Tuesday 29 June 2010

And then there were none!

Gone, all gone to the Post Office, and off to Taiwan, thank the Absent Ghods.  They did look nice, all bundled up in their bags, and although I spilt a bit of  lavender on the lounge last night whilst stuffing, it will vacuum up nicely, I'm sure. If I could remember where the vacuum cleaner was.



And so, there's all 60 of them, plus two spares.  I must say by the time I got through stuffing and stitching last night I was very glad to be finished, and I did make an impromptu sale at the Post Office this morning, very amusingly, to one of the Post Office staff who thought she could get a bag of ten for $7.00... anyway, I corrected that misapprehension pretty quickly, and she still wanted to buy some... 


It's been frelling cold today, only about 16C, and I feel like we've really hit winter.  I like winter, I get to wear all my favourite clothes at once.  Beautiful red leather gloves from here are keeping my hands warm, and I've got my best Bonds singlet on... tomorrow I have to go back out to the AEON* to do performance reviews for the six lucky souls who reported to me in my old job, and now I'm watching Stephen Fry and his gaggle of babblers discussing mad cows.  They should talk.


Bed, now.  Flannelette jammies.  Woo!

Saturday 26 June 2010

So many vodkas, so little lime

Well, actually, it was more like one Gin & Tonic on Wednesday night when Mr Golightly & I took his lovely mother out for dinner for her birthday.  


There were also bubbles, which I had for lunch on Friday - the first long lunch I've had for a while, closely followed by a trip out of the office to get a new battery in my watch, and then, at 4.00pm, just as the buzz from the bubbles was wearing off, I went home.  Hah.  I was in bed by 8.10pm, and asleep by about 8.30pm.  Bliss.


In the intervening time, I've forgotten quite a few things that have happened - the very lovely Felicity from All Toile and No Reward sent me a fabulous Australiana Tea Towel as a souvenir of her sojourn in Kununurra,  [isn't sojourn a funny word - I must look up the origins in my Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, which is a fascinating book, so good in fact that I'm torn between keeping it beside my bed to read at night, and taking it to the office to bore my colleagues rigid.  Guess I'll leave it at home.] which has fabulous pictures of the Red Northwest... and my lovely mother-in-law bought me one back from her sojourn to Townsville - it's got pictures of those well-known North Queensland native flowers, Garlic and Lavender, and a few more I can't remember without getting up out of my chair in front of the fire... all too hard.


I've made my lovely MIL a couple of things for the family Birthday lunch tomorrow:




Lightly padded coathangers, two with lace, one without.  Only because I didn't have enough lace for all three - and three little birdies filled with the tail end of my lavender.  The new delivery is waiting for me at the post-office, which, frustratingly, I can't get to until Monday night, so I can't finish stuffing the last 20 lavender bags.  I really wanted to be able to post those today (we are lucky enough to have an Post Office open on Saturday mornings just 20 minutes down the road) for my customer, but I guess Tuesday will do just as well.   


How long do you think it's going to take Australia Post to realise that not everybody can get to the Post Office between 9.00am and 5.00pm Monday-Friday, and make all Post Offices open on Saturdays?  They will let you pick up M-F after 6.00am, but that doesn't suit everybody either - I know, how about staggered hours?  Six days a week, 7.00am to 7.00pm?  God, what a revelation that would be.  And a revolution...


And this, to celebrate us being locked out of our house on the night of our return from the West:




"Over East" had so much rain whilst we were away that our new(ish) screen door swelled up, and we couldn't get the damn thing open.  Mr G had (of course) shut the garage door before we could get the screen door open, so we couldn't get back to the car to drive to WMIL's* house to get the spare back door key.  We have a spare key hidden in a Very Secret Pebble in the garden, but of course, it's for the front door.  


Anyway, we rang WMIL* & she very kindly drove over to our house (lucky it's only 15 minutes each way) with her spare key, which turned out to be... for the front door.  She also very kindly sat around and waited for the $150 emergency locksmith to come so we could be warm and dry.  So... I figured the least I could do would be to make her a fabulous keyring to go with the complete set of housekeys we're giving her.


And what else?


I made a froggie today, named "Julia", of course, but forgot to take a photo of her.  What a dope.  Hopefully the lucky recipient, Doc Rosie, will be kind enough to take one for me... 


And now, I'm going to bed.  It's 9.59pm and I've been up since 6.50am.  Flannelette jammies, ah, luxury.  Ciao!

Sunday 20 June 2010

Dark chocolate Kit Kat

mmmmmm.


Just what I needed after the second set of 20 lavender bags - luckily my customer says she loves them, which is great... so now I'm abandoning Bob Hope in Paris Holiday (no great loss, trust me), to go back into the Small But Perfectly Formed Room & make the last 20.


So... progress..










Back to the machine!

Saturday 19 June 2010

Twenty down...



Forty to go.  I couldn't get any more Momo Wonderland, it's like Hens Teeth, despite the valiant efforts of Miss Scurvy at the Craft show on Friday - but anyway, my lovely customer has kindly agreed to let me use up the last bits that I had, and I'm making pairs of complementary colours, which makes it easy:




I'm a bit sad that this is the last of the Wonderland fabric, it was very pretty - I understand why manufacturers stop making stuff, I really do, but why does it have to be stuff I like?  Why is it nice stuff, when you can still buy hideous crap like this?


Caleb Gray Eerie Spiders Pumpkin (1/2 Yard)


and I'm very disappointed to say that I absolutely hate this stuff from Erin McMorris!

Erin McMorris Weekends Lilyrose Butter (1/2 Yard)
 
Erin McMorris Weekends Lilyrose Lime (1/2 Yard)

what was she thinking?

Oh well.. I'm going to re-read Lois McMaster Bujold's "Komarr" tonight, Mr Golightly is in his PJ's already & listening to the football on his beanbag - his beloved Manly Warringah Sea Eagles are playing just now, here's hoping they win this week.  I couldn't stand another loss, the renting of garments, tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth and wailing is all a bit hard to bear... 

Ciao!


Wednesday 16 June 2010

Twenty!

Sets of lavender bags!  Twenty!  There's three to a set.  You can do the maths.  (Don't get me started on sport vs sports and math vs maths... I don't understand why people on that side of the pond have sports & math, and we have sport & maths.  I won't get it.  I also don't get why Channel Nine, which I watch so rarely that the sight of it being tuned in on the TV at home is like the sighting of a rare, endangered white rhino in full flight on the African velt, has gone from "Sport" to "Sports".  Where do they think they are, Florida?)


Anyway, I think I'm going back to "you can do the sums".  No controversy there... and so... my Etsy customer wants to know if I can make her 20 sets of lavender bags, what price I can do them for & how much postage to Taiwan will be.  Well!  


There's good news and bad news in this, because, firstly, she wants Wonderland, by MoMo, but only the butterfly fabric, and the twiggy fabric, which are both out of print as far as I know... lucky for me my lovely friend Miss Scurvy is going to the Craft Show at Darling Harbour tomorrow & is going to look some out for me... and I'm obviously going to have to pop back into Cottage Quiltworks to see if they've got any - see, this is why I buy fabric & hoard it, because you never know when you're going to need it.




The good news is that if she buys all 20 sets, I can still make a profit by doing them for $7.00 a set, plus I get nice exposure to the Taiwanese market.  All good, I think.


And on the new day-job front, so far it's been quiet, friendly, enjoyable.  I'm sure it's going to turn into 'busy, friendly, enjoyable' very soon, but for now, leaving at 5.30pm is a treat, especially when there's a 8.45am start in there.  I feel like I've had a holiday!


But now, off to bed!








Monday 14 June 2010

Busman's holiday

Blogspot seems to have made it a lot easier for non-nerdy* types like me to make changes to the appearance of their blogs, so I did.  I'm using this as an excuse to give Rusty a bit of time off, and to give Miss Petronella a bit of an outing.  I'm not entirely sure about the colour scheme, but I do love Miss Petronella.  She's a big show-off, so it's nice for her to be able to strut her funky plastic-and-lavender filled stuff occasionally:


I have to say that this is one of my all-time favourite fabrics, and I would never part with Miss Petronella simply because she's too gorgeous.

I bought some great fabric when I was in Perth, very simple cotton, but vibrant and colourful, and super cheap.  I love the designer fabrics (surprise!) but when you find something good for $7.99/m, you just have to go for it.  Also, my friend AJ sent me a link to eQuilter.com, which really fired up my post-holiday fabric buying gland.  You know the one, it sits dormant for a while and then goes 'wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, must have fabric'.  

I popped into here, where the lovely ladies are always happy to see you, and picked up some fabulous stuff - and a nice book, too:

 Scandinavian Needlecraft: 35 Step-by-step Projects to Create the Scandinavian Home 

which has some gorgeous projects I'm looking for happy recipients for... and I also made these little cuties:




Anyway, this is a truly terrible photo of the birdies I made with said super-cheap fabric, each slightly larger than the other, and all stuffed with lavender, with hand-sewn buttons for eyes and a hanging ribbon.  Anybody think they're sellable?  I'm thinking of adapting the pattern to make a bird head doorstop, too.  Somehow or other...

What else?  Oh yes, I start the new job tomorrow, and had to ring my new colleague to find out if I was out at the Ars*e end of nowhere or in town - as luck would have it, we're back at the AEON, (and I'm sure it'll seem like an eon), but I can cope.  I'm tonka, as Mr Golightly always says.  That's "Tonka Tough", for those of you who didn't get that advertising campaign when you were five, or six, or whatever.

And finally, thanks, Mrs Mountbatten-Windsor, for the day off.  Even though it's not actually your birthday, even us diehard Republicans** still enjoyed it, and the vision of two of my old favourites, Rampaging Roy Slaven & HG Nelson (A man simply called "bald"), getting a gong in the QBHL***... was a wonderful one, and all because too much sport is barely enough!

Ciao!





*I'm a geek, not a nerd.  There's a big difference, y'know.
**That's "people who don't want to be ruled by a queen", rather than "Not Democrats"
***Queen's Birthday Honours List (she gives us medals to make us feel better about being a dumping ground for ignorant sunburnt backpackers.  Or something.)


Thursday 10 June 2010

Ah, bliss

It was warm, you know, and sunny, and above all, dry!  It was quiet, and peaceful, and I did a spot of bird-watching...



and a spot of garden watching...



and a spot of dog-watching...




This is Gus.  He's very funny, sitting right in front of the fire, even though he has a mat only 5 feet away from the fire.  He's just small enough to fit there, and Jarrah, who's the other Dog of the House, is very jealous, but too big to fit right there!


Note the big chunks of wood?  That's Jarrah.  People like me pay lots of money to have beautiful furniture made out of this wood, my kitchen bench in particular...



(Please excuse the mess but you get the idea) and over in the West, they burn it.  Amazing.

What else?  A nice lunch out here, a spot of sewing (pictures to come, I promise), and a spot of fabric shopping.  I feel very relaxed.  Well, I did till Tuesday, when the madness started again... however, only one more day of whining from me, and it's all over, back to 'normal'.  Can't wait, I have to say!

When I finally unpack the sewing I did in Perth, I'll post some pics.  And in the interim, I collected this from the post office this morning, from here:

Bias Tape Pink Floral Cotton and Lace Double Fold

and this:

Bias Tape - Green Floral Cotton and Lace Double Fold

I can't wait to trim something!

Ciao!








Wednesday 2 June 2010

There's nothing like a few days off...

to make you feel better... so I'm off visit my Ma & lovely Hank for the long weekend we didn't even know we were having (it's actually next weekend, where we live, but this weekend where they live)... we got nice cheap flights, and I'm very happy not to be going into the office until next week now...


And the good news is that I've managed to find myself another job, working for the same monolithic megacorporation... but *voice squeaking in excitement* in town!!!


I'm finishing at the arse-end of nowhere on Friday 11th, and will be starting my new job after the 'real' long weekend, so I have three weeks in a row with less than 5 days (and hopefully less than 50 hours) in it!


All so exciting.  Not quite as exciting as lovely Felicity's adventures in Broome, but still enough to make the tunnel, and its associated light, a little closer!


And in the meantime...


Amy Butler, Genevieve Gail, and Patty Young Fabric Bundle, 4 Half Yards

I'm thinking about these... some of my favourite colours... nice combos, very tempting... being strong.  For now.

Have a great weekend, back soon!