If a tree falls in the forest...

Would anybody hear?  Well, Gentle Readers, let me tell you that when a tree falls down in our street at 0149 on a Friday morning, pretty much everybody heard it.  And popped out in various states of undress to inspect, surmised that a) nobody was hurt, b) no property was damaged, c) no electricity was off, d) no driveways were blocked and e) no accidents were likely, becasue it's a flat road and the tree was easily visible. So we all went back to bed.  Except for the new(ish) neighbours to our left, who came home at 3.00am, and decided that the fallen tree  presented an immediate danger to life and limb (ho ho ho), and promptly called the Fire Brigade. 


I have no idea why the Fire Brigade felt it was necessary to come charging through the quiet streets of Newport with lights ablazing and sirens roaring, but they did.  They parked right outside our house, proceeded to set up the generator for the lights, got the chainsaw out and spent a very happy hour and a half (yes, it was a big tree) cutting up the tree.  Sleep?  Not much, really.


They finished about 4.15am.  I get up at 5.30am.  Cranky?  You bet.


Anyway, here's the evidence:

And here's Mr G watching from the safety of our bedroom:

And the best part (I think)?  All the foliage and tree bits have landed on our verge/nature strip, and so when it finally stops raining, Mr Golightly is going to go out & mulch it all up & put it on our garden.  Some small measure of compensation for spending Friday with a brain like marshmallow, yes?


In other news, I finally got MaddieGal's pouches off in the mail to her - and I have bits and pieces of Mendocino left, if anybody's interested.  It is very thin, and really only suitable for small things like pouches or lavender bags.  Definitely no good for doorstops etc.


In other news, the crazy hours continue, 44 last week.  I have vowed that I will not do more than 32 this week, partly because I'm off on Tuesday (yay!) and am schlepping out to Villawood to eyeball some upholstery supplies for my chair-recovering sojourn to Perth next week...


I've been doing these stupid hours because I've been on a few courses in the past two weeks, but that's all finished now, so things should settle down a bit.  I now know what makes you a Leader, as opposed to a Manager, and that my GSI is mostly blue and a bit green with not much red.  Gah.  Amazing how much money institutions spend on this stuff, isn't it?  Our Management offsite dinner was... interesting, for a certain value of 'interesting'.  I was home by 9.30pm & asleep shortly thereafter.  All that lemon squash!


And yesterday, despite my head feeling like a slightly overripe rockmelon, I went up the hill to help MBF* and the Kidlets strip the hideous straw wallpaper from her dining room.  We found this underneath:

Any ideas who Ruby was?  Me neither!


And that, Gentle Readers, is about the sum of my week.  It's 13.32pm & I'm still in bed.  I 
still feel slightly like a damaged piece of fruit, but the urge to sew is getting to unignorable levels, and I feel some lavender bags coming on... 


And so I wish you all uninterrupted sleep and a great week!  Ciao!




*My Best Friend

And in other news of unparalleled excitement

I have sent off an item to the Australian Etsy Disaster Relief fund, so if you're feeling generous and have A$18.00 to spare, you can have 3 beautifully stinky jumbo lavender bags, posted free to anywhere in the world.


These be they:

Ribboned up & ready to go.  Come on now, don't be shy, it's a great cause!


If you can't find my item in the Disaster Relief Etsy shop, all profits from everything sold out of my shop in January & February are also going to this great cause - when you make a purchase, send me a note that you're buying something for the flood appeal, and I'll refund your postage.


Back to the sewing machine!


Ciao!

Blah

That's how I feel today, Gentle Readers, and not just because the Poms trounced us at the cricket.  I slept badly, woke early to farewell our houseguest, then pottered for a bit, including finishing off cutting & trimming 20 5" square lavender bags - more on that exciting news in a moment - then went back to bed until 10.00am.


The exciting news (see, I'm not like one of those sadistic* bloggers who make you wait until the very end to give you the good bits, I just chuck it out there) is that I finally fronted the ladies who run the only homewares store in Newport without wearing too much hairspray and makeup (the ladies, that is, not the store), and they happily agreed to take 20 of my 5" square lavender bags for a trial - I made some as a 'Thank You' gift for lovely Wendy Hendy, who kindly put us all up over Christmas - and before I went off to the post office to send them off, I thought "well, what have I got to lose?  They can only say 'no'".  So I showed them, and they didn't!  Molto eccitante!


Anyway, I spent today stitching, stuffing, hand-stitching them closed, trying a new technique for closing them, wasting an inordinate amount of time pulling out the new technique which is much quicker but doesn't look as nice, I don't think - I must admit to much admiration for those sewers who can stuff their lavender bags whilst the bags are trapped in the machine, because I sure as hell can't.


In between that, I had another nap, then another.  I think I might have an ear infection, it's been groaning on & off all day, which is always a signal to me that something has gone wrong.  Maybe another dose of 'glue ear'?  Who puts glue in their ears anyway?  Whatever it is, it's making me tired.


However, in the "I'm so brave, I'm soldiering on" mode I've adopted temporarily to write this crap, I am now going to bombard you with pictures of said lavender bags, and add some of them to my Etsy shop, so if you feel like making me rich and sick, feel free:

And that's it for now.  Oh yes, almost forgot - Hello to the Gentle Reader from Hawaii - I have a very soft spot for Hawaii because Mr Golightly & I had our honeymoon there.  Ahhhh.  Sadly (or perhaps not) all the photos from 1993 are pre-digital and I'm too lazy to get off my lardy-arse and scan them, so you're reprieved.  For now.


Ciao!


*Not entirely sadistic, anyway.

Sneak Peek

Well, here's the fruits of our labours - that's me, My Best Friend & the Kidlets.  We stuffed, stitched, punched, cut, knotted, stamped, wrote and argued, mostly about the pricing.  I admit I have no idea how much to charge for things - I always worry that they're overpriced, but then I remember Lois McMaster Bujold in 'A Civil Campaign', where Kareen Koudelka tells Ekaterin "don't undervalue your own work, there's plenty out there who'll do it for you - what they pay for, they'll value".  So, I've gone with more than I would have, say, three months ago, and we shall see.

Fingers crossed!  I will report back on Sunday night, if I'm still alive.


Ciao!

On the wagon...

Well, Gentle Readers, much excitement for me this weekend - first of all the Treasury thingy (and did ANY of you get the gratuitous Ferengi reference on my beautiful Treasury description, or am I shouting into the wind here with the sci-fi stuff, hmmm?), and now, my lovely Beautician, Kerry, has invited me to put some stuff onto her table at the Newport Market Day, which is being held on Sunday 14th November.  

I have had numerous invitations to do markets, and I have investigated the effort required (huge, no, really) to have a stall at St Ives Heritage Craft Markets, and I'm sad to say I'm pretty much too lazy to do all that humping, lifting & carrying (actually, my back is so bad I get a backache just looking at lifting the groceries out of the car!).  The sewing part is easy, but the thought of having to get a table, tablecloth, tent, chair, float, display thingys, arrange the stock, keep a supply of food & drink, not go to the toilet all day and be jolly and welcoming to all prospective browsers or those who just want to rub their dirty sticky fingers on my beautiful lavender bags, frogs, doorstops etc etc etc, just put me right off.    

So this is ideal, the lazy person's market stall.  Her table will be selling all those products required to keep us looking beautiful, and I will be selling things you don't really need but which make nice souvenirs, or nice christmas gifts, or hostess gifts [question without notice - is that an {shudder} Americanism????] or teacher gifts, at very reasonable prices.  

If you don't have any plans, and it's a nice day (because, let's face it, who wants to go out in the rain???), pop on down & say hello.  We'll be outside Rapport Beauty, on Barrenjoey Road. I'm the tall dumpy one.  

And of course the other reason for me telling you all this useless information (well, let's face it, if you're in Bahrain, like the very lovely Felicity from "All Toile and no Reward", one of my favourite reads, you are not going to wander down to Newport, now are you?) is that I will be trying very very hard not to post any more this week, until I have made the doorstops, Christmas trees, pouches, sets of lavender bags, sets of clove bags, fridge magnets and Christmas badges, and packaged them all up, and priced them, and have something to show you.  So, please come back on Friday, when all will be revealed!


Ciao!

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!

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!

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?

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

 

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!

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!

Two strands of thread...

And then last night...I made some lavender bags as gifts for my colleagues - it's amazing how much lavender one of these things actually takes - I use a 25ml scoop - which in theory should equate to 25 grams, a litre of water weighing a kilo and all, and one of these takes three scoops!  


Anyway, I've ordered more from lovely Christine at Ratho Lavender, who doesn't have a website of her own (but she should!), but who can be contacted via this link.  Her lavender has the most distinctive smell of any lavender I've ever bought, and all my customers comment on how fantastic it is - so I'm really happy that she can get more to me before Christmas - lavender bags make a simple but effective gift (hint!)!  


Oh yeah, the gifts!

and all wrapped up and ready to go:

I love 5" squares, they are the most versatile things - coasters, lavender bags, jumbo lavender bags, frog components, lavender pyramids etc etc... every one of these is made from a single 5" square - fabulous.


and then... I love finding new blogs - but it does make me think, "is there anybody out there who doesn't blog anymore?"... I just found this one, via Etsy, of course, when I was looking, as I do every single day, at the beautiful, the bizarre, the ridiculous, the fantastic, the incredibly cheap and the amazingly expensive things for sale...

Anyway, I've added two new blogs in the past two days, and I'm thinking... what the hell, a third new one won't take up any more time to read... and it's an embroiderer's blog, which is a nice change amongst all us common sewers and knitters.. so check it out!

And now, I'm multi-tasking at the moment, partly watching Stargate Universe, which has just started - it's looking a bit grim at the moment, but we'll see - also we'll see if Channel 10 gives it a better run than Channel 7, who eventually relegated Stargate to 11.00pm on a Thursday night - and partly doing this blog - but the strain is starting to tell - so it's off to the Universe... more when I remember the dialling sequence for Earth!

Busy, busy

I took advantage of the cooler weather to go back to bed for a bit this morning, that's the other thing I hate about summer, I don't sleep well & so I'm perpetually cranky. What's that? I'm always cranky?! Well, how rude. I'm just particular, that's all.

Enough about me, more about the work in progress. I found a great site here & she suggested using a quilting ruler (of which there are a few in the house, even though I don't quilt) to cut squares out of each corner (mine were 1"/2.54cm) & then lining up the seams. Boy, what a great tip! My perpendiculars are pretty perped, let me tell you - anyway, I was so thrilled I made two bags & some lavender pyramids & put the lot up on Etsy for the bargain basement price of $25. US, that is. Anyway, we'll see. There are lots of people out there doing pouches, boxy or otherwise, but only mine has the added bonus!

The only other thing was that I haven't seen any method of making a lined boxy pouch without having a raw or overlocked (that's 'sergered', to those of you in the US of A) seam showing & I don't want that. I want it to be really nice! I did have a bit of a brainwave about how to do it, but when it came to practical application, I couldn't figure out how to do it. I need my mother for this, she's a genius at that stuff! Mum! Get on a plane!

In the St Nick of time..

Snavelled them out of Mum's bag before she & Hank whipped off to the HV - here they are (but no Chloe, sorry).

Gone, all gone

So, my friend Kaz rings me and says "bring up all your stock of lavender bags, and all your frogs". And lo, they're all sold. Well, both the frogs have gone, Mr Rusty and Ms Spring Fresh, and some of the lavender bags, and also I had a request to make more lavender bags, another orange set, the set of Ava Rose in blue (which I had given to a friend & which I therefore had to make from scratch) and a set of something completely different. Whew.

Lucky I had some beautiful black & white stuff my mum gave me for my birthday (which was Saturday, btw, thanks for asking) so I made a set of 3X5" squares in the long rectangle style, with nice little black spotty buttons for emphasis. I haven't taken pictures yet but I will, soon. Also, I made Miss Chloe Frog, for Miss Mandy, as a christmas gift and didn't get to photograph her either (damn it) before she went off to Charlestown. So, no pictures, and a nearly empty shop! Off, off to the sewing machine. Is that an echo I hear????

A blast from the past

Just had a nice weekend in the small town where I went to 3 years of primary & 6 years of high school; hmmm the more things change...

Anyway, the reason for this visit (one of only 4 in the last 25 years or so) is that my first boyfriend was turning - get this - 50. Scary, scary. Anyway, it was nice & the weather was kind & the pub we had dinner in was fine, great steak & beautiful orange & almond cake - I took a few pictures of his beautiful garden - this is a dogwood tree, apparently. Whatever, it's gorgeous.

Also, I whipped the last of these up tonight when I got home - hope she likes 'em!

Smelling good, looking great!

So I made some of these for a person at work 'on spec', as they say here, and she ordered 4 sets, just like that. Here's a preview:

They smell great, too, full of cloves, a nice change from lavender... $10 a set is okay, right?

Also I get to use up some fabric I'm not that fond of, for a good cause and make some money - can't do better than that!

Working, working

So I've been slightly busy at work dealing with a crazy woman, and I've come home every night this week & made one of these in various fabrics and coloiurs; the guys in the office have started to notice how the girls are all walking round with these things stuck up their noses (nearly) and how nice they smell, so I've started making some more masculine ones...

The blue one is for my friend Shaddie, and the purple for my BA Buddie... you know who you are.

Also I got a bit embarrassed about having lots of beautiful fabric at home & walking around with my headphones in a nasty poly-something bag, so I made a very beautiful bag to keep them in from some Amy Butler Blue Wallflower with co-ordinating cord channels in that great blue dot... but these are the ones I made for my friend Gill in the UK, complete with her initial, appliqued on by hand. Yummy.

Creative genius at work

Well, more creative than genius, but it's all good fun. I've gained myself a commission to make 70 lavender bags for a girl at work who's getting married, (yes, you did read right, 70), and we took ourselves off to Lincraft to purchase supplies. Quell horreur, Lincraft in the city is closing down, and it was an absolute zoo in there, but I did manage to snavel myself 5 (count 'em, 5) new blades for my rotary cutter for the bargain basement price of $30! Wonderful.


Anyway, armed with a metre of pink satin, 10 metres of pink ribbon & a whole heap of other goodies (bias binding maker, new cutting out board for a Christmas gift, and an entire roll of iron-on interfacing, I staggered home to start cutting out... my wonderful husband (being the compleat IT nerd) put a spreadsheet together for me calculating the most effective way to cut the material contingent on the width, so now I know that if I cut it width-wise, I can get 12 point something bags out of my 12.5 centimeters, each bag being approximately 8cm wide. I will post one when it's made up, but for now, here's one I made earlier!