No peeking...

So, what do you get if you take these, and work some magic?

Potential for a swap with lovely Susie, from "I just love that fabric", don't you think?  I worked a little magic this afternoon and turned those beautiful parts into a more beautiful whole...

She's pretty gorgeous, I have to say - I got to use some fabrics I haven't used for anything else before - here she is waiting to have her tummy scratched:

And here's the side view:

The colours are lovely, even though they might not be what you'd see running in the park... I hope she likes it! 

Busy, busy

Another couple of busy days doing not much - where does the time go, that's what I want to know?  Two hours of it went on four new tyres for the car on Saturday morning... when I came to put petrol in the car on Thursday morning for my regular 40k trip to the office, I noticed the left front tyre was looking a little low, so I popped air in it at the servo.  


Has anybody else ever used a digital air pump?  I was a bit intimidated, I admit, but being of sound mind and a thoroughly geeky girl, I thought "I can do this" - and so I could.  Instead of the old-fashioned gauge that shows your air pressure when you depress the lever, you just set the pressure to what you want it to be, stick the nozzle on the tyre end and 'whammo', it beeps when it's done.  At least, that's what the instructions said.  But they didn't say anything about "whammo", strangely.


So, off I toddled.  Friday morning, up with the lark (actually, it's quite dark at 5.30am now, so it was, strictly speaking, before the lark, and I had to go the Post Office to pick up our train tickets from Roma Termini to Venezia Santa Lucia (see, I'm getting right into the spirit of the holiday here!).  As I drove down the road, I could hear this noise, like a metal bowl being hit by a wooden spoon, or something similar - so when I got to the post office, I had another look at the tyre & it was flat as a tack.  Luckily, Newport being fairly small, I was able to limp down the road to the servo & fill it again, this time following the trusty old-fashioned method.  From zero to 30 in not many seconds, and on the road again... except...


I was a bit worried about getting halfway there and having the (obviously) slow leaking tyre go flat.  The roads between home & Homebush are very busy, maybe not quite so busy on a Friday as on any other day (because lucky bastards like Baino are off on their RDO*'s), and I just hate the idea of having to hold up 50,000 cars so I can have my flat tyre public humiliation moment...


Anyway, gentle reader, here is a shameless plug for the NRMA.  They are wonderful.  The woman I spoke to was nice and friendly (which is no mean feat at 6.30am), they sent me a text message to say the car was on the way, the guy was nice and not even a tiny weeny bit condescending when I asked him to change my tyre (and yes, I confess, I did, but I do know how to do it myself, but really, do you clean your own oven?  You do?  Oh.) but he did say that the Silver Flash's tyres were getting a bit baldy (just like Mr Golightly tee hee hee) and after I saw the deep grooved tread of the spare, compared to the shiney, smooth looking doughnuts I'd been driving on, I agreed.  So, that's where two hours of Saturday morning went.  Phew.


What else?  I made these, as a belated Birthday Gift for Miss Clare, over at Lulu Carter:

They're the jumbo size, cut from a 7" equilateral triangle, and stuffed to the gills with beautiful lavender... wait, stop.  I sound like I'm putting them in the shop.  They're nice.  That's enough.

And I made this, for Mr Golightly's niece, who's name, unsurprisingly, is Alex, and it's her birthday on Wednesday.  The idea is that I'm going to stitch the stars on to another ribbon of rickrak & she can hang it up somewhere.  She's going to be 13, I think.  Amazing.  They grow up!  Who knew?  That's a terrible photo, too, caused by us having a few household maintenance issues at the moment, with the halogen lights in the small but perfectly formed room working, but sporadically.  

The rain has done some interesting things to our lillipilli hedge, which keeps us out of sight of the neighbours (lucky them), and also gives us much needed shade from the western sun in the afternoon - check this out:

All that growth (the pink bits) happened since last Friday night, when we had the torrential downpour.  There's about four inches of new growth all over the hedge, and it looks amazing:

And that's it for me.  I need to go & watch some geeky TV (Startrek Voyager, for the umpteenth time), and dream in Italiano... 

Hope you all have a great week!  Ciao!

Curmudgeon!

That's me... I do think grammar and spelling are vitally important, especially in the day-job, and I refuse  to settle for the mis-spelt word, the misplaced comma, the badly worded phrase... However, I get the feeling I probably shouldn't try & drive change off the back of a piddly little some-time sewing blog... although I was sorely tempted for a week or so!


Anyway, now that my dudgeon is not so high, I'm back to normal, whatever that is.  I'm still doing the stupid hours, average 44 hours for the last month, and have started counting down the days until we go on holidays... only 6 weeks to go tomorrow!


Is it too early, do you think, to start planning itineraries?  I bought this great set of Rome Walking Tours, and I'm thinking that I'll take them with us, they're small enough to go in a day-pack... along with the digital camera, an umbrella and a bottle of water, although the water in Italian fountains is perfectly safe to drink... although from skimming through some travel sites, you'd think "that foreign muck" out of fountains and taps was the devil reincarnated....


As for Venice, maps and plans mean nothing, the best thing to do is to wander round taking in the sights - and I am aiming to see this:

Courtesy Wikipedia.


Betcha we just get to see the scaffolding - apparently it's being restored... just like the first time we went, when we saw this:

Compared to the second time, when we saw the real thing:

Bit of a difference, and well worth the 3 year wait.  Oops.  That's "three year wait".  And now, having fixed Blogger where it's has started doing that stupid thing again with the photo alignment again, my curmudgeonly gene is reasserting itself, and I am going to bed.  Up, up with the lark at 5.30am, and off to the office.    Yee haw!


Sewing Saturday, I have orders - dogs galore, and "Let's go Shopping" for Anne-Marie - fun all round.  And of course there's some nice fabric pics to show you, so don't go 'way now, y'hear?


Ciao!

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?