So many vodkas, so little lime

Well, actually, it was more like one Gin & Tonic on Wednesday night when Mr Golightly & I took his lovely mother out for dinner for her birthday.  


There were also bubbles, which I had for lunch on Friday - the first long lunch I've had for a while, closely followed by a trip out of the office to get a new battery in my watch, and then, at 4.00pm, just as the buzz from the bubbles was wearing off, I went home.  Hah.  I was in bed by 8.10pm, and asleep by about 8.30pm.  Bliss.


In the intervening time, I've forgotten quite a few things that have happened - the very lovely Felicity from All Toile and No Reward sent me a fabulous Australiana Tea Towel as a souvenir of her sojourn in Kununurra,  [isn't sojourn a funny word - I must look up the origins in my Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, which is a fascinating book, so good in fact that I'm torn between keeping it beside my bed to read at night, and taking it to the office to bore my colleagues rigid.  Guess I'll leave it at home.] which has fabulous pictures of the Red Northwest... and my lovely mother-in-law bought me one back from her sojourn to Townsville - it's got pictures of those well-known North Queensland native flowers, Garlic and Lavender, and a few more I can't remember without getting up out of my chair in front of the fire... all too hard.


I've made my lovely MIL a couple of things for the family Birthday lunch tomorrow:

Lightly padded coathangers, two with lace, one without.  Only because I didn't have enough lace for all three - and three little birdies filled with the tail end of my lavender.  The new delivery is waiting for me at the post-office, which, frustratingly, I can't get to until Monday night, so I can't finish stuffing the last 20 lavender bags.  I really wanted to be able to post those today (we are lucky enough to have an Post Office open on Saturday mornings just 20 minutes down the road) for my customer, but I guess Tuesday will do just as well.   


How long do you think it's going to take Australia Post to realise that not everybody can get to the Post Office between 9.00am and 5.00pm Monday-Friday, and make all Post Offices open on Saturdays?  They will let you pick up M-F after 6.00am, but that doesn't suit everybody either - I know, how about staggered hours?  Six days a week, 7.00am to 7.00pm?  God, what a revelation that would be.  And a revolution...


And this, to celebrate us being locked out of our house on the night of our return from the West:

"Over East" had so much rain whilst we were away that our new(ish) screen door swelled up, and we couldn't get the damn thing open.  Mr G had (of course) shut the garage door before we could get the screen door open, so we couldn't get back to the car to drive to WMIL's* house to get the spare back door key.  We have a spare key hidden in a Very Secret Pebble in the garden, but of course, it's for the front door.  


Anyway, we rang WMIL* & she very kindly drove over to our house (lucky it's only 15 minutes each way) with her spare key, which turned out to be... for the front door.  She also very kindly sat around and waited for the $150 emergency locksmith to come so we could be warm and dry.  So... I figured the least I could do would be to make her a fabulous keyring to go with the complete set of housekeys we're giving her.


And what else?


I made a froggie today, named "Julia", of course, but forgot to take a photo of her.  What a dope.  Hopefully the lucky recipient, Doc Rosie, will be kind enough to take one for me... 


And now, I'm going to bed.  It's 9.59pm and I've been up since 6.50am.  Flannelette jammies, ah, luxury.  Ciao!

I see red

First, the road rage incident; for those of you not lucky enough to live in sunny Sydney, you may not be aware of the joys we experience during the morning peak hour.  All I'm going to say is to the crazy woman who screamed at me for having the temerity to honk at her, "you are very selfish".

The traffic was moving  smoothly, all three lanes of it.  And Bam!  There's the brain fart.  I'm going to pull up at a bus stop.  I'm not even going to drive on 10 metres and go round the corner so I don't impede anybody else.  I'm going to pull up at the bus stop, and everybody behind me, including the bus waiting to use the bus stop, and all those other people doing what they're supposed to, which is, obeying the road rules, can get nicked.

And then, gentle reader, she pulls up next to me, winds down her window & starts screaming at me.  I think the vein throbbing in her forehead kind of gave me the clue that maybe she wasn't quite sane.  Lucky for me the lights changed & I drove off in the opposite direction.  You can rest assured that on Monday I'll be very carefully avoiding looking for her!

And now, normal transmission resumes.

These have arrived: 

I'm very excited to have these in the house, because some of you may already know I love red, and now the big question is, what shall they be???

I sat in the small but perfectly formed room last night & tossed a few ideas around, and then went & watched an episode of Torchwood instead.  It's hard to be creative when you're tired, so I didn't even try.  I went to bed at 9.00pm, but now I'm thinking, cosmetic bag, froggie, pyramids, bunting - oh, yeah!

I made these for tomorrow - the photos are a bit crap, sorry about that, but you can see how nicely they came out:

I got the pattern from here and I think I'm going to turn it into a new family tradition!  Personalised Banners, pick your own occasion!

Have a lovely Mother's Day, all you lovely Mothers!

Feelin' groovy....

Well, not quite. I still haven't quite recovered from my [apparently] jetlag induced lethargy from my lightning trip to Melbourne last Friday - Melbourne, Melbourne, I love Melbourne. It's the closest thing to Europe we have here in this country, and I love it. I love the lanes, the fact that a person of the female gender, on their own, can go out for a nice meal, get a good table at the front of the restaurant where she can see the nice man playing the guitar, watch the nice people having their passeggiata, eat nice food and drink nice wine, and nobody bats an eyelid. Nobody hits on her, nobody bothers her, except the waiter to make sure she's got everything she needs, including the salad that wasn't on the menu but which they made specially for her... I love it. I left a fairly hefty tip, trust me.

I also did a spot of shopping whilst I was there, I gave in to my apparently re-growing devotion to all things red, and bought a nice light linen jacket with a very groovy shawl collar and three-quarter length sleeves, some seemingly randomly placed pieces of cotton twill tape for funk, and a thing at the back I can't think of the name of, that we last saw on safari suits and tweed jackets. Leave it with me, I'll dig out both editions of the my Fairchild's Dictionary of Fashion and look it up, or better yet, I'll ask my mother.

Her grandfather was a Master Tailor, and she'll know, because she knows all kinds of useful stuff like that. I saw a lounge suite (boy how old does that make me sound) at a garage sale once covered in some weird looking fabric which was part flat and part raised, in patterns, with the raised bit being made up of tiny weeny loops... she knew instantly I described it to her that it was called 'moquette'. Amazing. Even more amazing, she knew exactly what colour it was. Yucky olive green. Psychic powers or what?

I nearly succumbed to another red handbag, too, this morning - how many is too many? I already own five, four from Italy (Venice 1, Florence 1, Volterra 1, Rome 1) & one I got in the MLC Centre in Sydney, from the nice shoeshop man who is closing down very very soon - this newest one was very groovy, square, with links and a bar clasp going across the bag as the closure - it was also reversible, with camel coloured suede on the inside.. it was very nice, but my conscience stopped me... sadly.

In case you were going to say "Five handbags isn't many", That's five red ones. I own a bundle more than five... I was going to list them all but decided that probably isn't a good idea. I don't them trundling the guillotine into my front yard just yet, thanks.

Anyway, my wonderful mother-in-law (henceforth known as WMIL) has asked me to make 8 small pouches to give to her tapestry group for easter - she's going to fill them with eggs & a tiny chicken [toy], and then they can use them for whatever... and I've already made two, plus the two I made today trying to get the sizes right. These two are going up to Etsy for sale... if everybody isn't already pouched out. I sold my third Miss Muffett to a lady in Mexico, and there's only the orange one left. Didn't really think I'd sell that, but hey, it was worth a try. I'm delighted that I even had the opportunity to help the bushfire appeal by selling the ones I did. Anyway, pictures upcoming, and so, to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open, which is, hopefully, a good sign!

Night night!