I can't believe...

Gentle Readers, that I went to IKEA yesterday.  Mr Golightly's sister (who, in fact, I knew before Mr Golightly, and who actually introduced me to Mr Golightly, in a very roundabout way), had a day off yesterday, and together with Daughter/Niece Miss Milly-Melly-Mel, the beautiful blushing bride of last year, who is a teacher, and therefore on holidays, we traipsed out to Rhodes.  No, not the Greek island, but the suburb of Sydney which is in close proximity to my temporarily former office...


I got to Mr Golightly's sister's house at 10.09am, we picked up Miss Milly-Melly-Mel at 11.00 from her residence in Glebe and we were at Rhodes by 11.30am.  We did not leave until 5.00pm, and I arrived home at 7.09pm.  Phew.


And, I hear you wondering, why couldn't you believe you were going to IKEA?  Well, Gentle Readers, because I usually hate going - it's packed with people with no goal in mind, no lists, no idea - and a zillion screaming children.  Even though it's school holidays, and raining, yesterday was actually bearable.  We managed to avoid all those 'no idea' people by arriving at lunch time, waiting until 2.00pm to have our own lunch, and ducking out periodically for coffee.  Much more bearable.


And what, pray tell, I hear you asking, did I purchase?


Well, I had my eyes on a few big things:

But purchasing this would have required re-organisation of our whole living room, as it's currently configured to have the other sofa/couch/lounge at right angles on the RHS - so that wouldn't work - it would leave our guests sitting looking at the piano, rather than out at the garden, as you would want, particularly when it's looking so nice and green:

Looking North(ish)

All their other lounges have low backs, which I hate - I want to be able to put my head on the cushions when I lean back - and our house is not particularly modern in style - way too much clutter to be fashionable - so it needs to be 'cottage-y' without being twee - any suggestions?  I did look at the Moran range, and although the fabric on this one makes me want to roll on the floor foaming at the mouth, I did quite like the general shape and size, but I think I'd have to sell a kidney or two to get it and a matching two seater... maybe I should just have the old ones reupholstered & recushioned (again)?

I was also interested in TV stands, the perennial quest for a television stand that isn't completely f*ugly goes on and on - they're all either too modern or too chunky - and I think I'm going to have to give in & pay somebody to make me one.  

In other fascinating news, I bought a square wastepaper basket to store my christmas/birthday/gift wrapping paper, as per Chez Larsson, a new washing-up brush (see, told you it was fascinating), 12 tumblers (six medium size, six large) (at a huge $6.99 for a pack of six, that's $1.00 per glass, people), two packs of square cork mats (those are invaluable for protecting the Jarrah bench in the kitchen, which Mr G gets all thingy about, a water bottle so I can put cold water in the fridge, and finally, a 35c carrier bag.  It's huge and perfect for the sewing room rubbish.

My trusty companions purchased things along the same lines, but Mr Golightly's sister came across a bargain in the 'As-Is' section - an Expedit four section shelving unit for a bargain price, which, because I had my handy-dandy tape measure with me, we figured out we could get in the car & take home - and to loud and increasingly annoyed cries of "you won't be able to shut the boot" from both companions, I closed the boot on it quite happily, leaving Sister-in-law and Niece standing open-mouthed in awe of my spatial acuity.   Ah, sometimes it's good to be King.

Ciao!

More Urban Jungle... (it's a spider, so look away now)

This morning we had a visitor:

That's Mr G's hand, right there (safely on the other side of the screen).  She was pretty big, I have to say...

but she looked to me like she'd just shed her skin & was still hardening up... 

In other nature related news, the sole remaining palm in our back garden does what it does so well, which is self-clean, bringing down a few plants, tealight holders and pots in the process with a huge crash in the night... we think the possums were actually to blame, because they've been going nuts in our backyard over the Lillipillies, which are seriously in fruit, and I think they got a bit carried away & pushed this out of the tree:

The tree is at least 10 metres high.  No wonder the crash got us out of bed!

And the fruiting Lillipillies, I hear you say?

Apparently the early settlers used these to make Jam & they are quite safe for humans to eat... if you can beat the possums to it!

That's it f53kHVmCYQDDc2lMaX_zKCQMVjMxJHN8O6amp; have breakfast (it's 11.38am), iron that beautiful red French fabric and make pillow cases.  More, later.  Enjoy your day!

Ciao!

In the Urban Jungle..

Sometimes, Gentle Readers, it's hard to believe we only 31kms/19 miles from the city - this is why:

What can you see amongst the palm fronds at the front of our house?  Look closely now:

A not-so nervous ring-tail possum, out and about quite a bit earlier than normal.  These little guys are nocturnal, and don't usually appear much before dusk.  This was taken at 6.45pm yesterday, well before dusk (it's 8.19pm now & the sun is just starting to set).

Very cute, but altogether undesirable in your roof - they love to nest, which means if you've got anything soft up there, they're into it.  So far, touch wood, we have no evidence that this little critter is in our roof.  We're also not sure if the sticky-outy white bits at the bottom of this picture are testicles or something in the pouch - more evidence of nesting, if it's a pouchling....


Today I made a pillowcase, first one ever.  Why on earth would you make pillowcases when you can buy them from Target or BigW for $4.50 or so?  Well... of course there's a story to that - but the evening meal has arrived (Pizza!) so I'll have to come back to this after food!


Right, back now after watching 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' on DVD - I bought Mr G the full set on video for his birthday - lots of fun, especially after seeing the latest one at the movies myself, and tying lots of things together - **spoiler alert** bits in the first film that make an appearance in the last one...


Anyway, here's a pic of some of the pillowcase:

Made from an oldie but a real goodie - Heather Bailey's Fresh Cut Fabric Finery, in the 'Vanilla' colourway, with an extremely pale yellow stripe through it.  French seams everywhere, and not a raw edge in sight.  Why, I hear you ask again, are you making a pillow case?  Well, MGF Kaz has some beautiful material from the 'Les Indiennes Des Provence' shop in the Hunter, which closed down recently, and she's asked me to make her some pillowcases.  Well, not ever having made one before (but don't tell her that), I thought the safest way to not screw up her beautiful fabric was to do a practice run on something I liked, had a fair bit of & didn't mind cutting up.


Hers looks a bit lot like this:


but it's Red, not orange.  It's beautiful stuff, and will be gorgeous to sew with, I think, once I get it back from the Golightly Chinese Laundry outside.  Progress update tomorrow!  


And now, because it's a good deal later than 8.19pm, it's time Little Golightly's were in bed.  Can't be wandering the halls of Hogwarts at night, now can we?  


Ciao!

Confession time...

Beware, Gentle Readers, for 'tis confession time.  I hope you're sitting down, and not in my favourite chair, either.


I have never looked at the stats for my blog before.  I must admit (and don't I do a lot of admitting here, hmmm?) that I love it when people comment, so I know you're out there, and I also admit that the sole reason I got that feedjit thingy at the bottom of the blog was to feed my ego, but for some reason, I hadn't looked at the stats.


But today, I did.  I was adding the updated Treasury to the page, and saw the tab, and a little light bulb went on.  Gentle Readers, there are more of you than I ever suspected.  Indonesia, The Netherlands, the US of A, the UK, here, of course... how gratifyingly international.  (Did any of you ever see that film with Queen Latifah, Last Holiday, where she says "Make me... international"?  Check it out, people).  


In other news, it's just started to rain.  Yippee!  If I needed an excuse to have a nothing day, that's it.  I love it when it rains in the middle of summer.  Everything smells so... summery.  Especially when the southerlies come through on a hot afternoon and cool everything down - the roads smell, the grass smells.. it's a real Sydney thing... 


In other not quite so cheery news, whilst searching for the name of that Queen Latifah movie, I saw in Wikipedia that Pete Postlethwaite and Gerry Rafferty have both shuffled off this mortal coil... I loved Postlethwaite, his cheekbones always came into the room about 3 feet ahead of the rest of him, and he was magnificent in The Usual Suspects, which, Gentle Readers, if you haven't seen, you absolutely should.  


Gerry Rafferty had a huge hit here in 1978 with an album called City to City, and the single from that album, 'Baker Street', had a fantastic saxophone solo - when I was a melancholy, moody teenager, that song, played with Jackson Browne's 'The Pretender' and Al Stewart's 'Year of the Cat', was musical heaven for me.  No pun intended.  RIP, Ger.


In other news, completely unrelated news, and in what Mr Golightly refers to as 'a quantum leap', I had a brainwave in the night about Momo's French General "Lumiere De Noel" fabric, (which I bought last year as a charm pack to make the Christmas bunting for My Best Friend) - I love those fabrics so much I'm going to make it into a quilt - using the pattern that I made for Miss Nelly - so now I need to go off & buy a metre of one of those beautiful fabrics to make the strips and a layer cake.  Oh, joy.  More fabric :-)


And now, the sun is coming out.  That means it going to be bad Sydney today, where it's sticky, humid, yucky, and I have lost my excuse to do nothing.... so it's back to the sewing room, and goodbye to Lydiard Millicent.  No, not somebody with a weird, backward sounding name, but a visitor from that nice little village just outside Swindon (where, completely co-incidentally, I lived as a child, no, no, Swindon, not Lydiard Millicent, but I did live in Latton for a while, are you totally confused yet?)


Me too.  Ciao!

Blah

That's how I feel today, Gentle Readers, and not just because the Poms trounced us at the cricket.  I slept badly, woke early to farewell our houseguest, then pottered for a bit, including finishing off cutting & trimming 20 5" square lavender bags - more on that exciting news in a moment - then went back to bed until 10.00am.


The exciting news (see, I'm not like one of those sadistic* bloggers who make you wait until the very end to give you the good bits, I just chuck it out there) is that I finally fronted the ladies who run the only homewares store in Newport without wearing too much hairspray and makeup (the ladies, that is, not the store), and they happily agreed to take 20 of my 5" square lavender bags for a trial - I made some as a 'Thank You' gift for lovely Wendy Hendy, who kindly put us all up over Christmas - and before I went off to the post office to send them off, I thought "well, what have I got to lose?  They can only say 'no'".  So I showed them, and they didn't!  Molto eccitante!


Anyway, I spent today stitching, stuffing, hand-stitching them closed, trying a new technique for closing them, wasting an inordinate amount of time pulling out the new technique which is much quicker but doesn't look as nice, I don't think - I must admit to much admiration for those sewers who can stuff their lavender bags whilst the bags are trapped in the machine, because I sure as hell can't.


In between that, I had another nap, then another.  I think I might have an ear infection, it's been groaning on & off all day, which is always a signal to me that something has gone wrong.  Maybe another dose of 'glue ear'?  Who puts glue in their ears anyway?  Whatever it is, it's making me tired.


However, in the "I'm so brave, I'm soldiering on" mode I've adopted temporarily to write this crap, I am now going to bombard you with pictures of said lavender bags, and add some of them to my Etsy shop, so if you feel like making me rich and sick, feel free:

And that's it for now.  Oh yes, almost forgot - Hello to the Gentle Reader from Hawaii - I have a very soft spot for Hawaii because Mr Golightly & I had our honeymoon there.  Ahhhh.  Sadly (or perhaps not) all the photos from 1993 are pre-digital and I'm too lazy to get off my lardy-arse and scan them, so you're reprieved.  For now.


Ciao!


*Not entirely sadistic, anyway.

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!

Christmas 2010

Mr Golightly excelled himself this year (not) on the Christmas Front.  Not only did he fail to provide me with a slushy mushy Christmas Card declaring his undying love, devotion and gratitude for the myriad ways in which I make his life complete, but he also forgot to buy me a present.  Ahem.  Lucky for him I was way ahead of the game... I bought myself one.  I've been acquisitively admiring these earrings for a while, and bought them for myself without realising the role they were going to play at Christmas...

Christmas Day was spent at the Hendy's, with Secret Santa occurring just before Dinner.  For the Gentle Readers who may be unfamiliar with the concept, it is also known as Kris Kringle - all names go into a hat, and a person's name is drawn out with another person's name.  You then buy for that person, one gift.  That way it keeps the cost down, and the stress.  Only problem is... I did the draw at MGF Kaz's house, and promptly lost the Secret Santa Assignment pieces of paper before telling everybody who had whom.  So guess who ended up without a Secret Santa gift out of the eight people in attendance?  Io.  Me.  I.  Moi.  

I didn't really mind.  I have more than enough stuff.  I don't need any more things, I really don't, and I got a kick out of seeing what was in everybody else's parcel.  I'm not 11 any more,  I don't need those boardgames now.

However, some amongst the assembled throng felt bad for me, especially as Mr G had also forgotten to bring/buy me something for non-Secret Santa Christmas.  So, these little earrings, which I took with me just for Show & Tell, became the rescue present - you know, like the boxes of Cadbury's Roses you keep under the tree in case of the arrival of unexpected Gentle Readers.... Lucky for him!

In other news, a photo of the spots is in order, so you can see I wasn't over-exaggerating:

And also the unwelcome visitor to my mother's sewing room:

*Shudder*.  I had to leave the room PDQ* after I saw him.

And finally, Mr Golightly and Gus share some Christmas Joy:

I think it's lovely when you can bring happiness to the animals, don't you?

Ciao!

*Pretty Damn Quick