Grumblemumblemumble

Casey was watching old episodes of Angel on my bed and she must have had dirty shoes cause there's nasty gritty stuff all over my quilts :( Grumble mumble mumble.

So today I started working on a tablet case using only measurements found on the cnet.com specs page. It's about a third done, since it shall be quite embellished, but I figure, even if it isn't a perfect fit, there's so many different tablets, all with dimensions a few millimetres different, that it will fit something. Yay positivity!

I had to go with a slightly darker grey than I wanted to because the local shops had a depressing lack of options. I considered doing the machine embroidery in white instead of black so it would show up more but then I thought - I'm not that good at freehand machine embroidery. Maybe it's better if you can't see it as clearly. I've done an okay job considering. And it didn't shrink it down too much, so it should still fit okay.

The other thing I did today was put a heap of little x and w on a calendar to work out what weekends I'm working for the next few months. Since it seems I'm not working the weekend of the 20th November, we'll be doing the Mini-Me market again - hopefully we'll do a bit better with it being just before Christmas.

Blablahblahblah.

I had planned on a lovely, coherent post for tonight, but then I ate half a block of cheese and that always does funny things to my head, so I've decided to ramble instead.

It makes me sad when I open the fridge and find out that we have no fritz. And then I think of all the poor people interstate and overseas who have never had fritz in their fridge, ever. They're missing out on the delicious, finely textured, slightly dubious processed meat of the gods. Fritz whups devon's arse.

I'm really not good at sizing cases for small electronic items. As they get bigger, a half centimetre of leeway is less of a concern, but for an 8cm wide phone, it makes a big difference. For instance - My phone fits perfectly, if it doesn't have the jelly case on it.

I can't take a photo of it with the phone in it, because I'm using my phone to take the photo. It's a vicious cycle.

I can't find the smaller bag magnets. This makes me sad too.

Magnets on little narrow flaps are about the hardest things to do in the whole wide world. Turning them right-way-out is like childbirth, but without the screaming and the blood. Well, sometimes there's that too, but they don't give you special drugs for it. And then you sew it on about 5mm too far down on the back, so it doesn't sit quite right.

Or maybe the magnet just needs to be further from the edge?

The bruise I got on my leg on monday when I was being a mountain goat really really hurts. When my leg jiggles as I walk it hurts. When I sit down and my jeans pull tight on it it hurts. I was favouring the other leg today. It's a freaking bruise, it shouldn't be causing me to limp. But it hurts.

I even took a photo of it, and unlike most photos of bruises it even looks really bad. But my thigh is a bit hairy.

Today Meagan and I went to look at engagement rings. For her, not me, obviously. We were kinda agreed on our favourite, but the lady that she knew at the jewellers was trying to talk her out of it, because it came from the other jewellers. But we agreed, it was our favourite. And that lady that she knew (Meagan was friends with her daughter in primary school) was kinda annoying.

I took Kelsey her birthday present, a mini backpack in another of the fabrics I made her quilt in, and completely forgot to take photos of it. Whoops.

Would it be easier or harder, do you think, to make a case using only the measurements of the device without a physical device itself? Would the numbers 175, 15, 272 make it easier or harder than having something to plop on my ruler for a size reference?

I need some gray fabric. Gray is not a prominent colour in my stash.

Hip Hip Hooray!

Happy Birthday Kelsey!

I made you a present, it's only a prototype but it's still toats cute, and it kinda matches your quilt. Let me know when you're visitable and I'll drop it round so we can take some toats cute photos and show the blogging world :)

Ow.

I am home. Safe and sound. And sore. Really, really sore.

Long car drives, sleeping (or lack thereof) in a swag, shooting a double barreled shotgun with full cartridges, jogging around a lake, climbing a mountain and getting attacked by a tree all add up. The laughing and the dancing and the alcohol were all contributing factors too.

So we went to the Tim Fisher Memorial Shoot in Patchewollock yesterday. Really really lovely day, but the big spring rains aren't due to hit till the day after next, so alas, there weren't many flowers to be woven into crowns. Instead I sat and chatted and ate honey crackles and chicken twisties, and after the actual shoot was finished, they asked Me, Case and a couple of the other girls if we'd like a go. Since I'm quite disappointed that I continue to not be an action hero, I was a bit stoked. I shot one clay which I was quite proud of, and apparently with smaller cartridges I'd be a lot better because there wont be so much kick. Casey got five (we had about a dozen goes) but she's got the bulk to handle the big cartridges. We both have slightly munted right arms today, and oddly, I find the back of my shoulder hurts more than the front. Casey wants to join the local gun club right away, but I've noticed that ebay doesn't sell guns, and that could hold me back a bit. I've never seen any at the Salvos either.

Seriously though, it was much fun, and any sport that involves a gentle stroll back and forth is one I could get to like. Also, you get to shoot things. And they all have these jackets with a quilted shoulder where the gun goes, and I really like the idea of quilting my own.

We went to the Patchy pub on the way home, got takeaway and some takeaway alcohol and went back to Jan and Dal's. One of the neighbours, his brother and his brother's girlfriend from England came over to visit, and Case and I had a ball weirding them out with our singing and dancing antics. Then it was sleepytimes, or at least, sleeptyimes for everyone but me, for whom it was lay around and listen to everyone snoring really really loudly times. At one point, the three of them synchronised so one of them was crescendoing at all times - I was quite impressed.

When I woke up this morning I asked the girls how the hell they had slept through Brad's snoring. Brad claimed he wasn't snoring, and before I'd had a chance to tell him that he most definitely was, he said "that's not snoring, that's a mating call"

Um, no thanks.

Saturday night one of the girls at the Rainbow pub mentioned that she'd been geocaching that afternoon. It's a thing where people hide things and post the coordinates on the internet so people with GPSs can go find them, and leave behind something of their own. I'd heard of it but figured there wouldn't really be much in the middle of nowhere places we go to, but Casey and Jess got really excited about the idea - they even got cross that I had, quote, "kept it a secret from them." Turns out there's millions of the things, everywhere, including one just 500m from my house. Usually it's little tupperware containers with little trinkets and a notebook in them so you can write in that you found it, what you took and what you left.

To make up for it I downloaded the $9.39 geocaching app for my phone and we went looking. We went to Lake Abacutya, which is mostly dried up - we drove across it and found, in the middle, a small hollow, maybe 30m in diametre, full of water, so I jogged around it. When I tell people tomorrow that I jogged around the lake they will assume I mean all 8km of the Blue Lake, and be very impressed. We got back in the car and kept driving, coming up the boat ramp on the other side. We went to the site of Peppers Point School and didn't find anything, gave up and went to Lake Hindmarsh (which is very, very full) and found one! I left behind one of Helen's crochered oreos, so it's out in the world now.

We went to the Arapiles, some big-arse rock mountains near Horsham. One of the problems with geocaching is that it just gives you a location, and while the app is nice enough to show it on a map, it doesn't tell you the route. We started at the campsite, walked/climbed 500 of the 700m before we ran out of track, came to a sheer cliff face, I got attacked by a tree, my phone reached 5% battery and we decided to go back down, only to find, upon leaving the national park, that there was a road to the summit on the other side. We drove to the top, climbed the last 50m to the hiding spot and found our cache. I left behind a little torch and took a US 1c coin.

We stopped at three more that were on the side of the road on the way home. The app tells you the nearest ones and location can be down to the metre in some cases. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to waste an afternoon with some friends.

We will be tomorrow. We're going to cheap as chips first to stock up on some party favours to leave behind.

And I'm gunna take the quilt. It's been washed, so I'll be looking for a nice photogenic spot to make it look especially pretty.

Yawn.

Bradley Stephen Eckles is snoring so loudly I might not get to sleep at all tonight. Ive no idea how the hell Casey and Jess are sleeping through it. More tomorrow when I have a real internet connection :)

Away.

I have been up since 7.30

I am quite tired and it's barely 1am.

So I'm on holidays at the moment. This weekend we are in the Mallee, I'm not sure where exactly but somewhere about Rainbow/Jepparit/Hopeton. We are staying with Jan and Dal, and I cant find an unoccupied powerpoint for the life of me, or more specifically, for the life of my laptop. So it's running out it's 20% power while asleep and charging this phone, which fortunatelly I can blog from.

I had to get up early this morning for a waxing appointment :/ but it certainly wakes you up. Since I was up and going, I got the quilt trimmed and bound by 1pm, but by then Casey was home from work and we were off. I'm a bit bummed that it's still unwashed, because I had decided that a half cycle wash (rinse and spin) would make my rushed quilting and binding look half decent. But it's still purtty.

Tomorrow we are off to a shoot, where, weather permitting, I'll probably unleash my inner flower child and wander off into one of the back fields and making daisy chains. Bit ironic really, what with all the guns and all, but that's how I roll.

Ooohhh, Aaahhh...

Today, I bought a new phone. After spending at least half an hour a day for the last two weeks looking at damn near every phone on the internet, today I wandered into the shopping centre, went to one of the three phone shops and signed up for a 24month plan.

I've never been on a plan before. I'd always bought my phone outright and chucked my same worn-out prepaid SIM in there. But since I've recently had to change from buying $30 credits to $40 ones, I figured maybe I was better looking at a plan. I was a bit worried all the phones would either be crap or extra, and at the Telstra shop they were. The top of the line Samsung Galaxy S2 was only available on the $79 a month plan, and you had to pay $20 on top of that for the handset. I wasn't even looking for the top of the line. I was looking for the upper middle of the line, the ones that cost about $400 outright, not the ones that cost $800 outright.

And then I went to the Optus shop, and they had it on the $49 cap plan, with no handset charge. So I got it.

I'm gunna claim it was the combination of a nice big holiday paycheck (though haven't even been charged the $49 so far) and my being sad that the dollar had taken a tumble (I was gunna buy a handset from overseas) that led me to getting it. That and that it's pretty, and that it was the one I'd picked as my money no object Android phone. And it has a dual-core 1.2Ghz processor. All the geeks out there would be nodding their head appreciatively at that. This thing has more processing power than my first laptop, and that was only 6 years ago.

It's got a massive 4.3 inch screen, but it's scary skinny and light. I bought the biggest case I could find to bulk it up a little. I think I feel the same way about it that some people think about me: "oh no, be careful, there's nothing of it, you might break it..."

I can facebook and blog from it and it's got an 8mp camera.

Unlike all my other pictures, I haven't shrunk this down. I took the photo, the phone put it in my Picassa album, I uploaded it to the blog. Take a closer look if you wanna see how shoddy my quilting is)

I'm involved in two intense scrabble battles (I just played archive for 48 points) have put about a quarter of my music collection and half a season of Buffy on it, and apparently, you can make and receive calls with it.

Bugger, Damn and Blast.

About a week ago I went and did some fabric shopping. I had no real plan in mind, just a Spotlight and a Lincraft catalogue, and a couple of vouchers. I came home with a dozen or so fat quarters, a few half metre cuts an 1.2 metres of fabric to use as backing.

One week, a quilt top and three quarters of a quilt back later, I discover it should have been 1.3 metres.

Bugger.

In slightly better news, I am officially on holidays for two weeks.

Yar.

Although I sometimes do, I try to not get my geek on too much on this blog. Tonight however, I must. Facebook has changed it's layout. Yet again. It's rather annoying. And the usual trick of switching to UK English hasn't worked.

However, while I was doing this I noticed a new language you can use. English (pirate). So now I'm Cap'n Sara, instead of liking something I "Aye" it and instead of commenting, I "weigh in"

And instead of the usual (so and so) likes this, people "be eyein' this with pleasure" or "find this pleasin' to the eye."

A status is a "Cap'n's Log" and one is no longer in a relationship, one "sails steady."

I no longer have Events, I now have "Grog fests" (okay, so that's not really a change) and I no longer post what's on my mind, I talk about "What be troublin' me..."

It really is making me happy in the pants. The happy in the pants feeling outweighs the annoyance of the new layout. So if you're annoyed by the new layout, and want to feel happy in the pants, here's what you do.

On the little down arrow where it says Home next to your name, pick "account settings". Click the edit button next to language and pick English (pirate). Save your changes, and yar scurvey self shall be aprreciat'in this.

Want. Wantwantwantwantwant.

For whatever reason, all the websites that I use to download episodes of TV on the shifty as they air in the US instead of waiting for them to finally reach Australia seem to think I'm a spotty, nerdy boy living in my mother's basement. Adverts tell me all about virtual girls that want to dance on my desktop in their underwear, lots and lots of women think I live in Adelaide and keep asking me if there's any good things to do there. And apparently, Russian women are very very attracted to me. They will actively message me, and try to marry me, according to the ads.

Now obviously, I have no real need for virtual girls dancing on my desktop* and I don't live in Adelaide (though sometimes I feel like messaging them to tell them to go to The Woolshed) and although Tasmania is apparently about to legalise gay marriage, I neither want or need a Russian bride. What I both want and need though was the dress that one of them was wearing in one of the ads.

"Soulful" (their word, not mine) Russian Lady, if I marry you, I get half of that dress right? Please?

Would it be wrong to just lead her on till she tells me where she got it from? I'm not sure on the morals of dealing with Russian mail order brides and their wardrobes.

On a similar note, for anyone who has seen the new season opener of Castle, I want the leather jacket that Martha is wearing at the hospital. Really really badly.



*when I was younger, I not only had a sheep that ran around, but a tiny 30pixel square movie player that ran next to the clock. You would make your own movies in gif format and then play them in the corner. I made a 15 minute tetris loop. I had lots of spare time. This was on Windows 95. I wonder if you can get one for 7?

Planning ahead.

I know it was wildly optimistic of me but today I went into Spotlight to buy some more fabrics for the back of the new quilt, which I'm realising more and more (as I blog about it) desperately needs a name. Maybe Offset. I like that.

So yeah, today I went and bought some more fabrics for the back of the Offset quilt. I'd already bought 1.2m of a green floral, and kept a 10x40cm piece of all the front fabrics, but I wanted some brighter fabrics too. And I had to get them now, because I didn't want to get home and find I had the urge, but not the materials to follow through.

The bottom green is the print I have lots of, and I got 20cm of each of the others (and a fat quarter of the yellow because they were out of yardage). The maroony print is the same as the green, the blue fabric with the little flowers* is on the other side too, and the peach with the flowers is from a totally different range but it goes quite nicely. The other green is what I've chosen (so far) for the binding - I may go with something brighter in the end.

Since the urge didn't strike tonight I've still got to work out what I even want to do with the back - I need to start by measuring the front but I can't find any of the 43 million tape measures I own.

Oh, just realised, math. 37.5 (block width), a² + b² = c² (53.033), quilt is 3 point-set blocks long and 2.5 point-set blocks wide, quilt measures approx 159x132cm. Yay for math! It's easier than getting up and finding a tape measure...

Obviously, this is a really really horrible rendering, but maybe something like this.

It will not, thankfully, look anything like that drawing.


*I get really really bad deja vu every time I look at this fabric. I am so, so sure I have seen it, or something really really really similar before. It's driving me a little bonkers.

Indecisiveness.

One I'd assembled the bundle for my latest quilt, I was really happy with it. When it was out on the floor, I wasn't so sure anymore. But that could have been that it wasn't yet on point. It looked quite bland at right angles. 45ing it perked it up, but I was busy being glad that I could shuffle my corners into sides without having to unpick a heap of blocks and after 7 straight hours of quilting my sense of design had kinda turned to mush. It wasn't as briliant as the potential of the bundle had seemed, but it was nice.

Then yesterday I was looking at it hanging in front of the curtain and I really didn't like it. It was too bland, to pastel, a bit wishy washy and I'd decided I didn't like the darker stripe anymore.

Today I'm looking at it and I love it. Can't wait till next week when I'm on holidays, my legs are working again, I can piece it a backing, quilt it really densely and bind it in a nice bright green. Chuck it in the wash so it goes all crinkly and maybe hibernate under it for a week. Love it.

Does this happen to other people? Do you fall in and out of love with something every 45minutes or so? Or am I just hideously indecisive?

Gosh, I hope this doesn't happen if/when I have kids.

Ow.

I can't walk. I can't sit down. I can't bend over. It's horrible.

Yesterday morning my parents went and got a couple of loads of firewood. Which means yesterday afternoon we had to unload a couple of loads of firewood. And since everyone else is scared of any height more than two foot above ground, I was the one on the back of the ute picking the bits up and passing them on. 45 solid minutes of lunging one way to pick up a log, and then lunging the other to pass it to Dad at the other end. And today, my thighs don't work. They just burn.

I had been thinking about doing some work on the Snack quilt. But that would involve walking, and sitting down, and bending over, and, worst of all, squatting. I don't have a design board, I have the lounge room floor. So quilting is out of the question.

To bed for a Bejewelled marathon it is then...

Spontenaity.

Today I am loving a spontaneous (if badly photographed) new quilt top.

This started Wednesday night; while I was waiting for Anna to finish work and come to the gym I sat in my car reading the new catalogues. Lincraft had some coordinated bundles of fat quarters for $13 so I went in Thursday and got one of them, and I mix and matched myself one of the regular bundles to go with. Spotlight's catalogue had a spend-$50-save-$10 voucher in it, and the new DS fabrics were already on sale, so they ended up under $10 a metre. There's about 1 1/4 metres in amoungst this quilt top, and the pink and green check is definitely my fave. For the back I've bought the green floral, and I kept enough of the fats to do a bit of piecing too.

Even though I've done this design (I'd hesitate to call it a patern) a few times before, it's always been for the back of a quilt, and set on point, because that way you don't have to match your quilting lines. This time I decided to make it for the front, and originally I sorted it out to not be on point - just a regular 4 by 4 square.

But for some reason that seemed kinda boring. The shift to being on point required only two small bits of unpicking - as of the photo above, they were just neatly laid out blocks - and by shifting and cutting in half the corner blocks to fill in some gaps, it all came together as a 15 block quilt instead. If you tilt your head, you'll notice the centre 4 blocks are the same.


I think I kinda needed to do something like this in an attempt to force myself out of my rut. For all that the Cadbury Snack quilt is very nice, it's a bit boring as far as the actual work goes... there's not much to inspire progress. This took a while to do - I started about 7pm, spent a loooong time staring at layouts and shifting them (everyone always comes and has an input. Sometimes there's fights) got distracted by the footy (Go Hawks!) got seriously stuck into it, changed my mind about the direction, and spent another loooong time staring at it, this time with the help of a bit of paper scribbled on and chopped up, and the second photo with bits cut, pasted and rotated.

Once the research was done and the theory sorted out, I promised myself chocolate when I finished and got it all done. I usually really struggle with the last few seams of getting it together, but it seems chocolate works as an incentive.

I do like chocolate.

Yeah...

There's something to be said for getting home as the sun is coming up, and that something is, it's too late to start sewing now.


Yes, I am aware that it's friday morning and therefore we were out on a thursday. But we all have to work saturday and sunday, so this was the only option.

Maybe maybe...

New Spotlight catalogue comes with a spend-$100-save-$30 voucher, which isn't as good as the old save-$40 ones were but is still very tempting. New Lincraft catalogue has some sweet looking precuts and it says you can buy online but their website is munted and apparently, according to it, you can't. Still, I have tomorrow off, so I'm feeling some shopping coming on. Bit of a shame really, since I'm feeling more and more like it's time to get a new phone. Which would leave no money for new fabric.

Decisions, decisions.

I just decided I'll go to bed and decide later :)

The big questions...

Much like the tree falling in the woods, if a quilt blogger does a bit of quilt sewing, but it's neither interesting, nor photogenic, is it worth blogging about?

I've sewn the long strips together to increase the size of the Cadbury Snack quilt. I haven't sewn the little bits together, because my brain is a bit... um... I can't even think of the word to use but that kinda just proves my point. There's some extra squares that I cut from the ends of the fabric before I cut the strips, because there's a half dozen blocks more than can be made from strips, and I can't remember what colours get paired together. Oh well, progress is progress.

Of course I haven't ironed it or cut it or anything like that. It looks as if I've slightly rearranged my piles. It took me two episodes of Angel to re-arrange my piles. Admittedly, half of the first one was spent looking for brown thread. I feel a little out of practice.

Hiding

There are some people that desperately want the name of this blog. It makes me laugh, because they have sooks that they can't get to it, but type in my name and the word "quilting" (cause I've told them it's a blog about quilting, even though lately it's been about everything but) and it comes up on the first page.

If I was writing a report card on their detectoring skills, at the bottom I would put "must try harder"

And then I would white-out the word "harder" because really, they're not trying at all.

Anyway, what I must try harder at is making time to sew. I was going to tonight, having come home on time and all, but Casey was on my bed watching Miranda (fantastic BBC show. highly recommended. Reminds us very much of ourselves) so I sat on my bed and watched it too. I could have sewn the strips for the extension of the brown quilt (I like to think of it as the "snack" quilt, because it's like Cadbury Snack, with the brown chocolate and all the different colours of goo) or I could have done some work on the bag of pockets from long long ago. I could have cut the binding for the black and rainbow zigzag quilt, which has been waiting for a few months. Now though it's too late, because I ate two rolls of peppermint chocolate and now I'm pinging on a massive sugar high instead. I'm no longer allowed to operate heavy machinery. Or a rotary cutter. Or a laptop it would seem.

If anyone wants me, I'll be the one over here playing bejeweled and waiting for the rush to go away so I can go to sleep.

Parents, warn you children: massive amounts of chocolate at 1am is not, and never will be, a good idea.

Where were you?

Dear Me

Note to self: do not start watching old episodes of Angel. They are like chocolate peanuts - you can not stop at one, or even "just a couple" - before you know it you'll be 6 episodes down and have done nothing all night.

Just be careful.

My Sunnies.

I feel bad saying that my favourite thing today is my sunnies when I don't have a picture of me wearing them. Two reasons for this - a) everyone's gone to bed and b) I can't find an SD card for my camera to even have a shoddy go at taking one of myself.

Oh, hangon, I do have one picture of me and Meegs*.

But they're my regular sunnies. I have them three times now, one in a fantastic baby-poo shade of brown and two in black, as above. They're from target and the first two cost me $20 a pair, but I went in yesterday and found a pair for $5. I also bought a pair of men's aviators for $5, which are the ones I'm quite excited about. I've always longed to have a nice pair of aviators, but they've always looked terrible.

Oh, I've just remembered I have a webcam.

Oh, I've just remembered that any photos you take of yourself on a webcam will be really really crap.

But that's not the point. The point is that aviators are bitchin'. Except when you forget that you're not wearing your regular sunnies, and you put them on top of your head, and the little nose-stand bits get caught in your hair.

That blows.


*She once told me that she hates it when people call her Meegs, just as I told her that I hate it when people call me Sez, and usually I do. But, in much the same way that Mum or Casey can get away with it, it turns out that when you're actual, proper, unspoken language, finding out secrets months before everyone else friends, shortening of names is suddenly okay. Meegs is my other favourite today, but she's my fave every day, so I'm not sure that that counts.

Really.

I'm all adrift tonight. I did an extra shift at work but I finished at 8 instead of 10.30, did a bit of late night shopping, came home and people were still all up. The strangeness of the situation threw me completely off kilter and I haven't recovered, spending the night sitting in front of the fire looking at dresses on ebay for when the weather warms up again.

Of course, you may point out that sitting down shopping online is pretty much par for the course lately. I really haven't been sewing much - between work, holidays, and going to the gym till the wee small hours, I'm struggling to get in the vicinity of my sewing machine, much less use it.

I've been wondering if I should take a break from blogging too, because for a craft blog, there's been a distinct lack of that going on. But inertia once again prompts me to continue blogging every night, so I suggest that if you're getting bored, assume that posts don't contain anything crafty, just the usual pointless rambly shit with an occasional affirmation thrown in. When I do something crafty, I'll put it in the title.

In the meantime, I'm off to do some maths. Not quiltmath, but something quite similar to the other quiltmath; the one you use for justifying fabric purchases. I'm going to go and talk myself into, and then back out of, and then into again, a half dozen new dresses. And then down to maybe three or four, once I'm convinced that those ones are an absolute perfect bargain and so much better value than anything I could find in the mount. That I so totally, absolutely need. Really. To go with the other dozen dresses in my wardrobe that I have never warn either, but may need to, one day...

I Am Awesome.

I realised tonight that over the past few weeks, with worrying about friends and stuff, I forgot to regularly remind myself how awesome I am. That I can do all sorts of cool amazing things. Maybe you've forgotten about your amazingness, like a pair of very flattering jeans that got put in the wrong pile in your wardrobe. But instead of having to go through all your cupboards, your amazingness is easy to find. Is there a quilt on your bed? Did you make it? Is it seriously freaking bitchin? How about your handbag, your kid's favourite toy, a seat cover?

Even on days when I don't get anything made, I can still think of amazing projects, do beautiful maths, cook myself a delicious dinner. Straighten my hair so it looks really really nice, turn my car very smoothly into a corner. It doesn't take much to be awesome.

You've just got to be yourself.

Cuts and new fabrics

I like fat quarters. I've designed quite a few very easy fat quarter quilts. But I've also designed a lot of quilts that use a standard quarter. Or ones that only use 10cm of each fabric.

I tend to stash small amounts for the most part. Actually, I tend to come up with a project, buy for that and then get distracted with another project and end up with exactly the amount of fabric for a project that I'm now bored with*

When I'm going crazy stockpiling, I usually go for half a metre, unless there's only two fabrics that go together. If that's the case I'll get a metre of each, that way when I inevitably never ever find another fabric to go with them, I can just make my Two Tyred quilt again.

I find the minimum cut thing quite interesting. Fair enough for proper quilt shops to have a minimum 20cm cut. They're a little store, trying their best, and a 1cm leeway on a 10cm cut is 10% of the profit gone. But Lincraft are the same, and their profits don't really come very much from quilt fabrics. Worse are their half price specials, with 1m minimum cut. Apart from backings, who does spontaneous stockpiling of 1m cuts? Especially when they're still $10 a metre when they're half price.

Spotlight have always been very good. 10cm minimum, 5cm increments, 50cm minimum on clearance fabrics. But now they've changed to 1m minimum cuts on their clearance stuff, and today, when there was a metre and 30cm left on the roll, the lady went "ergh, do you want that bit too?" I said not really but I would take it, and so I was charged for that, and when the second fabric came to the same I said "no, not really" and she seemed very miffed. If I'm already having to buy 50cm of fabric I didn't really want, why would I want to by 80cm of fabric I don't want? You're still charging me $6 a metre for it. And you didn't even have any of the black I wanted in the first place, which means I'll ahve to have a hunt through the shed. It would be much easier for me to just bring in the tubs and start putting it all on the shelves I bought for that very purpose, but they are heavy, and I am lazy, and here are many many old episodes of Angel to watch instead.

Anyway, new fabrics.

The start of yet another blue and green quilt. Not that I have a usual quilt or anything.

I absolutely cannot justify these. Except that I like them.

The only DS fabric that I liked that we didn't have at the local spotlight. None of the other yellow ones were very nice.

Two batiks and a Michael Miller I would now have about 4 metres of, except, well, I can't find any of it.

Some stripey fat quarters. I don't have much stripe. And the orange is really pretty.

*This is why fat quarters are good. Lots of patterns use a fat quarter.

Back to the grind

Tomorrow I don't start work till 6pm. I have big plans to finish off the brown quilt top extention and maybe make one of these - now that I've seen the done in a way that doesn't have them all sitting apart from one another I'm very tempted. And I've got a big bag full of 10cm squares already cut too.

But I kinda need to unpack after the weekend, and that'll probably waste my day :(

But there's some fabrics I bought in there somewhere, so it's not all bad.

Inside.

So I've been tossing up on whether to post this or not, but since I can't really be bothered writing an actual post, I may as well. This was written just before 11am today. 

I just looked down and remembered I have a body, after having spent some time lost in thought. And then I thought to myself, oops, spent a bit of time existing entirely in my mind for a minute.

And now I'm thinking on how ridiculous that notion is. That I can even exist somewhere other than my mind. I've always thought that the body was basically a big handy method of carrying the brain around, and most of the time, my sense of myself doesn't extend past my neck. I, Sara Hosking, am a brain. A brain inside a person, a body, which is full of chemicals and hundreds of thousands of years of social conditioning and evolution to make me a person just like any other. But it's not something I really relate to. I may need to define myself in the physical sense when in the presence of others, but alone, I don't. I'm me, and I'm very internalised. I think a lot. I feel like, in a big picture sense, I get it. I can't define what it is, not yet anyway, but I get it. The whole sense of humanity, the universe, everything just seems to make sense when you come at it from the perspective as a teeny teeny piece. A part of the bigger whole, and, on a scale of the whole thing, pretty much indistinguishable from all the other teeny tiny pieces.

I wonder if atoms understand quantum? Obviously, what I'm doing here is anthropomorphising something that can't possibly experience intelligence as we define it, but really, the whole concept of anthromorphication is a silly one, since we had to declare human traits to be originally of humans before we could do it to other things.

I'm pretty sure that everyone, everywhere, is faking it. We're all brains in lumps of meat that will degrade and die eventually, and we spend our time pretending that we know what we're doing while secretly, in the quiet of the night, we shit ourselves with the fear that one day we may be found out.

Maybe if everyone knew that everyone else felt the same too we'd get on a bit better. Obviously there are those people who are so sure of their beliefs that they will hate and kill others for disagreeing with theirs, but I can’t help but think that those people just need to widen their reading a bit. Most of the great thoughts are out there already, just waiting to be taken on board and shaped to fit into whatever shape brain you are.

I wonder how much of our concept of ourselves is shape by others. I don’t mean in a sense of the people who raised you, but your sense of who you are, right now, in relation to the people in your immediate vicinity. Is there a big change between you alone at rest and you at rest in the company of others also at rest? Do you let their opinions of you have bearing upon your sense of self, or do you feel secure enough in yourself to let it sweep over and around you? I feel like I’m getting very close to the second, but is that always a good thing? What if what they’re experiencing is worry, and they’re trying to get through to see if you’re okay? Do you let their concern affect your mood, be it to cheer you up that they’re concerned, of piss you off if you feel that they’re trying to force you to get over it sooner than you want to? Should we let the opinions of even those you care about get to us, or should we remain true to ourselves in the moment we are in, be it a good one or a bad one?

I should point out that right now I’m in the back of a car that contains three people I’m still a bit cross with, and I’m wondering how much of my anger is body anger (chemicals affecting responses to a situation) or brain anger (me being cross with them for not being in the same emotional or intellectual headspace as me) – I think that what was the former last night is evolving into the latter.  But since it’s a still a mix of the two, I’m a bit fucked. I’m caught between the near-visceral disappointment of what feels like an (admittedly slight) betrayal, and the ability to understand why it is they made their choices as well as a complete respect for their needs and reasons for making them. It’s a tough spot to be in.  But since I’m not the one driving, it does at least leave me free to type out all the thought that would otherwise dissipate and be lost as soon as I turned the engine off.

Nonetheless, I’m considering coming up again in a couple of weeks time. But by myself. I’m still yet to find a better traveling companion.

Take that...

Do you want to hear me rant and rave? I have another blog for that stuff, you'll find the link in the sidebar. I'm pretty much over it now, It's amazing the way some sad music can actually cheer you up. I don't know how it works either, but it may have something to do with the fact that the person in the next room doesn't like this type of music, and I have it at volume just audible to them but not so loud that they can justify getting up to tell me to turn it down. It's a bit petty, but that's what you get for dragging me to Adelaide for a weekend of partying and then not partying with me.

Casey thought I should break out my sewing kit and sew one arm or leg hole on their clothes up, but that would involve sneaking in to get an item of their clothing, and I'm on bed now.
Missy Higgins/Taylor Swift marathon it is then.

Miss Fix-It

Im in a hotel room in Adelaide. Anna and Meagan are on the couch, quite drunk and whinging about their weight. Brenton is only tipsy, which explains why I couldn't talk him into going on the mechanical bull tonight. I went on, and kneed myself in the face when I fell off. Square on the nose. It hurt, and not only did it hurt my nose, it also felt like I pulled my hammy, but a bit more alcohol fixed that.


And now we're home again. Well, at the hotel. It's an odd night. The girls are both having boy issues. I got plenty of offers from boys at The Woolshed tonight, but this trip is about friends, not randoms. I don't want one. They would spoil my night. That didn't stop me from pointing out dozens of them to Meagan and going "I want that one. No, that one. Or that one. I'll have that one too" But really, on a trip like this, that's not a disruption I want, no matter how cute he is.

My mobile internet keeps freezing the laptop. I needed to reboot it 3 times between that bit of the post and this bit, and about an hour has passed, as well as plenty of other stuff, so here's how my post is actually. I kinda forgot about that top bit.


I have many talents. I'm good at, for instance, memorising people's credit card information. Fortunately for them, I'm also good at never actually using it. I'm good at finding an entire new of outfit in under an hour for under $100, and I like to occasionally keep in practice just in case it's a skill I ever need in my day to day life. If I'm going on the run, for instance. Possibly because I've stolen so many people's identities, not actually to use, but just because I like to know that if I need to, I can.

As for more mundane talents, I can make a lined, zippered card and coin purse, with two pockets, in about 20 minutes. I can sew straps onto a strapless dress, by hand, in the car. I look very good in very short shorts. I make bitchin roadtrip CDs, and I can find fishnet stockings when noone else can. For $4 a pair.

I also have another talent, and it's a bit of a strange one. See, when push comes to shove, I am surprisingly good at knowing what to say. I'm the one that talks people through crisies, and yet I feel, as far as I can tell, far more disconnected from it than the friends who don't know what to say. I'm not sure why, if maybe it's that they're feeling guilty in another room that they didn't know what to say and I'm there just opening my mouth and letting the words spill out and hoping they're the right ones. It seems that they are, or maybe I've just gotten lucky way too many times, because before I know it there will be smiles through the tears and hugs and I'll walk away feeling a bit bewildered as to what the hell just happened. I suspect it's a bit how a hostage negotiator feels, like the rush of the moment is so great it obscures the whole thing. I'm glad that I can do it, because it makes people feel better, but afterwards I feel quite lost. Something amazing just happened, I was there, I actually did it, but, um, I'm not sure what it was. It would be like making an amazing quilt top only for it to completely dissapear, to exist only as a vauge memory. I feel a bit empty, like I was working so hard to pour my reassurances into her that I'm left with none of my own.

I forget sometimes that I'm older than my friends, that the horrible, socially awkward, tell me what to do to make it all better stage that is long in the past for me is something they're still struggling with every day. But then, I wonder how much I'm really past it. Subconciously, I'm always looking for an exit, an escape route, a way to get out of all of it should shit hit the fan in such a way that I can't magically talk my way out of it. I usually can though. Today, the lady at the front desk of the hotel gave me a third key even though there's strictly only meant to be two keys per room. I didn't need it. I could have got one of my friends to come down and let me in, but it felt really nice to know that I could talk my way in. It's not something that I need to do, it's just something that I need to know I can do, should the situation arise.

And that, maybe, is where I find happiness. The safe, secure, keeping me warm at night knowledge that when I have to, I can rise up to pretty much whatever is in front of me. The knowledge that I don't need people at my back because I have me. I feel cliched telling the girls that they need to love themselves before they start worrying about what a boy thinks/says about them, but it's true. And I'm lying to them when I tell them that we've got their back, and that's all that matters*, but it's only because when you're upset you don't really want to hear that one day, you'll be grown up enough to have your own back, and that's when you'll be ready. For anything.


*I'm lying in saying that that's all that matters. I'm not lying when I say we have their back, because we do, but really, fat load of good we can do for them.

Excuse the rambleing.

Well I'm washed, straightened* packed, charged and ready to go. All I need to pack in the morning is a laptop and an esky. My dress is 3/4 sewn, enough that I can do it in 25 minutes when we get there if I really can't do it in the car for whatever reason. But I really like the idea of doing it in the car, because it's a very me thing to do. And I like doing things that are very me more than just about anything else. Except for maybe eating donuts. Except that's a very me thing to do too. And now I'm confused, and really should go to bed since I need to wake up in 4 hours.


*my hair is. And I may sneak the GHD off with me too.

It's a not so bad...

If there is one good thing about hand sewing, it's that it's very easy, physically, to unpick. You still feel like a failure when you're doing it, but the difficulty is in exact reverse proportion to when you've done it by machine. I'm so used to the whole "it takes just a second to sew, and 35 minutes to unpick" thing that you get when you make a mistake on the machine that for it to be the opposite feels weird.

Still, my revised lace placement is only about quarter of the length of the old one, so really, it's not like I've created any more sewing to be done (since I was only half done to begin with) Yay for fractions!

Other than that, I have packed 95% of the stuff I need to, and plenty of stuff I don't* - all that remains is to find my bathers (yay 4 star hotel with indoor heated swimming pool) and the jeans that are currently in the dryer, but I'll be wearing them in the car on the way up so I don't know that they count. I've charged up the cameras and the palm pilots and picked about half my music that I want for my hour of designated stereo time - here's a question for you all: hard rock covers of classic country songs, sacrilege, or a clever, sneaky underhand way to have country music playing in the car without the driver knowing it? He's quite insistent that no country is to be played, but you'd be surprised how well "Goodbye Earl" by The Dixie Chicks translates. Hell, boy beats up girl, girl and friends murder boy is practically standard emo-song fare, just, you know, cooler when it's upbeat and contains a bit of nah-nah-nah-nahing. I've added it to my hour of music just to see Meagan's face when she hears it.

*I was feeling really good about not having packed a whole heap of unnecessary stuff until I found myself looking in a cupboard and thinking, "hmmm, should I pack that tent? I might need it..." (it's okay, I'm not taking the tent)