So 10 hours ago when I was standing in the Salvos my brain was all like, "hey, lets buy that brown silk hand beaded top with the draped back and the asymmetric hem. We can shorten the shoulder straps, take out the tag, make the drape be at the bust and straighten out the hem. It'll be fun. How long ago were asymmetric hems "in", anyway? God, that was a flash in the pan. Ohh, better hurry, we need to be at the school in 5 minutes."
45 minutes later Casey told brain that actually, I had a whole another hour before I needed to be at the school. And just a few minutes ago, my brain was like "oh, did I say fun? I meant to say "a horrible idea don't do it you stupid girl put it back just make a white top from that stretch crepe ohmygodyoustupididiotaargh!!!!" Actually, I'm pretty sure what I said. You must have misheard me."
So basically my brain is a lying scoundrel and I'm hemming a beaded silk gauze top by hand tonight.
In semi-related news, this is a friendly reminder not to sit on your bed with your legs underneath you while wearing skinny jeans, lest your legs fall off. That's a pretty important cautionary tale.
EDIT, 3.30am: I think the fact that left to their own devices, my hands are capable of beading over the shoulder join and hemming the bottom, almost makes up for the fact that my brain is a jerk.
Showing posts with label FML. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FML. Show all posts
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Is variety, the so called "spice of life", actually spicy enough that you don't need actual spices?
Or: How I learned that people without a functioning sense of smell probably shouldn't do cooking experiments on top of the fireplace.
We are nearly out of tomato sauce.
That might sound like a weird opening, but here's the thing: my body has an uncanny ability to crave whatever it is that we are running low on in the house. Want peanut butter on toast? No bread. Would give your left leg for a paddle pop? No ice-cream of an kind in any of the four freezers. If I'm having a hamburger (by which I mean a beef patty, and a bit of bread) I want tomato sauce with it. Ergo, tonight, midnight, I open the fridge, see a packet of mince, think "perfect, hamburger it is." Sure, the mince is one day after it's best before, but don't they play it safe with those things, surely you have a day or two extra, right?
Not only that, but it's winter (pretty much) now. The fire is lit. The fire, which gets super hot because it's 20 years old and all its insulating bricks have fallen out. The fire that, sometimes last year, I would cook a beef patty on, instead of having to wash a frypan.
Also, I decided to test that thing where, if you wrap a bottle of drink in some damp taper towel and put it in the freezer, it gets cold in 5 minutes. This will be an important part of the resolution to the story, even though it seems a bit random (ie. not as ominous as everything else Ive written so far) at this point in the story.
So I've decided to cook a burger on top of the fire. Normally I'd mix the mince with breadcrumbs and seasoning, but, well, I'm both hungry and lazy. And anyway, aren't Maccas burgers supposed to be all beef? If they don't need breadcrumbs, neither do I. So I squish the mince between some baking paper till it's flatish, carry it across the kitchen, and plop it onto the top of the fireplace.
It makes a satisfactory sizzling noise. There's a big bit of baking paper folded around it, but I've put the fold to the back so I can lift it up and have a look inside.
It appears to be browning in the correct fashion. But this is where the problem starts. Some beef juice is leaking out in the sizzling. This happens when I make stir-fry, but not when I cook myself a burger. Conclusion: the breadcrumbs are needed to soak up the juice so it doesn't leak everywhere. I get a spatula and try to hold up either side of the paper, so the juice will pool under the burger next to the crease and hopefully re-absorb into the burger.
I know very little about cooking. I now know more: I now know that this does not work.
When the underside appears to be sufficiently brown, I try to pick up the burger and flip it over, without letting the tiny, miniscule dribble of juice I expect to be leftover (ha!) come out the sides.
It doesn't work.
So now there's beef juice sizzling on the metal surface of the fireplace, and from the feel of it, there's still a fair bit of liquid in the baking paper. I carry it over to the sink, and drop down one corner. About 45 litres of liquid gushes out. My burger is half cooked. The baking paper is feeling a bit damp. I get another piece of baking paper, this time doing some foldy-origami type thing to the sides.
I take it back and cook the other side. The origami turns out to not be necessary: the fact that it's already managed to perform the scientific wonder of expelling 5 times as much liquid as it appeared to weigh (I too have done this, one morning when I was so hungover I peed for about 15 minutes) has left it quite dry now that it's time to cook the other side. And even more dry when I bring it over to the plate, and cut through it to make sure that it's cooked through.
I figure I should try clean the top of the still lit, still very hot fireplace, and fortunately, I have some frozen paper towel wrapped around a not-really-at-all-cold bottle of coke in the freezer. And it turns out that frozen paper towel does an alright job of cleaning the top of a hot fire, if by cleaning you mean wiping a few times in hope that it's making some sort of difference and also not getting burnt. I don't know if it's actually even slightly clean: I think the best way to tell will be to wait for someone to go "what's that smell?" since I, as ever, smell nothing. But the bottom of the now half sizzling, half frozen paper towel is a bit brown, as it would be had it cleaned up some well-cooked beef juice, so I figure, job well done.
Having given cleaning the top of the fire a, excuse the pun, red hot go, I go to the cupboard to get some sauce to have with my burger, and discover what you have known from the beginning; that all 4 bottles of sauce in the cupboard have just a tiny dreg in the bottom, which will only come out, accompanied by little fart noises, with a good deal of shaking and squeezing. There simply isn't enough sauce to cover the fact that my burger is a dried out, shriveled up blob of blandness, that may or may not have been fit for human consumption before I even got it out of the fridge.
I chop it up into little bits and put it in the dog's bowl, and eat my piece of bread, unsure how exactly I made it to the point where I am considered an actual grown up human being.
In conclusion, it's probably a better idea to just use regular herbs and spices, than to decide that cooking in a way you haven't done in about 8 months is going to be enough to make your dinner edible. Also, if you've been putting off writing a blog post for about 3 months because you know that it will be your 900th, and you want to make it worthwhile, maybe it's just better to do something so stupid that it deserves the spelling stoopid, and blog about that instead.
P.S. I just went to the kitchen and the dog appears to have eaten it. I guess it can't have been BAD bad, since his nose (I assume) would be able to tell the difference.
We are nearly out of tomato sauce.
That might sound like a weird opening, but here's the thing: my body has an uncanny ability to crave whatever it is that we are running low on in the house. Want peanut butter on toast? No bread. Would give your left leg for a paddle pop? No ice-cream of an kind in any of the four freezers. If I'm having a hamburger (by which I mean a beef patty, and a bit of bread) I want tomato sauce with it. Ergo, tonight, midnight, I open the fridge, see a packet of mince, think "perfect, hamburger it is." Sure, the mince is one day after it's best before, but don't they play it safe with those things, surely you have a day or two extra, right?
Not only that, but it's winter (pretty much) now. The fire is lit. The fire, which gets super hot because it's 20 years old and all its insulating bricks have fallen out. The fire that, sometimes last year, I would cook a beef patty on, instead of having to wash a frypan.
Also, I decided to test that thing where, if you wrap a bottle of drink in some damp taper towel and put it in the freezer, it gets cold in 5 minutes. This will be an important part of the resolution to the story, even though it seems a bit random (ie. not as ominous as everything else Ive written so far) at this point in the story.
So I've decided to cook a burger on top of the fire. Normally I'd mix the mince with breadcrumbs and seasoning, but, well, I'm both hungry and lazy. And anyway, aren't Maccas burgers supposed to be all beef? If they don't need breadcrumbs, neither do I. So I squish the mince between some baking paper till it's flatish, carry it across the kitchen, and plop it onto the top of the fireplace.
It makes a satisfactory sizzling noise. There's a big bit of baking paper folded around it, but I've put the fold to the back so I can lift it up and have a look inside.
It appears to be browning in the correct fashion. But this is where the problem starts. Some beef juice is leaking out in the sizzling. This happens when I make stir-fry, but not when I cook myself a burger. Conclusion: the breadcrumbs are needed to soak up the juice so it doesn't leak everywhere. I get a spatula and try to hold up either side of the paper, so the juice will pool under the burger next to the crease and hopefully re-absorb into the burger.
I know very little about cooking. I now know more: I now know that this does not work.
When the underside appears to be sufficiently brown, I try to pick up the burger and flip it over, without letting the tiny, miniscule dribble of juice I expect to be leftover (ha!) come out the sides.
It doesn't work.
So now there's beef juice sizzling on the metal surface of the fireplace, and from the feel of it, there's still a fair bit of liquid in the baking paper. I carry it over to the sink, and drop down one corner. About 45 litres of liquid gushes out. My burger is half cooked. The baking paper is feeling a bit damp. I get another piece of baking paper, this time doing some foldy-origami type thing to the sides.
I take it back and cook the other side. The origami turns out to not be necessary: the fact that it's already managed to perform the scientific wonder of expelling 5 times as much liquid as it appeared to weigh (I too have done this, one morning when I was so hungover I peed for about 15 minutes) has left it quite dry now that it's time to cook the other side. And even more dry when I bring it over to the plate, and cut through it to make sure that it's cooked through.
I figure I should try clean the top of the still lit, still very hot fireplace, and fortunately, I have some frozen paper towel wrapped around a not-really-at-all-cold bottle of coke in the freezer. And it turns out that frozen paper towel does an alright job of cleaning the top of a hot fire, if by cleaning you mean wiping a few times in hope that it's making some sort of difference and also not getting burnt. I don't know if it's actually even slightly clean: I think the best way to tell will be to wait for someone to go "what's that smell?" since I, as ever, smell nothing. But the bottom of the now half sizzling, half frozen paper towel is a bit brown, as it would be had it cleaned up some well-cooked beef juice, so I figure, job well done.
Having given cleaning the top of the fire a, excuse the pun, red hot go, I go to the cupboard to get some sauce to have with my burger, and discover what you have known from the beginning; that all 4 bottles of sauce in the cupboard have just a tiny dreg in the bottom, which will only come out, accompanied by little fart noises, with a good deal of shaking and squeezing. There simply isn't enough sauce to cover the fact that my burger is a dried out, shriveled up blob of blandness, that may or may not have been fit for human consumption before I even got it out of the fridge.
I chop it up into little bits and put it in the dog's bowl, and eat my piece of bread, unsure how exactly I made it to the point where I am considered an actual grown up human being.
In conclusion, it's probably a better idea to just use regular herbs and spices, than to decide that cooking in a way you haven't done in about 8 months is going to be enough to make your dinner edible. Also, if you've been putting off writing a blog post for about 3 months because you know that it will be your 900th, and you want to make it worthwhile, maybe it's just better to do something so stupid that it deserves the spelling stoopid, and blog about that instead.
P.S. I just went to the kitchen and the dog appears to have eaten it. I guess it can't have been BAD bad, since his nose (I assume) would be able to tell the difference.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
It's working... *cries*
Two weeks ago, a man from telstra called my mum and told her that he could upgrade her internet plan. We were going to be getting 500gig of internet a month, at higher speeds, and a bonus free wireless dongle to use if we were away from home.
What we actually got was a 75 hour internet dropout and a new, separate phone bill for $30p/month for the wifi dongle. Data usage not included.
I've spent the last 3 days either on the phone to tech support or waiting for them to call me back. Someone today finally told us that the upgrade was actually a cancellation of the old plan and a commencement of a new one, so all our usernames and passwords were different, and that got us back online for all of 10 minutes (basically, enough to say thankyou so very much, we love you, bye and for it to die again) before the modem went aargh, I can't cope with ADSL2+ I don't wanna and gave up.
Tonight I borrowed a modem from Steven and smashed the keyboard until it took pity on me and worked. I tearfully hugged my mother and she went to bed (it was 3am by this point. She was working at the pub tonight) and I moved it all to my room and smashed the keyboard again until it all started working down here as well.
I'm so over tech support. And I still don't know what a DNS is, or why it was so hard for all these things to find it, but I don't care right now.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Grrr
The power going out has put a serious cramp in my night. I had plans man, and sure, I probably would have ended up playing bubble breaker all night instead of actually following through on them, but now even the chance has gone, and I feel robbed, man, robbed.
Friday, August 10, 2012
/startsulk
I am a sucker. More to the point, I am a sick sucker. Last night I spent 8 hours at work in horrible pain every time I tried to swallow, only to come home, have a shower, mumble something about dragons at my mother and pass out on the floor in front of the fire with the towel still wrapped around my wet hair. Then today (I wasn't supposed to be working, but they appear to have fucked up my roster this week) I worked 6 hours, coughing and spluttering and feeling pretty miserable. Tomorrow, also when I'm not supposed to be working, I've been rostered 10-3, which contravenes both my don't-work-fridays and my don't-work-before-lunchtime rules.
And, even though I have over 200 hours of sick leave accumulated, I go to work, I suffer through it, I share my germs with customers and I devote at least 40% of my concentration to mentally telling myself not to throw up over and over again. Because whenever I try to call in sick they get all passive aggressive; "but we don't have anyone else, wah wah" on me. And meanwhile, the department manager randomly takes a day off a month out of sickleave to "help keep the budget down"
Oh, and the best part? If I quit, I lose all that sick leave. Nearly four grand worth.
/endsulk.
In actual good news, the first issue of GenQ magazine arrived today with my bonus 8 kickstarter bribe fat quarters. Especially loving the brown and pink zigzag one.
And, even though I have over 200 hours of sick leave accumulated, I go to work, I suffer through it, I share my germs with customers and I devote at least 40% of my concentration to mentally telling myself not to throw up over and over again. Because whenever I try to call in sick they get all passive aggressive; "but we don't have anyone else, wah wah" on me. And meanwhile, the department manager randomly takes a day off a month out of sickleave to "help keep the budget down"
Oh, and the best part? If I quit, I lose all that sick leave. Nearly four grand worth.
/endsulk.
In actual good news, the first issue of GenQ magazine arrived today with my bonus 8 kickstarter bribe fat quarters. Especially loving the brown and pink zigzag one.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Naw, damn...
I've been in a bit of a quilting rut lately, and since even though Comic Con's over, the internet is still getting fuller every day with interesting new videos and articles, any attempts at having a play around at designing something new in Paint got repeatedly sidetracked by my "maybe I'll just check google's new video feed..." attitude.
So I broke out the graph paper and textas. After a couple of goes with nothing lining up I got the sizes of the rectangles sorted so that the edges of any potential quilt would be fairly level, and went to colour it in, and was doing the very bottom right hand corner...
And fucked up the colouring. On Paint I could just ctrl+z and then make the bottom corner rectangle pink, and then colour in the white square green, but in real life, I don't even have wite-out...
Also, to make it without doing T seams, you'd need to put a seam through the centre of the rectangles, and I don't want to do that (nor do I want to do T seams) so unfortunately, I can't actually make it either.
Still, it's kinda pretty.
So I broke out the graph paper and textas. After a couple of goes with nothing lining up I got the sizes of the rectangles sorted so that the edges of any potential quilt would be fairly level, and went to colour it in, and was doing the very bottom right hand corner...
And fucked up the colouring. On Paint I could just ctrl+z and then make the bottom corner rectangle pink, and then colour in the white square green, but in real life, I don't even have wite-out...
Also, to make it without doing T seams, you'd need to put a seam through the centre of the rectangles, and I don't want to do that (nor do I want to do T seams) so unfortunately, I can't actually make it either.
Still, it's kinda pretty.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Achoo.
The fact that I'm allergic to my best friend's dog literally makes me cry. Literally, as in my eyes water and my nose runs. That's what literally means, contrary to what you may have read on some people's facebook walls. When I read the word literally being used in the wrong context in a facebook post, I literally mentally disapprove of their inability to correctly use the word literally.
In the meantime, I need to go buy myself some more demazin.
In the meantime, I need to go buy myself some more demazin.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
I, anosmic.
Sometimes, like, that moment when you realise you might have blown out the flame when you shut the door of the oven 10 minutes ago when you checked on your food, but the gas has probably still been pumping through the whole time, but you're not sure if it has or not, and you've turned it off but now you're not game to turn it back on since the oven door's been open long enough for it to all waft out, so you won't re-light it in case the whole damn house explodes, and your food's still only half cooked, and you're getting seriously hungry but you're gunna wait yet another 10 minutes before you even turn the oven on... Sometimes, I wish I had a sense of smell.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Favourite Finds Friday
My favourite thing tonight is finding something that you were worried would be lost forever. Last night we went out and had too much to drink (yes, on a Thursday night: Becky got home from her tropical holiday, after Casey got back from hers last Saturday, and, before we all remembered that we don't actually get along, we decided to go out together) and this morning when I woke up (after not remebering actually getting home - sure sign of a successful night) I couldn't find my watch.
I have quite a history of losing watches on nights out - by that I mean I've lost 3 of them. I've never lost a phone or my wallet, just nice old watches that I've found on ebay and fallen in love with. And then, tragically, lost. So when it was neither on my wrist or in the little pile of them next to the computer, I naturally assumed that it was gone forever. Weirdly, I also couldn't find the wireless mouse for my laptop though I was pretty certain I hadn't taken that to the pub with me. But then, I've also misplaced half my memories of the night, so it's possible I did.
Fortunately, at about 2am, after I'd spent the night on the couch reading random wikipedia articles, the urge to clean my room kicked in, and I found my watch in the bottom of my bed, on the opposite side to the one I sleep on, as I was changing the doona cover. And it felt good. And the mouse turned out to be in the lounge, hanging with the other mice. Which is toats handy, since the desktop and Blogger aren't speaking to one another right now, and it would have been a right shit of a job to write this on my phone.
I have quite a history of losing watches on nights out - by that I mean I've lost 3 of them. I've never lost a phone or my wallet, just nice old watches that I've found on ebay and fallen in love with. And then, tragically, lost. So when it was neither on my wrist or in the little pile of them next to the computer, I naturally assumed that it was gone forever. Weirdly, I also couldn't find the wireless mouse for my laptop though I was pretty certain I hadn't taken that to the pub with me. But then, I've also misplaced half my memories of the night, so it's possible I did.
Fortunately, at about 2am, after I'd spent the night on the couch reading random wikipedia articles, the urge to clean my room kicked in, and I found my watch in the bottom of my bed, on the opposite side to the one I sleep on, as I was changing the doona cover. And it felt good. And the mouse turned out to be in the lounge, hanging with the other mice. Which is toats handy, since the desktop and Blogger aren't speaking to one another right now, and it would have been a right shit of a job to write this on my phone.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Pathetic whinging post.
I have a cold.
I woke up feeling okay, even managed to get in a half hour of actual sewing before it hit. Since then I've had tissues shoved up my nose whenever I'm alone and I've been shooting back Demazin like it's $4 shots night at the pub (including saying "nostrovia" or sometimes "za vas" as I do it)
Worst of all, it's my full weekend on, and, short of throwing up all over a customer, I don't have much chance of getting to go home sick tomorrow. Like Sundays aren't bad enough when you're feeling good.
Maddy was home from school yesterday (with "sniffles") so I assume I've gotten it from her. Only good thing is I made a doctor's appointment for Tuesday for something unrelated so if I'm still feeling crap I'll see if I can at least get a few weekdays off work. I don't even remember the last time I had a sick day, but then, I also don't remember the last time I felt this sick.
I can only hope all the cough meds make me fall asleep instead of lying about feeling sorry for myself for the next 4 hours.
I woke up feeling okay, even managed to get in a half hour of actual sewing before it hit. Since then I've had tissues shoved up my nose whenever I'm alone and I've been shooting back Demazin like it's $4 shots night at the pub (including saying "nostrovia" or sometimes "za vas" as I do it)
Worst of all, it's my full weekend on, and, short of throwing up all over a customer, I don't have much chance of getting to go home sick tomorrow. Like Sundays aren't bad enough when you're feeling good.
Maddy was home from school yesterday (with "sniffles") so I assume I've gotten it from her. Only good thing is I made a doctor's appointment for Tuesday for something unrelated so if I'm still feeling crap I'll see if I can at least get a few weekdays off work. I don't even remember the last time I had a sick day, but then, I also don't remember the last time I felt this sick.
I can only hope all the cough meds make me fall asleep instead of lying about feeling sorry for myself for the next 4 hours.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Why I have eaten a block of chocolate and done no sewing tonight at all.
My internet is running weird and it's driving me bonkers.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Isn't this why it's supposedly sold "pre-shrunk"?
I didn't mention it the other night, but the Prima Natural I used for the back of the pink pavement quilt has some shrinkage issues. Spraying with water (I'm not a fan of steaming) and ironing caused shrinkage of about 5mm on a 10cm square. I'm not too concerned about how it will look once quilted - since there's so much white on the back, and I'm quilting fairly densely, shrinkage should be fairly even and, hopefully, result in much crinklyness. But it is a bitch when I'm just trying to press the creases out of my blocks and they keep changing sizes on me, so tonight I decided to pre-wash the rest of it, as well as the white I found at Lincraft today.
As quilters, we tend not to deal with large amount of fabric. A couple of yards at most, for a backing. And I for one am glad of this. Because trying to iron eight metres of fabric is a bitch of a job.
As quilters, we tend not to deal with large amount of fabric. A couple of yards at most, for a backing. And I for one am glad of this. Because trying to iron eight metres of fabric is a bitch of a job.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Now with 67% less angst...
Spotlight didn't have any white. I threw my politest tantrum (breathing in and out through my nose a couple of times so my nostrils flare like an angry rhino's) and went home to sulk for a bit before work.
I spent a while tonight trying to work out something I liked with the half metre of white I have left, and gave up. Then I felt bad about not doing anything, so I made a bag.
Even though it looks similar in design to the Angst bag, the construction is totally different. I'd say it was easier, but really, that's probably just because of the quilting (or lack thereof). The zip is set differently too, it's higher up and you need to thread the pull after it's been sewn, whereas for the the Angst bag the two sides of the zip never get separated. I could have recessed it, but I didn't cut the setting strips for the zip wide enough. Nevermind.
I used 2 rectangle rings to make an adjustable strap too. It's about 1m long at full length, but the bag is pretty floppy (I used a layer of quilt batting instead of any actual interfacing) so it curves around and makes it feel longer. The bag itself is about 30x40cm, and about 8cm thick.
Helen wanted me to have a go at some bookbags for kids, and I think this would be pretty okay.
I spent a while tonight trying to work out something I liked with the half metre of white I have left, and gave up. Then I felt bad about not doing anything, so I made a bag.
Even though it looks similar in design to the Angst bag, the construction is totally different. I'd say it was easier, but really, that's probably just because of the quilting (or lack thereof). The zip is set differently too, it's higher up and you need to thread the pull after it's been sewn, whereas for the the Angst bag the two sides of the zip never get separated. I could have recessed it, but I didn't cut the setting strips for the zip wide enough. Nevermind.
I used 2 rectangle rings to make an adjustable strap too. It's about 1m long at full length, but the bag is pretty floppy (I used a layer of quilt batting instead of any actual interfacing) so it curves around and makes it feel longer. The bag itself is about 30x40cm, and about 8cm thick.
Helen wanted me to have a go at some bookbags for kids, and I think this would be pretty okay.
Monday, March 19, 2012
I did some stuff!
Today was not good. I haven't been that hungover since the night that I can't remember any of. I need to stop trying to drink as much as Casey drinks. She can drink more than I can, I need to accept that, and not try to keep pace. Lesson learned, until next time.
So anyway, I could barely stand, let alone sew, for most of the day. I know, theoretically, that it's better for you to eat something as soon as you get up, and get outside and moving, but I just don't want to. I just want to nap a bit more, maintain horizontality, and maybe be sick a little bit. The alternative makes you feel better sooner (I know that from BnS balls) but when you're feeling shit, you may as well wallow in it.
I didn't get started sewing till 9, but I've managed to do all the faces on the custom monsters, and I've sewn and turned the arms too. Five of the eight new monsters have horns. Horns are popular, it seems. Hard to turn those little points, but I found a bobby pin.
It's been a bit weird to be making pairs, but it's not the first time - I made a matching set years ago for one of my friends from work's sons.
So anyway, I could barely stand, let alone sew, for most of the day. I know, theoretically, that it's better for you to eat something as soon as you get up, and get outside and moving, but I just don't want to. I just want to nap a bit more, maintain horizontality, and maybe be sick a little bit. The alternative makes you feel better sooner (I know that from BnS balls) but when you're feeling shit, you may as well wallow in it.
I didn't get started sewing till 9, but I've managed to do all the faces on the custom monsters, and I've sewn and turned the arms too. Five of the eight new monsters have horns. Horns are popular, it seems. Hard to turn those little points, but I found a bobby pin.
It's been a bit weird to be making pairs, but it's not the first time - I made a matching set years ago for one of my friends from work's sons.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Dontwanna.
I hate binding. I don't get people who are all "I love doing the binding! It's the best bit... I spend a week sewing it down by hand and really savouring the process..."
Blergh. I know you can send a top off to be quilted; I wish I could send off my quilts to be bound. I've worked out probably the quickest, neatest method imaginable and it still feels like it takes forever. One day I might time them both, and see which actually takes longer - the quilting or the binding. There's so much faff to binding, there's cutting and pressing and pinning and folding and turning and sewing really carefully.
To that end, tonight I trimmed my edges, zigzagged them together and cut the binding strips. Just doing that took 20 minutes, and I haven't started the complicated stuff yet.
I need a binding fairy.
Blergh. I know you can send a top off to be quilted; I wish I could send off my quilts to be bound. I've worked out probably the quickest, neatest method imaginable and it still feels like it takes forever. One day I might time them both, and see which actually takes longer - the quilting or the binding. There's so much faff to binding, there's cutting and pressing and pinning and folding and turning and sewing really carefully.
To that end, tonight I trimmed my edges, zigzagged them together and cut the binding strips. Just doing that took 20 minutes, and I haven't started the complicated stuff yet.
I need a binding fairy.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Pathetic. (Me. I'm pathetic. Not the monsters.)
So, with the new sharper pointier scissors that I bought yesterday, I started cutting more eyeholes in monsters this afternoon.
Well, I say started. I pushed the tip through the fabric and straight into my fingertip.
See that tiny, tiny spot on my fingertip? Look closely, it's tiny. It's been 14 hours and it hurts like hell. I'm a little bit of a sook, in case you haven't noticed. But I appear to own the world's sharpest, pointiest scissors, and they only cost me $7, which seems pretty good value...
Anyway, tonight after work I got the rest of the eyes done, I got all the little arms and horns sewed (all 62 of them) and I snipped all the inside curves and turned them all inside out and I've stuffed 30 of them, but I've run out of episodes of Long Way Down to watch and also, it's 3am.
Just to amuse myself, I've strung my little rope of arms across my fabric shelves - if you're going to mass produce 62 tiny arms, leave them in a chain together, because it makes them much easier to turn right way out and stuff. And you can hang them on your wall.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's Casey's poem:
Well, I say started. I pushed the tip through the fabric and straight into my fingertip.
See that tiny, tiny spot on my fingertip? Look closely, it's tiny. It's been 14 hours and it hurts like hell. I'm a little bit of a sook, in case you haven't noticed. But I appear to own the world's sharpest, pointiest scissors, and they only cost me $7, which seems pretty good value...
Anyway, tonight after work I got the rest of the eyes done, I got all the little arms and horns sewed (all 62 of them) and I snipped all the inside curves and turned them all inside out and I've stuffed 30 of them, but I've run out of episodes of Long Way Down to watch and also, it's 3am.
Just to amuse myself, I've strung my little rope of arms across my fabric shelves - if you're going to mass produce 62 tiny arms, leave them in a chain together, because it makes them much easier to turn right way out and stuff. And you can hang them on your wall.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's Casey's poem:
The number of this Aristocrat,
Is the answer that you seek,
Don't get hooked on the Enchanted Forest,
We've a wedding this time next week.
Two to go, and about an hour tomorrow to do them in.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Grr
In much the same way that three times seems to be the limit for unpicking and resewing a seam, three times is also the maximum number of times I'm willing to reboot my modem at 4am...
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Meagan: Don't look.
Have you seen those surveys that the big quilting websites occasionally do? The ones where they ask you what type of quilter you are, how experienced you are, what fabrics you like.
I'd like to add a couple of questions to the bottom of that, because I think we'd all like some insight into how anal we are compared to all the other quilters.
Firstly: how far off does a point have to be before you will unpick it and do it again? This question needs to be asked twice too I think, since it's different for prints and solids. Prints I'm usually cool with anything up to 3 or 4mm, but solids it's less than 2mm. I think that's reasonable. 4mm is surprisingly large.
Secondly: how many times are you willing to unpick a seam before you just set the whole damn thing on fire? And does this number start off small and get bigger (as you've put in more effort and therefore care about finishing it) of start big and rapidly shrink (as you lose patience and your head explodes)?
I ask because tonight, everything turned to shit. My maths was wrong (shame), my very first piece I cut was 5mm too small, I did the HSTs perfectly but then as soon as it came time to sew together the squares, I sewed along the wrong side, realised, unpicked them, sewed them again, pressed them, discovered the aforementioned wrongness in the maths (each small block was 3.75mm too big), unpicked it again, trimmed them all down, sewed them all back together again, pressed them, realised I really shouldn't have trimmed the medium sized blocks too, unpicked them, sewed them with a narrower seam allowance to make up a few spare milimetres, pressed them and ease sewed them to the now only 2.5mm too big large squares. At this point, the universe clearly realised that it had taken the joke a little bit too far, and let me finish the rest of the quilt in peace.
Thank god it's a) really pretty and b) what should be a really quick quilt. Had I not screwed up pretty much every single thing it was possible to screw up, I think I could have almost had it done in a bit over an hour - as it was it still took under 3, and there was a lot of unpicking to be done.
It's pretty small, about 1m by 1.1m. Baby sized.
Tomorrow I have to come up with a back for it. There's still quite a bit of the green and both blues (maybe a fat sixth?) and there's the half metre of purple I decided to not use. I might do all cool colours on the back, and I'm going with grey for binding.
I'd like to add a couple of questions to the bottom of that, because I think we'd all like some insight into how anal we are compared to all the other quilters.
Firstly: how far off does a point have to be before you will unpick it and do it again? This question needs to be asked twice too I think, since it's different for prints and solids. Prints I'm usually cool with anything up to 3 or 4mm, but solids it's less than 2mm. I think that's reasonable. 4mm is surprisingly large.
Secondly: how many times are you willing to unpick a seam before you just set the whole damn thing on fire? And does this number start off small and get bigger (as you've put in more effort and therefore care about finishing it) of start big and rapidly shrink (as you lose patience and your head explodes)?
I ask because tonight, everything turned to shit. My maths was wrong (shame), my very first piece I cut was 5mm too small, I did the HSTs perfectly but then as soon as it came time to sew together the squares, I sewed along the wrong side, realised, unpicked them, sewed them again, pressed them, discovered the aforementioned wrongness in the maths (each small block was 3.75mm too big), unpicked it again, trimmed them all down, sewed them all back together again, pressed them, realised I really shouldn't have trimmed the medium sized blocks too, unpicked them, sewed them with a narrower seam allowance to make up a few spare milimetres, pressed them and ease sewed them to the now only 2.5mm too big large squares. At this point, the universe clearly realised that it had taken the joke a little bit too far, and let me finish the rest of the quilt in peace.
Thank god it's a) really pretty and b) what should be a really quick quilt. Had I not screwed up pretty much every single thing it was possible to screw up, I think I could have almost had it done in a bit over an hour - as it was it still took under 3, and there was a lot of unpicking to be done.
It's pretty small, about 1m by 1.1m. Baby sized.
Tomorrow I have to come up with a back for it. There's still quite a bit of the green and both blues (maybe a fat sixth?) and there's the half metre of purple I decided to not use. I might do all cool colours on the back, and I'm going with grey for binding.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Have any of you seen the latest episode of Castle? I was wondering if it was possible for 42minutes of televison to erase the pain of the week of Tuesdays. Actually, I was thinking that maybe the new episode of White Collar could do it, since Sara's back, and you gotta love a character that shares your name. But the 40's noir flashbacks, narrations and funny accents, coupled with my ability to work out what was about to happen (on average, just early enough to say out loud, to myself, "oh, oh...") made for an episode I was very nearly about to wake siblings up to watch at 2am.
And a quick catch up on the progress of the week of tuesdays: Dad made me help him rake up tree-bark and leaves and my throat's doing that horrible "pre-sick" thing, two days before I go on annual leave.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Day 3 of the Week of Tuesdays.
Last week was blue week. We wore blue at work and generally had a good time. When you work in retail, casual days are the best, because you get to be a ninja. Customers think you're just like them when you're not behind a register, and when you are behind a register (especially if you're one of the few and/or the only one in casual) they feel bad for you, assuming for whatever reason that it's so desperate in store that they're forcing employees to come in in casual and help out. It's lol-worthy. Last week was lol-worthy.
This week, not so much. I've been refering to it as "the week of Tuesdays" after the fact that bad things always seem to happen in our house on a Tuesday.
On sunday I was hungover and I lost a battle (but not the war!) against microsoft copyright protection and my wallet broke. Unrelated incidents.
On Monday I spent 2 hours going around the mount trying to find a replacement wallet. I pretty much failed, eventually buying an iphone hardcase because I like hard shell cases. It'll suffice for now, since I'm not much of a cash carrier - I really only needed it for cards and bum change. Then I went to Red Rooster and got denied my request for 8 nuggets (apparently now they can only sell me six) before going to work to find that Meagan has neo-natal classes now on mondays, so she's switched nights. I got Maccas on the way home, and they put mayo on my wrap. I hate mayo. Also, I couldn't use my kitchen or my bathroom, since handymen were coming in the morning.
Morning. Tuesday morning. The actual Tuesday in the week of Tuesdays. There were guys coming to install a new oven and get rid of the old bathroom vanity and replace it but through my sleepytimes and my closed door, it sounded like they were removing it with a hammer. And maybe light explosives. Loudly. During what is, for me, the middle of the night. I was a half hour late for work (actually, this Tuesday 4 weeks ago I was late too. I have 4 week rolling roster and my brain has obviously remebered it wrong) and we were a tad understaffed. When I went to the post office, instead of a funky new phone case or a bag of fabrics, there was a speeding fine. From Victoria. 106kph on the highway. There should be an exception for South Australians. I was under MY speed limit (110), isn't that more important?
Tonight, in spite of the fact that it is the week of tuesdays, I had a go at quilting the sunset quilt. I bought a spool of varigated pink a week or so ago so I filled the bobbin with hot pink thread for the back and threaded this expensive stuff through the machine.
Guterman Sulky Cotton 12 doesn't work well as a top stitch thread... Actually, it goes okay so long as you don't stop. If I could quilt the entire thing edge to edge in one smooth movement I'd be okay, but I can't, so I'm not.
On the bright side, It's very easy to unpick.
This week, not so much. I've been refering to it as "the week of Tuesdays" after the fact that bad things always seem to happen in our house on a Tuesday.
On sunday I was hungover and I lost a battle (but not the war!) against microsoft copyright protection and my wallet broke. Unrelated incidents.
On Monday I spent 2 hours going around the mount trying to find a replacement wallet. I pretty much failed, eventually buying an iphone hardcase because I like hard shell cases. It'll suffice for now, since I'm not much of a cash carrier - I really only needed it for cards and bum change. Then I went to Red Rooster and got denied my request for 8 nuggets (apparently now they can only sell me six) before going to work to find that Meagan has neo-natal classes now on mondays, so she's switched nights. I got Maccas on the way home, and they put mayo on my wrap. I hate mayo. Also, I couldn't use my kitchen or my bathroom, since handymen were coming in the morning.
Morning. Tuesday morning. The actual Tuesday in the week of Tuesdays. There were guys coming to install a new oven and get rid of the old bathroom vanity and replace it but through my sleepytimes and my closed door, it sounded like they were removing it with a hammer. And maybe light explosives. Loudly. During what is, for me, the middle of the night. I was a half hour late for work (actually, this Tuesday 4 weeks ago I was late too. I have 4 week rolling roster and my brain has obviously remebered it wrong) and we were a tad understaffed. When I went to the post office, instead of a funky new phone case or a bag of fabrics, there was a speeding fine. From Victoria. 106kph on the highway. There should be an exception for South Australians. I was under MY speed limit (110), isn't that more important?
Tonight, in spite of the fact that it is the week of tuesdays, I had a go at quilting the sunset quilt. I bought a spool of varigated pink a week or so ago so I filled the bobbin with hot pink thread for the back and threaded this expensive stuff through the machine.
Guterman Sulky Cotton 12 doesn't work well as a top stitch thread... Actually, it goes okay so long as you don't stop. If I could quilt the entire thing edge to edge in one smooth movement I'd be okay, but I can't, so I'm not.
On the bright side, It's very easy to unpick.
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