Progress Part II

Made birthday things for Miss Mandy but can't show them here as she reads this!  Once the birthday is over, I promise purple photographs.


Chair coming along nicely, but disappointingly not finished today due to my overwhelming desire to make sure the slip-stitching along the edge is invisible.  Which meant, I had to pull it out five (yep, count them, not one, not two, not three, not four but FIVE) times before I was happy with it, and even now there's a couple of spots I'm not sure of.


My fingers are very sore.


We're off to Hunter Valley tomorrow for a weekend of R&R & mowing, if Mr G ever gets home from work to pack his clothes, although he probably thinks I'm going to do it for him because I get home earlier than he does.  Ha.  


I've been playing scrabble online with My Lovely Ma & MGF Dawn, and losing badly.   Little old ladies have no scrabble-scruples.


There is other news, but I need to go & drag the suitcase out of the roof, apparently, so more on our return from the Green & Pleasant Land!


Ciao!

See, the problem is...

That the minute I sit me down to write a blog post, I get distracted by all the shiny things in our house (being the total geek-fest that it is), and I forget my original purpose... when I was much younger (in my feckless 20's), I used to have lists of things to do each weekend, so that when I found myself re-covering shelves with wallpaper just before guests arrived, the beds were already made and the fridge was full of food, instead of unmade and empty... but that good habit has gone by the wayside, sadly, along with the desire to do all my ironing on a Sunday night, and the urge to dust.  Twice a year is plenty, I think.  I'm sure I've mentioned before how one of my favourite authors, Sharon Lee, of "Lee and Miller" fame, also believes twice a year is not too often.  


Although, gentle reader, it must be said that after the Invasion of the Coffee Machine by the evil forces of Antdom, I did act quickly to locate the source of Ant Enticement that had appeared in my Small but Perfectly Formed room, this afternoon.  Apparently some kind supplier of 'something' in my dim and distant past had provided a lollipop, similar in shape and form to the sort consumed by Kojak, which was sitting behind my magnifying lamp... ants must have an incredible sense of smell, yes?  Anyway, after moving the small bookcase holding 237 years worth of Threads magazines (anybody want 'em?  Free to a good home, postage only), a small collection of buttons *snicker*, and a half-torso store dummy, I found said lollipop at the back of the bookcase behind said lamp, carried it with its attached lodgers outside, and left it in the wilds for nature to take her course.


So... shiny things.... I have ignored the clarion call of the blogs I have left unread all this weekend, in order to fulfill duties of the creative kind to my loyal and devoted audience.  Actually, I believe my mum (Hi Mum!) is about to start reading this, so I thought I'd better tidy up a bit first.  You know how mothers have that long-distance x-ray vision about the state of your house... 


I've spent this weekend sewing, having spent the week in some kind of whirling dervish trance-like state where the days from Monday to Friday just went in a blur... I was determined not to let this weekend go by without making some stuff, so here it is:


My lovely DSSIL*, Miss Mandy, had her birthday on Saturday:

 And she wanted a purple pencil case, with her initials on it, so that was easy.  Shame it wasn't there for Saturday, but after the week I've had, (which I am quite sure you don't want to hear about, seeing it was the same as the last week, and the week before that, and so on, ad nauseum), we should all be grateful I'm still crawling out of bed on Saturday mornings to sew, rather than just hiding under the covers like I wanted to!  


Then Miss E, Mr Golightly's middle niece, has her birthday tomorrow.  She lives in the fabled city of Melbourne, lucky girl, where there are markets galore, culture, lanes with bars, restaurants to die for and lots of lovely shopping. You've never been, I hear you say? Well, it's as close to Europe as you'll find in this wide brown land, so if you get the opportunity, go, for the love of craft!  This is what I made her:

It never ceases to amaze me how well the oddest combination of fabrics go together - whoda thunk that Erin McMorris's Pebbles in Lime would go with Echino's Scooters?  Well, after I went rummaging for something that particular slime green, I did!  Hope she likes it (I did press it before it went into the packaging, honest)!


And finally, for the lovely Jenifer in Massachusetts, some MoMo Wonderland jumbo lavender bags:

And now, gentle reader, I am going to lie on the couch and pretend I don't have a pile of clothes as big as a mountain on my spare bed waiting to be folded, sorted and put away (but not, you'll note, ironed!), that I don't have to go to work tomorrow, and that my big fat European holiday is only 9 working days away... oh wait!  It is!


Ciao!






*De-Facto-Step-SIster-In-Law

Clever, very clever!

I've been a wee bit busy, putting up with the sick husband really takes it out of you, and I spent a bit of time yesterday looking at houses with my friend Deb, which is fun, but exhausting!

So today I got stuck into the sewing, finishing off the pencil case & matching sketchbook bag for my nephew, who is turning nine in August & who loves to draw:

And then, I finished off Miss Mandy's button bag, which she wants to use to collect up all the little packets of buttons and threads you get when you buy shirts and things, and I've put a surprise in there for her (which of course I can't mention because I know she reads this!) - and that's going in the post tomorrow:

And then I made these for Kaz, from some lovely Momo in Wonderland, and some beautiful Butterfly Fling - they've got 6 scoops of lavender in each - who knows how much that is? Not me - the scoop says 25ml! (that's probably not funny for people who don't know about the metric system - "ml" is a measure of liquids!).

And then finally I made a pouch, my WMIL* has orders for me for 5 more, plus two more glasses cases - but for some strange reason it came out like a cube, rather than a rectangle - obviously I need to check the measurements calculator again!

And then I did a bit of work on the bunting for my lovely niece Melinda's wedding, in September - she saw the "Happy Mother's Day" bunting I made for her Nanna - and asked me to make some for her wedding! Her favourite colour is orange, so I tried to include as many fabrics with orange in them as possible - and how amazing that I could find 38 fabrics with orange in them - but I only needed 36 - and the fronts are now all cut out & appliqued on, and all I have to do is cut out the backs & the hanging & stitch them up... phew...

And now, gentle reader, normal transmission is resumed (actually, I've got the cricket on in the background and I'm greatly enjoying seeing what's happening to the England batting line-up - ha!

*Wonderful Mother-In-Law

Happy Birthday to a wonderful person

My very lovely DSSIL* has just had a birthday, which, to my everlasting shame, I missed, but if you read the previous long & winding road, you will understand why. The venue for the course I was on, on the days when I would normally have whipped out to the Post Office in order to get the parcel in the post in time for the birthday (phew) has no post office. No shops, except food shops, and only a shuttle bus to take you to the nearest shopping centre but not in the 30 nanoseconds the evil twins running the course allocated for lunch. Sorry, Katy & Jackie, you know I love you, smooch, smoooch.

So, I couldn't post it, but anyway, it's gone - and apparently she loves it! Interestingly, I had not made pouches out of silk before, and it's hard, because the material is so stiff, and it frays like crazy - I think I need to get some fraystop, or something similar, and disappointingly, I embroidered an initial on the bottom of the squarer one, and it got eaten up by the corners. Need to practice that a bit, I think. They looked nice though. Hope she can find a use!

*de-facto step-sister-in-law (my mother lives with her husband's father).

Remind me again

Why we're doing this? For this, in case you'd forgotten. So much fun, and they all have their own personalities. Sometimes it's really hard to send them away, and I miss the ones I didn't take pictures of - Miss Chloe, who is going to be the big sister of this guy, was one of those...

I'm sure, though, when I die, people are going to wade through my photo directory and go "what was she thinking?" ... but I don't care. It's creative, it's colourful, there's an amount of technical challenge, they smell nice, they have personality... what more could you ask?

Anyway, Miss Mandy, I admit I had my doubts about the colours being a bit dull, but sometimes it's nice to be wrong! Please let me know his name when he tells you.. I figure these guys are a bit like the dragons on Pern, who know their names when they hatch. Go, read, discover, worship at the altar of McCaffrey. She is probably a frog person too. Why wouldn't you be?

PS Anybody wanting their own froggie can contact me here.