Sorbetto tops and why stay stitching is probably a good idea

I have been sewing and using up stash.

Peacock feathers are a bad omen and mean DEATH. I don't mind. I like bad omens

I’m making Sorbetto tops (this is a free pattern from Colette and a very nice one, thank you Colette). Because of my aforementioned exciting IT issues, I could not print the pattern out but had to have it done at the print shop next to work by the man who works there who has a patient face. His patient face did not shift even when I made him measure the test square particularly carefully, ‘because it is a dressmaking pattern and if it is not 10cm square NONE OF THIS WILL WORK!!!’. Anyway, it was worth me and the patient man going through all that, because, although the Sorbetto top looks boxy and a bit frumpy when you have made it, when it is on, it is actually very nice, and an extremely useful shape. I wear mine with my green skinny jeans from Top Shop. I cannot believe skinny jeans are still in fashion but that was literally all they had in Top Shop, although I am a bit disappointed not to have realised that when I wore them with with my funky red flat boots I would look like an elf. Not a funky fashion-forward elf. The kind of elf who would be hanging around the back of Santa’s toymaking conveyor belt, smoking and making dismissive gestures behind the back of that Patron Saint Of Christmas.

I am not happy with the binding on the grey sorbetto top – the neckline doesn’t quite hang right. I think this might be because when they tell you to stay stitch, actually they mean it. But never mind! I have more fabric,

There is a deer on this fabric somewhere as well. The irony, it burns

And I think I might make another sorbetto top. I bought this fabric cheap cheap (because one of the advantages of the sorbetto top is that it only takes a metre, + any old crappy bits you can scare up for the binding) from Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road, in the sale. The man on the counter was having a bad day so I helped him cut it (‘follow the stripes!’). This fabric is knowingly ironic. If you say that first off, that makes it ok to make and wear a top with butterflies and kittens on it when you are 37. Knowingly ironic, remember that. Gosh. I am almost a hipster.

(Also, I have mastered a new spin in pole dancing. I can do three now. I can do step around, fireman + various exciting fireman variations, and cartwheel. The girls on TOWIE were doing it, and I would like to point out that I am better than they were. I am not even just better than Gemma, who seemed to be wearing trousers and a big jumper and not trying at all. Do you know what this means? It means anyone can learn to do anything, at any age, despite any natural disadvantages. So if anyone is reading this and has leanings towards origami or revolutionising nuclear fission or something, don’t let anything stop you. If I can learn to pole dance, you can certainly revolutionise the physics establishment).