Confessions of a sewing machine virgin

I have a sewing machine; I’ve had it for quite a while. I bought it from my good friend Danger Badger (she’s awesome; follow her on Twitter) when she needed money for drugs*. So here’s my confession: I’ve never used it. I’m scared of it.

See, with knitting or crochet it doesn’t matter if you do something wrong. Most mistakes aren’t even noticeable and those that are can generally be rectified; even if you can’t fix something you can just rip back what you’ve done and start again. But sewing involves cutting. And once you’ve cut something you can’t just go back and do it again. I’m also a worried about sewing in a straight line. Really, how do you do that?

I know I should just get an old pillowcase and sit down one evening and practise - cut some fabric, sew some (not-so) straight lines. Which brings me to my other issue with my sewing machine. It involves so much work. With knitting, I just pick up whatever I want to work on, turn on the TV or stereo and curl up on the sofa. Simple. Chuck in a glass of wine (oh, OK, two. All right, the bottle) and you’ve got a perfect evening. With the sewing machine, I need find space for it on the kitchen table, get it out of its cover, plug it in, work out how to get needle and thread in it - it’s all too much. So it just remains in its cover, forlorn and unused.

But this is fast becoming Not Good Enough. I’ve been designing knitted and crocheted iPhone and Kindle covers and I want to line them, maybe making little interior pockets to keep money or cash cards in. I need to learn how to use my sewing machine. And due to the great customer service at Elna I no longer even have the excuse that I can’t find the user manual, because I emailed them and got a PDF version back the very next day.

*to move to Switzerland

It  doesn't look that terrifying does it? But it is. Photo by Idoru Knits.

Crochet project wanted

I’ve been thinking recently that I want to start a new crochet project, something big that I can really get my teeth into. The only crochet I’ve done for a while were the various iPhone covers I designed, but these were just, well, iPhone sized. I want something big. Not just big, though, complicated and lacy too. And made in crochet thread on a tiny hook, preferably in one piece rather than joined motifs. Masochistic much?

Last week I tweeted to this effect, and in a nice example of helpful the crafting community it, one of my followers retweeted me to one of her followers who suggested I search on Ravelry. OK, I probably should have thought of that myself, but I didn’t. Anyway, Ravelry has a great search function. There are more than 300,000 patterns on the site, and you can add all kinds of criteria to narrow your search- craft, if it’s free, if it has a photo, yarn weight and yardage used, among other options.

I selected the relevant filters and a selection of choices appeared. I now have seven new projects queued - all lovely big shawls, tablecloths or bedspreads. I just have to decide which one to tackle first.

This vintage shawl pattern is now in my queue;
I think it would look good in the blue.