the cats are pretty unimpressed with the cold. I’m not exactly thrilled by it myself; Little Hartley was as close to frozen hell as I ever want to get, and this mid-north-coast town should not be feeling like snow in the air. Certainly not in April, at any rate.
So can I count this pic of Mumblenads commando-crawling over my shoulder (in the hope that I then won’t notice when she drapes herself over my arms, cos she’s totally smart like that) as my “dare ya” self-portrait a la Tanya & Soozadoo? It’s about as good as it gets round here – when my hair’s too long to fingercomb it gets hacked off (I try to time it to coincide with the World’s Greatest Shave, but I think the thrill’s worn off paying me to get a buzzcut), I wear lipstick maybe once a year & haven’t worn other makeup for I dunno how long. Every now & then I consider getting something funky done with my hair again, but so far I’ve decided it might well make me feel utterly middle-aged. I’m frankly still shocked every time I realise I’m not a passably cute 29-yr old any more, and it occurred to me the other day – sadly! – that nice boys are flirty friendly because I’m safely heading towards Little Old Lady Land, not because I’m all oozin it baybee <G>
I just ordered myself the Good To Be Green catalogue. Only $17.50 USD, and even with Paypal having US-centric exchange rates it’s still under $20. Happy birthday to me :)
I’ve removed all the images from the blog for the moment, because there was a huge – MASSIVE! – surge in bandwidth usage that I can’t quite figure out. In the space of a day or two, almost my total bandwidth allowance used, and I’ve only ever used 5% of it at most before. Nearly the end of the month, so I can do some investigating once I’ve got bandwidth to spare again come May 1, but meantime there’s not going to be much here visually.
unless I get a HUGE spurt on tonight AND have no misbehaving threads & wonko tension and so on, AND can find a courier I can afford tomorrow who’ll guarantee delivery by Monday arvo, I’m just not going to get this bloody piece entered into the comp. Which bites, because I really wanted to; it was always intended for this comp, and it seemed like fate that it after veering off on a tangent last year it turned out to fit this year’s theme perfectly. Mum’s feeling guilty because I spent so much time working on the bag patterns before the show, but meh, I was planning the quilting while I did that & besides the real problem was that I got sick. Stupid colds & IBS etc. And a little that I had to keep stopping to clean for visitors who eventually cancelled, which is kind of annoying but oh well (if I wasn’t a great big slobby mcslobberson I wouldn’t have to do that kind of panicky tidying, so it’s my own fault really). If I hadn’t wasted a couple of days (before we started work on the bags & dyefest) messing around with another design before remembering that this one – this one that was, remember, originally designed for this comp!! – was hanging on the drawing board only needing quilting … oh well. I am pretty happy with how most of the quilting’s looking, and for once the back isn’t totally shameful (have I mentioned how much I dig the Bottom Line thread? I really dig the Bottom Line thread), so I’m just going to finish the bloody thing now. I’ll hang it in here and look at it and tell myself it would have done wonderfully if I had just got my shit together, because that’s me singin my song baybee! heh. And then I’ll finish the two I entered into the Sydney show, so that deadline doesn’t come whomp me upside the head on the coattails of the next big rush. I really gotta get more organised (refrain #37).
so how typical is it that the only day I’ve been able to set aside as wholly* devoted to quilting the piece I want to enter in the DUQ comp, some nong takes out a power pole next door? Bloody great bang, I rushed out & couldn’t see anything, traffic was flowing steadily and the power stayed on so I shrugged it off. Kept hearing this peculiar noise. Looked out the end window and there are these massive flashes of light coinciding with each incredibly loud BZZZT! BZZZT! Um, k … I go look, and the pole’s on fire. The BZZZT is REALLY freakin loud when you’re outside, frightened the crappers out of me. I rushed back inside to turn all the sensitive electrical/electronic stuff off, and declined to go back out in the drizzle to take photos in case this pole decided to explode like the other one did. Cops & fireys & country energy gathered down there to stand around gawking up at it, cut the power & put the fire out. No power for something like 5 hours. I’d have gone back to the folks’ place if Id known it would be out that long – they said a couple of hours at first. So I napped as best I could between childwrangling and feeling sorry for myself.
* well, as wholly as it ever gets with her highness underfoot …
ok show’s over, now I have to get home and finish the piece I want to enter in the DUQ calendar comp. I’m SO tired it’s stupid heh. Coming down with a code in by doze hasn’t helped! We just got clear of the sinus/ear infections from hell and now we’ve caught an actual honest-to-gawd cold, how sucky is that?! I zonked after we got everything unloaded tonight, woke up around 11.30 desperately in need of codral or something. Sad lack of codral or something, so I sipped some unutterably awful panadol hot lemon drink, which actually says to add sugar if desired and after tasting I just boggled because OMG it’s sickeningly sweet already and I say this as someone with a very sweet tooth. I think I’ll go back to bed now. Urgleflummer. Wow -it’s after midnight, so it’s my baby boy’s 25th birthday.
so, if anyone’s in Port Macquarie this weekend, drop by & say g’day :)
patterns done.
fabrics done.
car packed, mum no longer having a nervous breakdown (unless making mug bags at 1.27am the night before a long day counts, which I’d say might except that she’d probably smack me heh), blah blah organisationyboo.
have I mentioned how much I love prepping for a show? I mean it’s hard work and lots of VERY late nights and unfortunately early mornings, and bits of it are tedious, but I get to do lots of cool fun stuff on the computer (making signs etc, and we usually try to have a new pattern for any show) and the visual rewards are awesome. Sometimes I want to just keep a whole display board for myself, just to look at.
nearly finished another bag pattern, designed to get the most out of a couple of fat quarters. This one’s a two-fer; drawstring or straight tote, both with a nice ovalesque base. These are bodgy snaps taken in a hurry on my way out the door this morning, but I couldn’t wait to show them off. The drawstring one is mum’s styling (embellishments not finished yet) and the flowery one is mine, but she’s made both up while I did diagrams and wrote instructions.
We’ve been working hard on the patterns for 3 bags (the slouch everyone seems to love, and two others nobody’s seen yet). Mum’s been making samples and testing patterns, and I’ve been writing & illustrating & trying to fit things into a sensible layout and so on. I’ve been having a ball with the diagrams; I lovelovelove figuring out how to express in a diagram some weird bit that sounds like nonsense in words. Doing them helps me figure out the words to write, too. Have I mentioned that I love CorelDraw? On top of everything else to love (least among which is not the magic undo and the ability to paste bits and copy properties (outlines, colours, whatever) from one object to another. If it would only tell me the circumference of an irregular oval I’d marry it.
how fun is that?
bleh, I’m tired. Oh yeah – both the girlchild and I ended up on Bactrim to sort out all the stupid toxic relentless crap in our skullular cavities & orifices. She turned into a whole other child after just two doses (no more screaming terror of rain and breezes, yay!) but mine seem to be fighting back a bit. I hope the Bactrim’s winning heh. So sick of the revolting crud in my head and the stuffy sore ears etc. You should not be able to feel your eardrums just sitting there inside your head, y’know?
So this is my sample/test for a piece I’m trying to finish for a comp. Yes, it’s messy and unco; I’m testing thread tension for different colours/types of thread, colours, stitches, and quilting motifs. I had intended to stitch around the edges of each piece in matching thread and then do something more colourful in the background, but when I was playing around with background motifs I decided I really rather liked the way it looks when the quilting doesn’t exactly follow the applique. I really like the way the red flames look between the hand & red stripey thing. I guess I do kind of an “in the ditch” usually, and I’m wondering if I need to change it up some. It’s a bit scary though. But potentially interesting …
so I’m sitting here trying to work and miss monkeyshines is watching a DVD when she starts yabbering about a snake, come look mama, it’s blah blah snake, look, mum come & look it’s out there, blah blah Dora blah snake. I’m all okay, okay, I’m coming, keep your hat on. Look at the screen, no snake just Dora & Boots & that bloody annoying map, wonder what the hell she’s on about. She points out the window and yabbers about the snake just lying there not doing anything. I look at the twisty, twining vines, and try not to be condescending regarding the difference between plants & reptiles. In the process of explaining that it’s just twisty twiny vines that LOOK like snakes, not an actual snake, I pull the curtain back … and the bloody thing moves. Eyes tracking my every move. Um, cool, er, maybe, is that a baby python? Maybe it will eat the giant clodhopping whatevers that have wild parties on/in the folks’ roof every night? I decide to take photos. From a safe distance, cautiously (especially once I get close enough to see that it’s suspiciously un-python-shaped). It isn’t very cooperative. I’d say it runs away, but you know, snake. It undulates very determinedly up into the ceiling of the verandah, at which point I decide inside is better than out there possibly underneath an irritated snake of unidentified species. I’m a little worried that it’s a brown. Especially given that it was invisible to me until it moved, and my eyes are better than my parents’.
Here are the blurry shots I got of our fast-moving, camera-shy visitor:
it occurred to me today that I should set mum up with a blog of her own to brag in. Not that I’m averse to bragging on her myself, but it might be fun for her. She’d have to promise not to grumble about her sloppy daughter though …
here are a few pics of another bag. I think she’s got another 3 or 4 (differing constructions & feeltones) in the works, at least two finished or nearly so. This one’s in the shop for $45 $60 (oops, my mistake).
< < -- Here she is all fused up ready to party. I bought some small oval shisha mirrors for the bright spot in the eye shape, but I ended up not using them. Instead I dug out some odd foiled plastic stuff I bought from Connie a while back to do something for "the girl with the silver hands" stuff.
and here she is all done — >>
Said silver stuff works well for the purpose, but is a bitch to sew through, at least with monofilament. I used Melody’s “escape hatch” on the facing.
Here’s the back.
I’m falling asleep in my seat here, post later. Hope the above is coherent.
“Venom & Lace” popped into my head as a title for the fairy/folk tale series (which is still percolating away, just haven’t done anything significant enough to warrant blogging about), thought I’d better write it down somewhere before I forget. Marty Rhone is dancing around in my head, of course.
meanwhile, I’ve got 2 hours before I have to collect her highness, and my March journal to finish. *cracks whip at self*
Got everything washed, rinsed, dried & ironed (scrim at left, waiting to be cut up for sale). Have to get some pics of the huge stack of poplins on the weekend; the sun did me in today taking pics of the sateen. Which is omg SCRUMPTIOUS. Pictures do not do it justice at all. It was lovely before, but it positively glows once dyed & ironed … all the depth of colour and lustre you’d expect of silk. I bought myself some sateen sheets a few months ago and am totally in love with how they feel & look, and this fabric is even more beautiful. I’ll be seriously surprised if we don’t sell out of it at the Port Macquarie show in a couple of weeks (always assuming the local girls don’t clean us out first heh). I have to test, but I suspect the sateen will be absolutely lovely to use for needleturn applique (I cannot gush enough over how lovely it feels heh) and I’m positive will be jawdroppingly gorgeous quilted up. Can’t wait to get some under a needle …
I did a bunch of pieces for applique (could be used for piecing too, but you know where my focus is); rainbow stripes, and some gorgeous colour blends useful for birds like rosellas & lorikeets, king parrots, kingfishers & Gouldian finches:
I’ve been trying to be good lately, but if I’m honest there are a few pieces I doubt will ever escape my clutches:
In other news, I got the poster for the quilt show sorted & even approved by the committee (every member of which had their bitchy boots on yesterday loo, ooh er). Except that apparently I’ve been spelling pavilion wrong all these years, so I had to rejig it ready for printing & distribution. I’m trying to get used to THAT WORD only having one L – it just looks wrong. Kind of doing my head in, too, given as how I’d always considered myself a good speller … stupid borrowed-from-French words. Pavilion pavilion pavilion. Pavillion still looks betterer, so :p
been a weird week. The other day I had a pain all day under my shoulderblade, with one episode of my right arm suddenly feeling incapable of lifting a grocery bag. Ignored it most of the day, then it suddenly got really rather painful somewhere around midnight, and my whole arm was hurting and the little & ring fingers were going numb. On a Friday. In a town with no 24-hr medical clinics. I’m all like wow killer indigestion, haha ok so reassure me that I’m not having a heart attack or something, but online friends nagged me into going to casualty (ER) instead, just in case. SIGH. Meant dragging a sleepy pook out of bed & strapping her in and driving myself there (and halfway there I thought um, yeah, driving is probably pretty stupid even if you don’t really believe you’re having heart issues). I had an asthma attack by the time I got there, so I was all short of breath & skittish which probably contributed to them being worried enough to keep me in overnight. Which meant ringing the folks at 2am to ask them to come collect El (fun phone call!), and after mum & dad left carrying a confused & distressed limpet I got stuck with all manner of things & taken upstairs to have more monitory things attached and blah. Painful and undignified and boring. They kept downgrading the diagnosis and I was like ok cool, so can I go? but they wanted to do this & that test to be sure. Upside is that I guess I got a free medical, nearly – c-spine & chest films, blood workups for diabetes & cholesterol & whatever enzymes they look for when they suspect heart attack. All fine, I gather. Final verdict, after sticking tubes and needles and assorted poisons into me? Probably a pulled muscle, seeya! Two conclusions I came to after getting permission to walk across the hall in my sexay patient gown and go to the loo all on my own:
I need to take better care of myself so’s I don’t wind up in here for serious, because ow and ick and BORING, and
I need to keep my house a bit tidier so just in case I DO end up in here again, I won’t die of shame having to ask someone to go collect some gear for me and the pook.
Anyway, so that was quite enough excitement for this little black duck. Yesterday & today mum & I went a bit berko on the dyeing. We found a source (finally!) for cotton sateen recently, so I dyepainted some yesterday & a buttload more today. I also dyed some silk hankies today, along with the hanks of cotton thread I made up last night. No pics of the fabrics yet (but OMG the sateen is lovely stuff!) but here are the threads and hankies:
the cats are pretty unimpressed with the cold. I’m not exactly thrilled by it myself; Little Hartley was as close to frozen hell as I ever want to get, and this mid-north-coast town should not be feeling like snow in the air. Certainly not in April, at any rate.
okay, tis done.
CHITCHAT