lack of blog activity doesn’t represent lack of stitching - far from it, but most of the things i’m working on at the moment are swap or xmas related so i don’t want to post until after they’ve been received. so to make up for lack of project pix thought i’d post some recent acquisitions instead.

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handmade glass brooch by lionel nichols. i’ve been drooling over the button sets for ages, but never found good reason to justify them. this was modest enough to treat myself to just because.

sock yarn! i’m tackling a hat on dpns in preparation. this (the yarn and the time to knit them) will be my xmas present to myself.

mexican oilcloth!! from vivalafrida. i stumbled across a mexican site selling these fabrics and fell in love immediately. googling to find the site again much to my surprise turned up a uk importer, resistance was useless :D. we might be in danger of heading into theme restaurant territory in our dining room if i can’t get a firmer grip on my inclinations though…

no pix but my other recent exciting parcel was a sackload of leather offcuts from this ebayer enough to keep us in slippers for life, and a mix of colours too. it’s mostly fairly thin which suits me just right as i don’t want to lose the softness and suppleness you get from the felt and i wouldn’t expect them to be super hardwearing. i’ll be making some more as soon as i can as my first (prototype not failure!) pair have utterly disintegrated :( this was down to stopping fulling sooner than i wanted because the hairy fibres were meshing through the lining, which itself was a result of not using thick enough layers in the first place. for version 0.2 i’ll try roughly double the amount of fibre, and a finer wool for the outer so the meshing should be less problematic. (nikki-shell, if you’re reading, you’ll be glad to hear i’ll be making a second protoype before i do yours!).