News of a varied kind...

Gerald Gee, who was one of the nicest people I've never met, has passed away.  He was a follower of my blog, and his occasional witty comments always made me feel like somebody was reading this stuff.  He often had film clips of beautiful singers from the 1930s and 1940s, and he had witty little cartoons, paintings he'd done on his Wacom tablet, and fabulous black & white photography showing a bygone era in London and the surrounding countryside.  




Here's one of my favourites from his website.  Vale Gerald.


In other, weirder news, we had a visit from a Bush Turkey.  Although I don't believe in ghosts, angels or devils, I sometimes wonder when Mother Nature pops visitors up in your garden after something like this happens... but I don't know that Gerald would like think his spirit was contained in a bush turkey!

I did a bit of sewing - currently I'm taking three rulers to school, one of which is a metre long - that's just over a yard - and it's a nuisance, as all three have to go into a hand which is also trying to carry my toolbox and inevitably, something of Natalie's.  We both abandoned the handbags after the first week (no lockers, nowhere to keep anything off the floor, any questions?) and are using backpacks, but she carries a coffee keep-cup in the mornings & doesn't have a free hand, and I do, so... 


Anyway, I made a wrap-y thing to put them in.  It works a bit like a knitting needle roll:

(pic courtesy of Sarah Kincheloe, from whom I have bought three knitting needle organisers) with the rulers sitting in the middle but poking out the ends, and Mr Golightly is madly trying to convince me that I should have made it the exact shape of the rulers... which would have been slightly ridiculous, as they are all different shapes & sizes, but I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with it.  Pictures when I am...

In happy news, it's Miss Mandy's birthday today, Happy Birthday MM!  I made these for her (and can finally show you!):

A little bit like the bush turkey, but not too much - this little guy is completely filled with stinky lavender!  And I made another beautiful treasury of vintage shoes and bags, which I will put up today.  Of course you can always go to Etsy & have a look at all of them in one place, in case you feel completely deprived by missing one or two...


The child's chair is progressing well (which is a good thing, considering we're supposed to finish it tomorrow!), and I made the seat border & seat back piping & attached it to the respective pieces yesterday - tomorrow I have to:


Put the calico on the seat
Put the seat fabric on
Put the seat border on
Backtack the seat border
Finish underneath the seat border
Attach the outside back at the top
Backtack the outside back at the top
Attach the piping down the sides
Attach the Ply-Grip down the sides
Attach the Dacron to the outside back
Pin the back to the piping
Attach the outside back one side at a time
Finish the bottom of the outside back
Put calico on the bottom of the chair.


Not so much, really.  I've got 8 hours.  I'll be fine.


And that, Gentle Readers, is it for me.  I can feel the lure of the television, and as I've only had five hours of naps this weekend, an early night.  Ciao!

Oh Canada!

Do you remember, Gentle Readers, how dubious I was when I first put that Feedjit thingy on the bottom of my blog, yes, yes, it's still there, tracking how many times I go & re-read my own stuff to make sure I haven't put 'decorted' in there again (prize available for first person to spot it & report back when I did it...), but it also tracks other people who come to visit!  And (sentence starts with preposition, must be important), Gentle Readers, it does!  I've had some visitors from Canada!  And America!  And London!  And Sydney!  


Hello!  Welcome!  Come in, sit down, no, not there, no, that's my chair, sorry, that's actually my chair, would you mind not sitting in my chair, get out of my chair, fuck off, go on, get out, go home.  Ooops.


Hello!  I don't know who you are but you're very welcome.  No, really.  I don't care where you sit.  If you're lucky, you'll find a seat not covered in magazines, or fabric, or 3-day old cereal bowls, or old newspapers.  Some days.  Good thing we don't have a cat, isn't it?


Anyway, I've been reading some new blogs, and leaving comments, as you do, and I suspect these lovely visitors, who aren't sitting in my chair, are from there.  It's a nice incestuous world, the blog world.  Everybody seems to know everybody else.  I went from Gerald Gee, who puts the most fantastic 1930's music & fashion on his blog, to Tooting Squared, to Mr London Street, to Whoopee, to Meetzorp.  I feel like I've made a whole new bunch of friends.  Which is not, of course, to say that you lot are on notice, oh no, not really.  The people who let you into their lives via their blogs are the best kind of friends, because, for the most part, you never meet them in the flesh, so they can't find out really how uninteresting you are  I am.  


Anyway, in keeping with the vain attempt to link this blog to some crafty stuff, which was one of the reasons for its existence, here's some pics of how I've spent most of Tuesday & Wednesday:

The journal cover was custom made to fit the journal I bought from this absolutely fantastic new shop in Mona Vale, Little Paper Lane.  I also bought beautiful wrapping paper, ribbon and card, for Miss Nelly's birthday, which was Tuesday, but which I won't be celebrating with her until Friday - she's the lucky recipient of the Quilt, but I also made her the bird, which is stuffed full of lavender... here's the birthday pile:

Beautiful, huh?  I love how LIttle Paper Lane's signature colour (almost duck-egg blue, almost turquoise) is the same as Miss Nelly's.  


And, Gentle Readers, I promise the next post will be the tutorial on how to make the journal cover to fit any size journal... and now, it's raining, so I'm hopeful of having Miss Nelly's mother, My Best Friend, round for coffee because she doesn't work in the rain, and you know what?  I'll even clear off my chair for her.  


Ciao!

OK, so maybe it was TMI?

However, remaining Gentle Readers, I felt that your loyalty should be rewarded with a deeply personal detail of my life - I keep so much from you in so many other ways that I thought you might enjoy this information overload... obviously I was deluded from the Giardia, and now that I'm not quite as sick, I realise that I was completely wrong.  Nobody wants to read about somebody else's gastrointestinal problems.  Honestly.  What was I thinking?


Also, I'm now constipated.  Meh ha ha ha ha...


Ahem.


I made three sets of birdies today, for lovely Yvette at work.  It's weird, isn't it, that I know two women called Yvette?  I never knew a single one before I started work at this August Institution, and now I know two.  Weird.  Also?  They couldn't be more different.  Anyway, the lovely 2nd Yvette requested three sets of birds, one for her in pink:

A set for either her mother or mother-in-law in blue:

and a set for either her mother or her mother-in-law in black:

Shake shake your tail feather!

And a doorstop for young Hogan, who wanted floral, but not too girly:

Hopefully this will fit the bill.  Back to work tomorrow, hopefully with things more... ordered.  That is all.

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!