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!

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!