Babysitting, shirts & cardigans

Well the past few days have been interesting to say the least.  My weekend started on Friday with my graduation ceremony followed by a lovely dinner with my darling Mike (thank you).

Here in the UK we have all been enjoying the celebrations for the Queens Diamond Jubilee - the coverage on the TV has been wonderful.  We are making our way back into London tomorrow, so we may see some more when we get there.

Saturday we were back at the cottage for an hour or so before Mike set off for Plymouth to collect his son's belongings from his son's student house and wasn't due back until today.  This gave me the weekend to get on with some sewing projects, in particular knocking off some more of the shirts to reach my quota of 10, and a little trip to Walthamstow market with my twin sister to look for some more fabrics for the shirts - and as usual I found some fabulous fabrics again.

The pink shirt was one of the new fabrics, check out the design near the shirt tails - its a paint brush.  This of course will be hidden when the shirt is tucked into Mike trousers but I thought it was quirky.  As you can see the pink shirt is 5/10.  The blue stripe is 4/10 and was fabric from my stash.  I have used the white contrast on this shirt.  No 6/10 is cut out and will be ready to be sewn during the week.  So I have now sewn half a designer handbag ha ha.

Sunday I volunteered to look after Bentley for my daughter - he is the Great Dane puppy who has grown somewhat since you last saw him.   Now this little story may amuse you.  I was up very late Saturday night sewing and didn't get to bed until around 1:30am.  Sunday morning I was in my PJ's until around 10am, at which point I thought I must go to the supermarket to buy some food to cook dinner when everyone came round.  Just as I was about to walk out the door Lauren turned up with Bentley.  I said I wouldn't be long and drove off. 

I assumed that she would stay in the house with the puppy until I got back, and more so because I didn't take my house keys with me.  When I pulled into the drive, my daughter's car was gone, the dog was in the house and I was LOCKED OUT OF MY OWN HOUSE.  You can imagine the air was rather blue for quite a while.  Bentley was rather confused as to why I wasn't coming into the house too.

Thankfully my older son took a locksmith's course and was able to get me into the house - but I had to sit in the car for nearly an hour before I could get in and I was able to get on with some sewing..................

As you can see here he wanted to join me in my sewing room - there wasn't a lot of room for him, and later in the day, my DGD came round and here are the two of them together - so sweet.  Bentley is 5 months old, so still has a lot of growing to do.  Alana will be 2 in July, so she too still has a lot of growing to do too.

Last but not least, I thought I would make a start on the cardigan from Butterick 5760 using some beautiful ponte knit that I purchased in the market over the weekend.

This photo doesn't show the true colour of the fabric.  It is actually navy and white and I have a quite a few ideas on how I want to wear this cardigan - with a white shift dress, or jeans, with beige shift dress or pants/skirt etc etc - more on that later.

Now the only things I have to do to finish this is cover stitch the hems , and sew my buttonholes, however, for some reason, I always have trouble when setting my Babylock Evolution to cover stitch, so I have given up for the evening and will look at it with fresh eyes in the morning.