Amy Butler dress material problem

I bought a pattern for an Amy Butler dress about a year ago but have been finding it tricky to find a material to make it from.  We have a couple of material shops near by and I go in and see many things I like, but when I try to imagine them as a whole dress, rather than just a small flash of pattern I can’t do it.  Which is a shame because I think the dress pattern is really nice.

It reminds me of one of the Sweet Valley High books I read as a kid. (I preferred the Hardy Boys, but I guess the library must have been out that day) In the story the twins Elizabeth and Jessica are in a magical world where they can make whatever they want just by imagining.  This meant that Jessica who loved clothes had lovely soft beautiful things, while Elizabeth who was more practical was left with more cardboard cut out clothing.  I don’t remember much else about the story, just the knowledge that my clothing would be more like Elizabeth’s if I was ever in this situation.  I might not be imagining clothes out of nothing, but I think I’m in a similar situation.  I guess I will just have to keep looking.

Bread Making

After all the work I’ve put in to the last OU course I’ve been enjoying some time off.  I’ve had my car MOT, had the fridge break down and found a replacement, and caught up on my adult fiction, particularly Stephen Kings, Under the Dome, which I had been saving.  (definitely worth the wait!)

I’ve been finding it hard to get started on the creating again, so to kick start myself I thought I’d start with something fairly simple, bread making.

Making bread shouldn’t really be that hard should it?  All it is is flour, yeast and water.  But for my first attempt I think I used too much water and it was much much more sticky than I think it should have been.  But that didn’t stop me and I still stuck it in the oven even though it wasn’t a perfectly formed loaf but a big sticky mess. 

However, although what came out of the oven didn’t look much like a loaf of bread, it tasted like one and added to a bowl of homemade carrot soup (made from last years home grown carrots) it made the perfect lunch for a cold, wet and miserable Sunday.  Hopefully practice really does make perfect and the next one will be more traditionally shaped.