



But anyway, the time has finally come for the animals to be packed into their bags and for me to turn off my sewing machine and computer (the latter thrills me more than the former...I did wonder about taking it with me) for a week. I am feeling so in need of a break, for despite the fact that I feel head-spinningly in love with what I spend my time doing, I am now utterly shattered. The last two weeks I have been operating on the extended working hours of going to bed at 2am and rising to sew again at 6am, so that I could write my bag pattern and get all my custom orders made up and posted off before our holiday. Not because I have any impatient customers, but because it makes me feel anxious not to have everything done and all the loose ends tied up properly, in the same way that it would to leave the house untidy when we go away.

Additionally, to those that have already bought a copy, you may remember that I said in my accompanying email to the PDF that extra photos were available for nearly every stage should you struggle with any part of bag construction - you are really welcome to email me, should you need to, and I will get back to you as speedily as I possibly can at some point after the 3rd August.
Wishing you all a sunshiny, happy week,
Florence x
P.S. And whooopeeee! As I've been spell-checking this blog post I have just received my first email from someone with with her very own handmade, brand new Tabitha Bag who says that she is delighted with her bag and really liked the pattern - I can't tell you quite how happy this makes me! The newbie pattern writer in me has had to exercise massive amounts of self-restraint not to take to the sofa and leap up and down doing my best impression of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's chaise declaring his love for Katie Holmes. Down on the carpet once again, the other thing that I will pass on is that this particular lovely bag-maker said that compared to other bag patterns she has followed, she found the order that I chose to do things in unexpected, but went with the flow anyway, and by the end completely 'got' why it made sense to do them like that for this bag. As someone who's never followed a bag pattern herself, I've never been aware that my order might differ to convention, but to those that do notice this, I hope that you will bear with it, as it seems to work out well in the end.