Dubrovnik

Work is fun, especially if you can go to beautiful places like Dubrovnik in Croatia, a.k.a. King's Landing! I was invited to speak at a conference on sustainable urban mobility and it just happened to be in an amazing hotel by the beach - not that I have anything against that kind of work.

In spite of the full programme I managed to have a walk around the Old Town of Dubrovnik, a Unesco World Heritage Site and now famous as the filming location for Game of Thrones' King's Landing. Unfortuantely I didn't see any filming going on but the new season is coming out soon and I can't wait. When I was strolling through the beautiful cobbled streets I could perfectly imagine Cersei's "Walk of Shame" scene - although the city is definitely nicer and less sinister than in the series.

Being in Dubrovnik, which is in the very South of Croatia and close to the border with Bosnia & Herzegovina as well as Montenegro, I remembered our great trip to Montenegro in 2015 and what I loved about this region. Sunshine, beautiful coastline, good infrastructure, pretty towns, tasty food (yum, burek!), and on top of that very cheap. Well, Croatia is actually not that cheap and Dubrovnik in the summer must be awful because of all the cruise ships coming in, but in the shoulder season it was perfect.

I returned home with a renewed love for the Western Balkans and this was definitely not the last trip in that region.

PS: I'm still working on the "Delft" cardigan I started last year. The issue with the shortage of dark blue yarn is not solved yet and even my Plan B (unraveling the sleeves I already knit and re-knitting them in a contrasting colour pattern to save yarn) doesn't give me enough leftover yarn to finish the bodice. The project is resting once again until I manage to get hold of more yarn.

More Sorbettos

My go-to pattern when I feel like sewing something simple - and I'm getting quite good at it now after Sorbetto nr. 4! It's the second time I'm trying the pattern hack to add sleeves and I shortened them some more; I also took out the pleat in the front in the polka-dot version to vary a little bit. I was also thinking about adding a collar of some sorts but decided against it to keep it simple.

In a slightly ridiculous side note, I also finally figured out how to properly use bias tape. Yes, that's right, I've been sewing for 5+ years and for some reason never bothered to properly read the instructions on the bias tape... But now that I know how it works I like it even more.

The flowery print fabric is from Nepal and some kind of synthetic mix, maybe with some cotton, but most probably viscose. It's very light weight and I like the way it drapes. I wish I knew where I could get it here in Europe, they had an amazing variety of prints in the shops but I couldn't buy too much because of the limited size of my backpack. Any hints as to where to buy/order nepalese fabric are very welcome.

The other fabric with the golden polka dots is from Nani Iro's  "Pocho" collection. I was very excited to finally use it since  my friend brought it specially from Japan and I really like the texture of the double-gauze. Originally I had planend to keep it for something "special" but then again it's probably better to use it with a pattern that I know well to make fewer mistakes. And the result is definitely presentable and I hope I'll be using it as much as my previous Sorbettos.