toy | little home by hand

I can finally share this now, because this gift was delivered to its one-day-old recipient yesterday!
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My best friend ~~is very pregnant with her first baby right now~~ had her first baby early this week and I wanted to sew her a gift for her baby girl. Since we met at our local horseriding stable and still go riding there every week (well, she’s been on foot for the last few months obviously) what better gift than a toy horse!

Since seeing Casey’s adorable vintage plush elephant I’ve been scouring Etsy for similar patterns and came across this little horse. I love the fabric choice on the cover so even though I had lots of different fabrics to choose from I went with something almost identical in the end!

I’ve never made something quite this tiny before but it came together surprisingly easily. The construction is very well thought out and I loved all the little handstitching and finishing details.

The little guy is seriously the cutest thing I’ve ever made.

Having discovered serious photography only a couple of years ago I really only know digital. I did have a much-used analog point and shoot since age 14 though and have always loved shooting black and white film.
I knew my dad had some analog SLRs somewhere and on my begging got them out for me. So here’s my newest toy:

It’s the Olympus OM-2N, an analog SLR from the late 1970’s and I am in love with it. Now don’t be fooled by its relatively small size and vintage look…this baby was the height of technology in its day and is still a serious and professional camera. But oooh, isn’t it cute, too?
And the even better news: there’s more where that came from! My dad not only has two more models of the OM-series but also a set of lenses in every size imaginable, most of them prime lenses! He was planning to be a professional photographer in his youth (guess it kind of runs in the family).
I chose the OM-2N because it comes with aperture priority as opposed to only full manual, which I thought would be easier as I am still figuring out the various knobs and manual focus. For starters I also took along a 50mm 1.4 and a 180mm 2.8 lens (sigh).
I shot the first test roll of film today and will be taking it to be developed tomorrow (provided I figure out how to rewind the film and get it out of the camera first). If the photos turn out anything close to how awesome it felt to shoot them I predict this Olympus and I are going to be very fast friends!

It’s funny how automated you become when you shoot a lot…the first couple of photos I found myself quickly looking at the black back of the camera and wondering immediately after why I was doing so. Then I understood I was looking for the (nonexistent) preview picture to see if I’d gotten it right first try.
I will be shooting mainly black and white film I think and I am so excited to get to know film in general and this camera in particular better. That said, I am still loving the digital world…I googled the camera just for fun and the first thing that came up was the complete manual as a free pdf – thank you internet!