Happy Halloween.

It was so nice to come home tonight and not have to make anything. I think I was so excited by the fact that I could just spend the night on facebook and tumblr and youtube that I got a bit carried away, which is why it's now 5.30am.

Anyway...

A cool cat, a cow and little red riding hood. All made by me.

A cool cat and a cow holding tails, and getting photobombed by the boy who couldn't be arsed doing a costume, so we made him wear teddy bear ears.

The ears of the cow... she didn't wear them because they kept flopping over her eyes.

Group piccie.

As much as I was sooooo sick of working on this stuff by last night, I'm also so glad I did it. Only two of the daytime staff did anything, and only two of the people in this photo (the witch and the bloodsplattered guy) aren't wearing at least a little something I made. But we had a fantastic night, got quite a few compliments (a couple were skeezy, but they were balanced out by the adorable ones from little kids) and generally enjoyed ourselves.

The fact that I can now, still, 7 hours on, still feel the ghosts of the sunglasses/headband combo pressing against the sides of my head seems like a small price to pay.

It's a linkathon!

I'm getting kinda used to this whole feeling like crap thing now, but it's getting incredibly boring. So I went into town today, but after 5 minutes in Spotlight I was completely buggered and went back to my car for a sit down. I guess that's the most of it now; coughing, with a whole heap of lethargy.

So, what's a girl to do with her complete lack of energy but audition tumblrs to go onto her dashboard?

I've mentioned before that I hesitated on getting a tumblr until instagram forced me to. So much of tumblr is just the work of others endlessly reposted and I'd much prefer hang out where the content is user-generated. So I only followed three blogs, textfromdog, which I've mentioned numerous times and believe to be utter, utter genius, hungoverowls, which, for me at least, is insanely relateable, and truebloodsims, where someone has recreated the characters from True Blood in Sims2, and gets them to do amusing things.

But, for whatever reason, if you're not following at least four tumblrs, it shows random posts on your dashboard. And sometimes they're interesting, but other times they're weird and/or depressing, so I figured I'd better round out my fill, and a night with no energy to to anything but lay about on my bed seemed like the perfect opportunity. A couple of best lists pointed me in the right direction, and I thought I'd share the couple I picked, since they're pretty damn awesome.

The first one is Animals Talking in AllCaps. As they say in their tagline, it's just what it sounds like. It's kinda like Walk on the Wildside but with photos instead of video. It can take a bit of getting used to reading allcaps, but once I did I read through about 30 pages of this.

The second is Dads are the Original Hipsters. Now, I love hipsters. If I was a city native, I would totally be a hipster. I love the Mullet:Hipster or Redneck flowchart, even though I possibly wouldn't go as far as a mullet, but I've always been resentful that my 20/20 vision means I can't wear cute glasses, and I love my skinny jeans, and flannelette shirts, obviously. What's more, there's dozens of photos of my dad I could submit to this site, since he spent the late 70s and 80s in a sea of lush, wavy hair, trucker caps, tight v-neck tees and stonewash denim. And he had a stunning mustache. But, as with Hungover Owls and Animals talking in AllCaps, it's the captions that really make this one. I think I might buy the book.

This though, I won't buy, since I can make one myself. A like oven mitt. Genius!

ZOMG.

Although Joe Nichols thinks tequilla makes her clothes fall off, it's actually the fact that Joe Nichols is going to be at the Deni Ute Muster that's making my clothes want to fall off.

Also, I think my ovaries might have exploded. Awks.

It's alright...

I had some misgivings about tonight - drinks with the girls after work, when I have to start at 12 tomorrow. Those misgivings got worse when I found out that we were planning on actually going out out as opposed to just sitting on the couch with a couple of drinks. But it turned out to be really really fun; an hour of gasbagging about work, then going to The G (that bit was kinda boring) and then off to Shads. It's been a long time since I've had a night out with people from work, it's been even longer since I've been to Shads relatively sober (less than one drink per hour) but, actually, I kinda loved it. I guess it all depends on who you're with, and if you get to dirty dance with some random guys, then all the better.

The good in the bad.

So I woke up today with a terrible hangover. Some might say that it was karma from getting a really annoying advertising jingle stuck in the heads of my entire facebook friends list, and maybe they're right. Some problems, when shared, are multiplied instead of halved.

Anyway, once I finally achieved verticality (it was a real struggle) I cooked some homemade chips which, naturally, gave me horrible indigestion. From headachey and nauseous to crippling heartburn in under an hour. Thank god for Quick Eze, which is so much more than just a one-day favourite thing. Quick Eze has saved my life many, many times, and I'm so grateful for its existence. A world without Quick Eze is a world in which I would not wish to live.

Similarly, a world with only one like per Friday isn't for me either, so, keeping with the theme, I'd like to honour my hungover shirt. Yes, that's right, I have a shirt especially for being hungover in. It's a mens shirt I got for $5 from Kmart (actually, I have two of them the same) and it always seems to end up in my morning after bag for BnS balls, and so, whenever I feel hungover, and I look in my cupboard, it's the thing I pull out. it's big and comfy and still looks very good on me, even when I'm struggling to stand. It's awesome.

As is my new method of cooking beef burgers - squish the mince between some baking paper and sit them on the top of the fire. Flip them over and once it's cooked through, eat. With lots of tomato sauce, because that's the whole reason for having beef burgers. I don't know that it would work on many fires other than ours, which pumps out a stupid amount of heat because all the insulating bricks in it have disintegrated after 20 years, but for me at least, it's quick, doesn't dirty a frypan and there's less grease in it. It's a good thing about winter, finally, though I'm also loving the sound of the rain tonight.

My favourites this week.

It occurred to me today that I've been doing favourite things on Thursdays and Fridays lately. It doesn't matter, hell, having two days of good things should be twice as good, right?

So while we're on the theme of twos, I'm gunna go with my two favourite songs at the moment.



Feel Alright - Steve Earle



Good Times - Charlie Robinson

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.

Good.

One would assume, seeing as how I've watched THIRTY HOURS of True Blood since Sunday night, that I'd make that my favourite for this week. Or at the very least, that I would make last night's strawberry cider, breadsticks and True Blood night my favourite thing this week. But I'm not going to.

Nor am I going to go with my fantastic friends at work, or trashy romance novels, or Wrigleys Strongmint chewwies, or even the very pretty yarn I got with the $10 voucher that Lincraft sent me.

Even though I find the tingly sensation that I get in my legs when I sit down in my skinny jeans to be weirdly enjoyable, that's not it either. Nor is it the entertainment I get from trying to push repelling magnets together.

Nope, today, my favourite thing is the tiny tick of my watch. It's so quiet that I can only hear it in the really quiet moments, and I don't get them too often. So I like the fact that the tiny tick of my watch is there to remind me when they're happening, so that I know to enjoy them.

Oh, okay, all the other stuff can be a favourite too :)

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.

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.

A random blog post about random things, randomly.

Yesterday, I ate an entire block of Cadbury Peppermint chocolate, except for two squares, which I put next to my computer screen, because that meant that I hadn't eaten a whole block.

I used to subscribe to Fat Quarterly, but after about a half dozen issues I decided it was a bit to cliquey* for my liking, especially since instead of being popular and planning the yearbook and the graduation ceremonies, I was off getting drunk in the arts buildings with the teachers. That's why I'm a big fan of GenQ now - because I suspect they would have been too. I put some money into their Kickstarter so my first issue is on the way, but in the meantime they have a challenge up - a few squiggly lines they want people to turn into a block - it's like Mr Squiggle but with fabric! And instead of Blackboard going "Oh hu-rry up..." we've got my mum going (at 4am) "God, haven't you gone to bed yet?"

Admittedly, they just wanted a block design, but that didn't take long, and I can't stand a hypothetical** so I did the maths and made it. I don't even know if it's actually submittable yet (I put pink both sides of one of the lines they had drawn, but there is still a seam there, which I think counts) so I'm not gunna post a whole picture: instead...

Trimmings are one of the prettiest things I throw into the bin.

I took a photo of this seam because it looks brilliant, and you'd never guess that the other 3 are horrible.

That's my two pinks next to one another. I could have made one of them orange, but I didn't want to. A well matched pink, yellow green and blue is all that it needs.

McDonald's have fish at the moment, to celebrate the Olympics. Just say no.

My leg has gone to sleep, before the rest of me has even gotten undressed for bed. Stupid leg.
 

*The Wikipedia article on cliques is fascinating, and I don't care that it says I am misusing the word.

**There was a TV show way back when on the ABC called Hypotheticals. I really liked that show, but that's the exception.

Favourite Things 5am Saturday

It might seem mean, but since they've spent the last week off in their respective tropical paradises, I don't care. My favourite thing this week has been having this end of the house all to myself. Late night music, going to the toilet with the door open and using the mirrors in their bedrooms at night. Not that I haven't missed them - I have, but they've been on facebook plenty. Casey's on a plane from Adelaide to Darwin as I type, and Becky'll be back in a few days, but it's been all the fun of having my own place while still having Mum and Maddy to talk to, to stop me from going bonkers and talking to kitchen appliances like I do when I'm on my own.

As for other good stuff, well, the fact that I have now got the process of extending jacket sleeves down-pat makes me feel good. I buy a lot of clothes from the kids section but even though they fit in most places, the sleeves tend to be too short on jackets, so I go to the salvos, buy a knit jumper in a similar colour, cut off the ends of the sleeves and sew them into the wrists of the jacket. Voila, longer sleeves.

I'd been worried that my monitor was starting to give up the ghost, but tonight Steven suggested that it was probably just the cable connection, and to give the plugs a wiggle. It worked, and I'm very happy about that.

I hadn't done any serious piecing in a couple of weeks, so to have made myself a simple quilt top tonight feels nice.

I think it harks back to a lot of my earlier little quilts, where selecting the right fabrics meant half the job was done - the layout wasn't all that crucial, it was just about the pretty prints. Weirdly in the photo, the purple looks a lot like the print that it's paired with in its HST unit, whereas in real life, they look nothing alike.

Finally, tonight I was staring into the fridge, thinking I wanted something sweet and chocolatey, but not really sure what. Then, I remembered I still had half a hedgehog slice in my handbag, that I got when I went to the bakery with Maddy after I picked her up from school. And that made my tastebuds, and therefore me, very happy indeed.

Things I love when I'm drunk

So, it's not even 2am. That's very early by my standards. But I'm calling it a night, being responsible and shit. I mean, I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, and I had a 5 hour drive today (not that it wasn't enjoyable or anything, but a 5 hour drive is a 5 hour drive, and a 5 hour drive is tiring) and I'm only little, so the 5 drinks I had in 4 hours, which is 7.5 standard drinks all up, is enough to get little old me kinda drunk. And I feel guilty, since Jeffy put makeup on me and everything, but unlike a regular ball, where I paid my $120 and ought to get my money's worth, I didn't really pay all that much tonight: I bought a round, and then 2 more drinks for me, and then I got KFC, which was next door to the pub, and therefore fantastic. So, if I wanna go to bed (and I do), I can.

But in the meantime, more goodness. Because just because there's alcohol in your life, doesn't mean there isn't goodness too.

I love my sister, and Jeffy, and Jamie too. They're pretty much always there when I'm drinking, and that regularity, and that predictability, is reassuring. The sun will rise tomorrow, and Casey will be there when I'm feeling drunk. Yay for both, except when the sun is shining in my eyes while I'm driving. At those times, only yay for Casey.

I love my friends that aren't here too. I miss them, a lot. Thinking back to the last time when I was at the Woolshed, with all of them, which would have been 8 months ago (cause Meagan didn't know she was pregnant yet) when we were all so close, and since then we've all drifted apart (Anna doing mornings now, Meagan off on maternity leave, Brenton and I being too busy in our own departments to ever really talk) but that doesn't mean I don't miss them, and miss talking to them. I'm still friends with all of them, I don't think any less than I was then, but life has gotten in the way. But I love them all.

I love the fact that our motel is about 20m from the pub that we were at tonight. And the fact that there's a KFC between the two. If there was a fabric shop in there as well, then I would be pretty much set up for life, but oh well, I can do that tomorrow.

I love MmmMmmMmmMmm by the Crash Test Dummies. Because, well, it's so freaking weird, and it makes no sense, in much the same way that life does, but it sounds good in your ears.

I love chewwys. I'm on Wriglys Extra Strong Mint with Cleaning Granules at the moment, and I love them. I didn't think of myself as a mint chewwy person, but since the other week when I had a cold, I can't get enough of them.

I love cider. I don't know why, it's possible that it's just because I also love apple juice, but under no other circumstances would I drink rotten apple juice, so maybe not. I know that spirits are a better idea than drinks with a higher volume to alcohol ratio, which, for someone like me who doesn't consume much in the way of liquids apart from alcohol, is better for the bladder, but I'd rather drink a cider than do a shot of vodka. Maybe because you can hold onto a glass of cider for a while, whereas a shot of vodka is all gone very quickly, and then people expect you to have another drink, and then you get even more drunk.

I love looking around this motel room and seeing how much stuff I've made. That bag, that cushion, that quilt, that bag, that bag, that beanie, that bag, that skirt. Craft is a funny thing, so often you can feel that it's pretty pointless, and just an expensive hobby that leaves you with nothing to show, but when you can have a quick glance around and see 9 things you made, being actually used, well, that's a nice feeling.

I love the dress I'm wearing tonight. I brought with me a couple of options, because I wasn't sure what to go with, and I decided to go with the simpler, more classic green dress, as opposed to the pink mullet-skirted ball gown, so I can save that for an actual ball. Probably a good thing too, because I saw girls tonight wearing mullet skirts in a non-ironic fashion, and I felt bad for them, because they don't realise what I bad idea that mullet skirt is. Also, the green dress makes my boobs look nice.

I love my wireless internet stick. I pay 30c a day, but it's nice to know that when I'm away, it's there, ready to help me blog, and listen to 90s music via youtube.

I love the possibilities that tomorrow holds, and the fact that, even if tomorrow falls short of them, it will still have been a very interesting day, that I'm glad I will haven gotten a chance to experience.

I love that I am the kind of person that finds everything interesting. 

The thing, I guess, is that life is really really interesting. Sometimes, we don't care, and sometimes we're too busy to notice, but occasionally, I suppose we have to leave the party early, once we've acknowledged that we've had our fun, and go back to our motel rooms, listen to a bit of Pearl Jam, and concede that, even when life seems like an endless rush, we still need to find the time to think about what's good, and what's missing, and if there's things on both those lists, find a way to take them off the latter, and raise them up on the former.


"... I know I was born and I know that I'll die, the inbetween is mine..." - Pearl Jam (I Am Mine)

Favourites List

Getting that "vibe" that you really should go to the op shop today, and finding a half dozen brilliant things.

Mini Sausage Rolls from the OK Pie Shop.

Being the only one home in our end of the house.

The music of the late 90s and early 00s.

Looking for shoes and finding yarn.

Making clothes without a pattern, because if there's no right way, then there's no wrong way either.

Having an "ironic" hot pink mullet skirt.

And a backup dress just in case the so-bad-it's-super-freaking-awesome mullet skirt is too ironic for tomorrow night.

Finding a full bobbin of the colour you want.

The fact that bacon tastes better cold.

How I don't have to shave this week, because I got a wax last week.

The Vacuum Sealer.

Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.

How clean my fingernails are after I wash my hair.

Lists. Writing them, crossing stuff off them, leaving them home; list are brilliant.

Favourite things (in bold)

Friday! It's a pretty good day, what with how I usually don't have to work and all, and today it was my last day off till next Saturday, and since I'm driving to Adelaide then, and back the next day, I'm not sure that it counts, so it kinda felt like today was going to be my last day off in forever.

But I got to go see this guy again.

And if I had to pick one actual favourite, it would probably be him. But I don't want my pseudo-nephew to grow up in a world where he can only have one favourite thing, so let's have more.

In honour of our hostess with the mostest, I'm going to go with some very mundane things;

The scroll button on my mouse. It is the unsung hero of all the input keys. While everyone's all rightclick/leftclick/spacebar/enter I'm just leisurely scrolling up and down. Using a mouse without one is horrible, and I feel that laptops would be greatly improved if they had one as well.

Those pop-up lids on drink bottles. You can open the drink with only one hand. And your mouth, obviously. But rarely am I laying on my other mouth. And they're less likely to spill all down the side of your face.

Little watchband adjuster tools. So much easier than trying to shove a pin into the little holes with a pair of pliers.

Chocolate Croissants. Croissants, with chocolate bits on top, and chocolate ganache inside. $2.40 from the bakery section at woolies.

Don's Salami. I don't know why it's so much better than Han's, but it is.

Getting your waxing done by a friend instead of a professional stranger, because the converstion is much better.

Having really long showers on days when it rains, because that's the whole point of having a rainwater tank.

CD burners. Remember when, to make a mix tape, you had to do it in real time? I do, but thankfully only barely.

Finding a fabric at lincraft that you've been looking fo the likes of on ebay for months.

Paying half price for it.

Favourite Things Everywhere

A couple of nights ago I paired together a four-patch block with a quarter-square-triangle block (is that its actual name?) and quite liked the results. And today before work I picked 4 colours on my Kona Card (Pear, Mango, Peacock and Taupe) and did some very basic preliminary maths, figuring that I could get a baby quilt from 50cm of each and a decent lap quilt from 75cm of each. And then, because it was Thursday late night shopping, I went to Spotlight in my meal break. And they had 50% off all their quilting fabric (till Sunday, apparently).

I'm putting favourite things in bold. It's 5am Friday now, and that seems Friday enough for me.

I only got 50cm each of the solids I picked, and the green is the only one that comes close to it's Kona counterpart. The orange is more melon-y, the blue more aqua-y and the grey - well, taupe is a light brown.

Back at work tonight, and I got some huge angst going on over my quilt math. How do you calculate how much bigger you need to make a square if you're going to make it into quarter square triangles and sew them back together? Is it two lots of your diagonal seam width (because if you did a half square triangle, and then did it again in the opposite direction, wouldn't it get the same amount smaller both times?) or is it only one (because each seam is measured one way, just like they are with the regular four patch?)

Turns out it's only once (yay knowledge!) but I only found that out by actually doing it, and having all my blocks be 1.8cm too big. But I took a pretty picture of my trimmings with Instagram.

Doesn't it look like delicious, rainbow linguine?

Because I got held up trimming, (and also with reliving the music of 1999 on youtube) I didn't get all my blocks sewn together, which is why in this photo, none of the points appear to match up. My batting should fit exactly to the top once it's all joined together, but at the moment, it needs 6cm of overlapping.

I'm calling it Every Which Way because even though they're not technically arrows, they kinda look like them. And once I see one of them as an arrow, I start seeing them all as arrows, pointing in every direction. I just don't know what good stuff they're telling me to pay attention to next.

Based upon the position of this on the floor in the lounge, the green is pointing to the kitchen, where today I ate some delicious chicken rice, the grey is pointing to the couch, where tonight after work I had garlic bread and watched the season final of New Girl, and the blue points to my bedroom, where I'm currently sitting on my bed eating some cadbury fingers.

Maddy (little sister) claims the white ones "changed her life" which is probably a bit superlative, but I will admit, they make my tongue very happy.

And there's a slew of things to keep the rest of me happy while my tongue's occupied, from books on my phone to clicky pens to nail clippers to funny, funny tumblrs.

Sometimes, the internet makes me cross.

I've never liked tumblr. Not only is it spelt dumb, but a lot of people who use it pretend like they're actual bloggers, when really, all they're doing is re-posting pictures they've found on other tumblrs, with occasional twitter-length posts about how they don't have girlfriends. Yes, there are some brilliant ones out there (if you can read textfromdog with a straight face, I will send you stash) but so much of it just an endlessly reposted waste of server space.

Nonetheless, tonight I got one, because, as I mentioned the other day, Instagram doesn't like Picasa, and since it makes me cross when other people spam up my facebook news feed with Instagram, I'd not only have to get a sword, but also fall on it, if I started doing it too. So it was a choice between Tumblr and Twitter, and since Twitter falls off the face of the internet after a fortnight, I went with the longer lasting of two evils.

And longer is right. It's taken me 45 minutes to get it set up and the first picture loaded. And all I wanted to do was show everybody a picture of my empty box of chocolate.

Gah. What a hassle. 45 minutes is almost half again on the time it took me to do tonight's project.

I suppose the proper name for it would be a pram quilt, or a car-seat quilt, but since they are both a bit dull, I'm going to call it a quiltlet. It's a bit under 50x75cm, so it's about a sixth the size of my usual quilts, and I just sewed around the edges and turned it right side out before quilting it, so no binding.

It's also got polyester batting, something I'd never used before. Spotlight had all their bags of precut poly batting for $3.99 last week, so I bought 3 queen sized ones, figuring I could use them for bags, or for cushion covers, or just let Maddy use them for her quilting endeavours. But I'd also used it under the lattice quilt, so I could take some photos without the darkness of the lino underneath, and so that I could roll it up without getting creases in the top, and the trimmings were the right width, so I went for it. I was only using random bits from the stash, and I told myself I wasn't going to spend more than 2 hours on it (all up, including cutting, it took an hour and 45 minutes) so I figured, even if I turned out horrible, it wouldn't be too much of a waste.

I haven't washed it yet but it seems okay - I suspect it will be a bit loftier than cotton, but I'm cool with that. It's a bit less clingy, obviously, but for something this sixe, I'm happy so far. The actual design of this one is very blah, but I might churn out some nicer ones for the facebook page.

Favourite things 5am Saturday

I had hoped to be able to get the tutorial for the Lattice quilt up tonight, but after I finished it, about an hour ago, I got a bit distracted by the all important staring-at-the-quilt-top-thinking step. It's still my favourite thing this week, but without a tutorial to go with it. Tomorrow night, hopefully.

I'm also loving Instagram, since it's hard to take nice photos of quilts at night in the kitchen. But I don't see why it can't just upload the pictures to Picasa - I know that one's owned by Facebook and the other by Google, but I think we should just all be friends.

I love it when I work out the maths well enough that there's very little wastage from my cutting. The pale blue of the background fabric started as a 1.8 metre (2 yards) cut, and that little pile was all the scrap leftover, including (mainly, in fact) selvedges and squaring up.

I love, partway through the pinning, realising, without intending to, exactly how much you would need to make this quilt using layer cakes. Answer - not much (34 neutral squares, 18 prints. The border would be narrower and the whole thing scaled up, obviously, but the only cutting would be the printed fabrics in half, 3 neutrals into quarters and 6 neutrals into HSTs, and then trimming it all square.)

I love a stripy binding.

I love now knowing how to crochet, even if, honestly, I don't find myself loving the crochet itself.

I love peppermint hedgehog logs, even if they make my arms hurt to roll them, and they look like poo.

I love the way the hands on my watch glow in the dark.

I love boiled potato with chicken salt. And a cold coke.

I love my electric blanket.

I love other stuff too, but I'm too tired to remember it.

Another late night.

I could say that I'm showing solidarity with Shay by also getting bored with the April finishathon we were going for and starting an entirely new quilt, but that's not actually the reason. I had planned on giving someone the pink pavement quilt, but now I'm starting to think it's a bit too pink for them. So there's a new quilt top, 75% done, all pinned and folded neatly on my sewing table ready to finish and blog tomorrow. It's all from stash too, which I'm quite proud of. But I'd finished doing that by 3.30, so it's not what's kept me up. Instead, it was this week's favourite thing - Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

I'm only two episodes in, but I'm gunna be good and not watch the other six so far... I'll try to ration them out so I don't get all impatient waiting for new episodes.

Good ol' Rant.

So I'm in my motel room in Adelaide, and the design of the height and angle adjustable shower head here was almost good enough to be my favourite thing this week. Seriously, as a piece of industrial design, I'm kinda in love, and I want one at my house, since ours is old and decrepit.


But really, a shower fixture does not a favourite thing make. Instead, here goes.


I love long drives, singing, loudly and badly, and so intensely that your face starts to hurt. For mile after mile.


I love finding a pace car, and becoming really really attached to it, and having one-sided, long and emotive farewells when it turns off. For the first 100km today, my pace car was a swift, and that was even better, because it was like we were a gang. And then I did see a gang - The Finks were in Tintinara when I drove through and they overtook* me about 100km up the road. And I'm not sure why the government is going through all these hoops trying to outlaw them - in 5 minutes I saw about a dozen road traffic offenses EACH, and that's more demerit points than they have, and once you're out of demerit points, you can't ride your bike any more. Unless it's a push bike. Seriously, the government should hire me. Minister for Obviousness.


I love literally rolling into Adelaide. The last 5km is all downhill.


I love this motel, for its free wi-fi and the fact that the best satay chicken in the world is directly across the road. I could have gotten it twice tonight, but I told myself no. I also love this motel for its shower fixtures.


I love my GPS. It's about 5 years old now but its still great, especially since I only paid about $100 for it new. It's called a "travel companion" too, which fits in well with my habit of anthropomorphising things. I have taught it an epic, round-Adelaide route for tomorrow, so I have time to get everything in.


I love the fact that, with facebook, it's now quite easy to bad-mouth someone that no-one who's reading it has ever met without the incompetent shop assistant ever knowing. It saves embarrassment all round, while letting me get it off my chest. Though if anyone but a teenaged boy had just pushed the scissors along the fabric, shredding the edge in the process, I probably would have leaped over the table and stabbed them with their own scissors. And granted, by putting it on facebook instead of telling it to his face, he'll probably just do it again, but the other woman behind the counter looked like an absolute cow, and I didn't want her going and being all passive aggressive no-one-else-minds at me when she was the one who should have taught him to cut the fabric in the first place.


I, apparently, love ranting about things.


Finally, I love these.

*When I say overtook, I mean my pacetruck and I got surrounded, and they sort of wove in and out of us and the car behind me and the cars coming in the other direction, with about 30cm to spare, and after I had to break suddenly for the third time, I considered just running them down, and charging the government for services rendered.