Lye in, pumpkin, weather runner and the start of Christmas

This morning was the first day that I have actually managed to have a good sleep and not wake up until I wanted to wake up. It's been a really lovely day as well. I have been really really tired recently from working as much as I have been. I have been doing 6 days a week for a long while now. I haven't even had many Saturday's off recently and no Friday's for a while either. I slept until 11 am today so all hopes of possibly going to any rememberance service were out of the window straight away. I woke up to the sound of e church bells. It was a fantastic 6 and a half hours longer than any normal day.

It has been a really lovely day today as well as I have started some of my Christmas crafting. Unfortunately I haven't been able to keep this one a secret but at least the contents will be. Last weekend we went to the Fabric Guild and I got some Christmas-y fabric so that I can start to make some things for Christmas. My plans are to make some cushion covers for the living room, a Christmas tree wall hanger made from triangles sewn together, and firstly I wanted to make a bit more of a special bag this year to make Adam's advent bag in.

I have therefore started to cut out some of the pieces ready for the bag and also to sew some small parts of it today as well.

I have cut my pieces of canvas into 2 squares, one each for the front and back and a long piece to wrap around the edge making the sides and bottom of the bag. It will be a bit like one of the bags for life that you can get once it's done. I am also planning on using patches to make pockets on the outside of the bag. I had to buy some new needles for my machine so that I had ones that would be good enough to sew through the canvas.

Today I started to iron the tops and bottoms of the patches, with a little help I will admit, and to sew the tops of the pockets to make the neat edges that I need. I have done this with contrasting thread so I started to sew the tops of the red patch pockets with grey thread and I plan to sew the grey patches on with red thread.

I chose the thread colour to most match the opposite colour material that I had.

I am not sure yet how I will add the handles or lining to the bag but I will cross that bridge when I get to it!

Now I plan to get all of the pockets ready to go onto the bag and then I will work on how it is all going to sew together as I go along.

I have also recently managed to catch up with my weather runner (I did get a few weeks behind recently) but am now up to date. Here is the progress to the end of October.

October has started to cool down slightly with the average temperatures dropping more into the purple 6-10 degrees category but it has still been really really warm with the average staying in the 11-15s a lot. There is more green in there that I would have expected. This seems to still be the case with the start of November too. Maybe we will get some more wintery temperatures into November. 

I almost forgot! Pumpikin! Please meet Jeff the pumpkin - this year's new addition to the family.

We bought him in Yorkshire a few weeks ago when we went up to Yorkshire for a night's escape so he is fairly well travelled.

During his carving I was at work so he was left to Adam for design and creation. I think he did a pretty good job though. And he definitely persuaded a good number of trick or treaters to visit us. We almost ran out of chocolate again!

For me, Halloween and more than anything, bonfire night, definitely marks the start of the holiday season and of my favourite time of year. I can't wait to finish studying for my exam and have some proper dedicated time for crafting again. Roll on 9 December (but not too quickly as I have a lot of work to do before then!)