Summer Sew Along and exciting news

So I had hoped to document my Japanese top sewalong with some photos but Little I broke the lens on my camera on saturday night. She gave it a hearty shove and it has refused to come out ever since, just makes a weak creaking noise. So I have to think about whether I can get this mended and where. In the meantime I have drafted the pattern and cut out the pieces. The pattern looks very complicated but once you start drawing it out - it becomes much simpler. I think it looked complicated because of the Japanese annotations. I am sewing it in some

Kaffe Fassett /Rowan shot cotton which is a dull sort of ochre (called "Tobacco"), I think in real ife, it is more yellowy than this image. I found the fabric while visiting my mum last week and found it was £3 cheaper per metre in Exeter than in my local fabric shop!

I have also joined Ali's (who seems to be a very clever person) Summer Essentials Sewalong (do you noticethe new widget?) There is a flickr group for this. I hav eplanned my five items to be:

1. Japanese top

2. Stripey T shirt

3. Brown shift dress from Built by Wendy dress book

4. Green patterned skirt (from stash fabric)

5. Some kind of trousers - I'm torn between wide legged or narrow....but as I have fabric and patterns for nos 1- 4 I am concentrating on them first.

My exciting (if you are a sewer) news is that a new shop has opened at the end of my road (yes about 4 minutes walk from my front door), and guess what? It's a haberdashery shop. It is a very small unit in a run down indoor market but it is a treasure trove and absolutely packed with buttons, trimmings, ribbons, zips etc, etc., and it is cheap and no extra packaging in items, like a zip encased in plastic wrapping. Lots of things are in see-through plastic drawers and you have to rummage through. I loves it. The lady who runs it says she has even more stock in her garage including wool and fabric, but she wants to stay in the very small unit so she won't have to put her prices up (don't you just love that?) She is bringing in the fabric and wool and customers will just have to squeeze in and rummage. There was a small pile of fabric offcuts on saturday but I restrained myself, may have to go back soon. But Sarah, if you are reading this, she has no rubber fringing!