It’s been an incredibly busy past few months, which you may have noticed from the lack of blog posts. That’s not to say that ideas for the next post haven’t been there, floating around, in the back of my mind. There was a trip to Thailand in April, followed by a trip to Tunisia in September. Each one of these trips were incredible, and I am planning to pay tribute to them properly with individual posts in the near future.
Work as a whole has felt busier as well this year, and in between work I signed up for a public speaking class to help me prepare for a conference where I will be presenting this week. I, like many, have a tendency to become very nervous when speaking in front of a large audience. With the public speaking class, I had to prepare a short speech to present every single week! Although it was certainly worth it, in that it helped me to be less nervous when speaking, writing a speech every single week took time. A lot of time.
In between all of this, I did find time to knit! My two main projects were finishing the Colorful Wedges baby blanket, and starting the Ondawa sweater pattern by Michele Wang (a selfish knitting Christmas present to me … if I can finish it in time! 😉 ).
On the sewing end of the spectrum, since completing my Cielo top, I haven’t started any new projects. My motivation to start new things often comes from the sewing world of Instagram, and the latest hashtag that has caught my eye is known as #sewfrosting.
What is frosting, you might ask? To understand frosting, you must also understand cake. First coined by the Sewaholic Blog in 2012 and later popularized by Closet Case Patterns and True Bias with the start of the #sewfrosting Instagram challenge in 2018, my take on the definitions are as follows:
Cake: Practical wardrobe staples. Handmade items that you can wear every day. (i.e. neutral colours, minimal prints).
Frosting: Less practical, might worn less often, but with unique elements that add to the joy of sewing (i.e. party dresses, bold colours and prints, lots of frills).
Both have their merits.
Of course, each of us have unique and individual styles, so it should go without saying that one person’s frosting could be another’s cake, and vice versa.
I desperately want to join in on the #sewfrosting challenge this year, and ended up splurging on the Breaking the Pattern sewing book by Named Clothing for even more sewing inspiration. Although I’ve got some beautiful ‘frosting’ patterns in mind, my fabric selection may need an upgrade, as they definitely fit more into the ‘cake’ category.
While searching for more sewing inspiration under the #sewfrosting hashtag, I also ended up discovering an entirely new indie pattern brand and sewing blog that I’ve fallen in love with: Just Patterns has a selection of only five sewing patterns, but each one of them are timeless, and could be easily sewn with either a ‘cake’ or ‘frosting’ end goal in mind.
That wraps up my thoughts on this lovely rainy Sunday morning. I’d love to hear about your knitting and sewing goals for this season, or anything you might have on your mind. Please leave a comment with your thoughts below!