Tuesday 5 October 2010

Cassettes... want some?

Way, way back in the 1970's & 1980's, probably before most of you were born, Remaining Gentle Readers, I had a nice boyfriend (not Mr Golightly, I should add), who was a bit of a music buff (and still is, I should also add) (hereafter referred to as My First Boyfriend).  He was fanatical about his vinyl (I had to check how to spell that, would you believe?), and would often play a record only once, in order to do what we now call 'ripping', which in those days meant creating a cassette tape.  A 90 minute tape would usually do an Album (aka 'A record'), one side per.  




He made lots of cassettes, and of course as I was also a music fan (and still am), made me lots too.  This is well before the days when you could rip your music to a hard disk, store it indefinitely, play it back from your PC, your DVD player, your iPod, your iPad, your MP3 player, your phone... so a cassette player was needed.  Everybody had one in their cars, in their houses, we all had Walkman's when they came out, some people even had recording Walkman's.  Phew.  


In addition to the ones he made for me (which I'm sure was all highly illegal and probably still is), there's a bunch of tapes I bought myself, but never listen to anymore, even though we have a functioning cassette player.  So when I said the other day I had to nerd, what I was doing was trying to convert the files from Cassette to MP3, using this excellent tutorial from YouTube... but the sound quality was terrible.  




So, apart from the five or so pre-recorded ones I haven't been able to source replacements for via the Interweb, I've got a box full of recordings by My First Boyfriend that I can't bear to part with, and a couple of pre-recorded ones that are the same - I opened my Boz Scaggs 'Silk Degrees' tape today to find I had written '16th Birthday present from Dad, 20 December 1977' in it.  Couldn't throw that away, now could I?  The rest?  Toast.  Honestly, who wants 'em?  If you can think of anybody who does, let me know, the usual way.  I'm sure we can arrange something!




Sewing-wise, I'm making another pooch - this one is for Miss Nelly, after she helped me stuff the black & white one, I think she fancied one herself, so a green monster is being created - with these fabrics:

For the face:

1  YARD Timeless Treasures Stitched Swirls on Green Fabric, Apple Collection

Inside the ears, the green dots:


Tanya Whelan's Ava Rose collection, 4 fat quarters



Hard to find a picture elsewhere on the net of this particular fabric, it seems not to have been as popular as the pink version, but I love it.

Body is a really nice turquoise, purple & olive-y green spot, ear fronts are a striking orange, blue & green diamond on a brown background. Underneath is green, featuring spots in red, blue, yellow, grey & green triangles, circles, rectangles & squares. All the shades of green are different and I love it! He's going to look fantastic!


Here's proof - this guy was made with a bunch of unrelated fabrics and he turned out alright!





OK. Gotta go now, Mr Golightly (aka The Provider of Bed and Board) will be home soon & I want to be knee deep in scrubbing something. Just in case he thinks I've done nothing else except blog all day! Ciao!