Simply Stitchy

    Hi all, I haven't done much knitting for years. I think my last completed project was a floppy Brim hat back in 2010. It was a bit of a flop if I remember correctly... Nice shade of lavender though! Anyway, I joined the local Fibre Arts group back in April which has rekindled my interest in both knitting and crochet.  One thing that has surprised me is how much you can forget about both skills. So much of this year has been taken up relearning how to do both. It would appear that they are perishable skills. In my eagerness to knit and crochet as much as possible, I've been surfing the internet for patterns. Nice easy patterns to ease me gently back into the world of all things yarn related.  One of the first things I made was a Snoopy head. It was supposed to be a whole Snoopy... but I used the wrong size crochet hook. Say 'hi' to Franken-snoop!      I thought he came out kinda cute so I entered him in the local fair. He didn't win anything but he...

  It’s that time of year when we can shake off our winter blues and look forward to a summer full of sunshine and warm weather. Particularly the warmth! It may be April, but my part of the world is still desperately trying to shake off winter’s grip. It’s freezing right now! As I don’t want to spend much time outside in the cold, I decided to spring clean my sewing area. Having spent the winter months working on three different quilt tops … actually, I think it might have been four… the area is looking a little bit lived in.   Not only that, but the local thrift store is closing down. Never one to turn down a bargain, I have spent the last few weeks topping up on sewing supplies. A couple of hem markers, a little bit of fabric, some different fabric, and just to be safe, more fabric. There are sewing machines and piles of fabric everywhere. I’m feeling in need of some re-organization! I already have some filing cabinets but, they are all full to bursting. ...

 Hi all I've always been a fan of charity shops. Even before they became a fashionable way to reuse or  repurpose other people's unwanted clutter.  To me, they have always been a gateway for feeding my addiction to vintage and antique sewing machines.  Like this one.  Isn't she a beauty? According to the markings, She is a New Home machine made in West Germany so I'm guessing she's a post war... maybe 1950s... electric sewing machine.    She has a bolt-on motor and the shortest electric cable I have ever seen on a sewing machine! Look at it! It's tiny! That's never going to reach any of my electrical outlets. I'm thinking that this vintage sewing machine was made to be in a cabinet... or a previous owner cut the cable for some reason.  Maybe their outlets were mounted on a desk and they didn't want long cables cluttering the workspace?  Who knows? One thing I do know, is this sewing machine is going to give me a little bit of a headache!...

 Hi all I've been running this Simply Stitchy blog on Blogger for quite a while now. Along with its sister site, Simply Thimbles, I've been using this platform since 2010, or thereabouts. That's 14 years! Simply Thimbles Image property of Olwen White Although I have been happily tapping away and posting the odd blog post here and there, and trust me, most of them are definitely on the odd side , the Blogger platform isn't exactly... idiot proof.  Not for this idiot anyway.  I'm the first to admit my passion lies with vintage sewing machines not computer coding technologies. Singer 128 Vibrating Shuttle Image Property of Olwen White   You can even give me a top of the range modern sewing machine with bells, whistles, and flashy lights... like the Janome Continental M17 (please Janome, if you're reading... give me one of those... or the M7... I'd be happy with the M7... pretty please?) and I'm in my element.  Make me figure out the intricacies of compos...