For the last few weeks I have been reading, with interest, various sewing blog hops where people answer a varying range of questions about their sewing/blogging/inspiration etc. It was therefore incredibly surprising, that this fledgling blogger (with only eleven posts to her name and an even fewer number of followers) was nominated.  So huge thanks to Rachel from Is it fitting for thinking that I might have something of interest to say –  Here goes . . . . . Why do I write? I have always liked writing. I like the permanence of the written word – particularly from a social and historical contextual point of view. I find writings from women of the past fascinating.  I have been both a diary keeper and a letter writer – I guess that I am just moving with the times, albeit a little after everyone else, and now blogging.  Years ago Virginia Woolf wrote about the importance of A Room of One’s Own – the desire is just as important today and it is with great interest and pleasure I have read about various bloggers’ sewing spaces and how precious they are to them.

My first Sorbetto

What am I working on at the moment? I am still in the September return to school flurry and have not completed any projects this month but I have started loads!  I tend to sew at weekends and knit during the week which is more manageable on my commute.  I have started knitting a patchwork blanket designed by Martin Storey as a knit-along for Rowan.  On the sewing table is a dress from Love at First Stitch (cut out and ready to sew), a yoke top from Learn to Sew with Lauren (cut out from the most gorgeous silk I bought in China this summer) and I am determined to make Fehrtrade’s VNA top for the Chichester Half Marathon which I am running on October 12th.

Chinese silk

How does your blog differ from other blogs? It’s obvious isn’t it?  I’m new, don’t really know what I am doing, can’t easily add buttons, icons, etc.  take rubbish photos (or rather my willing students take them) and haven’t really established my own style yet.  I am working on that and hopefully by the time I celebrate my first blogiversary I will look back fondly (and with some embarrassment) at these early, juvenile posts.

Bluebell woods on a run

How does my writing process work? I am a runner.  Whilst I am out I go through all sorts of things in my head: letters of complaint; job applications; blog posts.  I can assure you that somewhere on the South Downs are crafted the most amazing, original and entertaining blogposts.  Bizarrely, by the time I have got home, showered, done a million and one other things, all the little gems have vanished and what remains is what you can read here.

Post race ice cream

Nominations No pressure at all if not your sort of thing but I would like to nominate Lazy Daisy Jones  whose blog I discovered with this post on Day Three of OWOP and saw immediately that I would  love her style – her description of herself as a “mid-century …..mama who will forever be a girl at heart”  had me cheering “Me too!”   My other nominee is Sew South London who has been a kind and generous supporter of my blog and sewing efforts. Toodle pip Clarinda x

A brief foray into kidswear enabled me to use this wonderfully nostalgic fabric called Making Paper Planes