Tweed, glorious tweed

Aren't these delicious? In between the usual sweet stuff of life (Mum, can you build me a cabane? Can I have a snack? Let's do some painting, Mum! Look, I'm a baby dragon in my shell...and so on) I'm snatching moments to sort through my scraps, pull out threads, wool and buttons to start to put together my next project, a commission. It necessitated a trip to my most favourite shop in the entire world, a very old fashioned tweed emporium. It has lovely old windows full of displays of fabric, tweed skirts, jackets and hats - all very traditional, Shetland style jumpers and gloves, wonderful thick knee high socks and various other essentials of Highland paraphernalia. Inside, high wooden shelves are filled with coloured tweeds of all sorts, and big old wooden tables stacked with more rugs, jumpers and shawls. The service is impeccable, and the tweed is measured out with wooden rods before being cut on the long counter with an enormous pair of shears. Of course, everything is horribly expensive, but a little tweed goes a long way, and it is such gorgeous fabric to work with.

So, bring on the dreich weather and the howling wind, I'm all cosied up in the evenings with my radio, sewing machine and lots of wonderful cosy colour. I'll show you when it's all finished.