Onwards and Upwards

On Friday I officially finished my contract at work, and will be embarking on an exciting journey doing creative things to make a living.  This is going to require a lot of motivation! As a farewell to my colleagues, I made them Nutella cupcakes which we munched on with our coffee’s throughout the day.

Nutella Cupcakes
Nutella Cupcakes

I received this orchid and card (plus a bottle of rum which is now less than half full) as a leaving gift.  It was sad saying goodbye, they are a lovely team, however I am more than excited about what happens next! I will still be writing the blog for Cosy Tea (which I admit has not been updated for a few weeks) however this will be fortnightly now, and it won’t depend on how busy we are in the office as to whether I manage to post or not.

Leaving Card and Orchid

As a celebration of changes, my boyfriend bought me this lovely book from Magma Books in London.

Magma Sketchbook -Fashion

Upon first glance it just looks like another sketchbook, but when you look closely, there are faint guides inside of people, for me to sketch my designs on to.

Magma Fashion Sketchbook

This is particularly useful to me, as I am useless at drawing the human form, thus disabling myself slightly when it comes to designing garments.  I can see in my head what I’m aiming for, but it often gets lost and merges with other ideas.

It was only the second time I opened the book that I realised what was hidden in the back:

Magma Fashion SketchbookA handy guide for taking measuments for men and women, several pages of spec sheets to dedicate to specific customers, care labelling in European, American and Japanese, body measurements (I am always referring to bookmarks online for this) and then some info about fabrics and colours and how to tie various ties, knots and sarongs.

Magma Fashion Sketchbook

Needless to say this book is going to be travelling around with me a fair deal, and I think I owe someone some brownie points! 🙂

Join the Tea Cosy Craze!

As some of you are aware, I also regularly write for a blog for Cosy Tea. Once a week I feature free knitting patterns for tea cosies which I have found online or patterns that are sent to me.

'Button Up Your Cup' - Simply Notable

Since I started writing for Cosy Tea back in October, I have gathered quite a few free knitting patterns for Tea cosies and mug cosies. The pattern page is starting to pack out a bit now and is looking good, so I thought I’d share a few here and direct you over there to take a look!

Garden Party Tea Cosy - Loani Prior

You can find links to these gorgeous knitting patterns, and stacks more free ones over at Cosy Tea’s Blog. Don’t forget to check out the tea too!

Grannies Traditional Teacosy - Keren Smith

Thank you to Loani Prior, Keren Smith and Simply Notable for use of photos 🙂