Blogger ate my post.... again

Man.  I am so annoyed.  I just wrote a brilliant post criticising (hey!  Four eyes!  Sorry, bad Optical pun for those in the know) the growth in grammar illiteracy that seems to be on the rise - why is it that so many people who write for the public (and by that I mean anybody who can get to the internet) have no idea what they're doing? - and blogger ate it.  I am so annoyed.  Oh yes, I just said that.


Probably just as well, it was getting a little righteous, but when I see "Bored of Sewing" used as a title for a blog which is probably read by gazillions of people, it just makes my blood boil.  Just because you sew or quilt or whatever for a living doesn't mean that you should appear to be ignorant to the rest of the world.


Don't even get me started on those people who can't get "number" versus "amount" right.  For those of you who care, it's simple:  Amount is for money and things that can't be counted, such as "rain", "snow", "air", "time".  Number is for things that can be counted, such as "50 mls of rain fell in less than an hour on Newport last night & my laundry roof is leaking", "52 inches of snow fell on Washington DC last night", "the average human consumes 1 cubic foot of air per minute", and "look at the time, I have to stop writing this shit".  Just kidding.


And did you notice that I used "who", for people, rather than "that"?  That's one of the other ones I hate.  It's right up there with people who can't get "it's" and "its" right.  It's soooo simple.  


Also, I know that there are a few people out there who are going to say "you started a sentence with "and"... well, at least the rest of it is grammatically correct, and so is the spelling*.  


Anyway, rant over.  I got this in the mail this week, from here, one of my favourite Etsy shops:

and I'm going to give it a try - I've never done Sashiko embroidery before, but I'm sure it'll fun - and I'll post a picture of the finished article...

and these: 

which are going in the 'do not cut' box, except that I want to make lovely Clare over at Lulu Carter a birthday present, and these are ideal...


And, (there she goes again...) if you're like me and you love 1930's fashion and music, hop over to Gerald Gee, who does the most amazing things with music & photo montages...


Now.  Back to the damp ceiling!






*All you people in the Americas - we don't use the 'z', just like you apparently don't use the toilet.

Hi, my name is...

Dunno.  Not good at naming beasties.  Ideas?

And these are terrible photos!

Rain rain go away

Well, actually, don't, but could you at least let me get the washing dry?  I've tumbled-dried sheets and towels, but some things I just refuse to put in the dryer (who doesn't remember what the industrial-strength tumble dryers at the laundromat/laundrette did to your bras, back before we owned our own laundry equipment?) & so the back of our house looks like a chinese laundry... and none of it is any drier than it was when I put it out yesterday!


Apart from this:

which turned up earlier in the week from here, and although I know they're old and have been superceded by equal bouts of loveliness (actually, if I never have to look at that whole Wildwood collection ever again, it won't break my heart, you know why...) but there's something just so fantastic about the combinations you can make with them that I wanted to buy some to keep.  Forever.  

When lovely Clare from Lulu Carter visited me, we talked about how to keep favourite fabrics forever (hey, we could start a club, the 'FFF Wits'.  Nice...) and I commented that I'd seen it done on her blog and that's my plan, long term - pieces of my favourite fabrics, in embroidery frames, on a wall.  Nice.  When?  Who the FFF knows?

 

Thank you Miss Lulu for letting me share your image!

In other news from The House of Wet Washing & The Outlaw Josie Wales*, I made this:

which is going off to Brisvegas, for a lovely customer who lives in NZ, and I spent some time ogling these, which came from the V&A, one of my all-time favourite places in the world, as a slightly late but I wasn't going to mention it birthday gift from Doc Rosie and her other super-talented daughter, Miss Alix, who lives in London (hello, yes, April, not long now)...

  

Trouble is, when given ribbon as beautiful as this, you never want to use it, so you start hoarding.... (joke... 'start' was a very long time ago!)... and then you need a bigger house!

Now, off to break my fast, move my washing & sit in my lavender-scented Small But Perfectly Formed room, and make a dog!

Ciao!

*Mr Golightly spent yesterday watching Clint Eastwood movies.  What else would you do?

Doc Rosie and the Pencil Cases

That, to me, gentle reader, sounds like a much more interesting title for a book than "Little Kev hides his head in the sand about Asylum Seekers", or whatever it was called, but what would I know?


Anyway, I had a lovely visit with my very good friend Doc Rosie, who just happens to be the mother of the very lovely Clare, the brains and talent behind Lulu Carter.  And said lovely Clare hadn't been to the Golightly house since we rescued it from Pinkdom, and I think she liked it.  She was taken with the small but perfectly formed room, that's for sure (well, the contents, anyway!)...


Anyway, she stayed for a drink or two and some nibbles, we had a fabulous chat about craft, fabric, the ownership of 'original' ideas, who are the evil sisters and the wicked step-mother in the Cinderella world of craft, then she whisked young Master Carter away from the Frigits, and we had a fabulous time, eating, drinking and talking, and this time, we managed to stay away from this, which is good, because the last time we got together we polished off half a bottle, and I had a nasty encounter the next morning with pineapple juice that ended up with me chucking up said pineapple juice over the lawn.  You really wanted to know that, didn't you?  


Then I had the almost obligatory Sunday afternoon nap (these ten hour working days are really starting to take a toll, y'know?), and then sat down to make pencil cases, using Spotlight's best floral cotton drill.  When the recipients are five and three, I'm not going to use my best French linen, sorry!


For Tehya:

And for Kyla:

I love the Matryoshka lining fabric, which Mr Golightly's lovely niece Emma bought home from Amsterdam. 

And now, gentle reader, the cricket calls, and it's early to bed, early to rise makes Isabella less tired and grumpy than she is now!


Ciao!

Gone, all gone

All my bits for Crafthope have gone, and I was very happy with the outcome of Sunday's efforts with the japanese linen & red spots:

The colour combo was just right, good size, zip went in beautifully... a slightly different experience to the original combo.  Obviously the god of sewing wasn't keeping her eye on the original pouch.


I have a bag of disasters, in the small but perfectly formed room, where I keep everything I've started to make but which has gone horribly wrong - I don't know why I keep them, they don't teach me anything except to perhaps be more careful... 


Other items of note in the Golightly Garden - the flowering gum is:

They're just like aliens, aren't they, waiting to burst forth from their pods... but very beautiful.

And the Crepe Myrtle, also flowering but on its last legs - it's been so pretty this year:

I was trying to be a bit artistic here and get right into the flower with my digital macro lens, but it was windy and do you think I could get the wind to stop blowing when I wanted it to?  Obviously the god of wind wasn't paying attention when she should have been either.  That's my excuse for the blur.

And we have a visitor in the garden - who is very welcome, even though I'm not that keen on them per se, and I don't like them in the house, I love seeing them in the garden because their job is to eat mosquitos, which means the mossies don't eat me, and that's got to be good!

And yesterday was my friend Deb's birthday... she's had a torrid few months, lately, what with one thing and another, so I've pushed the boat out a bit for her birthday - but still in keeping with the handmade vow, I got her this:

from the lovely DiTerra, in Minneapolis... and I didn't make her anything.  Is that good or bad?  Who knows!

Call me UnAustralian, but...

I'm beginning to wonder why we need to spend today waving the flag, wearing the flag & having the flag painted on us - the need for overt displays of patriotism always worries me as perhaps underlying something very ugly - like those cars displaying stickers saying "Australia, love us or leave us" - surely everybody has the right with disagree with aspects of the national character, or state of the nation, regardless of where you were born?


I love this piece of writing:


I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism:  "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."  Carl Shurz, 1899.  


Interesting, isn't it, that some things do not appear to have changed in 100 years, and that the sentiments could apply to any country?


Ah, John Lennon had it so right... "Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too..."*


Ah, dreams...

And then there were three...

All of the things I donated to Craft Hope have now sold!  And now, I have to make them!  It's a bit naughty to sell something that doesn't exist, but I'm thinking its only fraudulent if you don't intend to make them - I spent this morning making one of these:

But I couldn't find any more of that pink, red, blue & white stripe (any ideas where it came from?  Nope, me neither, I'm thinking maybe Spotlight?  Ooooh, scary!) so I used Sandi Henderson's Farmers Market in this:

Which looked surprisingly good, I must say.  I hope the generous purchaser likes it!


Then I had to make a box pouch, so I thought I'd go with the nice japanese linen with the green flower on it, lined with fantastic owls:

and I cut out and appliqued one of the owls onto the front, and then, when I was sewing it up, I realised I hadn't caught the end tab in properly, and when I tried to fix it, completely screwed it up.  So, from being 99% done, it was 99% screwed.  So I had to start again, from scratch.  And I said the big F word, really loud.  I'm sure I shocked Mr Golightly, who doesn't normally comment on my swearing, of which there is often quite a lot (but of course, only when really justified, (yeah right)...) but he did check if I was OK... kind of- he yelled from the study "did you break something?".  If I'd been lying on the floor stabbed through the heart with a pin it would have been too bad, eh?

Anyway, I've given the owls up as a bad job, and gone to this combo instead:

 , 

which I must admit I quite like... so I'm cut out, pellon bonded, zip inserted, top stitched & rearing to go.  Tomorrow...  

And christ, it was hot today.  We took the 'shut up the house' option & kept the doors & windows closed, until the southerly whipped through at about 4.30 - just enough to lower the temperature by 18C, thanks, and to make us rush outside to get in the remnants of the washing in from the big fat rain drops... which lasted just until we'd got the washing in!

Ah well.  At least it wasn't humid, hey?  We'll sleep tonight, whoo hoo.  Flanellette PJ's here we come!