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!

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?

Aw shucks...

Thanks to my good friend Kaz, I was able to help out the very lovely Lulu Carter, whose iPhone had apparently left the building, bought the farm, fallen of the perch, you know.  Died.  It's hard sometimes being a geek girl, people ring you & ask some very strange questions, and phone support is very tricky, because you can't always see what others see - but this one was nice & easy, and of course, a pleasure...


Big day tomorrow, early start (5.30am), late night.  Off to sleep, now... but enjoy this - I'm thinking of making this my first patchwork quilt:

This is from Material Obsession Two, it's pretty simple except for one border & the applique...I don't really want to start patchworking seriously, because I think it's a slippery slope, but I would like to give it a burl... (that means "have a go")... should I?

A big thank you to Conyers, Georgia!

Where the hell is Conyers, Georgia, anyway? I had to go & look it up, and now I know. It's in the north-west of Georgia, near Atlanta. And why, I hear you ask yourself, do we need to know where it is? Because Elizabeth D from Conyers, Georgia bought the toilette bag I donated to the Bushfire Appeal shop on Etsy , and I posted it off to her this morning. I love the idea that somebody halfway across the world can buy something I made (and for a good cause too, that's the best bit!)... I have to confess that I sent out some "good cause spam", something I would otherwise never do, to all the people in my Contacts list I consider approachable, and also to some of my Etsy suppliers, asking for a little "pay it forward", I s'pose, by way of "I have a listing, it's a good cause, go & look" kind of thing.

Interestingly it appears to have worked, albeit on a bigger scale than I was imagining. My friend Kaz, who lives in the beautiful Hunter Valley bought four, yep, four things, although two of them were already destined for her house anyway. The other two were a bit of a surprise, so my gallant efforts to fight off the Jetlag Lethargy that gripped me on Saturday, by sewing madly were nearly all for naught. Well, kind of. The whole point is for people to buy what you've made, so stop whining.

Anyway, I had made Bruce the Twin Bro', to go with the beautiful Blue Boy I made a couple of weeks ago, and a couple of other nice pouches apart from the ones already going to the Baptist Ladies Auxiliary Sewing Circle & House of Good Work, or whatever it's called, and poof! All gone. So I set to & made a gorgeous box pouch using some of that lovely Sandi Henderson Ginger Blossom range - and poof! Again! Sold to my good friend Mary. Man, I need to give up IT & do this all the time. Really.

I also donated three of those Miss Muffett Pouches Mum & I made when she was here - I thought $8.00US was okay, they're all nicely made but not of particularly exciting fabrics, except for one. Unless you're a fan of orange, of course. Check em out here.

And the earrings arrived right at the front door - Angela left me a nice note to say thanks for the mention in my blog, but really, they are so gorgeous her shop deserve lots of advertising, and when the other niece has her birthday, I'm sure I'll be raving again!

Hope she wasn't put off by the spiders & things growing round our front door - MWH & I are firm believers in letting spiders do their thing, especially when it comes to eating mosquitoes... except when the Mummy Huntsman comes into the house & lays her babies in our pantry/laundry room. Then they're all over the ceiling, in the sink, on the ironing board, in the pantry... man. They're tiny though, about half the size of your little fingernail, and spidery. Of course, there's nothing (much) for them to eat in our house, so they're all going to die... I don't know why she does it, this is the third time she's come inside to have her babies. First time was one NYE when we were having people over to stay the night & I had to run around like a crazy woman with the vacuum cleaner trying to suck them all of the ceiling... then it was my bathroom, where I just left them to fall into the bath. I will just sweep these guys up as they fall prey to Nature... because who really knows what baby huntsmen eat?

And finally, it's my lovely friend Clare's birthday, check out her blog here. Happy BIrthday Clare!

Who needs

the old boy network, when you've got the old-girl network happening? My lovely friend rose w's fabulously talented daughter, Clare, whose gorgeous work actually inspired me to get my act into gear & onto Etsy, has been kind enough to mention my (aw shucks) little blog & shop on her fabulously well connected blog (see what I mean about that old-girl network?)... along with a picture of gorgeous Petronella posing in my sewing basket, and, even better, she said nice things about me! Whew! I'm not excited enough to burn ginger biscuits, but I was excited enough to interrupt MWH whilst he was watching Star Trek (the original series, can you believe it?) on TV, to tell him. That takes some cojones, let me tell you. Good thing they're disguised as pin cushions in Amy Butler fabric!

Speaking of nice fabric, I'm about to put the first box pouch up for sale on my shop. Now that I'm kinda famous, we'll see if they take off... but in the meantime, I am so delighted about Clare & her blog that I can't stop grinning like a loon. There's nothing like a little mutual backslapping to get you in the mood for the office. Ooooh. Nasty.

And, finally, before I go off to bed, I forgot to mention the absolutely most exciting thing of all, I sold those two gorgeous toilette bags to a nice lady in Hawaii. Man, that's so neat (I think she was taken by my explanation about the "T" word...). Off, pillow, doona, sleep, sleep...

Sometimes...

having a full blown obsession is a pain. Other times it's great. I've been banging on about making these great box pouches (from a tutorial I found here amongst others - this one had a great tip about the corners, remember my great perpendicular moment from yesterday? Of course you do.) & I finally got a look inside one on Etsy, where the seller was kind enough to show that all she did with her raw edges was finish them with some bias tape. Well, we've got bias tape coming out the wazoo, of course, but did I use that? Noooooo, on the first one I used expensive ribbon from Singapore, and on the second one, even worse, I had to make my own 1 1/2" bias tape (and so I couldn't use my spiffy bias-binding maker yada yada {tune out here to avoid off topic sewing equipment moment}...which was one of the goodies from the Lincraft closing down sale) because it's only 1" yada yada...) from very expensive fabric from the States. What am I, nuts? Yep. Probably.

Anyway, I have decided in my infinite wisdom that if I am keeping the pouch to use in my handbag, and not to make my fortune (thus enabling me to give up my lucrative but oh so boring career in IT), then I don't actually have to do anything with the raw seams except pink them. Who, I ask you, who, is going to say "show us your raw edges then"? Nobody. Absolutely nobody. I even put a label in it. Really. Talk about effort disproportionate to reward.

Anyway, they do look nice, but boy, that four hours went by pretty quick.

On the upside, one of my favorite bloggers is back in the land downunder after her holiday visiting the Queen, amongst others. Just kidding. She went to see Alix, who is, after all, much more important than the Queen! Welcome back Lulu Carter.