Once again, all the blog titles I wanted have already been used.

I realised when I woke up this morning that I had gotten so distracted by new episodes of Time Team last night that I completely forgot to do a blog post.

Whoops.

Crafternoon got a bit distracted by a trip to the movies to see Gulliver's Travels, which was quite good, and then, since I was in town anyway, I figured I'd do all my running around. So I bought hot pink shirts, and went into Jagga Jagga, and talked to the man about getting them printed, and bought clothes, and booze, and food, and an esky for tonight, and I went to Spotlight too but I only spent $10 on a heap of eyes and a very cute red fabric with little birds on it, which doesn't match anything in my stash but which I think will make nice headbands.

After that - is a crafternoon still a crafternoon if it's held in the evening? Crafterevening doesn't have the same ring. And silly me had only taken the terribly not-fun task of cutting out the patterns for monsters. I got bored after 6 or 7, and gave up. And I got a blister on my thumb.

I used to love scissors. Helen called me SaraScissorHands when I was little because I was always always using them. But for the last 6 months I have been spoiled by the existence of the rotary cutter, and it's blister free method of chopping fabric into little bits. But I'm willing to concede, it's useless for cutting around the fiddly little bits of a small plushie. So am I really. Once I have picked a craft I can really only temporarily stray from it. Doing a couple of monsters in their entirety would probably be easier, but I still feel that it's more efficient to cut out all the bodies, then do all the faces, then make all the damn things at once. It just feels quite uninspiring to me at the time, especially since they're all ones I've done before.

No time for crafting today, since it is new years eve, and much fun/feralness/dunkenness/ boganness is to be had. We are boating from Donavans to Nelson thisafternoon. I have 16 cruisers and two ruskies. And a cute new esky, which is the exact right size for 18 premix bottles, which worked out well.

So, since I won't be in range of an internet :( till tomorrow night, Have a Happy New Year everyone. Personally I think that statement is a bit far-reaching, and we should all settle for having a lovely Saturday, before planning a lovely Sunday, just like we do every day, but what the hell. Every day should be nice, and we shouldn't only be saying that on December 31st.

Dude... Sweet... Dude... Sweet...

I really need to stay off the Vistaprint website. Everything I get off of it is the epitome of pointlessness, but gosh darn it's cool. Today I got two keyrings, a notepad, post it notes, a cap, a stamp, some little magnets and a big one you can stick to your car. All printed with our silly little "Save a horse, ride a lawnmower" logo*.

Yeah. You're all jealous you're not members of the Lower South East Ladettes. Logo by me of course, on my funky touchscreen, prone to overheating computer.

I should point out that we went with it because the boys wouldn't get us South East Pisshead Association shirts. But ours is so much cooler, because we have a proper custom logo as opposed to their silly picture of a ute. We're gunna get the logo printed on hot pink polo shirts. Might see if I can get that sorted tomorrow. Because... I don't have to work for the rest of the year! And I probably should get on with it, because it's two weeks till the Harrow BnS ball.

Before that though we have Crafternoon III - Crafters Never Sleep, and then NYE on Friday. I'll be going to Nelson with my bogan homies, and I don't start work till 5.30pm on Saturday, so that's plenty of time to recover. Some big days ahead, but I can't go to bed, since my Time Team episodes finished downloading today while I was at work. And I've loaded them onto my tablet to watch so my laptop doesn't overheat, and it's much too awesome of a setup to tell it to stop. Which is a problem because I've loaded seven hour-long episodes onto it. And I'm only onto the third. And it's after 2am already. And I need to be out of bed by lunchtime at least because I need to pick up Kelsey at 1.30. The name of Crafternoon 3 is surprisingly apt.

I know. My life is too awesome for words.

*which is an adaptation of last years NYE celebratory shirt logo (the big lady in a floating inner tube), and in honour of Big and Rich's excellent song Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.

Crafternoon II - Keepin' on Crafting

So today was the epic sequel that everyone's been waiting for. I had planned to go to Lincraft before I picked up Kelsey at 1, but then I didn't get out of bed till 12, so that didn't happen. Lucky me she needed buttons too so I still go to go to Lincraft.

Even though I was only gunna get one bundle, I ended up getting 3. These are the two I brought home - the third I bought because I was suffering from Getitforestheritis, a horrible affliction caused by the knowledge that Helen's making a retro tickertape quilt for Esther, and an uncontrollable desire to unnecessarily help. I have no idea what I'll do with these though, since I don't really have a design on the top of my head of a 16 fabric spectral retro quilt.

Since I've no plans yet for that, I figured I'd get started on one of the other ones. The purple, green and blue bundle I assembled ages ago seemed to be preferred to the pink, white and brown bundle, so I went with that. I only got as far as cutting my big squares before the girls went home, but I got stuck in while they had tea, and it all came together around 8pm.

Ah, the joys of photoshop. This is cobbled together from a couple of photos because I took the photo at Helen's right after I'd finished, and I didn't have a stool to take it from. Here's a real life photo.

I got home about 10.30 but unfortunately, the speedway was still on. Tonight was the start of the season and because we live so close, it's annoyingly loud. I haven't gotten anything done since I got home (not including the consumption of yet more mini pavs with whipped cream) and I'm not planning on it, and tomorrow will probably be a washout too since I'm back at work.

More money = more fabric though, so I suppose I don't mind. And it's my last shift for 2010.

Do I write too much?

I didn't realise it till I'd gotten home and had my ice-cream, but Helen was right, it has been a very long day. Expensive too. But my pay packet next week should be massive, thanks to four double time and a half hours, eight time and a half hours and three you don't have to work but we'll pay you anyway hours.

It's the best thing about this time of year really. And what's more, because of the timing of it all, I'm still managing to not work new year's eve or most of new years day (5.30pm start) but I still get plenty of bonuses (I'm doing next monday too, so I'll be getting double and a half again)

Anyway, shopping. Since I thought noone was at Helen's when I went there (for future occasions when everyone's out in the backyard, we need to set up some kind of secret home/not home sign) I went straight to Spotlight, but she appeared there not long after. My total spend was about $65, but luckily, that's right about what I got in money and Spotlight vouchers for Christmas. So that would have worked out well, but I'm not super keen on one or two of the fabrics now that I'm home, and I think I'll have to look at replacing them. But it's okay, turns out that the special is on till Tuesday, so I'll be going back tomorrow. And maybe Tuesday as well. I got 3 quilts worth, minus backing for one of them and the binding another, but still, even once I get that we are still only looking at a total cost of about $35 (that includes my super cheap $7p/m batting) per quilt. And not a little quilt either; I'll get around eventually to explaining the pattern I'm doing right now, which uses 9 quarters to get a 120x140cm quilt. It's a bit simple, and it uses quite big squares, but it's very quick and much more economical than a fiddly little thing with all those seam allowances.

After Spotlight (it took a while) we swore at the Kmart photo boxes for some time, had some lunch, and got kicked out of as many shops as they closed as we could. Which was only two. We need more practice. Helen thought she was dodging visitors but when we got back to her house they hadn't even arrived yet, and when they did, they didn't seem very interested in my fabrics at all.

There's no helping some people, I guess.

Bob threw a tantrum when I had to go to Woolies for coke, but the diet stuff is kinda like kryptonite for me, so it had to be done. Tea was yum (I haven't had potato gems in ages) and the babies went to bed, so Helen and I got stuck into patterns.

After the hoo-rah with the work christmas show top, I was thinking how glad I was that I hadn't moved away and done a course of fashion, because I so wasn't into it any more. But if this keeps up it wont be long at all till I am an expert in baby clothes. I wasn't a huge fan of Helen's sewing machine, but then, it wasn't mine. And I stuffed up the cuffed hems, but we chopped them off and it looked fine as just regular flares. Oh, and I should mention in context that they were just practices, made from bright green gingham. From a pattern I traced from some corduroy jeans she's never really worn. We'll need to increase the butt room on the next pair, and I've just realised that means we need to shorten the length of the inside leg on our altered pattern (which I will need someone to remind me about tomorrow), but things are looking good. Not that anyone can see them looking good, because at 10pm you don't think of taking a photo of the baby while she's doing a test fitting of the pants, but we'll get there

If you have a size 0 baby in need of some funkadelic pants, we are the people to call.

And if you want photos of completely unnecessary purchases, this is the blog to visit.

This baby would have been one of the best $2 I ever spent, but I only had a dollar on me so Helen paid the rest. It fits one metre of fabric, but it's not a particularly effective storage solution. It looks so amazingly funky though - I would love a briefcase sized one, but I'm fairly sure those clasps don't come that big, which is an epic shame.

There was a different fabric in it than the blue solid at the bottom, which I bought a while ago, but I like that much better, so that's one less I have to replace tomorrow. I've bought a pink (that's almost exactly between the two shades in the flower) to use as a binding, but only because the lack of orange fabrics at Spotlight borders on the criminal.

There are a few crossover fabrics in this bundle, but for this one I want the contrast fabric to be the yellow instead of the pink (I only put it in the middle this time to show off the tulip print). That brown there is spoiling it for me quite badly though, so it needs to be swapped out.

Actually, I've just had a thought... what do we think of this Erin McMorris being subbed in? I have a yard of it that's been stashed for a while now after I got it on ebay for about $4.

Helen has nominated this as the quilt she wants for her birthday so I guess it's up to her. Here's the back fabric:

Which I'm also considering cutting a strip of and framing for Mum. They look nothing like Barry, but the green ones are exactly the same colour as his crap, which I have fortunately managed thus far to keep him from doing on my quilts. Quilting with birds is even worse than quilting with cats*, unless they're pretty printed-on-fabric birds.

This is my final bundle, and actually, I picked all the other fabrics because I'm so in love with the yellow one. But now I'm not sure that it fits.

The idea is that the whites are the big squares, the blacks are the half squares and the yellow is the little squares (they were the brown ones on Kelsey's quilt) but I'm worried that in the chopping I'll get some that don't really have much yellow in them, and they'll get lost. There were a couple of others in the range but I think they've sold out, which is a shame because I seem to recall they were a more even pattern. There's no rush though - I might find something I love weeks from now but that's fine, I doubt I will have started it anyway.

Crafternoon tomorrow (but I have to be at work at 4 - sob) so I'll be choosing between pants and cutting, probably of the first set because I'm quite in love with their retro-ey goodness - I'll need to find some blades if I take that route though because mine have gotten damned blunt.

Do I write to much? In my defence one of my main reasons for starting a blog was so that my typing would go back to being good, and it's certainly done that. But I do tend to waffle on a bit sometimes, and for that I apologise. With an s, because that's how we roll down under.

*It's damn lucky that blogger in draft is so excellent at saving-on-the-go, because this blog post has been exited out of by Honeycat three times now...

CRAFTERNOON!

Mum, Dad and Maddy have pissed off to Melbourne for the weekend, so I'm on my lonesome till Casey finishes work in a couple of hours. The cats have been fed, Bazza has been fed, Facebook and the rest of the interwebs have been checked. So now it's hair washing time before CRAFTERNOON!

Yay...woooh...huzzah...yippee... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

No massive plans, mainly cutting for some upcoming baby/mini quilts. Will be aiming more for the 100x120cm size than the 80x100cm size, since I think that that's a bit more practical in the long run, and I've cut back a bit on my dreams for non-gender-specific fabrics. One is blue and green. One is pink and orange. I'll also be continuing with the same design as the honeycomb quilt - the squares on one side and the crazy on the other. I have 4 yards of fabrics for each quilt.

And yes, they are the same fabrics in different colours. The boys quilt will be big squares of the blue with 4-patch squares of the 2 middle greens, and the back will be the middle greens being wonky with the bottom fabric as the main bit. Binding will probably be the blue, but that's a ways off. Girls quilt I'm not sure what will go where, since the fabrics a lot more similar than the big difference between the blue and the one with the red. There will probably be a vote of some kind.

These fabrics were all from fabric.com, who put a little sticker on the fabric telling you what it is and how much they sent. That's probably the only really nice thing they do, except for be cheap. These fabrics were all $5 per yard before postage, which probably translates to around $50 per quilt when you include postage, and exchange rates, and batting.

Single sided quilts would be a lot cheaper. But probably quite a bit more boring.

Also, since this is all single manufacturer, I don't need to pre-wash. And that means I don't need to iron. And that's worth about $20 in itself. It certainly saves me over an hour of standing at the kitchen bench, and I earn $18p/h at woolies, so that works.

Anyway, hair washing. With someone else's shampoo, since I have run out. Bummer.