OMG, somebody pour me onto the couch...

7.00am & I'm awake, so it must be Sunday.  Ick.  Up.  Peanut butter & honey on raisin toast & irish breakfast tea (twinings, of course).  3 slices (naughty but nice).  Somebody left the cake out in the rain... no, no, stop that.  Somebody put the peanut butter in the fridge.  Fine for them as likes their toast hot.  Not so fine for the refined types who also frequent this hotel & like their toast cold.  Cold peanut butter is very hard to spread.  


Spend an inordinate amount of time looking for two particular fabrics, which I have in my tiny mind as being in a big box.  But of course they aren't, are they?  They're in a small box, and it takes me 30 minutes to find them. Put on load of washing.  Go outside in PJ's & inspect existing loads of washing on line from yesterday.  Nearly dry.  Check sky.  Nearly damp.  Decide to live a little & risk it.  20 minutes later, emerging from shower to hear rain falling down drain pipe.  Curse.


Rush outside (back in PJ's) & salvage washing.  Hang to dry on newly acquired aluminium clothes horse, guaranteed never to rust.  The horse, that is, not the washing.  I have had clothing rust, but a paste of lemon juice & salt will get rid of rust stains quite nicely, I've discovered.  Go back inside & continue the cutting out thingy.  Keep working on that until MWH arises at 9.30am, discuss day's program with him, put washing out, put next load of washing on... keep cutting and sewing, cutting and sewing...


Pop out at 11.00 to buy the Birthday BBQ for MWH, god, how much fun is that (not).  Stainless steel versus cast iron, number of burners, hood versus no hood, built-in versus trolley, natural gas versus LPG... then home again to do more toy bag sewing, strip the bed, another load of washing, iron things for work tomorrow, pop out again to pick up the BBQ from the shop, more washing (god, was it interminable this weekend or what?), cook dinner... god what a day.  


yada yada yada...


On happier, less domestic notes, the Tree Waratah in our front garden has flowered, for the first time since it went in, in 2005.  It's going to be gorgeous when it reaches its full 10 metres:

Our native Magnolia is also flowering, a bit harder to see, but given away by the buzzing of bees which flock to the gorgeous creamy white flowers:

Two of the toy bags are finished:

and one to go... 

this is controversial... be warned

I just stopped reading a blog I've been following for a while; I was going to write a big fat post about why I stopped reading it, and then I thought, "why?"... tell the truth, I'm not a fan of hypocrites. I don't like people who put shit on other people but who can't take a little constructive criticism themselves... and I don't like whiners. If you have a roof, hot and cold running water, food in the fridge, pay-tv and access to the internet, you are better off than a billion other people who live on less than US$1.00 per day, and people in the richest country in the world are better off than most.

That is all. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Tasmania, so Beautiful

(How green your gardens are... is it some kind of blasphemy, do you think, to co-opt the tune of a slightly known number by Samuel A Ward...?

Tasmania is lovely, all green rolling hills, amazing mountains and fantastic gardens:

Does anybody know what these are? They grow into a bush, all purple & blue, like a big blueberry in the garden.

This somewhat large tree was in the Churchyard at Deloraine, with a rather interesting bunch of cast-iron frames around the graves...

We made some new friends:

And yes, the liver-coloured lovely is peeing. Talk about timing...

And we saw some beautiful flowers, and the occasional insect!

And we spent time looking at this (my personal favourite):

Oh yes, and there was craft:

And while I was away, these arrived:

Ah, joy. Holidays and fabric. Bliss.

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye...

Cheerio, I don't know, the next line...


We're off to The Tasmanian Craft Fair today, flying at lunchtime & coming back on Monday arvo, with Kaz & Az, and my lovely DSSIL* & DSB*.  I expect to have many tales to tell of the webbed-fingered folk who live on that fair isle, bring back much crafty booty to be ooh-ed and aah-ed over, and several 10Kg blocks of Cadbury's Chocolate to fill my arteries with cholesterol... I am telling you this,  Gentle Reader, because I will not be blogging for the entire time.


Agggggggggggggh.  Withdrawal.  But there will be many, many photos on my return.  Be warned.


Also, I'm going to attempt to smuggle bamboo knitting needles into my hand luggage, so if I get arrested, please be ready to put the hat around to bail me out.   I get very irritated by our govinmint's blind stupidity on this issue - I was reading YarnHarlot's blog where she posted about the 'Stitch & Bitch' row on her plane trip to somewhere, and thinking why, oh why, is our govinmint so paranoid?  Surely they've realised by now that knitters are more likely to be dangerous if they can't knit than if they can and are?  Bizarre.


And just to keep everybody involved in fabric porn happy, here's something I acquired yesterday at Tessuti:

So cheerful but I have to wait until Monday before I get the scissors out & make something with it!  Ah, torture.

As Daav yos'Phelium would say, "Until soon".  Gotta pack!

Counting down those days...

Any guesses where this is?

How about this?

Woo Hoo Holidays 2010!

Sunday Sunday...

Dah dah, da da dah... okay, I'll stop now.  I was thinking of Mama Cass singing "Monday Monday", actually, but that's still a whole 24 hours away, TG. I was singing in my head, too, because my poor WH has a sore throat & is quite the neanderthal, lying in bed watching bad Sunday morning TV (is there any other kind?) & whimpering from time to time.  In deference to his not-wellness, I will close the door on the small but perfectly formed room when I go in to start my (real) day, and as always, turn the music up really really loud... and remember what a great concert it was on Thursday night:

Today, whilst listening to Mr Costello, I will make a cover for Ms Scurvy, for her DS, using plain black fabric and these:

Apparently she has a bit of a skull fetish going on, and I've offered to make this into a pouch in return for her lovely Ma sewing this up for me:

which I've kniited in lots of glorious colour, but haven't sewn up - I hate the sewing up part, everything should be knittable in one piece as far as I'm concerned.  I'm sure there's a way...

Anyway, when I finally get around to knitting up the band & finishing it off, I promise I will post a picture.  Honest.

What else?  Oh yes, these arrived:

  and I'm going to make these because six of these wrapped in ribbon is a great christmas gift for colleagues, close acquaintances, you know, the kind of people who you want to give something to, but it doesn't need to be big or hugely expensive - and everybody loves handmade, right?

And this arrived too:

 and I have no idea what I'm going to do with these, except I love these fabrics, and one 10 X 10 square gives you four 5 X 5 squares - isn't that amazing?  Maths, who knew?  Not me, that's for sure.  I made quite a lot of jumbo lavender bags earlier this year with these, what with Miss Mandy having a hairdresser friend, and Kaz having a friend known as the Butterfly... and speaking of Lavender, there's a card from the Post Office telling me the newest shipment of lovely lavender from Ratho has arrived - but that too is a job for Monday (morning, around 6.15am)...

But for now, the small but perfectly formed room and Elvis Costello are calling my name!

Ouch!

So, in the wars this afternoon, or what? MWH* has been very busy making me a return for my sewing table in the small but perfectly formed room, and I very carelessly caught my knuckle right on the bone on the stainless steel ruler than is set into the desk, on the edge.. ouch ouch ouch, a small cut but it bled mightily. Then, as part of investigation into how the new return for my desk was attached to the desk, I landed the tip of my middle finger right onto the sticky-outy stainless steel runner bit, drawing more blood. Man, what's going to be third?

I believe these things do come along in threes, probably because the first time you're careless, the second time you're in shock from the first time and the third time you're distracted by the pain & shock of the first two!

Anyway, here's a terrible picture of the new return:

My very clever WH is going to make another piece which still stand on rubber feet to sit on the top of the return, to bring it level with the top of my sewing table - and making it an ideal place to lose store flat items, like the cutting out boards, which seem to be proliferating at an alarming rate...

Also, I made a shoe bag for my lovely friend Lulu Carter's sister, who lives in London - her birthday is tomorrow (or is it today, oops!) - last year I made her this:

so this year I wanted to make her something different - and given that shoe bags are the flavour of the day, this seemed like a good way to go:

and I used more of that beautiful Joel Dewberry Deer Valley to line it, and hand-appliqued the name of the bag ('shoes') on the bag - that is so time-consuming, but it does look nice, I think:

Whereas yesterday I just added the word to the bag I made for Cathy's birthday:

She did seem to enjoy the humour. Eh by gum...