Yoshikazu Yamagata and Mafuyu

I can't believe these amazing house sweaters/sculptures comprising the My Town In My Home exhibition... a joint project by Yoshikazu Yamagata and Mafuyu. I am in awe. Thanks to the blogger behind Love Forever for the links!

Mafuyu

I wish I had been born in Japan so the designer of Mafuyu and I could be best friends. FOREVER! I think we could knit a whole new universe together. A plush, yarn-y universe.

summer sewing

A couple of fabrics I'm considering ordering:

Garden Party Red, part of the Wee Play collection from American Jane (designed by Sandy Klop)

Circles Navy, also from the Wee Play collection

Marimekko...

... at H&M! I found the best preview of the collection at FabSugar. It sounds as though pieces will start appearing in stores in April. I already have my heart set on this top.

vanity cozy

Okay, let me be up front: as much as I like to think I'm not a vain person, I definitely have my silly little obsessions and hang-ups. I'm sure at least a few of you out there can relate! One of my biggest pet-peeves is puffy bangs. I HATE puffy bangs... I iron my bangs out every morning. When my bangs are puffy, or frizzy, or even slightly wavy, I feel like I belong in a Madonna video from the 80's. I have nothing against retro flashbacks in general, but hair-wise, I think most of us are happy to leave that particular decade behind.

What I'm working up to is (this is embarassing) if it was up to me, I would have a hair iron on my person 24 hours a day. Unforeseen rain shower? Hair iron to the rescue! Someone hits you in the face with a snowball? No worries: hair iron! So when I recently invested in a brand-spanking new, fast-heating model, I decided to stow my old, much less efficient model in my gym locker. Want to go for a run on a friday evening before a dinner date with friends? No problem! Gym locker hair iron!

The only problem: my gym locker is a plastic lock-up basket, ghetto-university style. So what's a girl to do when she needs to store her still-hot hair iron in a no-doubt melty and likely flammable basket?

Solution: a heat-resistant hair-iron/vanity cozy! (I forgive you fully if you feel the need to stop reading here)

The inner layer of the cozy is made from an inverted oven-mitt from the dollar store: inverted is key, since the heat-resistant fabric (as logic would dictate) is found the outside of the oven mitt. I just cut out two rectangular pieces and sewed them together very roughly by hand, and then covered this inner layer with a tube-like bag made from a fabric scrap. I added a little handle, and then hand stitched the two layers together by hand around the opening, and voila!

So that's one problem solved, although my larger "issues" remain. The cozy fits nicely, my bangs are looking good and my gym building hasn't burned down. Win, win, win!

Anyway, if you've made it this far, thanks for humouring my obsessive side! 

Debi Van Zyl's Maxine

Debi Van Zyl's little creature Maxine just made my day. How can you not love a face like that?

signs of spring

They've bloomed! And within days of each other... it must be love.

The large one is incredibly elegant. You can't tell from the angle of the photo, but the flower sits about 4 inches above the tallest leaf on one of the longest, straightest stems I've ever seen.

The little one is an adorable miniature.  For reminding me that winter can't last forever (even in Montreal), these two have earned a little treat: plant food all around! 

little pouches

I spent part of my Sunday procrastinating by making a couple of little lined pouches!

The fabric for the black one is from Ikea, while the cream one is made from a small scrap from Japan.

I think I'll use the black one to carry makeup to and from the gym. I'm determined to start going in the morning!

The cream one has lots of little pockets for my small knitting supplies, like stitch holders, cable needles, safety pins (which I use as stitch markers) and tapestry needles. Hopefully now I won't constantly be misplacing these things! 

pencil case

I know this may make me a boring homebody, but many of my favourite Saturday nights involve my sewing machine and a glass of wine. My tolerant other typically watches the hockey game concurrently: I've learned not to be bothered by the cheering crowds and the announcer's outbursts, and he's learned to block out the laboured background hum of my machine's aging belt.

Tonight's project: a little pencil case (more whales) with a dark purple zipper and grape cotton lining. The photos don't do the colours justice! I found a fantastic tutorial on the blog Three Bears... finally the geometry of squaring bags makes sense to me! Yay!

IVANAhelsinki

Knits from IVANAhelsinki's fall/winter 2008 collection.

As of this moment, I am dying for a knit onesie! My next project?

Stephen Burks' Patchwork!

Missoni patchwork dog and vases, from Stephen Burks' ReadyMadeProjects.

Maybe I could make a vase like this... I'm thinking glass vase from the dollar store, a little Mod Podge... what do you think? Do-able?

sister's boyfriend's dog's cousin's mitts

Just kidding... mittens for my sister's boyfriend, modeled by my ever-so-tolerant other. I finished them up this past weekend: they were knit sans pattern from Malabrigo worsted in Paris Night. Quelles mitaines internationales!

oma.. i think i love you

Coveting and then coveting some more: the Oma bicycle from Jorg and Olif, for sale at ReForm School...

I'm pretty sure you could ride this bike into space if you tried hard enough. It's so beautiful... if only there weren't mean people out there who steal things. And if only I had lots of money. And finally, if only I lived in a city where hitting cyclists with cars wasn't a sport...

sisterly gift: little bag!

Last weekend I finished a little bag for my sister. The fabric is from my trip to Japan last November: I love how happy and squirty the whales are! They make me want to go swimming.

I'm still at the experimental stage when it comes to zippers, but I'm pretty happy with how the bag turned out. It's a good size for make-up, so hopefully she'll find it handy! Off to the post office I go.

are my plants asexually active?

I can't believe this plant has a flower! I have no idea what kind it is... it was inherited from friends when they moved overseas. I was told it hadn't flowered in years... but what's even more mysterious...

is that our other, tinier but identical plant is also blooming, for the first time since we bought it a year ago! Could our two plants be asexually active? Has there been a little covert cross-pollination going on chez moi?

knitting needle roll

I got in a little sewing time this weekend, and finished up my knitting needle roll! The design is based on several I've seen for sale on Etsy, but with a bit of a twist. 

I decided against having it tie up with ribbons... no need to enhance the girliness of my hobby. Instead, it will be fastened with elastic cord and toggles... but of course I managed to lose one.

So that small detail will have to wait until I have time to get back to the store. Oh well! I'm just happy to have somewhere to store my needles.

Sonia Rykiel's bunnies

Sonia Rykiel - Fall Collection 2008 (photos from Style.com) 

See the bunnies? I love these sweaters!