Confession time...

Beware, Gentle Readers, for 'tis confession time.  I hope you're sitting down, and not in my favourite chair, either.


I have never looked at the stats for my blog before.  I must admit (and don't I do a lot of admitting here, hmmm?) that I love it when people comment, so I know you're out there, and I also admit that the sole reason I got that feedjit thingy at the bottom of the blog was to feed my ego, but for some reason, I hadn't looked at the stats.


But today, I did.  I was adding the updated Treasury to the page, and saw the tab, and a little light bulb went on.  Gentle Readers, there are more of you than I ever suspected.  Indonesia, The Netherlands, the US of A, the UK, here, of course... how gratifyingly international.  (Did any of you ever see that film with Queen Latifah, Last Holiday, where she says "Make me... international"?  Check it out, people).  


In other news, it's just started to rain.  Yippee!  If I needed an excuse to have a nothing day, that's it.  I love it when it rains in the middle of summer.  Everything smells so... summery.  Especially when the southerlies come through on a hot afternoon and cool everything down - the roads smell, the grass smells.. it's a real Sydney thing... 


In other not quite so cheery news, whilst searching for the name of that Queen Latifah movie, I saw in Wikipedia that Pete Postlethwaite and Gerry Rafferty have both shuffled off this mortal coil... I loved Postlethwaite, his cheekbones always came into the room about 3 feet ahead of the rest of him, and he was magnificent in The Usual Suspects, which, Gentle Readers, if you haven't seen, you absolutely should.  


Gerry Rafferty had a huge hit here in 1978 with an album called City to City, and the single from that album, 'Baker Street', had a fantastic saxophone solo - when I was a melancholy, moody teenager, that song, played with Jackson Browne's 'The Pretender' and Al Stewart's 'Year of the Cat', was musical heaven for me.  No pun intended.  RIP, Ger.


In other news, completely unrelated news, and in what Mr Golightly refers to as 'a quantum leap', I had a brainwave in the night about Momo's French General "Lumiere De Noel" fabric, (which I bought last year as a charm pack to make the Christmas bunting for My Best Friend) - I love those fabrics so much I'm going to make it into a quilt - using the pattern that I made for Miss Nelly - so now I need to go off & buy a metre of one of those beautiful fabrics to make the strips and a layer cake.  Oh, joy.  More fabric :-)


And now, the sun is coming out.  That means it going to be bad Sydney today, where it's sticky, humid, yucky, and I have lost my excuse to do nothing.... so it's back to the sewing room, and goodbye to Lydiard Millicent.  No, not somebody with a weird, backward sounding name, but a visitor from that nice little village just outside Swindon (where, completely co-incidentally, I lived as a child, no, no, Swindon, not Lydiard Millicent, but I did live in Latton for a while, are you totally confused yet?)


Me too.  Ciao!

I had forgotten you*

Not strictly a song title, I know, but it is appropriate, thank you *Mr Paul Kelly... I had completely forgotten to put the credit for that lovely photograph of the school at Latton into my blog - it was taken by Ian W Stokes, and you can see it here:


I love Panoramio, it's the cheapest way I know of to see places I've only dreamed of visiting, and it never ceases to amaze me how clever people are with their cameras:

Copyright  Androo.  (I haven't figured out how to do the ascii thing on this laptop yet).  I feel much better today, more human, and I can think again.  But only enough to see that the house looks like a bomb has hit it (see what happens when the tidying person takes a day or so off?) - and yet, funnily, I can summon up absolutely no energy for tidying.  I did stack and run the dishwasher, because leaving dirty dishes on the sink is my idea of slovenly, and we haven't fallen quite that far into disrepair yet.. although the milk has gone off, and we're just about out of bread.  Yikes.  Better get well soon, methinks, or we're going to be well into the Dave Lister School of Slobbing round Slobbily.


Yes, definitely feeling better.  Other news - the lovely beautician where I go infrequently to allow them to use me as the model for 'what happens if you don't look after yourself', or, on other days 'this is what happens when you let yourself go', was very kind about me not turning up for the 6-weekly hot oil & hair ripping out experience I had scheduled for today - and I quote "we don't want your germs here".  Thanks, Kerrie, I'm always happy to see you too - but she did have a question about these:

I'd forgotten that I'd left a set of 3 in there for them to enjoy - and apparently they've been getting queries with regards to selling them - well!  I said $3.00 each, but Kerrie seemed to think she could get $5.00 for them no trouble.  I said if she could do that, she was welcome to take 10% (does that sound right?) for her trouble.  She said she would see what happens!  Man, when I can be bothered, I'm going back into the magic room to make some more!  

And of course now I've remembered what happened to these, and why, when my lovely customer Carmen from California ordered this set, and I knew I'd made them, but I couldn't find them - not like me at all, and you, up in the back row, stop sniggering, I had to run around like a bluear*sed fly make her a set from scratch, and do you think I could find that creamy birdy fabric?  Man, it was almost ugly, let me tell you.  However, find them I did, make them I did, posted them off & got lovely feedback on their nicely lavendery-stinkiness... and that's why I had to make them, because I'd given them to the beautician to up-stink their salon.  Well, if we can use 'up-cycle', I don't see why we can't up-stink.  Debate on the need for the hyphen welcome here...

And now, gentle reader, having assuaged my conscience with regard to Mr Stokes and the credit for his lovely photo of the lovely school where I learned the value of a comma, and not to put too many instances of a preposition in a sentence, and all about Thomas the Tank Engine, and Little Black Sambo (hey, it was the unreconstructed 60's), I am off to visit the new abode of my WMIL*, and to plan the housewarming gift I am going to make for her.  Much joy to follow for all, I suspect!

Ciao!

Winner takes it all...

I just found out I've won something!  Man, that is so exciting.  I have a very paltry history of winning things - it's so small & pathetic I can probably list all the occasions - first one was when I was about 5 or 6, and the small two room school I went to (see picture!) had a fete - and I spent sixpence of my hard earned pocket money on a ticket - and won, yeehaw, a bottle of beer and a bottle of lemonade.  I seem to remember that I didn't even get to share in the lemonade, but I do remember that Dad made shandies out of the winnings!  


Next, I won a terrarium in a raffle at my first job - and it wasn't exactly auspicious, either, because I'd been given the job of selling all the tickets, so of course my win was highly suspect... I have no idea what happened to the terrarium.  It had an african violet in it, and with my extremely ungreen thumb, some might even say, 'pink', I'm pretty sure it didn't last too long!  I've just realised that's nearly 30 years ago.  Man, I feel old today!


Then, 2 years ago, when I was working as an IT consultant, I won a $50 gift card to David Jones, an upmarket department store here in Sydney.  I used it to buy morning tea for my colleagues, so we all got to enjoy it...


That's it, until now - I've won some oilcloth from the lovely Susie, who has this very beautiful blog -  justlovethatfabric@blogspot.com - how exciting is that?  I'm going to make something for her out of it, after I work out how to sew it!  Pictures forthcoming, you betcha!