New ways to waste time...

Yesterday I had lunch with a former colleague, a lovely man who manages to combine keeping me informed of all the hatches, matches and dispatches in the former office, good works and living two hours from the office (by train), and still staying relatively sane.  I have no idea how he does it.


Anyway, he floored me a bit by asking how I was filling my days, and you know what?  I found it a bit hard to come up with a sensible answer.  Then, this morning (note the time, Gentle Readers) as I was finding out a bit more about my last commenter, I saw that she had an Etsy Treasury displayed on her blog.  And I had a Eureka! moment - this is what I've been spending my days doing!  


I love that Etsy now lets anybody make Treasuries, they don't restrict it any more to some arbitrary number, but those of us with the urge to trawl the interweb looking for slime green budgie smugglers* can express their desires freely for all the world to see.


So, I will post some pics of the treasuries I have done over the last few days, if only I can work out how.  Help! (but here's a link until I do figure it out!)


Also, yesterday I bought a new camera strap from here and I think I need a tutorial on how to work it, I resisted the siren song of new t-shirts for (hah!) summer, and I got a parking ticket.  Shouldn't have spent all that money on the camera strap!


Anyway, it's time to get up now *snort* and get on with the day.  I forgot to buy milk yesterday, along with putting the free parking sticker on the car (see, too busy thinking about the camera strap), and so I can't have breakfast until the corner shop opens at 7.00am - I highly recommend staying away until after that.  Animals are always more placid after they've been fed!


Ciao!


*speedos

Slice and dice

This is a gift for somebody, but I'm not telling who it is until a bit closer to the day.  Also, I don't want to reveal the type of gift, because that would just completely give it away. 


This is the second First Quilt I have made, I'm still working on the Sydney Pies quilt, but it's sooooo boring sewing round all those circles and I promised myself a little light entertainment after the tree adventure (being delivered today, any suggestions on pricing would be welcome, MGF Kaz had very firm ideas and I must admit she was probably right, there was a fair amount of manual labour involved in sewing on all those beads, buttons and bells... not to mention the stuffing!)... so this is where I'm at:

I love these colours, they're feminine without being too girly, young enough for a small-ish person without being childlike, and fresh enough to stand a few seasons worth of fabric in & out of fashion-ness (you know what I mean, some fabrics on the market are instantly date-able by their very design, and so become outdated very quickly).  


I note here, Gentle Readers, that we are having a parenthetical and hypen kind of day, today.  If your brain isn't coping too well with the grammatical strictures, come back later. It isn't going away.


Anyway, after much anguish about ways to ensure nothing was repeated (failed) and nothing was next to the same pattern in a different colourway (failed), I threw the whole lot in the air and just put them together as they fell.  Kind of like divining using chicken entrails, but a whole lot less messy.


The progress:

The pattern calls for the quilt top to be 'slashed' (and just to clarify for some of our readers from other lands, I know that "going for a slash" has a whole 'nother meaning, but here we're talking about cutting out chunks of fabric), then you resew it together with the sashing (blue strips) in exactly the same positions it was in before.  I thought that was a bit boring, so I took the opportunity to fiddle with the pieces, and moved some of them around to make it a bit more interesting.  


Then, when it's all back together, you do the slashing thing again, except on the vertical, but in exactly the same places (2 1/2" either side of seams 1, 3 & 5, working from the left).  This is what it looks like now:

A big pile of strips.  I was going to rotate some of the colours again, but I've discovered that 2 1/2" can be bigger on one side than on the other, probably due to the fact that I was trying to cut it out on Mr Golightly's Über-precious Jarrah kitchen bench, the largest surface in the house (apart from the floor), and having to keep moving it to do so (plus I was cheating & doing it by eye, rather than using my ruler, and my eye is not as accurate as I had hoped.  Unsurprisingly.) - I'm pretty sure the recipient won't have her ruler out checking.


So, I think it will probably stay as it is, but with the additional vertical sashing.  I think it's going to be quite nice.  Now all I have to is work out how to assemble it.  See, this is where I need my mother, to help out - she's made a zillion patchwork quilts over the years & can probably do this in her sleep, but the downside is, she definitely will have her ruler out.  Ouch.  I can feel it on my knuckles now.

Ciao!

Life List - No way Josè

1. Go to England with less than $1000 in my pocket when the exchange rate was $1:33p.
2. Have Gastric Flu.  Coming out both ends.  TMI?  You bet.
3. Spend 6 months unemployed in the Midlands, UK, in the 1980's, where unemployment was running at 28%.
4. Borrow money from a parent.
5. Find out my new chap was married to a woman called Sharon who lived in NZ.
6. Learn shorthand.
7. Go skiing.
8. Rupture my ACL skiing, hence #7.
9. Wait 2 years for an ACL reconstruction because I didn't have private health insurance.
10. ACL reconstruction.
11. Second operation to fix something they missed in #10.
12. Get married.  Have a wedding** 
13. Put on 3 stone (19kg) after #12.
14. Watch the arches in my feet collapse after #13.
15. Have the police knock at my door to tell me a parent had died.
16. Work as a Secretary.
17. Start anything new in a year ending in -9.  
18. Lose a friend to Breast Cancer.
19. Lose a friend to Lymphoma.
20. Lose a grandparent to Emphysema.
21. Lose a friend to AIDS.
22. Lose a friend to Suicide.
23. Go to a funeral.  Any funeral.
24. Take Mr Golightly shopping.
25. Lose a beloved parent-in-law to Alzheimer's.
26. Fart in the office.
27. Have an accident of the menstrual kind in the office.
28. Almost have an affair with a married man, in the office.
29. Be sexually harrassed by a crazy ex-footballer.
30. Move house.  22 previous addresses (that I can think of) is plenty, thanks.
31. Do data entry for a living.
32. Leave my camera in a taxi and never see it again, Olympics pics and all.
33. Live in Leicester, UK.
34. Work in a library.  It really is like "The Librarians".
35. Let myself be bullied.
36. Convince a doctor I didn't want children.  No, I really don't.
37. Share a one-room flat with anybody.
38. Live in a one-room flat with outside toilet & shower.  Those winter mornings really bit.
39. Fall off a motorbike at speed.
40. Be a passenger in a car which rolls.  Still got the dodgy shoulder from that one.
41. Shoot a sitting duck.  Shame on me (I was 16, does that ameloriate it a little?).
42. Shoot anything.
43. Drink too much white wine from a flagon.
44. Vomit said white wine all over the bathroom floor.
45. Cleaning up #44.
46. Drink cider.
47. Spend 9 weeks on crutches, courtesy of #11.
48. Spend 2 weeks in a caravan on 'holidays'.
49. Share a house with 3 unrelated blokes.  Can you imagine the soap?
50. Take a dog to the vet and come home alone, knowing you'll never see the dog again.
51. Have a neighbour steal your dog when she left her husband and 6 fox terriers behind.
52. Be poor.
53. Live in a foreign country with no support network & no friends.
54. Algebra.
55. Statistics.
56. Wait until I'm newly married before discovering the one thing I want to really do in life requires me to go & live in another city 300km away.
57. Spend November and February in England.  Freezing cold.
58. Spend two years in pain waiting for the doctors to decide if I needed to have my gall bladder out.
59. Have my gall bladder out.
60. Vomit after smelling the vegetable soup somebody ordered for dinner immediately after I'd had my gall bladder out.
61. Wet the hospital bed whilst vomiting after #60 (told you it'd be a good list, didn't I?).
62. Go out on Christmas morning looking for somewhere selling wrapping paper, as Mr G had 'forgotten' to wrap his presents.
63. Wrap Mr G's presents on Christmas morning.
64. Spend a Christmas in Cairns.
65. Spend a Christmas in 42°C heat
66. 
    

And then there were six...

I finished the last tree & then discovered that it wasn't quite big enough to be in the centre of the beautician's window - so I had to make another one, which I got the photocopier guy to make A2 size - then I had to make an emergency dash to the lovely ladies at Cottage Quiltworks to get some more fabrics, just in case.  This one is the same fabric front & back, but without the decorations - instead I just attached a bunch of bells, all over the tree & one on each branch - it's going to jingle every time the door opens, the breeze blows, the reindeer land on the roof...

I also helped My Best Friend's Kidlets to make some more fridge magnets, and I made a set for Christmas, which are in the shop:

the book is, somewhat ironically, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".  Deliberately chosen, of course... I have the whole set, which were a constant presence in the house when I was growing up.  They were originally published in the 1930's and they aren't worth very much, but I wouldn't part with them for all the money in the world.


What else?  I spent some quality time showing my WMIL* how to start a blog for her Strata Plan, we had a lovely family dinner to welcome back Mr Golightly's nephew & his partner from The Biggest Smoke (London) on Friday night, and I made a small pouch, also destined for the shop:

And now, Gentle Readers, the sound of the rain falling on my back roof is so loud that I can't think, so I'm going to trundle off to bed!


Ciao!

Arrgh, get on with it!

Even though I am desperate to get the final tree finished today, I can't seem to get away from the computer.  I spent an inordinate amount of time uploading photos to my Flickr account today, into the Arches in Architecture group, because, as you know, Gentle Readers, I love a good Arch.  Check out the group.

Now, I'm fiddling around with Mozilla, Greasemonkey and Etsyhacks because I'm too lazy to recreate my fridge magnet listing for all the entries I want.  Everytime I go into the sewing room, another PC lightbulb comes on & I'm back in the study.  Arrrgh.

Anyway, good news that there's a re-finished Amy Butler tree for you to admire:

 And now I really must get on.  I'm expecting an influx of orders for Fridge Magnets and I need to get the gnomes working... or is it elves?  Back to that tree!


Ciao!

Life List - Thanks but I'll pass

1. Go to England with less than $1000 in my pocket when the exchange rate was $1:33p.
2. Have Gastric Flu.  Coming out both ends.  TMI?  You bet.
3. Spend 6 months unemployed in the Midlands, UK, in the 1980's, where unemployment was running at 28%.
4. Borrow money from a parent.
5. Find out my new chap was married to a woman called Sharon who lived in NZ.
6. Learn shorthand.
7. Go skiing.
8. Rupture my ACL skiing, hence #7.
9. Wait 2 years for an ACL reconstruction because I didn't have private health insurance.
10. ACL reconstruction.
11. Second operation to fix something they missed in #10.
12. Get married.  Have a wedding** 
13. Put on 3 stone (19kg) after #12.
14. Watch the arches in my feet collapse after #13.
15. Have the police knock at my door to tell me a parent had died.
16. Work as a Secretary.
17. Start anything new in a year ending in -9.  
18. Lose a friend to Breast Cancer.
19. Lose a friend to Lymphoma.
20. Lose a grandparent to Emphysema.
21. Lose a friend to AIDS.
22. Lose a friend to Suicide.
23. Go to a funeral.  Any funeral.
24. Take Mr Golightly shopping.
25. Lose a beloved parent-in-law to Alzheimer's.
26. Fart in the office.
27. Have an accident of the menstrual kind in the office.
28. Almost have an affair with a married man, in the office.
29. Be sexually harrassed by a crazy ex-footballer.
30. Move house.  22 previous addresses (that I can think of) is plenty, thanks.
31. Do data entry for a living.
32. Leave my camera in a taxi and never see it again, Olympics pics and all.
33. Live in Leicester, UK.
34. Work in a library.  It really is like "The Librarians".
35. Let myself be bullied.
36. Convince a doctor I didn't want children.  No, I really don't.
37. Share a one-room flat with anybody.
38. Live in a one-room flat with outside toilet & shower.  Those winter mornings really bit.
39. Fall off a motorbike at speed.
40. Be a passenger in a car which rolls.  Still got the dodgy shoulder from that one.
41. Shoot a sitting duck.  Shame on me (I was 16, does that ameloriate it a little?).
42. Shoot anything.
43. Drink too much white wine from a flagon.
44. Vomit said white wine all over the bathroom floor.
45. Cleaning up #44.
46. Drink cider.
47. Spend 9 weeks on crutches, courtesy of #11.
48. Spend 2 weeks in a caravan on 'holidays'.
49. Share a house with 3 unrelated blokes.  Can you imagine the soap?
50. Take a dog to the vet and come home alone, knowing you'll never see the dog again.
51. Have a neighbour steal your dog when she left her husband and 6 fox terriers behind.
52. Be poor.
53. Live in a foreign country with no support network & no friends.
54. Algebra.
55. Statistics.
56. Wait until I'm newly married before discovering the one thing I want to really do in life requires me to go & live in another city 300km away.
57. Spend November and February in England.  Freezing cold.
58. 
    
59.  

**Edit to clarify - Mr Golightly is perfectly safe, but I never want to go through all the stress, hassle & bad behaviour weddings seem to engender.

Welcome, Newest Gentle Reader

Did I mention, Remaining Gentle Readers, that I was happy to see a new Gentle Reader join your discerning ranks?  How nice it is to have your company, ArtyGal, and how inspired I was by your running blog (not quite inspired enough to get off my lardy arse & join in, but inspired nonetheless!) - I gave up running after item #14 on the Life List of Things I Never Want to Do Again, Nosireebob - running is way too hard with fallen arches & pronating feet, you just keep falling over.  

I used to enjoy it, when I was a teenager, out with the dog(s) every day (only one at a time, sadly, we had Honey first, and after her (hit by a car), Chocky (came to us because her family was temporarily living in a caravan park & couldn't keep her)... pictures?  Sure:

Taken in 1973.  See, I knew how to take pictures even then.  Joke.  Honest.

I'd love a dog now, but Mr G quite rightly says it isn't fair to be out of the house 12 hours a day & leave a dog on its own, but MGF Kaz is working on convincing him that two dogs (Remember that great joke, the punchline of which is "why do you ask, Two Dogs Fu**ing?") would be fine together (No?  Ask nicely, I'll tell you it privately)... he's not convinced.  Maybe I would be better to dedicate some Sundays to spending time with the waifs and strays at Monica's Doggie Rescue???

And back on a crafting note, I have finished the four small trees, and I did a few gussying-up thingys on the Amy Butler one which I will post at some point today.. I showed them to two separate yet equally biased audiences yesterday, and all audience members seemed to think they were just the ticket, so hopefully Kerry The Beautician will be equally pleased. I plan to do nothing more complex than a little sparkly beading on the Japanese balls, as it is glorious enough already... but as always, suggestions welcome.

And that, for now, is it.  I'll be back when the sun is up, and after a pleasant cup of coffee with My Best Friend this morning.  Enjoy your day!

Ciao!