Happy things

I have some things around me at the moment which are making me so happy. First let me introduce you to my new sewing machine. I really love it - I've been showing it to all my friends and even let one have a play with it. It's a Janome Memory Craft 5900 and it has red buttons. My sewing projects are so much better with this. My old machine was my 18th birthday present and so it is quite old and rickety now. I didn't appreciate how wobbly my sewing was until I started using my new machine. One of the reasons I find it so brilliant is that I earned the money to pay for it with magazine articles and Fimo workshops and demonstrations.

I bought the machine at the big Sewing for Pleasure show at the NEC in March and I got a great deal which included this foot. It's a quarter inch seam foot and I've been using it this week. Love it! Here it is...

I had a birthday a little while ago and my lovely family had a look at my Amazon wishlist and treated me to these three books. The books are Stitch Alchemy by Kelli Perkins, Creative Pilgrimage by Jenny Doh and Unfurling by Misty Mawn. Now to find the time to work through all the great ideas.

One of my birthday presents (a beautiful ceramic bowl from Anthropologie) came wrapped in this honeycombed brown paper. I don't know what I was more excited about, the paper or the bowl. Imagine the texture I can get in a piece of artwork with this on it.

I haven't been able to make much for the past couple of weeks, but it's for a happy reason. My craft space (in our spare room) is stacked with furniture, toys and even a bike as our downstairs' floors now look like this - yay!