Spotted while out and about in the Grampians. This is my new favourite in vandalized signs (it used to be “Form 1 Planet“)
Added later: Have just been popping in to a few blogs participating in Blogtoberfest, and I stumbled upon these ones, which I think are pretty funny too :giggle:
Blogtoberfest Day 5
Posted in General Ramblings
Blogtoberfest Day 3: I’m sure Amy denoted today Clocktober to remind us all to turn them forward!
I’m by no means a part of the anti-Daylight-Savings-camp, but the wisdom of starting it a day before school starts back kind of escapes me. It takes me at least a few days to fully adjust, and the kids too. I wonder how many kids will turn up late for school on Monday?!
This boy is showing signs of wanting to play all night, so it won’t be just that one lost hour I’m bemoaning in the morning :yawn:
Teeth are still a big topic of interest around these parts. Current status as follows:
Kid #1: One gap, three more wobblies.
Kid #2: Two grey wobblies 🙁 (I’m still harbouring mother-guilt over that particular event)
Kid #3: One tooth arrived two weeks ago(!), another one on the way (favourite chew-toy = my chin)
There’s been a noticeable lack of creativity ’round these parts lately. I’m sure the lingering mother-guilt has something to do with that. I was “busy” sewing when Niamh took that fateful leap. It doesn’t matter that I’d told her dozens of times not to jump in that spot – this time, I didn’t stop her, so hello! self-blame. Gah.
It’s been a helluva week, too. I had a spot of single-parenting while Dermot was in Sydney for work (earning myself a few brownie points towards wiping out that mummy-guilt). A discovery of the parasitic variety (necessitating trips to chemist and laundromat and noIdonotwanttotalkaboutit. Ew.) Several too-early starts thanks to the smallest boy and his impending second tooth…
Aaaand. A punctured tyre yesterday morning as I dropped Finn off at school. D’oh! As I lowered the window to wave goodbye, I heard a certain kind of ‘thwack thwack thwack’ noise that you just know cannot be good. I stopped the car and found a dirty great big screw sticking out of one of the rear tyres. Hoping the continued presence of said screw would prevent the tyre from letting down immediately, I drove straight to the nearest shopping centre with an auto centre. They were super-dooper busy, but graciously let me queue-jump, and repaired it straightaway while we nicked off to feed the caffeine habit I seem to have acquired lately. (Can’t imagine why!)
But. My good temper will be restored momentarily. We are off! Today is the last day of term, and tomorrow we are going away, la la la. We (ok, mostly I) have been counting sleeps for the last three weeks, let me tell you. We are heading beachfront for three days and then mountainside for three more, just to get ourselves a well-rounded holiday. See you on the flipside 🙂
ETA: Forgot… I did manage to get to the Northside Makers coffee-crafternoon last Sunday (see if you can spot Rohan and I at that link 🙂 ) where I managed, oh, about 4 rows of crochet on a face cloth (simple squares crochet out of a bamboo/cotton mix are divine as face cloths, you should definitely give them a go). Margaret calls me a ‘multitasking wonder’. Hahahahahaha!
Just briefly (very briefly, for I am absolutely knackered – feel like I didn’t have a weekend at all), I wanted to pop in and announce that the lucky recipient of the CRAFT: magazine is…
Will be back tomorrow (I hope) with pics of the-pants-that-very-nearly-weren’t 🙂 G’night.
Neither camera nor model would co-operate this morning, and it’s tricky to photograph white on a sunny day. But you get the idea. This was my first attempt at machine applique, and perhaps given that, I should have tried on something other than stretch fabric, and taken a bit more time to practice. But she wanted to “wear it now”, so I did my best.
And I remembered why I failed my first high-school sewing test. Can’t sew curves!
Posted in General Ramblings
Having a minor issue with the previous blog post not showing up in feed readers. Let’s see if this one shows up…
Oh, and I finally fixed my pesky little smilies 🙂
Edit: Hmmmm, nope, not yet. What the heck is going on, I wonder?
Edit again: Nevermind, they eventually both came through. Wonders of technology!
Posted in Blog Blather, General Ramblings
Green & Blue… have been showing up in my Flickr Favorites a bit of late – along with complementary browns and hits of red.
Photo Credits: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]
Green & Blue… have been showing up in my own sewing as well – probably as a result of the above.
Green & Blue… are how I’ve been feeling this past few days. For the record, I really Do. Not. Recommend getting Gastro when one is 37 weeks pregnant. Ugh.
What’s that? I can’t hear you. La la la la la. It is definitely not March already. No way no how.
So then, do you think it’s too late to do a Christmas recap? Well too bad. I never did quite get around to showing off our crafting efforts for Christmas 2008, which is very sad, considering the effort that we (and particularly Dermot, since I was all broken-wristed and what have you) went to. Christmas, it goes without saying, came hand-in-hand with a little bit of family drama. Gift-making and giving became the subject of argument, so I was left feeling a bit flat about the effort we had gone to. Que sera sera. I’m over it now. Much of the enjoyment is in the making anyway, I find. And I did offer to keep the gifts we had made for the prime grumbler, but that offer was (strangely) refused!
Our ‘theme’, if you like, for Xmas 2008 was ‘Paper’. We put together a bunch of photo albums – these are Japanese stab bound, just like the album I made for Nichola.
These are A5 sized…
With black album pages…
And glassine interleaves…
We also put together some smaller notebooks, more conventionally hard-bound…
Pretty pretty on the inside…
And some more…
And I found that Gocco-ing is not so difficult with only one hand…
So I printed up a bunch of these notecards (graphics are from, um… Clipart.com, I think)…
And my favouritist thing of all, some lovely bookplates (some were blank like these, others had names already printed on)…
Finally, we printed up these Mibo calendars (freebie found via Steph) and had them bound at Officeworks. I love the graphics on these, not sure why we didn’t do ourselves one…
Whew! When all of that was done (in the two short weeks before Christmas, mostly), some of us were plum tuckered out…
(Not that she had much to do with the crafting, mind you. Perhaps she just grew tired of waiting for Mum and Dad to pay her some attention!)
When all of this was in the planning stages, and there were two wholly-limbed adults going to be taking part, it all sounded good. When a good slab of the cutting and binding came down to Dermot after the chair incident however, I don’t think he was so impressed. I heard a lot of ‘I told you that you should get started earlier’, I can tell you 🙂 . I’ve promised that 2009 will be my year to do all the work… so I’d better get started, hey?
Posted in General Ramblings, Other Craft
Tagged christmas, crafting, handmade, japanese stab binding, Mibo calendar
Cindy from Bug and Pop commented on my previous post, asking if I would help her get the word out about Handmade Help, the blog she has assembled to bring attention to various auctions by crafty peoples, the proceeds of which will all go to those affected by the Victorian bushfires.
There are plenty of other ideas building up around the crafty blogging community – Cam at Curly Pops has put together a nice collation of some of these. One of my favourite ideas is Beyond Pink & Blue’s plan of putting together small care bags for children affected by the fires. The Toy Society are also collecting handmade softies for distribution to the children.
These are obviously longer term goals – the most pressing need for the survivors in the very short term is for money. The Red Cross Appeal page is here. Most (if not all) banks are also collecting monetary donations. Also, blood for the burns victims: the Blood Bank are no longer requesting urgent blood donation, but are requesting new registrations to ensure supply in the weeks and months to come.
Please. Do what you can. The death toll is shocking enough, and still rising, but with over 5000 left homeless, it is vital we take care of the survivors.
I feel like the soul is being ripped out of our state. Some of the fires have been not quite far enough from home for comfort, but far enough that I cannot begin to understand the devastating losses suffered by so many.
