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!
I also ordered a yard of one of the new She Is Cosmos prints. It should be great for a summer bag, or maybe some cushions... it's a heavier, coarser weave than the Nani Iro fabric.
Garden Party Red, part of the Wee Play collection from American Jane (designed by Sandy Klop)
Circles Navy, also from the Wee Play collection
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!
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!
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.
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 spent my Saturday night finishing off these cushion covers for our living room couch! Both of the fabrics I used are from Ikea.
We have a couple of pictures on our walls with thick black frames, so my intention was to introduce more black into the room to tie things together a bit. What do you think?
