Retail and Fabric Therapy...

First up, the retail therapy.

Saturday I decided to venture to that little travelled place called 'outside' and made my way to Mahone Bay with birthday money in hand. I'm glad I picked a day that was warm and sunny, although I anticipated that my little lone excursion would be way more fun that it actually was. Turns out that I am just way too pregnant for anything to be tonnes of fun at this point. I couldn't stand for long, I certainly couldn't get down to some of the yarn and oh my stars (to borrow an expression) was I warm :) Have a Yarn is warm on the best of days. Throw in nine months of pregnant, a winter coat and sun streaming in the windows and you have a nuclear meltdown on your hands. I had hoped to avoid wearing my coat in, but I couldn't park quite close enough for that.

Anyhow, I managed to do a fair amount of damage anyway. Behold...(ignoring the mess in the background)



I now have a swift. I've been wanting one forever and yet when I finally did purchase it, I thought it kind of silly since my yarn buying may be slowing down considerably in the next little while. Meh...ah well. It's purdy. That is some Fleece Artist mill end, sock weight I think. It didn't have a tag. It was on sale. Whee.



What would a yarn shopping trip be without more Tanis? This time in the Spearmint colourway. Well on my way to having the whole collection. And so nice to be able to cake it up and use it right away now.

Which is where the fabric therapy came in today.

I was reading Chicken Betty's blog yesterday and she was playing with fabric that was just so pretty and fresh and, well, springy. Made me realize that when wanting for spring and cooped up (no pun intended I swear) cuz of the cold, a little infusion of colour can be a wonderful thing. So off to the fabric stash I went. Well, to be honest, I had visited it a little prior to my yarn shopping trip and here's why...



It may be kind of hard to make out, but the greeny-blue yarn matches the greeny-blue fabric bang on. That came out of the stash. The yellow fabric I picked up on the way home from yarn shopping (sheesh, almost forgot about that). The purpose? Pinta needs dresses. We're hoping to make a trip home to Ontario in the oppressive (a word I do not use for dramatic effect in the least) heat and humidity of late summer where central air reigns supreme. Solution for small babies? Light cotton sun suits with lightweight little sweaters, that's what I think.



Ta-da :) (I have to use smileys instead of exclamation points...while I've discovered another avenue for a 1, there has not been a similar solution for the exclamation point on my broken laptop keyboard...arg). Having a fabric stash is a good thing. Didn't quite have enough for the bloomers so I used a co-ordinating fabric for those, as well as the ruffle on the back of the top.



See? Too freakin' cute. And easy. I made a couple of these for my niece way back when she was a wee babe (all of two years ago) and heard that they went over well in the humidity of Florida on vacation, which, honestly, is comparable to my hometown in August. I get the biggest kick out of pattern sizing too. That is the 'newborn' size there and it looks to me like it would fit a six month old or older. So I think I'm good. I plan to start the little sweater tonight sometime (no, not taking my own 'stop knitting' advice...I'm too fidgety without the knitting, sore hands be damned) and hopefully get the yellow dress sewn up tomorrow. I petered out around mid afternoon and lay down for a nap, thinking I'd only been out an hour or so, only to wake and discover three hours had disappeared (and that my husband had the same idea and conked out on the couch downstairs...with the dog. My no couch rule undermined yet again).

I feel much refreshed after my little fabric therapy. I'll likely be rummaging through the stash again to see what else I can come up with. Until later...