Saturday 9 January 2010

All right, crisis averted!

Boy, when I get my knickers into a twist, they really do get twisted, don't they?  I must admit to being really pissed off with Vodafone AND Google, for making what appear to be some fairly arbitrary decisions about the way the bundled phone is going to work, because, no matter how good Google, Gmail etc etc are, the fact remains that occasionally, people will want to synch their PCs with their phones.


Anyway, I found something called 'eReader', via the Android Forums, which has been put together by those clever people at Barnes and Noble.  It's great, because it allows you to download the eBooks you might previously have bought at Fictionwise, which is an eBookstore I've used since I had my Palm, way back in the dim distant dark ages.   So, the good news, gentle reader, is that I can stop spending hours of my *free* time looking for drivers, .exe files and hints hidden in the dark corners of the HTC universe, and concentrate on the really important things, like, sewing!


Because MWH also got a new geeky toy for his Big Birthday, I thought I would be nice and make him a case for it.  Well.  Talk about fussy!  Had I but known... (it was really a case of "but I want the caramel on the inside, which some of you may remember).  He wanted a clip, not a nice, easy to use lobster, of which there are plenty in the drawer, but one of those fairly horrible 'push to open' jobbies which I find very hard to use (and which, to be fair, is probably the point, hard to open, hard to get lost, yes, yes, I get it), and he wanted it sewn on *here*, not a millimetre lower, and yes, that's lovely, but could I have some velcro on it too?  So I took it all apart, added the velcro, discarded the original (now too short) lining, ripped, stitched, swore a bit and came up with this:





Anyway, after two weeks of use, His Nibs advises me that he wants to be able to use the silicon condom that came with said geeky toy, and could I make him another one, a bit bigger, and also could it have space to stuff the headphones into as well?  Honest, the man thinks I can work miracles.  Well, he's only partly right, of course.  Sadly, I didn't have any more of the robot fabric, but I did have baby-poo brown dinosaurs, of course I did...





Note it's all one piece, and I did a clever thing with the ribbon this time, stitching it into the top seam when I joined the inner & outer fabrics.  Looks much nicer, and, best of all, the geeky toy, silicon condom and earphones all stuff very nicely into the pouch, which seals up securely with Velcro.


So, I'm thinking, I should make myself a better one, with some o' that magic velcro stuff on the top to stop yon geeky device sliding onto the floor, something that happened quite a lot last week!


So, using some of this absolutely gorgeous french linen from here, I made this, lined with this:




And then I made this for a colleague, who borrowed mine in the week to go out powerwalking, and who raved about it!    Fabric also from Whipstitch Fabrics - gorgeous, isn't it?  Any excuse to spread the love.




I think I need a tutorial on how to make those lovely handles I see on Etsy, which look a lot more sophisticated than my 3" cut & folded - any suggestions?


Now, I'm off to enjoy the eReader on my geeky toy... ciao!

Please!

Can some clever person tell me how to put a spiffy background onto my blog?  I've spent a fruitless morning (well 28 minutes, anyway) listening to next door-but-one's absolute crap music, & trying to read-and-think, think-and-read, and it's all too hard!


Help!





Oh this?  Completely unrelated, but very nice & available from here!