Friday, October 23, 2015

A Cushion For Corbie

No, I haven’t gotten swept up with the fall leaves! They are lovely to kick around though. Such amazing colours! This is my favourite season of all and I’m enjoying it thoroughly. Especially after our Canadian election in which we collectively Heaved Steve. Yay! Ten years was ten too many under that man. Hopefully we can get back on track as the positive, innovative, tolerant and eco-conscious country we used to be. We’ll be watching you, Justin. Please don’t disappoint. But I digress.

So what has your damselfly been up to? First of all, I’m definitely not posting this from my new iPad. There are issues with the blogging apps and IOS 9 so I’m holding off for awhile. It’s taking a bit of a learning curve but some things are getting easier on the iPad and some things are downright fun! For instance I love Feedly for my blog reading. So quick with quite an elegant interface. Reading my library books on Adobe Digital Editions is so much easier too with such clear text on the Retina display. The camera is pretty good though I was sad that neither Hipstamatic nor Instagram are available and it’s a little awkward to use such a large device to take photos. At least it’s a mini and not a full-sized iPad. Here’s the little item I just finished sewing today, picture taken with Corbie, the iPad Mini 4:

This little item is Corbie’s new Pyramid Pillow. (Yes, I name my devices. Doesn’t everyone?) The pattern was available in the July issue of Threads magazine and I had made a note of it even before I actually had an iPad to put on it. My version is 2” smaller in all dimensions than the original however mainly because I used a bunch of 9” upholstery samples circa 1995 that I found lurking in the stash. I think they were from somebody else’s stash originally and wandered over to mine! It’s just the right size for a Mini though:

This photo was taken with Thom’s new iPhone. (Yes, of course we were playing with our new toys!) The pockets on both sides hold my earphones and Ruby, my old iTouch, which I still use for listening to podcasts while knitting, spinning or gardening. The iPad is a bit oversized for my pocket. Besides making this cushion smaller than the pattern states, I added a heavy cardboard base and a rather hefty rock inside the stuffing for stability. It’s perfect to sit on a table or on my lap while I read. No slipping about. All materials were from stash so besides that issue of Threads it cost me nothing but my time. Now I wish I could have my living room chairs reupholstered in that fabric. Too bad it’s 20 years out of date. It’s perfect.

I’ve also spent some time in the studio sorting out patterns and fabrics for yet another Sewing Marathon. I have at least 20 garments that I want to sew! Goodness. That should keep me busy for awhile. And I tested out my new printer (an HP Envy 5530 if you’re curious) while I went way back as far as July and wrote up all my makes for my analog notebook. I was too busy before we went on holiday and I’m still behind in blogging all the knits I made while we were driving all over the countryside. Coming soon. Really.

Then there was the gardening (got most of the veggie garden weeded, planted in fall rye and ready for winter) and the walking (gotta keep up the exercise. You know how it is. Time just disappears in a blur.

While I’m at it, I want to apologise for deleting the Flickr widget from my blog’s sidebar. It wasn’t working properly because Flickr changed something in their coding. Corbie can happily post to Flickr but they don’t show up on the widget. And you can’t click on the photos because all you get is a File Not Found error. Bleh. Bye-bye. I haven’t found a substitute either. Sorry about that.

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