Updating my Working Wardrobe

One of the great pleasures of being self-employed / working from home is that you can wear what you like to work. There are no office dress codes to worry about when your office is in your house and you're your own boss!

I'm not a fan of working in my pajamas (apart from when I'm ill or working on a crazy deadline) but I do like to be comfy. Most of my old t-shirts were getting a bit past it so I decided to treat myself to a few new ones from Etsy for wearing "to the office".

Here are a selection of shirts from some of the fab Etsy shops I discovered while going on my t-shirt hunt (I've bought some of them & have my eye on others). Etsy is great but it can definitely take a while to hunt through all those search results to find stuff you like, so I thought I'd share my finds in case any of you guys also fancied some t-shirt shaped additions to your wardrobe (working or otherwise).

Fox t-shirt from Gnome Enterprises:

 Lion t-shirt from New Duds:

Cassette Tapes t-shirt from Crawlspace Studios:

& Rock & Roll Casette Tape t-shirt from Last Earth:

Moth / Butterfly / Dragonfly t-shirt from Friendly Oak:

Moon t-shirt from Blackbird Tees

Owl t-shirt from Zen Threads:

I like a lot of Zen Threads' shirts, especially this ship t-shirt:

And as an English Lit grad I love love love these literary tees... Robert Frost t-shirt from Neena Creates:

& The Importance of Being Earnest t-shirt from Aoristic:

(P.S. If you're a fellow book lover, you might also want to check out Out of Print Clothing who sell t-shirts printed with old book covers. Ah how I wish their Maltese Falcon t-shirt came in women's sizes!)

Lots and Lots of Simple Squares

I've mentioned before how I've been gradually working my way through my stash of "random" balls of yarn leftover from other projects, and knitting blanket squares.

Well, this is all that's left of my yarn stash now!

I've got a crate full of big blanket squares (in two sizes)...

... and a stash of about 150 mini squares:

The next job on my crafty to do list is to sort through all the big blanket squares to see how many extra squares I'm going to need to make them up into proper finished blankets. Then I'll be going yarn shopping to find some extra colours - I'll be planning this shopping trip as carefully as possible to avoid ending up with a big stash of leftover yarn again!

P.S. I continue to be deluged with nasty spam comments in my inbox every day so I'm afraid the anti-spam word verification widget has made a comeback. Sorry, folks.

A Very British Biscuit Tin

Gosh, it's been a while since my last blog post!

Things have been quite quiet here over the past couple of weeks. I've mostly been doing things like slowly catching up with my filing & accounts, and watching a bit too much TV.

I have also been eating far too many biscuits thanks to the purchase of this gorgeous biscuit tin from Marks & Spencer:

It's got a map of London on the top and then each side is illustrated with stuff from each country in the UK.

I did quite like the trio of square Diamond Jubliee -themed biscuit tins M&S were selling, but it was this one which stole my heart. Once all the biscuits have been eaten (which won't be long now, at the rate I'm getting through them) the tin will be put to good use holding in-progress craft projects or sewing supplies, I'm not sure which yet.

Talking of Diamond Jubilee stuff, I also recently treated myself to this "Royal Tea" tea towel designed by Charlotte Farmer (image from the Tate Gallery shop). You know how I love a nice teatowel! 

Have you bought anything as a "souvenir" of the Jubilee?

A Sky Blanket Update (almost halfway!)

I can't believe my sky blanket will be half-finished in just a couple of weeks! How time flies, eh?

I thought you guys might like to see how it's progressing :)

It's a bit hard to tell from the photos, but because I'm using two strands of DK yarn to knit each square the blanket is quite thick & chunky and reminds me a bit of a cosy quilt. Look how big it's getting!

When it's finished the blanket will be just the right size for keeping on the arm of the sofa, or for using on a single bed- it's hanging over the side a bit in the photos but that's just because the bed's pressed up against a wall & I wanted the whole width of the blanket to be visible in the pics.

This is what the back looks like:

I continue to love the random mix of blues and greys that are developing as the blanket grows, although I am slightly depressed to report that I've got to buy more light grey yarn as I've almost run out! Having lived in England all my life you think I'd have expected this, wouldn't you? Haha.

As I've probably mentioned before, the colours are just a snapshot and often not really representative of what "the day's weather" was like - just the other day my sky blanket square was bright blue and white as that's what the sky looked like at midday, but throughout the rest of the day it was grey and cloudy and it rained pretty heavily. It would be completely impossible to pick two colours to accurately represent the whole day's weather, though, and if you tried you'd end up with something like when the BBC's online weather forecast predicts "light rain" for the day but when you click for more details that prediction turns out to be a sort of averaging out of a sunny day with a thunderstorm at the end of it.

There have been a few days when I've been absorbed in work and forgotten to look at exactly midday, but I try to look at the sky as close to 12 as I can and I remember most of the time. It's actually becoming such a force of habit that if I'm still up at midnight I find myself seeing the clock approach 12 and think "I must look at the sky!" even though, you know, it's the middle of the night. I wonder how long it'll be into 2013 before I stop checking to see what "today's colours" are?

Oh and I've realised that I'm not actually going be able to use it while I'm living with my parents, as their cats would trash it pretty quickly! It's a bit of a shame but I think it may have to get put away when it's finished and kept for when I'm living far away from blanket-loving furry creatures with sharp claws (pesky kitties!)