Just for the Peppermint Penguin

This is what the seam in the lining of the boot bags looks like when finished:

Not too shabby, methinks.  You can't even tell where the turning hole was, and I guess that's all good!

It's Sunday morning, Mr G is wrestling with the washing machine (our 17 yo Hoover Electra 540) & I'm still in my PJ's, trying to find some inspiration.  I've been through all the whiz-bang new sewing books I own (you know, '999 reasons to sew again', 'I've reinvented the spinning wheel and you should all be grateful', and my all time favourite, '300 ugly and useless things to make with little or no fabric' and I can't find anything I really want to make.  

I've knitted scarfs, gloves, jumpers, cardigans, lace, beanies, neckwarmers and suits for dolls. I've embroidered tray cloths, cushions, samplers, collars and Christmas decorations.  I've cross-stitched samplers, bell-pulls, nifty little bags, pin cushions, hand-towels and bibs for babies.  I've mastered the fully lined box pouch, the zippered flat pouch, the boxed bottom make-up bag and the pencil case, I've made felt dogs and fabric dogs galore, I've made birds from that lovely and oft-stolen pattern from Spool Sewing, boot bags, shoe bags, lingerie bags and lavender bags, aforementioned Christmas decorations and far too many frogs to even discuss, and I want a challenge!   

Suggestions?

These boots were made for walking...

Actually, I've been waiting for the storage fairy to come along and fix my boot storage problem - I confess to owning two pairs of knee-high winter boots, and although I have a pair of inflatable inserts, they don't keep the dust off, amazingly.  Amazing, too, that we even have dust, being such good housekeepers like what we is.  


Anyway, I finally got the message and made not one, but two, bags to store the boots in, in fabrics I've been hoarding (surprise).   Because I didn't want to use these fabrics on something I wasn't going to see again, the boot bags were the perfect solution:

  
They take four pieces of fabric measuring 60 X 30cm, and I like to make mine a little differently to the norm - I cut out the four pieces, then stitch a top of facing and a bottom of lining, stitching the ribbon in at this point.  Then I make a big long tube, sewing both pairs of top & bottom together, leaving only a turning space in the bottom of the lining.  


Then I turn it right sides out, stitch the hole closed & then push the lining inside the bag, wrong sides together, press, and top-stitch round the top.  This way, you don't have to try & close a hole in the top where it's going to be visible, because nobody turns out the lining to inspect it (well, certainly not in my house!)...


The other news is that Mr Golightly has made me a lovely new set of cubicles in the bottom of my coat cupboard, taking a relatively useless space and turning it into something extremely useful:

He's cut me four holes in the back of the cupboard for umbrellas, which always fell down and landed on your feet whenever you opened the door, and five cubbies for shoes - one for a pair of short boots, and four for ordinary shoes, which currently sit on the floor in the bathroom, causing you to risk life, limb and broken ankles in the middle of the night.  


Marital bliss ensues.


Ciao!

Steak vs mince

I started writing a post this week about our lovely new PM & the tribulations faced by people who give up everything they own, have ever known or ever loved, and spend days in a leaky unseaworthy boat in the hope of starting a new life free from persecution... and how ironic it is that her parents were able to up sticks and make a new life in a country of their choosing, at a time of their choosing, bringing their dignity and their possessions along with them... and now she's denying people, whose situations are far worse than "her health will suffer if you don't move to somewhere warm" (let's try "we don't like your religious beliefs so we're going to rape your women and kill your children and you have no recourse" or "your skin is the wrong colour, so you can't go to school", or "you eat different foods to us, so you can't have a job", for starters) the same opportunity.  It is not a crime to seek asylum in another country.  Guess we can't say that too loudly or too often.


I didn't finish it, because my moral outrage was too strong to let me think straight.


In addition, I am well and truly over this week.  My wonderful new job has a few glitches in it, and for the first time since changing jobs, I wonder if I've done the right thing... maybe I jumped too quick?  


Ah well.  On the good news side, Doc Rosie got her birthday present, the beautiful Julia Froggie, but in light of the above... maybe she'll need a name change?  My Taiwanese customer got her 60 lavender bags and apparently was very happy with them, which is nice, and I made bits and pieces that didn't rate photographs... and I found out that Eckersley's Arts and Crafts supplies has a huge selection of ribbon, so I bought a few metres:

There's something inherently beautiful in ribbons, I think... here's some I already own:

Is this a fetish, do you think?  So ephemeral, so fleeting but so functional, so useful and so beautiful.  Reminds me of William Morris's exhortation to "Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful"...


It's nearly as good as being a fabriholic!


And so, gentle reader, it's nearly time for bed, so... ciao for now!

Doncha just love a wedding?

Some people I know and love got married in 2002....

They had some ups and downs, moved to London, separated, and spent some unhappy time divorced and apart... and then, last week, to the happiness of everybody who knows them, got remarried:

Wish we could have been there... but I made them a pair of happily married frogs instead:

who will be going off to London tomorrow.  

Ain't love grand?

And then there were none!

Gone, all gone to the Post Office, and off to Taiwan, thank the Absent Ghods.  They did look nice, all bundled up in their bags, and although I spilt a bit of  lavender on the lounge last night whilst stuffing, it will vacuum up nicely, I'm sure. If I could remember where the vacuum cleaner was.

And so, there's all 60 of them, plus two spares.  I must say by the time I got through stuffing and stitching last night I was very glad to be finished, and I did make an impromptu sale at the Post Office this morning, very amusingly, to one of the Post Office staff who thought she could get a bag of ten for $7.00... anyway, I corrected that misapprehension pretty quickly, and she still wanted to buy some... 


It's been frelling cold today, only about 16C, and I feel like we've really hit winter.  I like winter, I get to wear all my favourite clothes at once.  Beautiful red leather gloves from here are keeping my hands warm, and I've got my best Bonds singlet on... tomorrow I have to go back out to the AEON* to do performance reviews for the six lucky souls who reported to me in my old job, and now I'm watching Stephen Fry and his gaggle of babblers discussing mad cows.  They should talk.


Bed, now.  Flannelette jammies.  Woo!

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!

Dark chocolate Kit Kat

mmmmmm.


Just what I needed after the second set of 20 lavender bags - luckily my customer says she loves them, which is great... so now I'm abandoning Bob Hope in Paris Holiday (no great loss, trust me), to go back into the Small But Perfectly Formed Room & make the last 20.


So... progress..

Back to the machine!