04:06:00

Hello lovely Gentle Readers.  It's been a while, I know, and it's also been a while since I woke up at 0340, wide awake, ready to get up and go to work.  Not really.  I've had a very disturbed few days, with various things happening, including trundling Mr Golightly off to hospital to have his (very small) double hernias fixed, and the spare head off his back (don't ask...).  He's at home now, sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room (close to the TV, doncha know), having some very bloated bits, and some very shrink-ed bits, some shaved bits and some bits covered in waterproof sticky plaster.  He's taking pain killers.  Amazing.  As long as I've known the man, he's never taken so much as an aspirin, and yet, here he is, popping Digesic like they're smarties.  Very sensible.

In other exciting news... well, there isn't any really.  We had a fabulous Easter in the Hunter, where it was by turns, warm, windy, warm, rainy, and I took some pictures (I think)... we ate some fabulous food here, probably one of the most enjoyable meals I've had in a long time (including Italy!) - we sat outside in the sun, Az brought amazing wines from the cellar, and we chose the 'A Tavola' option, which means "let us cook you stuff" - and it was fabulous.  We ate and drank for what seemed like days, but I'm sure was only 3 hours or so, and then crawled home for a nap (well, I napped)... 

Actually, I lied about the exciting news.  I rescued the house from floating away down the street today - we had a tiny weeny little bit of rain (around 80mm in an hour, that's quite a bit [there's 25mm to an inch]), and the drain on the patio became blocked - and of course, Mr Golightly had oh so conveniently incapacitated himself, so I had to roll up my pants and doff my shoes to go wading out onto the patio - it was lapping at the back door, Gentle Readers, and I very seriously considered getting the inflatable boat out... till I finally found the drain, stuck my hand in and cleaned out various piles of leaves, muck, wet spiders, and other assorted crap.  It drained pretty quickly, but I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't been home - we have two doors that open onto the patio, so presumably, the water would have seeped in & met somewhere in the middle of the living room????  Right where all those electrical cables are for Mr Golightly's pet project???  Short circuit, sparks, fire, no house?  Ick.

And now, Gentle Readers, I am going back to sleep.  I'm working from town tomorrow, so I don't have to be up at Sparrow's to miss the traffic, I can actually do the civilised thing and get the bus into work, so I won't be getting up until 0630, and leaving at 0730 (wow!)... and so... ciao!

Oops she did it again

This was a delightful surprise last week; I walked into a daddy-long-legs web, wondered why, looked up and saw that our friendly huntsman had been back in the house, and left her latest offering.

Every one of those is a baby huntsman spider.  Yeehaw.  


I have not, shamefully, been back to upholstery school.  The thought of doing a 16 hour day so closely following on the heels of post-holiday exhaustion was just too hard to come to grips with, but this week, I promise.  Just in time for the holidays.  Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on the cushion sewing fairly quickly, but it's the hardware bits that'll probably be my undoing.  We shall see.  


The very lovely Chairy Godmother has just posted a fantastic looking chair rehab, which is well worth a look.  I picked up a chair from the side of the road during our latest Council Cleanup:





Mine is quite similar to this, but in that hideous bronzey-green 'sharkskin' vinyl that was so popular here in the 1960's.  I'm going to donate it to the Upholstery School so that somebody can have the joy of making it into something beautiful.


And speaking of beautiful, I made an Easter Bilby today - there's been a campaign going on in Australia for some time now, to help save the endangered Bilby:





Mine is way cuter....

I haven't worked out yet how to turn the two-dimensional pattern into three, but I'm working on it.

We're off to the fabulous Hunter Valley for Easter, and there may be some Easter Bilby giving, so if I do make some more, I promise I'll post pics.  I have Easter Tuesday off too, not really a holiday but it is for me - yee haw!

And now, the siren lure of pizza is calling me... Ciao!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

Actually, Gentle Readers, when I originally wrote this, it was Saturday at 09.49, and I was still in bed. Gasp!  I worked yesterday from 0730 until 1800,  which was extremely foolish for somebody still getting over the after-effects of several hours on a plane (in a plane?) and by the time I got home (1930), I was, to put it oh so bluntly, knackered.


Anyway, the lovely Mr Golightly not being one of those husbands who delight in masquerading as a martinent, I did not have to set to and make a gourmet dinner, but instead peeled off my work clothes, threw on my sloppy house clothes and flung myself, bodily, onto the sofa.  I did not move again until I staggered off to bed three hours later, having watched a repeated NCIS episode, an episode of something so deeply boring it's already gone from my memory, and an episode of "Person of Interest", which I am really enjoying, and I am grateful to those people at that awful television channel (which is so awful I won't even deign to name it) for putting on again.


I woke at 0630.  Typical, isn't it, that having no need to actually get up & go to work, I am wide awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Ick.


That said, I do have some sewing chores to do, my lovely DSSIL Miss Mandy had a birthday on Wednesday, and Miss Emma, the mother-to-be of the incomparably named, but as yet unborn Linus Libbis, had hers on Thursday.  I know exactly what to make them both, but... time being somewhat scarce this week, I have done exactly zippo about it.  Ahem.  Amends to be made, stitches to be set.  Also, pictures to be taken and posted, but that's for after.


For now, some more holiday snaps - some of the things I love about contradictory Italy...


Ciao for now!

Sunday, too far away (Roma)

So, Gentle Readers, we're home.  We had a good flight from Rome to Hong Kong, and a great flight from Hong Kong to Sydney, especially after the 10 hour sleepover we had had in Hong Kong, which made a huge difference to our jetlag status - that is, none.

These photos were taken at various points over the holiday - the first one is a bunch of guys we came across round the corner from where we stayed the second time we holidayed in Rome - when we were there, this was a single table & two very dishevelled looking guys - now it's a whole community of, interestingly, only men.  The guy in the maroon scarf had a minder sitting on the scooter to the right, and was eyeing me as I was taking the pictures.  I didn't get too close.

This little number was by some guy called Michaelangelo.  He has a bit of a future, I think.

Part of the recovered items from the Roman Forum - absolutely gorgeous.

I didn't buy any fabric.  Can you believe that?  However, I did buy:

• Red handbag #7 (gift for my lovely Ma)
• Red handbag #8
• Mystery gift for MGF Kaz
• Red wallet
• Several leather key rings, from a fabulous shop where they were actually sewing the items on the premises, with the industrial sewing machine set up right there in the shop - my question "Fatto in casa?" was given an emphatic answer, "no, fatto qui!"
• A very cute little red leather coin purse (yes, for me)
• Some cosmetic specials for my SIL's
• A gorgeous set of three Furla leather pouches and keyring for my lovely MIL
• A red (yes, yes, I know) Furla keyring for me
• A beautiful surprise for Miss Nelly (because I know she reads this)
• A leather wallet and an ipod case for Master H
• Some fantastic handmade writing paper embossed with the letter 'D'
• Mini-calendars for 2013 for my team
• Absolutely no Pope fridge magnets - not one to be found in Rome.  And yes, I did look.

It's nice to be home.  

Ciao!

Saturday night (in Bologna) too tired

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So, Gentle Readers, I have to confess that the previous post was largely written a week ago, when we were indeed on our way to the airport, edited during an incredibly boring transit in Hong Kong, where I tried and failed to finish the previous post, and we've finished our first amazing week in Roma, having succeeded in seeing things we did not see last time, but which I am confident were actually there, because they've been quietly sitting, waiting for Mr Golightly and me to come and see them, for 2,000 years.

I am having a few technical issues with the newest infernal machine to join the Golightly household, (and I'm blaming you, Miss Blue Lambb), because Blogspot has not yet come to grips with people who are trying to write posts using a tablet, so if you see a few more typos than normal, please be gentle with me :-P
More soon.. Ciao!

Come fly with me...

Yes, Gentle readers, I am lucky enough to be getting on a plane this morning & flying off, with the charming and erudite Mr Golightly, to the eternal city, Roma, Rome... again.  It doesn't seem more than about ten minutes since we were there last time, and maybe because we'd been before (yes, alright, twice), the usual mad scramble that is us packing was not quite so scrambled; there was no fleeting unpleasantness caused by Mr Golightly's short-sighted insistence on bringing his favourite green shirt (age 268 years, state of decrepitude, extremely advanced) , everything went smoothly, and here we are at the airport, waiting to board in good time.  Even the check-in queue was zero people long. So, in my experience, this means it's going to rain the entire time we're away.

We have a list, this time.  We're not just going to wander the streets with our mouths open like we did last time, we've got a cunning plan and the list:  Hadrian's  villa, the Appia Antica, The Vatican Museums, the basilica, maybe a few catacombs. I deliberately packed 15 pairs of socks , undies and enough bras to outfit a girl's school, so that no time is wasted in the lavendaria, and I fully intend to not do anything more domestic than make my morning coffee. We may also go to another city for a few days, depending on how the spirit moves us; after hanging around Hong Kong airport for six long boring hours, some Italian fresh air could be just the ticket. I'll keep you posted. Ciao!

Friday night too drunk

That's part of a movie title, you know, Gentle Readers.  I think it's an excellent title for this post, which explains quite a lot about my weekend.  I wasn't really too drunk, just pleasantly happy.  MBF Deb invited us up for homemade pizzas, and boy, were they delicious?  Yes, of course they were.  She's a fabbo cook, far more interested in the creation of beautiful meals than I'll ever be, and she knocked up the pizzas in about 20 minutes flat, making it all look so easy.  Mind you, there was a very small amount of pre-work eliminated, in that she used pre-made bases, but, hey?  Who cares?  Is there a pizza-base police in the house?  No indeedy.


I woke up on Saturday morning with a bit of a headache, easily fixed with two aspirin & a bowl of cereal (aspirin in a glass of water, not the cereal.  Things weren't that bad).  I spent a slightly uncomfortable half hour at the beautician, remembering all the while the story my mother used to tell me - when she was a girl, she had long, thick, beautiful hair, and one of her great-aunts, of whom there were a number, according to the family tree, used to comb it with a fine tooth comb, and say "you must suffer in the cause of beauty".   Ouch.  No wonder she wouldn't let us have long hair as children.


In other news, I got very inspired to make the cushion covers long promised to Miss Lyndsey. I threaded up the machine with white cotton, cut, pinned, stitched and got all the way to the final stitching of the side seams before it dawned on me that I needed to make buttonholes.  I whipped an empty bobbin out of my jar, filled it with lemon yellow thread and dragged the buttonhole foot out of the drawer, and off I went.  Well, kinda. 

Image courtesy of Paradeofapples.wordpress.com.  

First of all, the machine thread snapped.  Then the bobbin thread got tangled up in itself & I had to take the whole bobbin race out to get it clear.  Then it did it again.  And again.  Then the needle started making funny noises.  So I got a new 90 needle out of the magic box, and popped that in.  Nope.  I rethreaded the machine.  Nope.  I tried sewing something apart from buttonholes.  Nope.  Eventually, and ever so slowly, Gentle Readers, I thought, "perhaps this is not the right bobbin?".  Yep.  Took it out, moved all the thread to another bobbin and rather quickly tossed the old bobbin in the bin.  And guess what?  Sewing like a dream, aren't we?   


There's a lesson in this, Gentle Readers.  Rethread machine, change needle, rethread machine, check bobbin, rethread bobbin if necessary, toss bobbin if all else fails.  Actually, if all else fails, walk away & have a nap.  That's what I did.  Next blogtime, I promise pictures of the finished cushion cover.


That's it for me.  Work tomorrow, then Tuesday off - upholstery school Monday & Tuesday night, with Lucas.  Thank the Upholstery Ghods for good teachers.  We're starting on some cushion making, so I expect to learn where I went wrong with the one I haven't finished yet ;-p


And now, I think I might even go & finish it.  It's only 9.30pm & I'm not really watching the cricket, and now that I know what the problem is... who knows?  Maybe pics tonight?  Wow.  And... ciao!