Warning - promotional material follows...

So, Gentle Readers, here I am in the Golden West, enjoying the heat.  It was 40C here yesterday, but no humidity, so apart from a slightly baked feeling, I'm coping.  Previous posts have rambled on about the heat and how much I dislike it, but really, if you're wearing 3/4 linen pants, a singlet and an overshirt of the thinnest cotton, how bad could it be?  I also had a pedicure yesterday, courtesy of my Lovely Ma, as a bit of an early birthday present - and so my toenails are now bright red, and my feet have been returned to the pristine state they were in at my birth, apart from the bunion, the scars, and the tan lines from that day 2 years ago when I went out at lunchtime & my feet got sunburnt.  Did I mention I don't go out in the sun much?  


Anyway, this probably segues nicely into Maggie Alderson... Maggie writes wrote a lovely column for the Sydney Morning Herald, full of interesting observations about fashion, people and clothes, which in my mind is not the same thing at all as 'fashion'.  Fashion, for mine, is that rarefied world of Parisian catwalks, tall skinny women wearing impossible creations of organza and silk, ridiculously high heels and hideous hair, and short fat men coming out to bow happily to audiences who know that perhaps 300 women world-wide will ever have enough money to buy these fashions.


The rest of us do department stores, little boutiques, chain stores, online shopping, vintage shopping, raid our mother's wardrobes, steal our husbands/boyfriends shirts... that's clothing, not fashion.


Anyway, Maggie has always had this eye, she makes observations about clothing that, when aired, you and I might go "Oh yes, now I see it", but left to our own devices, we could see but never really identify and analyse, much less talk about in an amusing and entertaining way.  So, the bods in charge of the Good Weekend magazine, which comes free with the Saturday edition of the SMH, have decided to revamp it, and Maggie's column has been dumped after 12 years.  I think I'm going to cancel my subscription, because frankly, Gentle Readers, apart from the travel section (in which the same places appear again and again, slightly reformatted to trick the less observant amongst us into thinking it's new), there's not so much in there that I want to read now.


On the up side, that's quite a lot of paper out of the recycling bin.  And, (note, sentence starts with a preposition, must be important...) Maggie sent me an email (shall I say that again, Gentle Readers, just for emphasis???  Maggie sent me an email Maggie sent me an email Maggie sent me an email Maggie sent me an Email) to say that she has a new blog, Maggie Alderson Style Notes so I can still get my Saturday fix.  Something else worth getting out of bed for, and with Maggie's help, out of the PJ's.


And now, because it's only 6.30am here, I'm going to have a nap.  


Ciao!

Flying high

So, Gentle Readers, here I am in the Qantas lounge at Sydney Airport, learning why my flights cost so much money - they've got whizbang new Apple terminal thingys here, free internet, all manner of reading material and even free plastic things full of hunny.  Can't beat that, really. 

I'm winging my way westward today, to be in Perth for my lovely Ma's birthday, which is next Tuesday.  From our house, it's about an hour and 20 minutes on a good day to the Airport.  Of course, my flight being at 10.00am meant I could leave home at 8.00am and come pretty close to missing it, or leave home at 6.30am and spend some quality time *snort* by myself in the lounge, eating stale bread & hunny and reading the paper.  Or creating a delight of the written kind for you to enjoy... so of course, here it is.

I was a bit disturbed to learn that Qantas has removed all check-in desks of any kind from the departure terminal - now you have to check yourself in (again), print out your own bag sticker, wrestle with that sticker to get it onto your suitcase so that it won't fall off, remember to peel off the two little stickers, one for your boarding pass, and one for your suitcase, so that when that suspicious person tries to run off with your suitcase, you can prove its yours because the stickers match - then you have to wheel it over to the conveyer belt, and then check it in again, do all the declaration thingys again, and then watch as it disappears off into the Ether, never to be seen again.  At least when you had a person do it for you, you could always go back & say "but Dierdre put it on the conveyer for me"...

I did wonder what happened to the jobs of all those people who used to do all this stuff for us - like so many other jobs, swept away by the advances of technology, I guess.  Think about it - typesetters, ledger clerks, car builders, hand knitters, lace makers, textile weavers... what's left?  The jobs that can't yet be replaced by machines - the thinking kinds, those that require analysis, deep thought, interaction with humans (doctors?), fine motor skills (mechanics, plumbers, cabinet makers) and brute force, but the careful kind.  Is that any oxymoron?

Anyway, I did promise a post about big words, but for now I'm letting it percolate in my backbrain - I haven't forgotten, honest.  Also, I have photos to post of my recent adventures in pouch-making land, and perhaps more Hunter Valley photos, if you aren't bored with them yet...

Here's one I made earlier:

And that's it for now.  I'm sure that as the week progresses there will be New! and Exciting! things to report, but for now, think of me stuck in the tin box that flies for the next four and a half hours.

Ciao!

No news from here...

Just more happy pics - I was busily taking pictures of the gloriously green Hunter Valley on Sunday (did I mention, Gentle Readers, that it's as green as I've ever seen it?  That would be a good name for a book, don't you think?  "How Green was the Hunter".  Might be a best seller. I should write it.  Ahem.), and the pooch, the very gorgeous Zoe, decided to run into my shot just as I clicked the button.


She's got excellent timing, that dog:

So of course I had to take a proper picture of her - dogs are normally hard to photograph because they never want to sit still, and they never look at you when you've got the camera in your hand (with the possible exception of Zeb, who knew she was a movie star, and knew how to hold her chin and knew when to smile and how to work the red carpet)

So I persuaded Zoe to do the same, kind of:

And she's laughing her head off at me.  Smart dog!

Talk about...

Working my fingers to the bone.  Well, kind of.  My very rude friend Ms Creek had the nerve to suggest I was a lazy cow now that I wasn't working, and perhaps my last post about the joys of lunching whilst somebody else (and a man, to boot) cleaned my house, might have led you to believe (especially some of my newer readers, welcome, welcome, sit down, no, here, sit here, have a drink, ice?  Biscuit?  No, I didn't make them, sorry about that.  No, really.) that I was a lazy cow, but you, Gentle Readers, know better.  You know that under this slightly tubby, slightly slovenly** exterior, is a workaholic.  Well, a sew-a-holic.  Well, more of a "I've got to be doing something with my hands-aholic".  


Just as an aside, Gentle Readers, don't you think that there should be a better term than '...aholic' to denote somebody who needs to be doing stuff, all the time?  I don't like that it is derived from 'alcoholic', knowing a few of those, unhappy souls that they are, I don't like it at all, and I want a better term.  I know that the Oxford English Dictionary is looking for people to adopt words that are in danger of dying out through lack of use, and I personally have adopted 'Traboccant', which means 'super-abundant'.  It's kind of appropriate for me, in that I have super-abundant amounts of fabric, ribbon, books, CD's, DVD's, buttons, dust... you get the picture.


Anyway, I'm thinking of digging out the Thesaurus to find a better word than xxx-aholic, and when I do, rest assured I'll let you know.  I know that you'll be worrying until then, but don't fret.  I'll sort it out.


Right, where was I?  Oh yes.  We went to the beautiful Hunter Valley and I made a panoply of presents... (see, big word slipped in there, but more about big words later, perhaps next post?)

And the weather was exceeding kind:

and we had visits from all different kinds of birds, some successful, and some, not so much:

Poor little fire-tailed finch crashed into a bedroom window - how beautiful his plumage is...

And these blurry specks are the local eagles, we saw two breeding pairs yesterday, floating round on the thermals about the house:

And finally, the Jacarandas are magnificently in flower, all over the district:

And now, Gentle Readers, lunch is calling me, and I must then away, away to the sewing machine, for some traboccant Christmas gift-making.


Ciao!


**Slovenly - defined in my book as somebody who buys her clothes from catalogues, and only goes into shops when she has to go to a wedding, funeral or formal function.  Yours?

Ladies who lunch

That's been me this week.  Wednesday I went out to the AEON* to catch up with a bunch of people I worked with out there, originally intending to see just one person, and ending up seeing loads of others - everybody misses me, apparently.  It was like a ghost town, with hardly anybody around, which meant we could sit and chat over coffee for an hour with nobody feeling guilty about reducing the August Institution's profit down from its most recent $6 billion result...


On the way back from the AEON*, I stopped in at my favourite fabric shop, Cottage Quiltworks, to get some more Christmas fabric supplies, fully intending to spend no more than $50.00.... ha.  Suffice it to say, I went over the limit by just a little and I got these:

Which I think will make some nice decoration-y things, and are proof that traditional and modern go well together, if you make sure the colours are right (love the blue-reds!)... and this:





Which amusingly has the same title as some erotic literature by Anais Nin, so watch out what you ask for in the shops!




Yesterday I spent a very enjoyable 2.5 hours with an ex-boss, somebody I worked with for a long time, whose company I always enjoy, and we chatted about Italy, travel disasters, life, the universe, you know.  He recently went to Europe with his lovely wife JJ & three lovely children - twin boys of 11 & a girl of 14 - how bloody brave is that?  


Apparently it all went well until the three kids contracted food poisoning in Hong Kong just hours before getting on the plane to come home.  His stories of the progression of each child into the vomiting stage was hilarious - one in the hotel bathroom, one all over their bed, one in the cable car up Mount Victoria - just the way to finish a holiday.  On mature reflection, I think I'd rather just have my wallet stolen.


And now, Gentle Readers, I have the first visit of a new cleaning person today, so I need to go & make myself in the epitome of a respectable Northern Beaches housewife.  I may be some time.


Ciao!


*Arse-end of Nowhere

Farewell, Streaks on the China

Some time ago, I was wasting time browsing links to other blogs on sites I read (does that make sense?).  I was on the lovely Angela Pudding's blog, Fluid Pudding, and I started to flick through the blogs with interesting titles.  Now, Gentle Readers, you know that I'm clever, but I'm not that clever.  I could never come up with something as witty as 'A woman who sews, her slightly daggy** husband and his worm farm', or "A woman who works in IT but wishes she'd trained in Upholstery when she was 17", or, my all-time favourite, "The slovenly woman's guide to day-wear when you're 48, not working and don't have to go outside ".  


Anyway, I was quite taken by the idea of Streaks on the China.  It had resonance of 1950's America, where women wore stilettos and aprons, actually ironed their husband's underwear and produced fabulous gourmet meals from packets of dried, reconstituted mushrooms, mince and non-dairy creamer.  Apparently.


So, I started to read.  I read about Sara's life, which was not about dried mushrooms and non-dairy creamer at all.  I followed her struggle with grief after a truly terrible event, her humour, her hubby, her dog.  I liked her.  She sounded a bit like me.  I even went right back to the beginning, and re-read everything she'd written.  I hung in there when she had a break from blogging, willing her silently to come back to it, which she did.  But now, it's finished.  She has declared her blog is dead, and she may or may not pop up in some other blogging endeavour.  I hope so.  I'm going to miss her.


I wish you well, Sara.  Ciao!


**daggy - slightly disinterested in fashion, likes to wear tracksuits, sit in a beanbag and fart a lot, which he blames on the possums.

So, now I'm a little peeved

You know how it is, Gentle Readers, you see a bargain, you impulsively jump in & buy, and then, wham, you get stung at the end, so that the actual bargain ends up costing you more than it would if you'd just bought the damn things outright.


This has just happened to me.  I bought a bunch of stuff from an Etsy seller who advertised herself as 'going out of business'.  OK, so she's keen to get rid of her stock.  Yup, no issue with that, and the things were quite nice.  So I bought a lot.  Quite a lot.  They're useful, they last forever, they don't take up much space.   They're hard to get here.  Enough justification, I would have said.


Anyway, they arrived, 12 days after I ordered them. From the States to here, that's OK.  I can deal with that.  However, what I can't deal with is the absolutely total dishonesty of charging me $22 to ship something that cost her $4.80 to ship.  I've been buying stuff from Etsy and the internet for some years now, and without exception, my sellers have refunded overpayment of shipping.  I even had a refund of shipping costs within Australia just last week, and that was about $2.00 - something I would not have batted an eyelid over.  But $17.20?  That's five cups of coffee and a biscuit!  That's two day's lunch money.  That's 15 minute's parking at Sydney rates.  That's definitely refundable.


So, anyway, I thought I'd have a look at her feedback.  Silly me, of course I should have done this first, but who does?  I've always had such a good positive experience with every other Etsy seller that it didn't even occur to me that somebody would rip me off.  Anyway, there was quite a lot of negative and neutral feedback, and a number of comments about the shipping costs being outrageous... Guess that should have alerted me.  I've never seen any Etsy seller with less than a 99% positive rating before.  Silly silly me.


Anyway, I did a bit more digging.  Her shop has been 'going out of business' since August 2008.  How long?  Yes, Gentle Reader, August 2008.  What should that have told me?  She's picked on a great way to get people into her shop, and then is gouging them on the shipping.  Not nice, not nice at all.  So, if you're thinking of buying paper tags, be warned.  The sharks are circling.