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.

Great? Great.

You know what's awesome? Rekorderlig fruit ciders. Well, having to type/pronounce the brand name is tough, but they're alcoholic deliciousness. I usually go with the Strawberry and Lime one. It tastes like warm strawberries, like a roadtrip to the strawberry farm in Portland and a $160 speeding fine. And they're $7 a bottle, so it's not to far off of that. And the Wild Berries one goes great with a Cherry Ripe. Which is great, because Cherry Ripes are great too.

And books. Books are great because even when you've had a couple, you can still read. Well, I can still read. I suppose it depends on how much, but I've not had so much that I can no longer read. But I've had enough that I can't really sew, or chochet, just now. So trashy romance novels (Molly Harper - love your work) cider and chocolate it is. Thursday nights are awesome.

Snh, Snh, Snh.

In my favourite series of novels, Discworld, by Terry Pratchett, there is a character called the Death of Rats.

The name's pretty self explanatory. 

Anyway, when he talks it's in Sᴍᴀʟʟ Cᴀᴘs and he says things like Squeak, Eek, and Ik and when he laughs it's written as Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ.

And for some reason, when it's all too big and too much, and a thousand words can't sum up the whole experience of being a human being, alive at this very moment, I think a little Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ pretty much sums it up. Because actually, it is pretty fucking funny.

A new kind of shopping

I can't remember entirely how, but tonight (and by tonight, I mean about 5 hours ago) I went to the Book Depository website. My goal, at some point, became to find a decent introductory book about wine. Sadly, I didn't. It was all how to make wine and 200 wines to drink before you die and such, when I wanted a book with a blurb something along the lines of A book about wine for people who don't really like the taste of it but would like to be wine drinkers because all the people on TV who drink wine look like they really enjoy it and frankly, it sounds cooler to have a glass of wine than a bottle of cider, so this book tells you an both a succinct and humourous manner which wine is both affordable and doesn't make you pull that "ergh" face."


That book it seems, simply doesn't exist. But I did come across Oz and James' Big Wine Adventure, which reminded me that I had the TV show. I'll be honest, halfway through season 1 (where they cruise through France) and I've still got no idea what I want to drink. All I know is, they look like they're having fun, getting drunk, and that makes me want to do it even more. I haven't even done a Coonawarra wine tour yet. I'm jealous.


But that's okay. At some point I strayed out of the wine section and into the humour, craft and trashy romance* sections, and now I appear to have almost two dozen books in my cart, and I'm torn between thinking to myself "but at $200 all up, that's less than a tenner per book, and that's damn cheap" and "Holy cow, $200, and it's free postage so you don't have to worry about combining savings, just cull it to about a quarter and buy the rest later" but I've no idea what I want now (well, in 7-14 days) and what I'll put off for a while.


Online book buying is just as hard as online fabric buying.


*Thanks to the Vaginal Fantasy webcasts, which have a name which sounds much more smutty than they actually are, I've finally been able to admit my fondness for trashy medieval and/or fantasy romance novels, and now the voices in my head have formed a bookclub with me, and we need more books.

I don't like thongs.

Tonight, I'm suffering from the horrible empty feeling that comes from finishing a book you were really into, and not having another one lined up. It bummed me out so much, I cleaned out under my bed. So now I'm also feeling bummed about the fact that an hour and a half of clearing, putting stuff in tubs and binning everything else has made the room look... slightly messier. All the visible mess is still there, around the sewing machine, and of course I'm putting that off the most because that's where all the half done projects are, and if you put them away there's always a risk they will remain half done forever.

In an effort to counter this at least a little bit, the rainbow zigzag quilt is all quilted and trimmed. This was from ages ago, and I kept stalling in hopes that I and/or my machine would magically acquire the ability to stipple, and I could do some funky dense stuff all over the black bits, leaving the rainbow to pop. But it still hasn't happened (because a.) I need to take my machine in for a service and having done that b.) practice) So I just followed the seams along the zigzags -edge to edge on the black, around the inside on the coloured bits. It makes it look a bit more cohesive on the back too - random zigzagged lines interfere with a random stripey design less than defined patches of quilting.

Trimmed AND lint rolled. Still needs a heart appliqued into the bottom corner gap.

I might bind it from the back so it's wider on the front, so I don't chop off as much of the piecing.

Pink binding will be done some other day, mainly because the fabric I'm using is 285cm wide sheeting, and it's gunna take a bit of effort to iron it and cut it into strips. There'll be less joins though, but I'm not sure it's worth it. I just went for it because I like the colour.

Change of topic now. I feel like having a little rant.

I have a question. What's so great about thongs? Obviously, being Australian, I am referring to the rubber footwear that gives you nasty nasty blisters, not the skimpy underwear that gives you nasty nasty wedgies. But really, they're both pretty bad. I mean, yes, they are easy to get on. And when you're at the beach, you can shake out the sand, for all that it's pointless, because the next step you take will get more nasty gritty bits between the thong and your big toe, grinding away mercilessly at the skin. And it wasn't so bad when everyone was paying two bucks a pair from kmart, but now everyone's paying twenty bucks for a pair of havaianas, and still losing them/getting them stolen at the same rate. It seems like a waste of money for something that's nowhere near as good as a pair of real shoes. I put on a pair today, because they were at the back door, and my boots were at the front door, and I was going out to get some bark to light the fire, and the front door was too far away, and I am lazy. And then I went out to the woodshed, which is usually quite full of spiders and I found myself thinking, "well, how ridiculous is this?" I have a pair of perfect boots that are pretty much impenetrable to spiders. And while I'm relatively chill about spiders* the ones in the woodshed are usually fist sized and hairier than the muff of a 70s porn star. Not the kind of thing I want on my be-thonged feet, for all that I would find the irony of one on an underwear thong worthy of a good chuckle. And while I feel that spiders on toilet seats are perfectly good and Australian, having to suffer through something furry crawling over my toes, just because I'm wearing properly Australian footwear (except they're made in Brazil) isn't cool. As far as I can tell, the only good thing about thongs is that there's usually some at the back door, and they stop me getting splinters in the bottom of my feet.

I feel better now.

*as opposed to Meagan, who made me go into the toilet and kill a 4cm daddy long legs last night - actual body size, about 3mm.

I'm back on the books..,.

Tonight, instead of sewing, I did some reading.

I'm not a big one for Christmas traditions, but for the last 4 years I've read Terry Pratchett's Hogfather at Christmastime. You can watch the two part telemovie too, but it's just not the same. It was actually this tradition that led to the wanting a new tablet - I can't find my paperback copy and with the battery cover for the little palm pilot not staying on, I couldn't read it on that either. But I found an identical used one, going cheap since it had no charger and would have been completely useless were it not for the fact that I already had all the accessories and all I actually needed was a little bit of plastic about 3 inches square, and that at least was included.

So today I read Hogfather. I highly recommend it.

I've put a little bit over at my other blog, just because I like reading it so much.