glory day

YES!!!

8-7.  Not the prettiest game in the world but it did the job.

And now I can’t stop crying!  Seriously just looking at that picture of the AB’s with the trophy makes me sob again.  There’s just no pleasing me, apparently.

47 down, 1 to go

The Rugby World Cup has been absolutely amazing.  So far 47 games have been played and I’m pretty sure I watched at least some of every game (unlike the rest of the rugby world I just can’t bear watching Argentina play so I zoned out of those games.  The Argentina-Scotland game would have driven me to drink if I hadn’t driven myself there). 

So it’s less than 4 hours til the final featuring the All Blacks and France.  I think I’m holding it together pretty well – I woke up in tears feeling like someone was sitting on my chest but the sense of impending doom has passed somewhat.

There are really only two teams I feared going into this world cup – Australia and France.  We played Australia last Sunday (and won) but the lead-up to that game was just brutal.  I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat (by which I mean ‘couldn’t eat actual meals but scoffed my own body-weight in potato chips’) and couldn’t read any rugby coverage.  So winning that game and moving on the final was a huge relief.

Now I have France to worry about – and they have form at spoiling our world cup parties! – and I’m all of a dither.  I think I shall have to go and do something repetitive and meditative, like ironing.

I was re-reading Fever Pitch yesterday and some of the phrases were straight out of my brain.  When it comes to rugby I am superstitious beyond belief, and incredibly fearful that something I did or didn’t do will lose the All Blacks the game.  The power is all with me, you see.  Unlike, you know, the actual players on the field.

It’s hard work people, really hard work, but these are the lengths I will go to in order to win the RWC for the first time since 1987.  1987.

The AB’s are the bookies choice for the win and apparently 83% of NZers polled expect to win the game.  But there will be no counting chicken before the hatching in this house!  I remember back in 2000 I’d bought a bottle of champers before watching a Bledisloe Cup game, so that if we won I could have a celebratory tipple.  Time was up, the AB’s were ahead and just as I was easing the cork out of the bottle John Eales went and kicked an almost impossible conversion, giving the Wallabies a 1 point win.  Irritating.  So there’s no champagne here, just in case.

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In news utterly unrelated to the RWC I have been a bit stressed lately about the state of my fabric stash.  There are 17 different places where the fabric stash lives and finding the exact thing I want was taking too much time, so sewing projects have been abandoned on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Here is some of the stash – and this is just the fabric that is stored downstairs:

This is about the point where I gave up and moved to Thailand just to escape the mess.

But no, I soldiered on and now everything related to the making of clothes has a place to live (even the patterns!) and hopefully in the fullness of time some of this fabric might actually be turned into clothes, let’s hope.

And after all that work, and vowing and declaring that I would never buy any more fabric again EVER I found myself outside a fabric shop the very next day.  And I bought some leopard-print cotton and some gorgeous black silk velvet and I only felt a little bit embarrassed.

This is why it’s so hard to sort out the fabrics:

Because the needs of Mr Puss will always come first!

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Oh hell.  Less than three hours now. GO ALL BLACKS!!