Visitors and a Martinborough mini-break

January is a sad-glad month for me. Usually, over the Christmas and New Years period, a bunch of friends come home to visit home (their parents and families) and I get in on the action. It's great to see them again but enjoying them so much makes me realise how dreadfully I miss them for the rest of the year! 

This summer brought a bumper crop of visitors - including the family I mentioned in the last post - Bex, her partner Sebastien and their son Julian. It was super great having them stay with us, and it's really nice to be able to play host to people without having to worry about flatmate etiquette. Julian is a year old and he was a star, definitely the kind of baby that makes you think "oh... it wouldn't be so bad...", even though he was a bit crotchetty from all the travel.

The family left on Thursday, and Shannon and I went across to Martinborough with a group of friends for the weekend, getting back at about midday today (Sunday). We stayed in a super lovely house in the middle of a vineyard, ate a great deal, and spent the evenings drinking and staring at the stars. Everyone else saw approximately one billion million shooting stars and I saw none, and I took no photographs whatsoever of the entire weekend which I'm sure makes me the world's worst blogger.

On Saturday day the associated menfolk took themselves to a golf course and spent the entire day ruining a good walk; we the ladyfolk drank coffee, lunched at a vineyard, went to a PRETTY FREAKING AWESOME VINTAGE STORE, swam in the river and came home via the ice-cream shop. While in Martinborough we looked at all the giftish shops which were full of things that were very nice, but not quite nice enough to buy (sometimes I am scared at the quantities of (designer) dross in the world).The sun was lovely and the wind infinitely ignorable so I feel that we definitely won on the weather front.

I went totes nuts in the vintage shop which had a veritable plethora of knitting and sewing supplies, including quite a lot of vintage trim, buttons and the like. There was no fabric or patterns about which made me feel simultaneously full of sadness and deeply, deeply relieved. My stash also thanks me - while it's nowhere near as extensive as it could be, I am hoping to be increasingly stash-less and try and buy for patterns as I go. I am so frustrated with having not quite enough fabric to make any one thing at any time.* 

My haul!: I bought a bunch of transfers and trims from the vintage shop:

I'm planning to use the bigger transfers (they're a bit smaller than A4 sized) on baby blankets etc. The transfers in the book are intended for embroidery and are 1940s/50s I think - I LOVE them. I think it would be awesome to embroider them on a super simple t-shirt - something like the Sewaholic Renfrew or the Grainline Scout Woven Tee (which I've actually just ordered). The trim is quite hard to see in this picture - I bought about a metre of navy/white/red rick-rack, and some kind of bizarro Oroton-mesh style metallic ribbon which is edged in white crochet. I think this would look great inserted into the shoulder seams of a simple raglan sleeved top.

With all these plans, I am rather itching to get started - I am sitting in my sewing room right now, but it's still missing most of my crafty bits as I'm expecting my favourite family to come through again on their way back up the country. Having emptied the room, I've had a chance to think about how I'd like to set it out.... I know that things aren't ideal right now, but I think for optimum awesome room-ness I will have to buy some additional furniture. I like the idea of having cubby holes for my fabric and yarn stashes, and perhaps i would be able to store my sewing machines on my desk if I gave up my second computer screen which I'm not really using at all. I'll have to have a think and maybe a perve at some other people's sewing rooms for inspiration.

I'm trying to soothe my sewing desires by knitting myself a top: this one, from Purl Soho. I tell you though, when you're on a sewing kick, knitting just isn't the same. Going to stop drooling at patterns and dreaming about what to sew next, and sit myself down to some knitting for half an hour or so.

*Vintage fabrics are, of course, totally exempt from this rule, due to my lack of self-control in this department.**

**the moment I wrote this I found fabric to buy on Trade Me [help me I have a problem].