Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Project 41: Flying Clothes

Lingoman and I are headed out on our longest vacation yet this coming Sunday. Three weeks in England and Scotland and we're both very excited. It will also be the greatest number of consecutive days together in more than thirteen years.

We were invited to go with the Victoria Gaelic Choir to compete in the Royal National Mòd in Inverness, Scotland. They needed more fluent speakers and more male voices, and with us they got two of each for the price of just one hotel room.

We decided early on to make a big trip out of it since our last Scottish trip was only nine days and it felt like a waste of money to cross the damn Atlantic only to turn around and come back right away. We're spending three nights in London first, then heading up to my cousins' in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire with a side trip to my Mom's hometown of Cleethorpes to see my last living aunt. Then it's up to Glasgow for the weekend before the final push to reach Inverness. Six days there at the biggest Gaelic festival in the world is going to be spectacular. Inverness is where the Mòd was held in 1997 when I won the harp competition. When that's all done, we think we'll be heading out the Isle of Skye for a few days at our friend Alec's self-catering croft house.

Anyway, what does that have to do with clothes? I decided I wanted some nicer-than-t-shirts but still easy to travel with clothing for the trip. I picked up some polycotton interlock at Fabricana last weekend and made these colour-blocked raglan sleeve shirts in a single evening. The one with the black body and grey sleeves is the most successful v-neck so-far. The contrast stitching on the hems was a last minute experiment. Not quite sure I like it yet.

There are two more shirts on the cutting table so with any luck I'll get them done in plenty of time.