Dana Air Flight 9J 992. For the lost and unknown

Today marks the end of the 3 day mourning period declared by the Federal Government of Nigeria for the 153 souls lost on board Dana Air flight 992 on Sunday, the 3rd of June, 2012. Sunday afternoon at 4pm, death fell from the sky, taking all 153 souls with it.

Earlier that weekend, on Friday afternoon, a cargo plane from Lagos, Nigeria had crashed in Ghana, killing 10.

And on Sunday morning, a church was bombed in Northern Nigeria.
They called it Black Sunday on Twitter.

We, as a nation and a people, lost our loved ones, our children, mothers, wives, brothers and fathers.

Our hearts were broken.
Our weeping will stop one day, I know, but in the meantime...we mourn.

The fallen.
The innocents.
The Children.
And in our hearts, we honour them.

May their souls rest in perfect peace.

Any Day Cardigan (Red heart free pattern)

I've been a bit busy with my first garment.

Not my design, i found it here, and took a shine to it.

In my usual way, I just can't leave it alone however...the largest size in the pattern sheet was too tight on me, so I added some increases and modified the neckline to please my non-existent eye for style (it's a going-to-the-movies sweater anyway, so it's going to be worn in the dark mostly...who cares?),

and this is what I finally ended up with, after about a week of fussing over each and every stitch and frogging and defrogging and generally driving myself crazy...

May I present...my first garment made...well, almost; I still have the crocheted buttons to finish!

My sincerest apologies. I told it to keep still to have its photo taken, but apparently it's even more bashful around a camera than I am, because as soon as I got the light just right, the stupid thing turned around in a pout!

Please hop over to my Ravelry page to see it in it's full glory (or lack thereof, hehehe!).

Now, to finish off this cardigan, I decided to do a loop chain sort of button closure. I mean I simply made a loop of chain stitches from the buttonhole side and sc'd into the next stitch (by the way, buttonholes belong on the right for women, left for men), and sewed on the button on the other side of the cardigan. I couldn't find any nice buttons that I liked, so I crocheted some.

I had gotten shiny blue buttons, but they're so lovely, I want to string them together with something and make a necklace. So I decided to cover my boring black plastic buttons (which I'd bought to make a button coaster like this), and I think the crocheted version (next to the shiny blue plastic ones) is much nicer!

So basically I crocheted two circles, inserted an actual plastic button in between and single crocheted them together , like a button sandwich with yarn as the bread and the button as the filling, you see?

On the far right there is a tiny pouch I made on the spur of the moment. I'd just finished measuring for my buttonholes when my tape measure unrolled itself and ran under the dustiest, darkest corner under the bed.

I cursed, swore and scolded it, but it wouldn't come out.

What to do?

Of course I had to crawl under there and fetch the stupid thing! Daft tape, never knowing when to stop playing around at hide and seek! Just look at it up there, insinuating itself into my photograph! Attention whore!

Of course I had to come up with a workable solution for us both, so I made this tiny pouch for it to rest in. Now when I measure, I only bring out what I need and immediately fold it back into it's little home.

Happy tape measure, happy me!

Peace and blessings!

Making up can be hard to do...

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but slow connections and a crazy busy schedule meant I didn't actually get to a terminal until evening, and I was too tired to think up anything to say by then.

Over the weekend, in a moment of nearly Zen-like peace and stillness, I asked myself why I am so afraid of the diagonal box stitch. I've tried tutorials from this site, and even this one, but they both stumped me, mainly I think, because I didn't have access to YouTube videos, and because I just have a short attention span.

But for some reason, on this day of all days, I decided to sit down and conquer this stitch. Its actually quite simple (don't they all say that?), but comes out looking super fancy and hard to do.

So I did a test swatch, and that made me feel so happy that I decided to tackle the shell stitch, my second greatest foe. Back to Google, and 2 hours later...

The diagonal box stitch/crazy stitch.

The shell stitch.

And then I had to reapply lip balm, so I dug out my makeup bag...and realised I hadn't cleaned it, or washed it in over...well, for a long time!

So, the obvious answer was to sew the swatches together and make me a new makeup bag!

So, 2 hours later ( I hate installing zippers, and I sewed the whole thing by hand), I had this little lovely...here it is sitting next to the old makeup bag.

I bet the blue, beaten up fellow on the right is saying,

"Show off!", and the new pouch is going,

"Oh, don't hate on my abundant fabulousity, please!"

While I sat there, patiently stitching, it occurred to me that my life used to be much simpler, but it seems that as I've gotten older, I'm required to use more products to make my face even semi-presentable in the mornings. So, I put down the pouch and went off to have a private moment with my makeup...I had some silly thoughts about minimising (I have this creed that goes "if you're using more than 5 makeup items on your face every day, you need to minimise and de-fuss your routine"). Here's the state of things...

L - R: Hand mirror, 2 brown eyebrow pencils, lip balm, 2 shades of red lipstick and 1 nude lipstick, liquid eyeliner, eyeshadow, cuticle remover, 2 combs for nappy hair emergencies ;), and above: small bottle of vanilla body spray and 2 hairpins for those hair emergencies!

Wow...that's um, a lot, right?

I looked at this pile for about 5 minutes before my brain shut down again, and I had to go back to my stitching. I can declutter some other day!

I found some old mud cloth to use to line the new pouch, ( a big thank you to my Senegalese family for helping with this step!)

That mud cloth lining is really lovely. It's a woodcut looking scene of half naked villagers cavorting around a pot bellied iron pot on an open fire...maybe they're cavorting because they're cooking giant African snails?

Though why grown-ass men should be cavorting around an open flame in just their loincloths is beyond me...isn't that begging for trouble?

Anyway, before I wander off on one of my legendary and annoying tangents, here is what else I got up to when I finished the pouch...

I made a cell phone sleeve in our national colours; green, white and green. Just because I could.

And that's all about that!

Peace and blessings.

P.S.  It has just been brought to my attention that I tend to ramble on these blog posts and that I find it difficult to keep to the point. Who brought it to my attention? My good friend and repeat visitor; who occasionally edits my work...my writing work I mean. So I asked him if he didn't think it would be boring if I stayed on point, and he said a nasty unprintable thing. So I asked if he was having PMS or something, and he said something even more florid...which I found so delightful (I am always delighted by how easily I can tick him off) that I teased him for another 10minutes before he realised that I was deliberately trying to rile him up...oh, dear Jesus! I've gone off on a tangent again, haven't I?