good for both the serger and the sewing machine. If I don't like it, well it's not a great loss, each spool was only $2 ! 6000m !

See the price on the fabric ? $2.24 - and it was 1/2 off that ... $1.12 :-)
The buttons were $.57 total
Are you doing the math ?
This skirt (probably another BWOF-04-2009-101) is going to cost < $1.75 - now that's my kind of shopping LOL !

Michaels Bundle

Here's the 2nd of 3 posts this week. The last one will be tomorrow then I'm out of the picture til at least Sunday. Wednesday is a holiday here in Quebec and I booked off Thursday and Friday in order to fit in a quick trip to New Brunswick.

Ann & Diana - I'll be passing through about suppertime both Wed and Sat ! ;-)

First a Q&A - actually, one question from Faye about my piping foot. I don't have a piping foot (actually I do have one for my serger, but I only thought of it AFTER I'd finished both dresses LOL)

For the Pink dress, I used my Kenmore's regular zipper foot. It's a really square, clunky, metal foot and you can't sew really close to the cord of the piping.

For the Butterfly dress, I used another foot, it has a vertical edge on the right hand side and I just sewed from the right side of the fabric leting the piping ride along the inside of that vertical edge. I think it's my 1/4" foot, but don't quote me. It worked really well.

My singer has one of those plastic, narrow, pointy zipper feet that would probably work well enough, but again I only thought of it after.


Sooooo, I received my Michaels bundle last week. It was shipped on Jun 9 and I received the delivery notice on Jun 16 - ONLY 1 WEEK ! I was expecting at least 2 weeks, shipping to Canada is NOT fast.

Now I need some help/advice. (and all of the problems, questions, mis-expectations are the result of my own inexperience, not Michael's fabrics)

I got a 15yd bundle of the cottons, which includes, cotton, linen, silk and variations of them - how do I tell what is what - is there a way ?

I also, for some unexplainable reason, expected a cotton bundle to be all shirtings. What is it they say about assuming things ?! I have 5 pieces, 3 twill and 2 shirtings. But now I have to figure out what to do with them, I'm sure the twills are too heavy for shirts. I will say, the colors are great. When you order bundles, basics are a safe way to go. There isn't a piece here that I won't use just as soon as I figure out how to handle them.

And how to care for them. Do I bite the bullet and throw them all in the washer ? (This would be where I need the advice)

Every piece has some sheen to it, which makes me think they're not all cotton, but probably/possibly blends. They are all generous cuts, all 3 yards except the brown shirting (4 yards).

Here's what was in the box.



Clockwise from to left - the Twills first
Kind of a medium blue, the twill is pretty fine


Navy blue, herringbone (?) twill, yeh navy blue, really dark, this was the flash from the camera


Cream twill - the weave on this one is larger than the first blue one, and it is quite susceptible to runs, there are 2 pulls in it now, but near the selvage so I can work around them. Will not be able work with this with my rings on !


White shirting


Brown shirting (this one feels fabulous !)

A Woman's Perogative

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend. It was very quiet here at our place...but after a pretty busy week last week, it was just what we wanted.
For me, a bit of everything...cooking, knitting, sewing, shopping.

Cooking - So, what do you think of my Peach Ice Cream?
Not quite the expected 'peachy' color, you say ?

Well, as the title hints...I changed my mind :-)

THIS is Marjie's Apple Pie Ice Cream !

It's very good - I have only one problem with it. The darn stuff tastes like it needs a scoop of Vanilla to go with it. Whoever heard of apple pie 'without' vanilla ice cream ? LOL !!!

Sewing - On the sewing front, this weekend, I didn't actually finish anything, but I 'did' trace and cut out BWOF 2009-04 (#112). I just have to finish rethreading the serger and I can get started. Maybe it won't take too long and there will be a finished pic before Friday.

Knitting - The 2nd sock - I'm now on the last couple of decreases before I do the instep

Shopping - I went back to Fabricville - 'nuff said...MUST. SEW. LOTS. MORE (must also stop going to the fabric store !)