Of Slacks, Scrapbooks and Stingy Crafting

Ok, so the last bit isn't entirely accurate, but I wanted the alliteration.

As you can see, I'm now photo-capable again! My computer is mostly functional again-- still have to reload a couple things like Photoshop, and do some major work on fixing my iTunes library. There's a bunch of random albums where all the tracks got loaded twice (some of them only partially loaded twice), and I'm going to have to reconstruct all of my playlists, so I'm in the process of writing down the track listings from my iPod. Can't sync that till it's done. But anyway, back to the craftiness!

This is the fabric/pattern I'm making my test pants from, which has been sitting in my stash for about two years now.
I also found all of this yumminess in the same bin, which I honestly had forgotten I had, and am itching to make some stuff from it!! Especially that embroidered black.




So these are the pants, which I cut out and basted together last Thursday.

As you can see, I still need to tweak the fit some. (And it doesn't help that this mirror angle makes me look really short and fat!) I'm going to have to take off the yoke and tweak the side seams a bit, I think, but hopefully once I get all those changes made, it'll sew back together really easily! So I'm hoping to have all those changes made and the pattern altered accordingly by the weekend, so I can sew them together as my test run for the pantsuit.

No sewing this past weekend-- was in Baltimore to hang out with friends and watch The Decemberists! I did take my road trip scrapbook down, though, and made a rather major dent on it. I have one tiny bit of stamping left to do, and then it's just print out a couple of things (easier to do now that I have my computer back) and machine stitching, which I can get done in an afternoon. But I have to do the pantsuit first. Still, I should be able to get this done by the end of the year, which is my goal!!

As for the last part...I've come to a decision. Money's going to be really tight for me over the next several months, and so I'm going to see if I can refrain from buying new craft supplies until May (which is when my car should be paid off, and then I can rebuild whatever chunk of my bank account the next couple of months is going to kill.) I will make a few exceptions:

• Small notions like zippers and thread, if I don't have anything on hand that will work.
• Scrapbook adhesive. Can't finish those pages if I run out of sticky stuff! Also, maybe photos, if I run out of printed out stuff to work on (hahahaha!)
• If I need to buy things to make gifts. Such as that fabric I already promised B for her birthday presents. And if I need to make any wedding gifts for S.

But other than that, I'm going to try my darndest to not buy any more fabric. Or paper. Or clothes from the thrift store to refashion. We'll see if I can stick to it.