glory day

Summer: 1; me: 0.

Summer has absolutely kicked my arse this year - I don't remember it being so humid and cloying since 2000 (my first Sydney summer).  I don't cope well with the heat - I don't like my make-up running, I don't like sweating and I'm NOT a fan of sunburn.

And the heat has leached all my motivation/creativity/spirit/will to live.  I haven't cleaned the house for ages, I can't be bothered cooking, my sewing machine has cobwebs.  De and I are walking once a week rather than every night.

Then there are the mosquitos (to which I am allergic).  I spend most of the summer with painful and inflamed bite marks on my legs (and arms, and face, and chest.  And pretty much everywhere else).  And the fleas!  I have NO IDEA how my cat gets fleas - he has supervised access to the enclosed front courtyard which has no lawn, and has no contact with other animals - but oh hell yeah, he gets the fleas.

OK, so 'funny' story: we were going out the other night, and I could feel a hair brushing my cheek, but couldn't find it to touch it.  I looked in the mirror and discovered that there was a flea on my face.

Let's do that again, shall we?  I was about to go to a nice restaurant for dinner and there was a FLEA ON MY FACE.  Seriously, that was one of those primal moments from which I may never recover.

I mean, I Frontline, I bomb, I lux, I powder, but the little buggers are still there!  And nobody else ever gets bitten or anything (and I'm fairly sure David's never see a flea) but because I'm so allergic to the bities they lurrrve me and lie in wait for me.

Thankfully it looks like the temperatures might start dropping over the next few weeks.  I've been taking massive amounts of B vitamins to combat the blues and started planning what I need to do next.  I refuse to be beaten by a season.

Oh actually I have done something - I made a lap blanket for De.  Here Mr Puss indicates that my colour blocking is simplistic and jejeune:

But he has fleas, what does he know.

Maybe I'll go shoe shopping on my way to surgery

~ 2½ hours to go ~

Some things, briefly, to stop me dwelling on my impending surgery:

I helped to co-ordinate our op-shop's involvement in the Under the Blue Moon festival last week.  I'd been bringing bags of clothes and things home for the past few months, and here is everything washed, ironed and packed ready to go:

I must admit to feeling a tiny bit daunted at that point.

We had two days of really hard work - Friday setting up, Saturday working the shop - and while there were some stresses [we work for the same organization, quit your bitching] everything went really well.  We got a good crowd, the shop looked great and the lucky dip thingie totally went off (who knew?).

Obviously the best part is that we raised nearly $1600, which is a) the first time in well over a year we've hit the 1K mark and b) believed to be an all-time record for one day's takings.  So yay.

~ 2¼ hours to go ~

A whole heap of the work done for the festival wouldn't have happened without De, who was just a phenomenal helper.  Everyone at the shop loved her, and really I couldn't have done it without her.

And you know what else I couldn't do without her?  Listen to my new iPod Touch!  In a moment which rendered me speechless De and J gifted me the iPod Touch J had won at an event - isn't that just an amazing thing?  And I was actually speechless, and you know that doesn't happen very often.

OK, 2 hours to go.  I'm going to go get it over with.

Surfers Paradise

De, Ke and I have just returned from our weekend in Surfers Paradise, although none of us are, in fact, in any way surf-y.  This was the river view from our hotel balcony:

and this was the city-side view from our hotel balcony:

which while much less pictuesque was perhaps more useful.

Surfers Paradise seems to be a town which attracts a great deal of groups looking for organised entertainment, such as hens/bucks night groups (of which we saw many) and post-season sporting groups.  For that reason I didn't really enjoy the town - there wasn't a sense of friends meeting up together so much as associated individuals coming together to get smashed and behave badly (David *quite* snorted when I told him that, as he feels that is the perfect description of De, Ke and I together, and I have icily informed him he has missed my point).

We had a great time together (as always) with much laughter and chatting and wine and food.  We went to SeaWorld on Friday, and it turned out to be the perfect day to go - on the off-season so the crowd was small, and the weather wasn't too hot.  We saw pelicans, dolphins, turtles, penguins:

rays and polar bears.  We went on a glass-bottomed boat in the shark reef and saw sharks, rays and many different types of fish, including a very pensive yellow fish:

After dinner at the Hogs Breath Cafe we went and got surprise! piercings - Ke got a labret piercing, De got a new nose piercing and I just had my nose jewellery changed.  Piercings for all!

The rest of the weekend was market shopping, lunch next door, walking along the beach, watching the All Blacks win (win!) and then coming back home to my partner and my cat.  Its always fantastic after a lovely weekend away with my girls to come home, it reminds me of just how lucky I am.

Fabrics and lists and friends, oh my

I have been that busy coming up with new systems and writing lists and decluttering and trying to get our lives more organised that I've completely ignored the other parts of my life - namely anything to do with sewing, pattern-making, blogging or not obsessing!  However we are over that particular project and ready to move on to designing the perfect wrap dress pattern.

~~~~~

Cool things that have happened recently include:

Fabric from Green Olive!

Martine was kind enough to send me a pack of her gorgeous as-seen-on-TV fabrics which will become a wrap dress in the fullness of time.  The colours, the texture - this fabric is awesome, and check out the Tribal range as well.

~~~~~

I had my hair cut.  While I really, really like it I can't help but feel I look a little bit like David Bowie circa Aladdin Sane.

~~~~~

A Highlanders jersey of my very own!



For years I've been wearing an old Otago jersey which my brother unknowingly donated to me which, while very good in its own way, isn't really the same thing as a Highlanders jersey.  De was in Perth a while back and found the 2007 jersey design on sale and thought of me!  And the Highlanders have won every game since so obviously it was meant to be.

~~~~~

Spotlight had a 'spend $100 get $40 off' which I thought was sneaky-clever.  I now have my own body-weight in retro florals and black crepe suiting.

My life in snippet form

Now I really hate to moan (HA!) but this weather simply can't go on.  Both my lillies are dead - aue, the lillies I raised from teeny, teeny bulbs - and I am losing the will to live.  Supposedly there will be a dramatic lowering of temperature tomorrow but that remains to be seen.  And the promised thunder-storms would have been nice, too.

*****

I had my hair done yesterday, into a shorter style which my hairdresser describes as 'edgy'.  That would be the 'suburban housewife' version of 'edgy', of course.  It looks nice, I like it, but in no way is it 'edgy'.

*****

Foxtel played the mini-series Roots last week, which De and I watched together.  It's a great series, and interesting to watch in light of current events.

*****

My house is seriously upsetting me right now.  There's so much stuff here I can't even begin.  I berate myself for not tidying up, but seriously, there's nowhere to put anything.  And there's nothing I can do about it!  If I try and think about it for a moment I get all stressed and panicky and hyperventilate-y.  I honestly don't know what I'm going to do about it.

*****

I wrote up a long schedule of sewing projects for the next few months, which I now don't really feel like doing (and frankly, there's no room downstairs to sew) so I made some necklaces instead:

So while I'm not doing the stuff I need to do, at least I'm doing something.

*****

And now I'm going to make cupcakes for tomorrow's afternoon tea.

Gathering wisdom from the whanau

After a gorgeous evening with De and Ke, eating steak and curly fries, I asked them for their wisdom on my latest run of frocks.  They were both of the opinion that this frock:

is the way forward.  And I think I agree (at this stage in my gosh-I'm-huge process).  Yay for some re-makes, and yay for some fabric-buying trips.

Morsels from my day

This is a conversation which we allegedly* had last night

Me: I AM GOING TO SLEEP DOWNSTAIRS BECAUSE I AM BEING BITTEN BY FOXES.

David: Do you mean mosquitos?

Me: FOXES!!  FOXES!!

*I don't know, I wasn't awake, and sometimes I suspect David of embellishing.

~~~~~

Here is the frock I made yesterday:

The flash is making the colours look wrong, and the angle is not right, but it's quite cute in person.

Today we went to Mickeys for lunch with David's parents, which was fun, and tonight I'm having dinner at the Amazon Steakhouse with De and Ke.  Awesomasaurus.

Rugby and guinea pigs, oh my

Last night the All Blacks beat the Wallabies 19-14 to secure the Bledisloe Cup.  It wasn't a particularly pretty game - although all I've ever asked of a game of rugby is that the team that I support be on the winning side of the scoreboard - but it got the job done.

November is my favourite month for a couple of reasons (it's my birthday month!) and the annual Northern Hemisphere tour is one of those reasons.  Enough time has passed since the Super 14/Tri Nations/Bledisloe Cup extravaganza that you really look forward to watching rugby again.  And this year we're trying for the Grand Slam - and to beat Munster this time!

And earlier this week the Super 14 squads were announced.  I'm quite happy with the Highlanders lineup for next season, hopefully it'll go better than last season.

In other news we have been feeding De's pets this weekend, and took some photos of her guinea pigs:

Archie (who bears a striking resemblance to Dougal from The Magic Roundabout) nibbles the lettuce out of the holder-thingie, and then Horatio eats it out of Archie's mouth:

I know it's a bit unclear, but they moved so fast - really cracked us both up!

We are, after all, the passionless people

Sadly the past few days have been beset with petty irritations.  For example: I went to Spotlight yesterday and there were no trolleys available.  Like, none.  In the afternoon, on a Tueasday?  As I can't carry seven bolts of fabric as well as all the ribbons, threads, bobbins and dyes I need I only spent half what I usually do - oh wait, is that a bad thing?  Yeah, it is for Spotlight!

Today I went to the doctors to find that my favourite technician no longer works there.  I ended up in the hands of a nurse who's very nice, but her ear-syringing technique leaves a lot to be desired.  But she got the job done, my ears are clear and the pain has worn off so it's all good.  Then there was some raruraru with the pharmacy but that was sorted out soon enough so no worries.

OK, my irritations are really petty.  I wonder what happened to the impassioned rants of yore?

Tonight was lovely - my sister-wives came over for catching up and chatting and to watch Project Runway (De brought round a chocolate and coconut sorbet which I may have to buy a lot more of as soon as possible).

Sometime last week I ran the cat's grooming glove over the lounge rug and pulled out a huge pile of fur:

 

No, that's not two cats - that's Kees facing down the pile of rug-fur. 

I'm here because I finished something

Like many people I only post here when I have finished something - I could write about the four patterns I made before I made this frock (although that would be boring and ultimately futile), but does the internet really need to know what I had for lunch? (generally soup or a grilled cheese sandwich, if you're at all interested).

But here is the result of my six week programme to make a dress to wear to a friend's wedding:

I'm really, really happy with the way it turned out.  While it doesn't look fantastic on the mannequin (one advantage humans have over mannequins? we squish)  it looks great on me - and the Coat o' Faaaabulous  (now in it's revamped state) looks fantastic with it.