Retail Therapy & Saffron Safari Jacket Progress

Following on from my previous post I did indeed take advantage of the 20% off Spotlight sale to buy a new serger. Clearly they just aren't really in demand here in HK so I had a choice of only 2 models - a Brother and a Janome. In the end I went with the Brother 3034D since my sewing machine is also a Brother and - dare I type this and jinx myself - has been a fantastically reliable machine. It's purchased now so if you have any horror stories or are big Janome fans please don't tell me! After finally making my decision the salesman told me it would have to be ordered and would take a month. I think a wounded noise came out of my mouth because he looked very worried and asked "is it urgent?" Well of course it is - don't these people understand anything!?! However today I got a call and it is being delivered on Monday, so I am pretty happy now.

Spotlight (which is I guess an Aussie version of Hancock's?) hasn't been open here for long and it is really inconvenient to get to, so having trekked out there I also filled up my shopping basket with lots of notions and some fabric sneaked in there too.


Speaking of Aussies, Vicki and her sister Cheryl were visiting Hong Kong last week and we managed to meet up twice, once in my lunchbreak and again last night for a few drinks and a bite to eat. Seriously if anyone is ever shopping over here these are your girls, they know everywhere to go and really make the most of the time - Vicki's blog is well named! It was fabulous meeting up with them, really more like catching up with old friends, so thank you Vicki & Cheryl for taking time out of your holiday to get together with me - see you in Australia soon! Vicki has a photo because I of course forgot my camera. You know what else - they both look so young and I have (optimistically) decided the secret to eternal youth is shopping, sewing and the odd glass of champagne. Consider yourselves all enabled!

Finally I have made some progress with my saffron safari jacket (let's call it SSJ) - this is BWOF 04/2008-107. Interestingly it is designed for petites and based on measurements I did not need to make any adjustments, just cut a 19 (basically a petite 38). This is something Marji suggested a while back when I made a BWOF jersey dress where the neckline originally ended up near my waist, so thank you Marji, I think you are spot on and I may need to make petite adjustments to some patterns in the future. So far the drafting is fabulous and after trying a Patrones even the instructions are pretty good. Of course I have all the fiddly details still to come. Here are some progress shots.