OMG, somebody pour me onto the couch...

Sound familiar?  Well, the birthday party for MWH was a big success, but I feel like I need a week of sleep... I had Friday off & picked up my friend Kaz from the nearest railway station at 9.00am, then we didn't stop until about 9.30pm that night.  Then we started again the next morning at 7.00am, and poured the last guests down the driveway that night at about 11.00pm... 


MWH got some lovely gifts...

about 5 pairs of thongs - that's about a pair a year for him.  Also about 6 different varieties of beer, some wine and a bottle of, get this, Green Fairy Absinthe... thongs may also be known as 'flip flops' to some of you, and maybe 'Jandals' to others... some of our more classy friends left the price tag on - $6.97 for a pair of nasty rubber black things that have a really bad rubbery smell for the first six months of their lives... and he loves them.

And in the interim, I had about 5 parcels arrive, including 5 yards of this:

 which I think I'm going to turn into a tablecloth & napkins...

Also this, from here:

in the red, the brown & the green - can't wait to do something with it, and this:

which is a pattern for the perfect monogram - I could make one of these for just about everybody I know, as the perfect custom-made gift - from here.

But now, I have to go off & finish the christmas tree decorations I'm making for my friend Deb - she just gave me a Christmas Tree shaped dish, which I've used as the template for Christmas tree shaped decorations - filled mostly with wadding, but with some cloves for that nice northern hemisphere Christmas smell you never get in Australia!

And, because it's only 4 nights before Christmas, I thought a little animal festivity might be nice as an incentive to get the Decorations finished!

"Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
"On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!

"To the sewing machine! Stay away from the Mall!
"Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!*

Although, we are in the midst of summer, so this might be a better option - I dare you to go there!

*Unsurprisingly, not the original lyics.

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!

Living treasures... made of paper

Have you seen this?

Amazingly clever.

Today, gentle reader, I sally forth to purchase innumerable paper serviettes, plastic forks (although I will hold out for bamboo if I can find them), paper plates (the sturdy kind), Stock, onions, spices, and a whole other bunch of non-perishable stuff for The Big Event, which is MWH's 50th birthday BBQ, on Saturday. He's so funny, he doesn't want "a party", so no cake, balloons or streamer-like decorations, just 40 good friends and lots of beautiful food cooked by this clever man, seen here doing things with our amazing early Christless Dinner, which he cooked, in its entirety, on the BBQ!

And then I'm going to make something with these:

which I originally bought to make this:

but instead used red dress making weight linen, from the SWICTBTWBBHNYBCAS*, and lined it with this (gotta love that Deer Valley!):

Excuse my fingers. I had to take this in the office (note the Eclipse mints tin on the desk waiting to be recycled) because, although I got up at 5.00am to finish it, I forgot to take a picture of it before I left home. And, I hear you say, why did you have your camera in the office? Doesn't everybody carry their camera around all the time? No, actually. I had it with me because we were going off to yet our office Christmas lunch on Friday, and I wanted to take photographs of the other side of where we were going to be on Saturday!

Beautiful.

*Stash Which Is Claimed To Be The World's Biggest But Has Not Yet Been Confirmed As Such

I love this blog!

I stumbled across this blog entirely by accident, but I do love it - this guy finds the most amazing places that are part of New York but a part which is slowly disappearing - it's a city I've never visited, but would love to one day - maybe after the US gets a little less paranoid & stops finding would-be terrorists in every visitor - even the ones who are trying to get out...


I've had a really busy couple of weeks, with early Christless with my Ma & Lovely Hank (that's "christmas" for the religious, or "saturnalia", for the pagans amongst you), plenty of birthdays in November & December, orders from the UK & US, and an exciting invitation - MWH's sister's son's girlfriend's mother (got that?) in the UK is apparently opening a shop & liked the look of the pouch I made for her daughter for one of those late November birthdays... but which I completely forgot to take a photo of (d'oh!) so I can't impress the crap out of you with it... but I digress -she wanted to know if I'd be interested in putting some stock in her 'soon-to-be-opened' shop (seriously?) - all I need is the time to make some stuff!


I went to a 10 year old's birthday party (and MWH & I are still having the argument of the ethics of posting even a pixellated picture of the girls in their bathing suits here, so I haven't)...


and I made the birthday girl this pencil case for her birthday - Happy Birthday Nellie!

and we had the annual lunch with a bunch of ex-colleagues, at one of the nicest venues Sydney has on offer:

and we saw a bit of these guys:

This picture was taken by Adrian, age 4. He did a self-portrait, too:

Cute, huh?


I made something for my WMIL*, who has moved in to a new apartment & wanted a better way to keep the doors open than by stapling the cat to the floor. Ooops. That was my idea. These were hers:

Filled with washed sand, they weigh a ton. Which is, I suppose, the point! I love this fabric, too, which is Amy Butler's Wood Fern Silver, from here.


Oh, and here's the cat:

Is that an evil look or what?

pretty...

We had a lovely couple of days in the Hunter Valley, and all four seasons of weather were experienced at various times - hot, cold, wet, dry, windy, calm...


We ate hugely:

plus prawns, oysters, fabulous white wine, pannetone, mince pies, home-made stuffing for the turkey... and on Monday night, our friend Az made fantastic pizzas, which we cooked in his wood-fired oven - with slightly disastrous results for my Ma, who is still recovering from a nasty bout of bronchitis...


and we've been busy:

Back to work tomorrow for a rest!

Still here..

Got visitors.  More soon.

Ciao!

Just in case you thought you'd seen the last of me today...

You were obviously wrong.  I've had a productive day, finishing the last of the pouches ordered by my WMIL, and also whipping up an order for the lovely Xine67, who wanted something made with this gorgeous Marimekko fabric:

So today, we did this:

And here are the finished smaller ones:

And now I'm thinking about Paddle Pops, Magnums, Streets Blue Ribbon Vanilla... various forms of ice cream.  Yum.