BAHAHAHAHahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa!

This is my current screensaver at work.

Sums up my mood PERFECTLY!

10 on Tuesday (on Wednesday)

Have missed a few weeks of 10 on Tuesdays.

Last weeks was 10 favourite places to eat, and as I am hardly an international (wo)man of mystery, most of my places would probably have been in Perth (or at the very least just Western Australia) and therefore possibly of little or no interest to others!!

But, this week it's all about your 10 Favourite Sounds.

Hmmm....

1. The sound of your loved one sleeply peacefully next to you;
2. Baby birds chirping merrily away in their nest. And, that's a strange one for me, 'cos I DISLIKE birds intensely *shudders* I think it's their scaly little feet. Bleurgh;
3. Music! Not all music, but most music!
4. Bagpipes. I know - another odd one, but part of my family heritage is Scottish and I do love a good skirl on the pipes, even if it sometimes makes me feel like crying, but they aren't exactly a perky instrument now, are they?
5. The sound of (other peoples) children merrily at play. You know that bubbling laughter that kids have when they are just having the most fun playing chasey (or whatever it is that kiddies play these days!);
6. Pre-dawn silence. I hear a lot of this due to the ridiculously early time I am usually up in order to go to training.
7. Silence in general :D
8. Frog songs! Especially when there are lots of them gurgling away!
9. The hubbub of a heap of people who are having a great time. In a bar, or out at a restaurant. The clink of cutlery, the sound of conversation....
10. The susurrus (sp?) of trees gently blowing in the wind. Not a strong stormy wind (cos that'd just freak me out), but tall eucaplypts rustling in the breeze. Awesome!

That was harder than I thought...

Knitting Nana

Have been meaning to post about the lovely nana (making an assumption here peeps - I didn't actually confirm she was indeed a Grandmother...) I saw knitting the other day.

On the bus!!!

Bless :D

There I was, sitting down minding my own biznez on the bus, plugged into my iPod so that I don't have to interact with my fellow human beings...yes, yes, I know it's anit-social, but good lo' you should see some of the people on my bus route...

So there I was, immersed in Beyonce or Rage Against the Machine or Kylie Minogue (or similar) when the bus paused at a stop to collect a vision in blue rinse! Black jumper with gold metallic embroidered rose pattern? Check. The most INCREDIBLE crystal earrings? Check (they looked a little Vegas showgirl, but hey, who really cares!!). Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes? Check and (possibly) check :D. Long strand of metallic silver beads around her neck? Checkarooney. I have almost never seen so much glitz on one person!

She looks at me - I look at her. She reaches down and grabs out a plastic carrier bag full of wool and needles and notions. And then proceeds to knit what looked like the most complicated cable stitich EVER. On a moving bus. Without stabbing herself or anyone else with her non-commuter needles. I wasl almost tempted to ask her to show me the stitch :D

Amazing! She got quite a lot of the scarf completed in the 10 or so stops before I got off, and she was still madly clickety-clacking away when I left the warm cocoon of the knitting bus!

The only gripe I had was the shocking array of wool she was knitting with...but, hey, it's a 'Global Financial Crisis' (allegedly) and needs must!

10 on Tuesday (on Wednesday)

This weeks 10 on Tuesday is right up my alley!!!

OMG!!!!

10 Favourite songs of the 80's

hehe

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bit of an 80's music tragic. I may have trouble keeping this to 10 Favourites!!

Here goes...and in no real order....

1. (I've Had) The Time of My Life - from Dirty Dancing;
2. Addicted To Love - Robert Palmer. Who didnt love all those girls in the background?
3. 9 to 5 - Dolly Parton. This could almost be my theme song at the moment...
4. Ti Amo - Laura Branigan (I hope...)
5. Take On Me - a-ha. Those boys were HOT back then and I saw a photo of them recently and OMG THEY HAVE AGED VERY WELL!!!
6. Pretty much anything by Whitney Houston released during the 80's;
7. Again pretty much anything released by Bananarama;
8. A LOT of Belinda Carlisle;
9. Two words. Bon Jovi; and
10. Lady In Red - Chris De Burgh. Love love love this song!

Hopefully those are actually all from the 80's. I sometimes have overlap as I am more a child of the early 90's and some of the music from this era sort of merges into the one time frame for me - that of finishing primary school and moving into the first years of high school. Ah, good times!

Belated June Update!!

Hello my little cherubs :D

Whew! It's been a little while hasn't it?

Anyhoodle, I've been terribly busy doing non-blog and non-craft related stuff. June was so jam packed that it literally flew by and before I noticed it was July!

So, June was a great month to....

• Meet new people. Some of them boys. Some of them jerks...actually of the three (seemingly nice) boys I met, 66.66% of them turned out to be jerks. The remaining 33.33% (recurring) are doing well so far......ssshhhh, he might be a keeper ;)
  
• Not do very much crafting at all. I have been horribly lax. My craft room has been unattended, vacant and ignored even. I did make one teensy tiny tissue paper flower...but that's about it. I started a knitted baby hat. And thats where that finished! Oh well. It's not as though I have lost my crafting mojo, it's merely on a brief hiatus and I have a feeling it will be back soon;
  
• Celebrate my dear old dads birthday. Ahn. Bless him. 63 years young and still the man I judge all others by. I love my dad (could you tell?). The bestest thing about dad is that I know no matter what I do in my life (perhaps short of committing a serious crime) he will always love me and never judge me. Jeez, I love that man!!!
  
• Finish my Bento Box quilt. Finally. Refer to post from 9 June for more deets on that long-winded project;
  
• Catch a cold. Bleurgh. Twice. And still not over this last batch. Yuck. I am quite possibly the worst sick person this side of a man-flu sufferer. I've been going through about a box of tissues every two days. I should buy shares in Kleenex damnit because I sure am keeping them in business at the moment!!!
  
• Have dinner(s) and drinks with friends. I love my friends! They listen to all my neuroses and shenanigans and over analysing of situations and then provide a voice of reason. And despite all those hard yards - they still love me! You guys are the best!!!
• Get a Facebook stalker. ummm. Awkward!
  
• Volunteer. My work gives us time off with pay to volunteer with community organisations and the like. It's a really cool programme and they promote various things through our internal internet. Things like weeding gardens at elderly peoples houses and helping with maintenance, or setting up for fund raising events for childrens charities. Cool stuff that is good for the community;
  
• Join the gym. Yep. Despite my ridiculous amount of triathlon training I have not been a member of a gym for quite some time. However, I have now joined up with my housemate and we have been going to copious amounts of classes...well, until I got sick and forced myself to rest!
  
• Farewell one of my colleagues who has gone off on maternity leave to prepare for her first bub. So cute - she is getting all out in front with baby at the moment, but still over a month to go!
  
• Farewell another colleague who left to set up her own marketing, communications and events management business. If anyone needs anything like that in Perth, get hold of Suzanne at http://www.creativeelements.net.au/ and tell her that Kylie sent you!!!

Hmmm. I think that was all. I mean aside from the ridiculous busyness that is my paying job. *sigh*. Global Financial Crisis (I love how people - including myself - capitalise the words) means I will continue to be wanted, needed and loved (or perhaps slightly loathed) in a work related manner for quite some time!!

Yay.

And in closing, there's this...well...there was going to be an incredible photo of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine (ggrrrrrrrr!), but Blogger appears to be having some photo techno issues so I am afraid there's no photo. Just visualise instead :)

Stuff 'n' Updates

Am just watching "The Zoo' on television.

OMG - I am such a sucker for baby animals :)

They just had a baby langur (sp?) monkey on. Oh. My. Goodness. So very, very, very cute!!

So, what's been happening? Well, I've FINALLY finished my Bento Box Quilt (per last weeks post). I've also finished the bulk of the cross stitch on my Les Lapins project, so now just all the outlines to do (bleurgh. My least favourite bit). I've finished 95% of a skirt for work - just need to attach the lining and finish the waist and hem. My first item of clothing that I have made since Home Ec in High School...

Hmmmm......what else?

Let me see...Oh yeah! My work and Facebook stalker! I really shouldn't laugh, but there was this guy that works for the same company as me who had taken a sudden and unexplained liking to me. It's a long and complicated story, but suffice to say, through a bit of subterfuge and a few little white lies (I know, I know!!!) my friends and I believe we have staved off any potential issues. Of course, I now have an imaginary boyfriend. He's pretty hot, you know (lol). A cyclist, 6 foot 5, in great shape, works as an engineer....what!!? Well, if I'm going to have to lie about having a boyfriend to see off a potential stalker/suitor, I am totally going to make it worth my while :D

Anything else.....oh yes.

ItotallymadeoutwithanotherguybutItotallydontknowwhereitsgoinganditssupercomplicatedandohmygoodness.

::ahem::

Sometimes I wonder what I'm thinking.

But usually only after I've done something I probably shouldn't have.

Cos THATS when you should do your thinking...

I love...

...long weekends (how very Aussie of me!)...
...the smell of freshly baked cakes (lemon meringue cupcakes today, banana bread yesterday, apple custard tea cakes for Brown Owls on Saturday)...
...a surprisingly good book that I picked up on a whim at the library...
...and, the feeling of achievement when you finish a project...

YAY!!!!

That's right! I've finally finished the Bento Box Quilt that I've been working on for, ummmm.....

::scampers off to check her project diary::

::footsteps slowly coming back::

...umm, yeah. Appears I didn't write it in the project diary. Lets seeeeee. It would have to be well over 12-months.

Easily.

If not longer.

So, let's not keep the finished project from you for any further length of time.

Taaaaa-daaaaaaaaaaaaa!

It's kind of a crappy perspective, but I did have to stand on my kitchen bench in order to get up high enough to get the whole quilt in shot, so, hey, I took my life into my own hands peeps, just so you guys could see it ;)

The basic construction is small rectangles of indigo Japanese fabrics, combined with coloured Japanese fabrics. Each square was made up of 8 separate rectangles - 2 coloured and 6 indigo. The two coloured rectangles are of the same fabric and are sewn together with the indigo fabrics on the outside.

The backing fabric is a black koi carp all over design, and the borders are plain indigo fabric combined with some spare squares in the corners and the side borders (mainly because I ran short of border fabric...). I then machine quilted the outside row of 'boxes' using white cotton to mimic sashiko stitching. The top and bottom borders are quilted on a 45 degree diagonal, again using white cotton.

I have to say that there are bits of it that I'm not all that impressed with - nothing wrong with the design, just my rendition of it. As usual, my issues with the backing fabric catching were there - it's like I'm cursed!! The front piecing is alright - the main section is the best. I didn't really think out the side borders very well and was also running out of fabric, so (to me anyway) they seem a bit half-a$$ed. But, I am VERY proud of the binding. I hate making binding, mostly because its so time consuming and I usually scald my fingers on the steam iron and such.

Additionally, I generally manage to muff up my binding attachment. I think this is because I was sewing it onto the front and back of the quilt at the same time. What this caused was the back of the binding to not always attaching properly, and it makes the quilt quite hard to manipulate around, and quite frankly its just a drag. And I always end up with binding issues - like crappy corners, uneven hems and such.

This time, I sewed the binding to the front of the quilt using my machine and then hand sewed the back of the binding to the back of the quilt. Worked a freaking treat!!! A bit more time consuming for sure, but a 1000% improvement on the overall binding look. Corners are much neater and the stitches on the back are practically invisible.

So that's one less thing off my (freaking massive) list of 'Things To Do'.

Now if I can only sort out my personal backing fabric "issues" all would be well...