A Glimpse...

Work is still running me at record hours -- which of course is great, except that I'm not managing to keep up with that and anything else. It seems like everything else, from hanging out with friends to looking at houses to keeping up with housework, has been falling aside. I've got a friend in town for the holidays - and I've only managed to sneak off to see her twice for only a couple hours.

Every time I have a chance to reflect on my day - or week, or month - I want to make changes toward having a more balanced life. You know, time for work, time for housework, time for social things, time for hobbies. It sounds great. But unrealistic right now.

Since I can flip on my sewing machine any hour I'm free - unlike my poor friends who do not want to hear an invitation to meet for tea at 11 pm on any given night - I've been doing a little sewing. Nothing big, nothing from plans, just playing around and seeing what happens.

This are my two attempts at a case for my work tablet. Attempt number two is just a little bigger than I'd hoped - but attempt number one wound up less than half-an-inch too small (a sad error when putting it together), so I went a little bigger on attempt two. Still, I am looking forward to using it in the next week. Since I'm free to carry whatever kind of purse I want over the holidays (instead of the cross body I need for work days), I'm looking at my few options, all of which have open tops. Without the security of a closed top purse, I felt like I needed a little more protection on my most important work tool.

I really prefer the contrast zipper on attempt number one - which also looks a little better in terms of zipper installation - but it is just a little too small. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find some way of using it.

Can you tell I've got storage and travels on my mind? I'm not a good traveler, but having lots of cute little bags in my luggage might help. (Yes, that picture is incredibly blurry. If I were a good blogger, I would probably retake it. But right now I'm not feeling up to the effort.)

I don't know what it is about traveling, but the moment I hear I'm going on a trip, I start wanting a new purse. I would guess that probably means I have a tendency to settle for 'good enough' on purses, and later it turns out it wasn't 'good enough' after all... But, looking through my stash - even smaller now that I've sent more than half my supply off to charity - I still didn't find anything I really wanted to take.

Long story short, I am not one of those people who is comfortable mixing dark neutrals - like navy with black or brown with black. I see it happen for other people and think it's okay, but I haven't been able to embrace it yet. So, trying to pick a black or brown purse to go with both navy and black outfits... well... it was a losing battle. Since black and brown are about all I have left, I just wasn't feeling it.

Several days worth of plotting and a few hours of sewing and I have something like this:

Not quite finished yet

A quilted and lined purse with one big exterior pocket. I've added an over the shoulder strap that can clip on or off, and I'm hoping to eventually make a longer cross body option - but not this week. This is my first time working with any kind of hardware, and still working without a pattern. I'm sure there were better ways to do almost everything I did, but so far I'm liking it. I'm really looking forward to taking it on a test drive tomorrow.

Since I didn't add any interior pockets to my lining, I wanted to use the scraps I had leftover to make a coordinating little zipper bag that I could put my mobile in as protection.

Front (Whoops! I see I missed clipping a piece of thread)

Back

Again, I was just making it up as I went along - but I think it turned out well. I did have a coordinating turquoise zipper (that was supposed to go on the purse) but I so loved the contrast zipper on the tablet bag I made that when I saw I had one more of that color left (and in a size better suited to cell phone carriers than anything else), I went with it. I am not disappointed.

Looking at them together, I'm fairly pleased with how they turned out - especially for having absolutely no real pattern or tutorial to follow. I think that they are going to perform fairly well for me - but I am glad to have some time before my trip to test drive them before I take off.

If pops of fun fabric are going to help me through this trip, I think I am about as set as I'm going to get.

I've just got to hand over the key to the house sitter - make it through tomorrow - and it's vacation here we come!