Thankful Friday

With the cooler wintry weather my energy and productivity levels have increased proportionately with the thickness of my jumpers. My mind is finally buzzing with ideas again, and I'm not feeling like I'm wading through such thick mud trying to execute them. Which is not to say that everything is going right (yesterday was particularly frustrating and ultimately fruitless), more that I finally have a little vavavoom back. For the whole of September it felt like everything that I tried to start, suddenly seemed insurmountable and I ended up with a pile of half-finished projects and aborted potential patterns and tutorials (you only saw the things that came to fruition - I could have written twice as many blog posts about the things that didn't).

So anyway, wherever this burst of energy has come from (some of it may have come from a bar of chocolate, but I don't think that can be solely accountable), I'm grateful for it, as well as for a couple of other lovely things that have happened over the last couple of weeks:

~ The beautiful fabric at the top of this post? Delivered by Lizzet of The Fabric Loft, whom I'd officially like to name as a One-Woman-Fabric-Emergency-Service (that's the fifth emergency service, she would be the fourth, but we've had to call upon the AA too many times this year to prioritise fabric over the AA's yellow vans*). Having heard me discussing the merits of a certain fabric on Twitter, she contacted me to say that she was fairly sure she could get hold of the colours I needed by the end of the week. When her supplier delivered the wrong fabric to her on Thursday, instead of writing to me and telling me that unfortunately it wasn't going to happen (which would have been completely understandable and what I would have expected her to do), instead she drove over to her supplier's to collect the right fabric and posted it to me to arrive on Saturday. Lawks. That's impressive service. The beautiful fabric shown at the top of this post is Toy Poodle by Kinkame, a treat that Lizzet included with my order - aren't the colours gorgeous - but that wasn't actually what I ordered. Unfortunately I can't show you what I did order until January, but do go and look in her shop. She has some lovely new things, two bolts of which she ordered in specially for me - thank you so much, Lizzet.

~ I wrote to Cal Patch (yes, my dressmaking hero...or should that be heroine - she whose name is uttered with alarming frequency on this blog) earlier this week with a question...or two...and yet again, she amazes me with how generously she gives up her time and how reassuring and inspiring she is in her approach to dressmaking. I don't think anyone would expect an author to provide full follow-up support to a book that they'd written, because really a book is a stand-alone thing and you tend to buy it on that basis, so it's a unique and lovely thing to find someone who makes themself so accessible and whose advice is always so clear, sound and supportive. Thank you, Cal! 

~ To the person who invented the concept of soup. I think it is my favourite food in the entire world. My appetite for it is limitless and nothing is more cheering to me than seeing my deepest pan loaded to the top with vegetables. I believe that there is no other form in which four people could be capable of happily gobbling up two heads of celery, a kilogram of carrots, 4 parsnips, 3 onions, and a lone swede in one sitting without the accompaniment of carbohydrates. Yes, the photograph only shows part of the vegetable feast and I should alert you to the absence of potatoes. Seeing as they're the only vegetable that even the government doesn't count as a vegetable I've now boycotted them from my soups...I've always had my suspicions about them, but now it seems that we have confirmation at the highest level that they have been merely masquerading as vegetables. That doesn't stop me eating them in their Baked Jacket form...but for soup they've been struck of the invitation list. Logic...it's not something I try to concern myself with...

Wishing you a lovely weekend,

Florence x

* For readers who don't live in England, the AA isn't a mobile branch of Alcoholics Anonymous propelled around by a yellow van, but rather the Automobile Association - those who will come and rescue you from your car when the automatic gearbox goes into a funk...again!).