in soviet russia, fabric sews you

I've been a bit slack with knitting since UK Ravelry Day, for many reasons. Partly heat-induced torpor, which makes a good face-down sprawl on the lawn look incredibly appealing. *Picks ants out of eyebrows*. I've also been down the allotment a lot when I can muster up the energy. (Anyone in the Manchester area want any raspberries?! you have to pick them yourself though :) )

The rest of my spare time, I have mostly been very slowly working on this. My First Evah Sewing Pattern! I finally plucked up the courage to go to my local fabric store, flick through the pattern booklets and pick something. It purports to be Very Easy, so we'll see. It's a sort of dungarees / romper suit type thing for a baby. I'm not used to this topsy turvy world of sewing, where the pattern costs 3 quid and the fabric is only 2.50. So the small bit of tissue papery stuff is more expensive than the big bit of corduroy? I come from Knitting Land where most patterns are free and the raw materials are sometimes pricey, so this fabric shop is a bit like looking glass world to me - I half expected the Red Queen to take my money. So far I haven't found anything too unintelligible in the pattern, but I haven't got very far as it took me ages to cut everything out. As the pattern has lots of different sizes, I felt that it might be nice to reuse it when the wee man has grown a bit, so I decided to be a masochist and not actually cut the pattern pieces. Instead I laboriously traced the pattern, cut out templates, and eventually just gave up and drew roughly on the fabric with chalk where the lines were supposed to be. I can't see this being a particularly accurate garment but it's a learning experience I guess. Hey, I have already learned that for the sake of saving three quid, it would have been an awful lot easier just to cut the damn thing! Oh well. At least I can progress on to the hopefully slightly more fun bit where I actually sew stuff together now... although, the sun has come out now, and there is a comfy looking patch of grass over there...