Getting high, every night, with every single, every loving girl in sight...

Someone pointed out to me the other day how silly it is that they're called "roofies" when they make you fall on the floor. Nonetheless, Kelsie's Free Candy and Roofie Lexia party is tomorrow night, so while Casey was working on a pedo-van cake, I decided to make some roofies.

Now, obviously, they're not actual date-rape roofies. This isn't Breaking Bad, it's an 18th birthday party. But my original plan, which was to just give everybody Splenda tablets, was derailed by the fact that artificial sweeteners taste like shit. So I needed something else. And I decided I wanted them to be nice and obvious - both obviously there and also obviously not-actual-roofies.

Solution - basically tiny, tiny pavlovas. Beat a whole lot of icing sugar into an egg white, pipe out little pellets onto some baking paper, put another piece of baking paper on top, bake it as low as the oven will go for 5 minutes, and voila - roofies.

Some of them got a bit burnt, but they still taste fine. And about 5 times as many as are here (that's a 125ml tub, about half full) decided to sortof implode as they were cooking, so they got et already. And I made another batch where I didn't put the second piece of paper on the top, hoping that that would reduce the implosions. It did, but since their tops weren't flattened out they look kinda droplet-shaped. Still, much like the ones that imploded, they're still a delicious sugar hit.

For the record, the don't dissolve, and they float. This, combined with the fact that they give you a sugar high as opposed to causing anterograde amnesia means that anyone hoping to actually date-rape someone is going to be hugely disappointed. The effect they have is more like that time we went around one high-school lunchtime with a box of sugar cubes and a heap of those sugar-sachet-sticks. Everyone's gunna get super excited and then need a lie down.

Well, it's an 18th party, they'll be doing that anyway.

How I spend my nights

Juuuust throwing a tantrum at etsy at 4.30 in the morning because it keeps giving me cotton knits when I'm looking for woven rayon fabrics.

Because that's how I roll. (The tantrums at websites thing, not the constant need for more nice drapey rayon fabrics to make into lovely flowwy skirts now that the weather's starting to get a wee bit nicer. Okay, that too.)

And so say I.

Caitlin Moran's new book Moranthology is out. I haven't found a hardcopy locally yet (unsurprisingly) but after an epic battle with the Google Play app on my phone it graciously took my $15.99 and let me read it.

And that's why I did nothing this weekend. Maybe. I also drank so much that I can't remember most of the rest of this weekend, but I'm sure that's a random, uncorrelated coincidence.

Little victories

Four hours ago I thought to myself, "I might have an early night tonight..."

Clearly, I didn't, but I fixed Casey's pants for her, so I'm still declaring tonight to be a rousing success.

Weirdly, getting laryngitis the other week has improved my singing voice.

Almost inevitably, whenever I write up a long comment to an instagram picture, the net drops out while it's uploading and I end up having to re-type it. Fortunately, even though the net dropped out three times while I was trying to upload this photo, it eventually got there.

This jacket was actually made out of a 99c polar fleece blankie I got from the salvos. It’s a pale beige, scragly, badly sewn test jacket I made to work out where the zipper would sit. But instagram makes it look like it should be worn by a fucking rock star. Now I wanna go buy some gold lamé and make one like this one…

Since I want to make this jacket in some nicer (read: more expensive) fabrics than just polar fleeces, I'd also like for them to have zip closures. And while zips are easy in bags (since they're all on straight edges) on a jacket they're a bit tougher. Especially when that jacket hasn't actually been designed to have a zipper closure. Plus, since the faux-leather won't really be able to be pinned, I wanted to try sewing it without pinning. So I got a cheap polar fleece (quite thin polar fleece, admittedly) blanket from the Salvos because it wouldn't matter if it all turned crap, and had a go. It worked well for the most part, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to do a set-in sleeve without at least a little bit of pinning - I did it with 4 pins and was super-proud of myself.

I'll re-draft the front so that the zipper will go inside of a seam and since I'll be lining them the outer zip will go in a lot neater too.

Does anyone know where I can get some pale gold suiting weight stretch sateen? I wanna be a rock star.

So there's this tag on tumblr: "Coat Porn"

Tonight while I was watching Sherlock I realised that the wrong side of the fabric I used to make the very first version of the draped collar jacket would be a pretty much perfect match for the epic trench coat he wears in the show. So now I'm obsessed with finding the perfect trench coat pattern, even though I'm still yet to make the draped front jacket in either the faux leather or the caramel wool I've bought for them.

What's more, it won't be long until the weather starts to warm up, so I've got a pretty narrow window in which to find a pattern, refine the pattern, make a coat and wear it before summer gets here. That's why I spent a good couple of hours on etsy and the rest of the internet tonight looking at vintage patterns. I got a bit carried away, and ended up buying about six of them. Hopefully one of them will be okay.

My saturday night.

So my little sister, who's nine, by the way, doesn't really ever sleep on her own. Ever since she was tiny she slept with mum and dad, and now that she's bigger, she'll sleep with mum if she's home or Casey or dad if mum's at work.

She and mum and dad have been on holiday for a fortnight, and mum drove them back from Adelaide this afternoon. Apparently, Maddy slept in the car the whole way home. Which meant tonight, as one by one everyone else in the house fell asleep, Maddy kept on shifting beds. And since I was the last one still awake, she ended up in mine, watching 2 Broke Girls while I fartarsed around on the laptop. She was fairly sure she was ready to pull her first all nighter, right up untill 5.05 am when she informed me that she was ready to go to sleep now.

I'm not very good at sharing a bed with someone. Especially not a nine year old with a tendency to kick you in the face as she sleeps. So I'm on the couch.

I should just pull an all nighter. But honestly, tonight was the first night in ages when I thought to myself at about 2 am that I was ready for bed. But it was full of gangly pre-tween and bad sitcom, so I waited.

I should have just gotten drunk...

I need to cut back.

Since I've been spending *cough* about 4 hours a day on tumblr lately, I got to thinking about how my blog would be different if it was there.

Obviously, tumblr's a very picture-heavy place and I'm not much of a picture person. Small, cluttered bedrooms and an almost entirely nocturnal existence (afternoons, when I'm at work, obviously don't count) don't make for a whole lot of good photos. And quilts don't work well as gifs, static, 2D things they are.

I think my thoughts better in words or numbers but I like seeing other people's thoughts and ideas as visuals. I could happily read a million words but pictures (and even more so, gifs) make things so much more fun.

And the love... Oh, the love. I love to love the love. I love shipping stuff and going down with this ship and mashing two people's names together once they're a couple (My car, Taylor, just got a boyfriend, Harry... Tarry! My OTP*!)

I love the confessions posts and I especially love all the Texts From Last Night posts. I love feels and saying "right in the feels" and "I don't know what my feels are feeling."

On the other hand, tumblr is just a whole lot of people posting other people's stuff. For the most part, it's little more than a handy aggregation service, and even though people are pretty good about linking back, so much of it is the same stuff over and over and over. The fact that blogger/wordpress/livejournal aren't re-bloggable is something that I'm glad of. There's a lot of fantastic original content on tumblr, but, with the exception of a few shitty content thieves, pretty much everything in the quilting/sewing/crafting blogosphere is original content.

Speaking of original content, I haven't been making much of anything lately (a four hour a day tumblr habit being a big contributing factor there) So I'm gunna ease up on posting here every day. I've got other blogs to post non-crafty stuff on, so I'm not gunna force myself to write filler. I think it'd be better off for everyone if I put that effort into forcing myself to sew.

*Actually, I think my OTP (One True Pairing) is probably my last car, BJ (a Ford Mondeo), and his then-girlfriend Vroom (a Ford Laser, basically the next size model down). They were together for two years, Vroom's owner working similar shifts to me at Woolies. We would park them next to one another and talk about how one day they might have a little navy blue (they both were) Ka (the supercompact). This was before Tumblr though, so they didn't have a mashup name.

Songs about Rain...

So it's 12 days into spring and the weather just can't seem to make up its mind. We've had lovely sunny days, gloomy skies, gentle breezes, gale force winds and huge downpours. But that's pretty typical of the mount. You sort of have to ignore the weather, except to constantly complain about it. Just because today was nice doesn't mean tomorrow will be.

And a weird thing happens inside homes and buildings... Generally the opposite of what's going on outside. In our house, through the winter, it'll often be in the high 20s*, because we'll have the fire going. At work, whenever the sun's shining outside, they overcompensate by turning the aircon on too high.

Tonight, after a sunny and dry but still chilly day, I came home and put on rainymood. It in no way, shape or form compares to actual rain on my actual tin roof, but I'm having a night in which I feel that a bit of ambiancic rain sounds are necessary.

I've just realised we haven't had any epic thunderstorms here in a while. Please, changeable Mount Gambier weather, can I have some of them soon?

*according to the internet, this means it would be about 80f.

Come at me, Carbs.

Why do they call the spaghetti that takes 8 minutes to cook "instant" spaghetti? That's not instant, that's eight minutes. There's 8 minutes of difference there. And when you want carbs NOW, 8 minutes is a lifetime. A lifetime in which I eat a whole lot of parmesan cheese. When I cook myself spaghetti, I cook less than a normal person would, not because I have the stomach capacity of a small child, but because I ruin my appetite on fake powdered cheese beforehand. But it's important that I have the real fake parmesan cheese, the Kraft one. Someone filled one of the real jars with the cheap stuff and thought I wouldn't notice. But the other day I was staring in the cupboard and there was a jar of cheese there and I had some and it was all wrong. So I knew today that I had to buy more, thankfully. Having fake fake cheese would have ruined my night completely.

Weekend

Before having an arguably ridiculously big night last night, yesterday I went into Spotlight's Quilt Expo that they were having. I'd taken in a half dozen quilts for them to display, to help get out word that it was going on, and probably a quarter of the quilts they had there were mine. I got there pretty late because I was up till 8am having a spontaneous bedroom cleaning spree, and really, I don't need to be taught how to make a block. But they had all dress fabrics at 30% off, and I wanted to buy some pleather to do a dressier version of my jacket, but I didn't really want to pay $23 a metre. I'll have to try to do it without pinning it, but I figure the fabric won't stretch or shift as much as fleece does.

Today I spent being hungover and watching True Blood. Tonight I am having an early night.

A decision (or two)

I don't know why I only ever get the urge to clean my room in the middle of the night, but I'd like to say this: the sun gets up waaaay to early. It's light outside. That's not okay with me. I think in future I should be consulted.

Anyway. It's 6am. It's been a long day/night (though clearly not long enough?) so it feels like a long time ago when I picked what to wear tomorrow (tonight?).

The skirt was a dress that had a bodice for someone boobier than me, so I just chopped it off. The top is what I mad a couple of weeks ago for the fluro party and ended up wearing for about 20 minutes with a pair of jeans, before taking it off in favour of rednecking it in a white tank top. I need to sort out some shoes, but I figure I'll just go buy a cheap pair from Kmart.

This is hard.

The Awesome Blitz is on this weekend. It's a big retro themed party that they hold at Dirty Shads these days - last time I went, years ago, it was at a big out of town place called The Barn. But it moved a few years ago, and now I'm worried that it might cramp my weekend somewhat. I know plenty of people who are going, but it could get in the way of the natural progression of the night for us, which is The G, then Shads, then Maccas.

The problem, of course, is the outfit. A retro party needs a retro outfit. I have my fabulous vintage sequined christmas present, but I don't know that the evening will live up to the dress. Also, I only own cowboy boots, nothing go-go boot-y. I could go something a lot more 80s, but I really don't know what. I'd made a decision for what to wear in a general sense, based mainly around my gorgeous new cowboy boots, which I'm thinking were totally worth the $150, and the price of which makes it okay that I'd be wearing a $15 dress.

Is there some kind of magical outfit that I can wear with knee-high black cowboy boots and black tights, that will make my ex-boyfriend feel a bit regretful, look normal at The G and like a costume at Shads? And can I sort it out in the few hours before work tomorrow evening?

If I have to...

Obligation craft is such a weird thing isn't it? Lets be honest, we don't sew because we have to, and if we did have to, we probably wouldn't want to any more.

The main reason I make stuff, I think (and actually, it's the reason I do most things) is curiosity. I either want to see if I can, or want to see how well I can. I have terrible vision in my mind's eye, so if want to see how a quilt will look, I have to make it. That also explains why I dislike binding. It is obligation sewing. It is a necessary evil that gets you to the bit where you can put a quilt in the washing machine and have it come out all crinkly.

Hems are pretty much the epitome of obligation sewing. I can't be the only one who hears the question "hey, you sew don't you?" and immediately thinks great, hems... before they've even asked it. It's interesting to note that most people I will shoot down without any guilt whatsoever (because, hems...) but a friend that has agreed to give you a waxing appointment at 11 at night, you're quite happy to. But then, she said she thinks I'm like the Hulk, cause I don't even flinch when she's doing that bit of the underarm that really hurts.  All part of why I love her I guess. There needs to be love, to willingly do hems.

Tassels on scarves need a fair bit of love too, especially on a red and white scarf, as a Hawthorn supporter. Of course, it might not be a Swans scarf (Hi, number two on the ladder, having fun down there?) it might be for a Where's Wally costume. Though I find it hard to believe that a woman who's been knitting for 80 odd years doesn't know how to put tassels on a scarf.

On the other hand, Nana Joy's probably spent the last 80 years deflecting requests to take up hems in favour of knitting blankets, like she wants to. So no doubt she's also an expert at delegating that last little dull bit. When I grow up, I want to be just like her.

So, this happened...

Tonight I went looking for stripey fabric, found a really old demo Kindle and pulled it apart with a butter knife. I found it very interesting, but I realise that such antics are not particularly good blog fodder. Also, I cut my finger. Not like, bad, but it hurts. Kinda like a paper cut, but on the inside of a Kindle.

That's only fair, I guess, since I was prising out it's innards with a kitchen utensil.

You Guys...

Guess what everybody! I've had too much to drink. On a Monday/Sunday night. Brenton was drinking so I figured it was okay for me to drink. And I've spent the evening chatting with my ex on facebook. Why the hell not?

...

You guys, I'm really drunk. I've agreed to a True Blood marathon of season 5 with my ex boyfriend this weekend, and, even worse, I'm looking forward to it.

The Plan

The plan for tonight was to finish work at 10.30, go to the gym and come home home to try to have an early night. I start at 12 tomorrow, and that's early for me. But I forgot my headphones, and EmmStaff, who is one of the most gorgeous, tall, athletic, pretty, smart, funny, insecure 17 year olds I know, was going to try to sneak into The G underage, and wanted me to come with her. And because I adore her even though I really should hate her, I agreed. It was her best friend's 18th and that was going till midnight and I figured that would give me time to finish the half-sewn olive green version of my fantastic jacket.

Long story short, she got in, we danced, I had two drinks, there was some country boys in there, I decided I'd have a crack if the opportunity presented itself, it did, I've got it even in town, and then I ninja'd away to take Emm home, and came home myself. It's no later than I would have been up anyway, I had a fun evening with a different crew, and it was a good reason to finish off my jacket, which I'd be procrastinating on for no apparent reason.

What's more, because there's no-one else up this end of the house, I figure'd I'd have a go at getting a picture of it, since the dark green's probably easier to photograph than black.

I think what this picture best shows is that my fingers are freakishly long, and that the bathroom mirror really needs a clean.

When all else fails, sit on the floor in the passageway with the tall mirror leaning on someones door and take wonky photos, and wait for instagram to fix them.

Thanks instagram.

Whoops

Earlier tonight I randomly picked a whole heap of games for mum's new tablet. And we could say that I sent the last 4 hours thoroughly testing their suitability, checking that they ran okay without too much lag or bugginess, and turning off all the annoying music and sounds. And while that would be true, it would be more accurate to say I got distracted flinging marbles at one another, exploding little blobs of goo and joining rainbow pipes together, and lost track of time.

Thankfully, I made the case first... But I forgot to take a photo, and it's too nice here in bed to get out and go and get it.