Greetings from Conchita

Today, Gentle Readers, has been all about enjoying the coolish weather, the cricket and Conchita the Chicken.  Some of you may remember that Mr Golightly bought me "Sew It, Stuff It" for my birthday, and taken as I was by the Owl, I wanted to try making Conchita first, just to see how the patterns were.  


You know how it is, sometimes you jump into making something & it turns out the pattern is incredibly complicated, or it just doesn't work, no matter what you do - my first biased cut skirt was like that.  I had no idea that it would drop so much, or that it mattered that I left it to hang for the time specified - but it made me look like a sock money anyway, so it was consigned to the recycle bin PDQ.  


I did not want this to happen to Conchita, and it was pretty easy to make, but I didn't follow the directions exactly - he recommended 1.2 cm/12mm/1/2" seam allowances, which would be fine except the lace I was using on the top, for the Chicken's comb, would have been completely swallowed up by the seam allowance, so I changed that one to 1/4".  I cheated and filled the bottom with sand, so she could be used as a doorstop if required, and my hand embroidery round the eye is completely different to what was recommended in the book, but hey, it's all good.


She came out OK, I think:

As for the Cricket, I got all inspired to make an Etsy Treasury about the Cricket, given that us Aussies are well represented in the Etsy world, but after finding a disappointing number of '"Rare" Cricket Cages', fabric with the word 'Cricket' in the name, or toy crickets, I've given it up as a bad job.  Nobody outside the Commonwealth really cares anyway!


In other Cricketing News, Mr G is very lucky to be going off to the SCG Members Stand tomorrow to compete in the Paddington Gift for Day Three of the Sydney Test.  He's a bit peeved because you have to wear long pants & a collared shirt to sit in the Member's Stand, but I think he's quite happy about being able to ignore the Mexican Wave, in traditional Member's style.  If any of you lovely Gentle Readers from non-Commonwealth Countries want a translation, let me know.  Also, I'll let you know if he gets arrested.  And if I bail him out.


And finally, the other thing I found today was this, which I've printed out & I think I'm going to make some up as a birthday garland for My Best Friend, whose birthday is in late January, and I might try enlarging some non-copyrighted letters to make some to sell - I usually get my fonts from AlphabetPatterns & they don't appear to have any copyright or usage restrictions... please correct me if I'm wrong here. 


And that, Gentle Readers, has been my day.  I also got in a bit of tidying up, reading, ran the dishwasher, removed the colony of ants that appeared to have taken up residence in said dishwasher whilst we were away, and I am about to prepare fabulous food for Az, who is going to the Cricket with Mr Golightly tomorrow.  I apparently volunteered to drive them in at 7.00am, so they could get good seats (see reference to Paddington Gift, above).  What was I thinking?  


Ciao!