A story nothing to do with sewing, since I'm still just sewing ties.

About a month ago, my laptop, which I'd been using for about a year (having bought ex-rental for $200 as a temporary thing while I "found one I liked enough to spend a lot of money on") died on me, handily right before I was about to head off on a trip to Adelaide, which meant it was easy enough for me to find a temporary replacement laptop for my temporary replacement laptop. I bought a pretty decent spec Toshiba, for $390, but it's a brute of a thing with it's 17" screen compared to the 12" I had before.

A friend of mine is in need of a new laptop too, so when I went up again last weekend I told her I'd have a look at the ex-rental places to see what I could find her. Crazily, the ex-rental place that I had got mine from had gotten rid of their ex-rental part, so there wasn't quite the range I'd had last time, and unfortunately there didn't appear to be much in the ballpark that mine had been: it was either a lot less for a lot worse, or a bit more (about $450) for about the same. There was also a very cute little white thing in the corner without a price on it, but while I was off looking for a man who would ultimately tell me that it was already sold, the friend that I was with googled the serial number on his phone, and the reviews were pretty good. But I couldn't get a hold of Steph back home who wanted the laptop, so I didn't buy her anything.

I left her a message explaining the situation and when she called back that night she said that if I was okay with her paying me back over two weeks she'd have a decent one, since unlike me she doesn't buy a laptop just to tide her over till she buys a laptop. Weirdo. So we went back the next morning and, what do you know, the little white laptop has a price tag of $417 on it and that man that's there now says nope, no-one's bought it, and when I get all excited because the man had told us it was sold, and that we'll take it, he throws in a $50 HDMI cable to say sorry we had to come twice.

And yeah, you can get an $8 HDMI cable at Woolies, but it's the thought that counts. The thought might be: "Wow, Radio Rentals really overcharges people on their accessories" but I'm getting a six-month old laptop for $600 off it's RRP, so that's kinda irrelevant.

But the whole point of this kinda complicated computer shopping story is this: I had the big laptop, which I had named The Queen of Sheeba, for about a month. It was nothing at all like I wanted. It's big, it doesn't have a touch screen, it has a full numerical keyboard, which meant that whenever I went to scroll down I typed 00000000000 a lot. The power cable plugs in on the right hand side, which, for someone who sleeps on the left hand side of the bed, was really quite annoying. But in that month I'd gotten kinda fond of the big girl. I loved how fast she booted. She's twice as fast as the last laptop, and about 8 times faster than Steph's ancient piece of crap, so she's gunna be completely blown away. She felt solid, like you could invade a foreign country in her. Okay, that's a bit weird, but I liked her. Had I not found this one, I think I could have overlooked the fact that it was so damn difficult to photoshop anything without a touchscreen, and we could have hung out and made stupid facebook posts for the next three years, till her harddrive fried itself and I went into mourning. I didn't feel that way with my previous laptop, but I did the one before that, and it's a nice feeling.

So I've been quite slow in moving to this new one, the Baby Princess of Sheeba, it being the one size model down from the Queen. It was handy that I could use mostly the same drivers and that I still knew where all the program installers were, and Steph's quite glad to be getting a few thousand dollars worth of fell-off-the-back-of-a-modem software and movies and TV shows, but during this transition week, while I spent my nights moving ones and zeroes from one end of the network to the other, I kept on using the big one whenever I had to do anything. Maybe because it still has the mouse plugged into it: the black and red mouse not really coordinating with the shiny white. But the queen is moving out tomorrow, and I finally un-synced Firefox, and "obliterated history from the beginning of time" on Chrome. That is a web browser that takes it's deletions seriously.

I've only known it a month, and even though it's so lovely to be able to pick up the baby with one hand and fling it under my arm and know that, even though I probably never will, I can fit it into my handbag if I have to, and that it's almost as speccy as it's big sister, and that I'm sure that given another month I'll love it just as much, as of right now, I'll be sad to see the Queen go.

God save her, because I don't think Steph knows that much about antivirus software.

Even blogging is too much.

After 4 not-particularly-fun hours, I'm sick of computers.

Settling.

So I've had my new (old) laptop for a few days now and we're going okay. Sure, Vista double and occasionally triple-checking if I want to do stuff is a tad annoying, but all I have to do is pretend I'm my mum and I feel the urge to install codecs or updates or add-ons drop right away. And yes, the touchscreen doesn't actually respond when you touch it with your finger, but I can still scribble myself a quilt pattern in paint using the pen, so that's okay. And while I haven't gotten used to the little nodule in the middle of the keyboard that you're meant to use instead of a touchpad, I've plugged a mouse in and that feels quite familiar, after using one with mum's laptop for the last month.

If I could work out what I actually want, I would buy it in a heartbeat, cause a lot of what goes on with this laptop isn't really what I'm looking for. But since I don't know what I'm looking for, I'll concede that what I'm looking at isn't doing too bad of a job.

Yay Stuff!

So, friday. Well, Saturday now, obviously, since my timing tends to be a little skew-whif, but still, that means favourite things.

I had been thinking that what I would put as my favourite thing this week would be my sheer unadulterated awesomeness, since I managed to design, piece, quilt and bind a quilt for my sister's birthday this sunday in just 3 days, but then I realised if I was as truly awesome as I thought I was, then I would have decided to get started weeks ago, and I'd be getting in some sleepsies before the BnS ball tomorrow night, instead of sitting here having just finished. I'd have also remembered to take a photo before I put it in the washing machine, and I wouldn't have made that cutting error as I was finishing the binding.*

So, other things.

The fact that mum is worried about the ethical implications of my messing around with her netbook and using Daemon Tools to convince it that it has a DVD player when it doesn't just makes me laugh. "But you're lying to it..." she goes, while telling me that it's silly for me to feel bad about the death of my old laptop.

My phone. Still. Three months on, I'm still loving how it just does stuff. No faffing or fart-arsing about. It does everything I want it to do, except maybe print me money.

Having a real laptop again. Sure, the fact that it's running Vista is really irritating, as is the fact that the touch screen only works with the pen, but as a stop-gap till I decide what I actually want it's excellent. Look at me, blogging away on it. Nice keyboard, too.

The "slow" button on the foot pedal of my sewing machine. I thought it was pointless the first time I saw it, but it was very handy tonight, stopping me from rushing the binding and making a(nother) mistake.

Being indecicive about which ballgown to wear, because it means I have the kind of life where I a) occasionally wear ball gowns and b) have enough ballgowns to have indecision between them.

Having a CD burner. Saying "I need a new CD" and going and making one.

Oh, and the fact that I'm going to a BnS ball tomorrow night, and I'm taking along one of my best friends, who's never been to one before. Toats exciting!


*Fourtunatelly, although it shit me, it really only added about 5 minutes of work, and about half of that was just me despairing.

Later...

Tonight, after visiting Helen to pick up my still sadly a bit poorly* laptop and going to Carols by Candlelight and spending 2 hours at the gym cause Anna was waaaay later than she said she was gunna be, I got all the red and white fabrics, took them to the kitchen, laid them out on the bench and stared at them for a bit.

Then I got out some paper, drew a little diagram and wrote some notes to myself, along the lines of "flowers can only go between two lights" and "stripes can only go between two darks" and "stars have to abut - shame"

And now, 30 minutes later, I've decided to wait till later, chop them up and just do it by eye. There's still 13 whole** days before Christmas. I will be fine.

*by that I mean that although it's useable for now I will still need to replace it ASAP, making me merely poor.

**by that I mean 12 whole days and 22 hours and 20 minutes till midnight Christmas eve. In case you were wondering

Damn.

Oops, it's after 3am already. But I have a lovely new gym bag. Rainbow, too.

For the record, I'd just like to say, seersucker doesn't fuse well. But it looks damn pretty. Also, you can't see it in the picture, but I had to use black zipper pulls. Hot pink ones are damn hard to find - the zipper itself was actually a pulled apart one of those purses that unzip forever - $3 from Cheap as Chips, making it about the same price as the off-the-roll stuff from Spotlight, except only one zip pull, and the wrong colour. Damn.

In other news, lappy's running again. While I'm very glad that it's working again, if it would stay broken long enough for me to go get it looked at, maybe I could get it properly fixed.

Pavement Maths

Well, after dying occasionally for the last few weeks, I think my laptop is doing it for good tonight, which means I'll be taking it for a visit to it's Uncle Steven tomorrow. My money's on it either being the wiring in the swivel or the graphics card. But I've never been that good with hardware, so I'll leve it for the expert to pull it apart and have a look.

In the meantime I have stolen mum's netbook. My fingernails are too long for the little keys, and I keep making typos.

Because I didn't want to deal with the trauma I finished off the green pavement quilt.

This one, like the pink one, is about 140cm square. It's couch blanket sized, a size I really like. It's quick, and it fits easily under my machine.

But having had a request for a slightly larger one, tonight I did some maths. Imperial maths too, and math that comes with pre-cut options. I'm not going to give assembly instructions for this quilt, just shopping and cutting instructions.

First up, you'll need two large print fabrics, at a useable 20.5" - this means about 55cm. One of these, cut into two 20.5" squares, the other, cut across two rectangles 20.5x9.5, and then cut in the other direction two rectangles the same size. This way your prints will all face the same direction.

Next up you'll need 5 fabrics measuring a useable 9.5" - about 25cm. From each of these cut four 9.5" squares, and cut any leftover fabric (from your large prints too) into 2.5" squares for your corner stones. Alternatively, two charm packs sewn into four-patch blocks should give you about the same thing (you'll need 20 squares) and you can use any leftover charm squares cut into quarters for your corner stones.

Finally, for the boring old sashing, you'll need twelve strips 2.5" wide - either use a jelly roll or cut up about 80cm of fabric. You'll get four pieces of sashing 9.5" long from each strip, for a total of 48 bits. 

You'll need 23 corner stones: if you haven't got enough from your leftovers (it depends on if your fabric is a useable 44" wide - I find a lot aren't) then you might need to ferret about in your scrap box - it's a good chance to get rid of some really little bits.

Use the picture above for an idea on the layout of your 9.5" squares or put them wherever you find aesthetically pleasing. My only rule with the corner stones was to not have any of the same fabrics touching, other than that I went with what I thought looked nice.

This should end up about 65" square - if you want a bit bigger then add sashing or just a border to the outside.

Post-market post cause dad ruined my early night.

Total amount sold - $19. One baby gym bag and one monster. Helen did slightly better, scoring a whopping $24 in sales, but I think she bought about $100 in stuff from other stallholders so that kinda cancels it out. I didn't buy anything at the market, but after it was finished I went to spotlight for some cushion inserts, and bought $20 of fabric too, but that was 3 metres, so its okay. And I spent twice that on KFC tonight, and I've still got no idea why I had to pay. I only et the potato and gravy.

This afternoon I bummed about on the couch till 5, went and picked up Maddy, et far less than $40 worth of KFC and decided it was time for bed. An hour later, my father decided it wasn't and that I needed to wake up and help do the dishes, because it's fine for him to sleep from 12 till 3 every afternoon, but going to bed at 7... oooh no. And now I'm awake, in bed, and my arm hurts cause I'm typing on the touchscreen keypad while lying down. Still, it's easier than using the real keyboard while lying down.

Hmmm...

Lappy's chucking a hissy fit. Bit worried. Yay for the phone, but even with the cool swype to type thing it's pretty much impossible to do a full blog post with pictures and all. Hopefully we'll be all better tomorrow, cause I have a tiny yellow ribbon box. Also, a quilt top and some bags. Yay!

Two days.

So last night, before my laptop decided that It really really didn't like it's graphics driver, I told myself that under no circumstances was I to do any dressmaking. Dressmaking is slow and messy and gets in the way of stuff I should be doing, like finishing stuff off for the market on sunday.

So I made a little box out of some yellow ribbon.

I put my pins in it. Then later I took them out and put them on their magnet, because that's where they live. But it seemed easier at the time to make a little ribbon box than get up and take the two steps over to where my pin magnet was on the floor. Tonight, it's full of little black beads.

And last night I also made a quilt top. When it was done I spent about 15 minutes staring at it lying on the floor and realising I'd done it all wrong and considering unpicking it, but then I couldn't be bothered. It's still nice the way it is. I just need to find something for the back. I'm gunna quilt it lots, just wavy lines. I think it wants to be crinkly.

I got a half dozen of the bags about 95% done last night too - I just needed to zigzag over the edge seams tonight. And even though I kinda want to, I didn't make a start on another skirt pattern tonight.

I just spent 45 minutes sorting through 10cm squares instead. I made 10 cute little bundles that I might piece into pillow covers. If I don't get distracted by something else in the meantime.

Going nowhere fast...

Tonight, I cut 18 pieces of fabric 46x60cm, and interfaced them together into nine big double sided bits.

That might make it sound like tonight was another night of procrastination, but that took me two and a half hours. The ironing and the measuring and the cutting and the ironing and the measuring and the cutting and the ironing. I didn't even take anything to watch, cause I was doing it out in the kitchen while my new harddrive talks to my old harddrive and they get cross when you want to watch TV at the same time.

I guess the moral of the story is that attempts at mass* production usually leave you feeling a bit crap. All that work for a nice neat pile of really big rectangles. Whoopteyfreakingdoodah.

I've tried to pick some boy fabrics, or at least some gender neutral ones. There's a Riley Blake that I seem to recall getting last time I was in Adelaide, something with cute animals that I think came in a mixed remnants bundle from fabric.com, a Kaufman and a variety of Spotlight stuff.

Tomorrow I need to cut out the little bits on the sides and take the offcuts, which suddenly becomes a set of handy colour cards, into town and find some ribbons to match to be the handles.

And now I'm off to bed, to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of 3 little hardrives whirring furiously. I think they'll be at it for a while.

*the m key on my computer doesn't work sometimes, and it's a good thing I re-read all my posts before hitting publish, because otherwise you would have all been thinking I spent the night producing ass.

Whoops.

I've no idea how long it took cause I fell asleep while it was doing it, but my computer is up to date. I should have learned by now that 2.30 am is not the time to decide to do software updates, but it's the only time I get the urge. Then I give up keeping an eye on them and go to sleep :/

I like.

Okay, so the hair colour is wrong, I don't have dreadlocks, my eyebrows are much lower and my nose is bigger. But whatever. I'd like to see how crap it looks if I'd tried to draw it with a mouse or the touchpad. Hooray for styluses!

What the hey, shit's good, lets like other things too.

I like taking my car in for a service because it's scheduled, not because the engine's blown up.

I like the moment of insanity when there's a spider on your bed, but you can't squish it immediately because you don't want it's guts all over your quilt, so you shoo it onto the spare pillow because you can change that.

I like knowing I should be working on projects, but instead getting out some of my newer stash and coming up with yet more plans for it.

I like days off work.

I like the idea that tomorrow night, I'm gunna stand in a field and get a bit drunk. It's been too long.

I like big coats and vests.

I like sitting in front of the fire because it's warm and it's made me all lethargic.

I like making quilted stubby holders. I like using quilted stubby holders. I like finding a fabric and thinking "hey, this would be perfect for a stubby holder"

I like it when there's a blue or red card in the post office.

I like buying a different bottled water to everyone else (Mt Franklin and Pump are the main bottled waters in Australia, I buy Aqua Essence, because it comes in a bag and is from 500m behind my house)

I like it when people are comletely olivious to an obvious solution. It's a bit mean, but I like to not tell them, and see how long it takes them to figure it out.

I like checked shirts.

I like new socks.

I like the fact that not only am I free to choose what I want to do today, but that I have options.

I like going through really old harddrives and seeing stuff from years ago.

I like reading my really old blogs, and thinking to myself, 'Gosh, you were such a whiny emo"

I like knowing where I've come from, even if I don't know where I'm going.

I like being myself. Noone else would be as good at it as I am.

Horray!

You may notice that the file name for this one is I'm a massive loser

As well as that, my big box of fabrics is here from The Fabric Quarter, and while that would usually dominate proceedings, in case the pictures above didn't load, I have a stylus again.

It's bloody briliant.

Okay, I'm gunna go do important stuff for a bit. maybe fabric photoing, maybe quilting, maybe having something to eat. I haven't decided yet.

Grrr and Grrr again.

Today I achieved nothing* at all. But that doesn't worry me. Sometimes you have days like that.

What does worry me is that tonight I went to click on the little spot where the stylus for my laptop's touchscreen lives, and it wasn't there. Casey spent half the day with the laptop trying to catch up on season 3 of Chuck and Becky was signed into facebook when I checked in tonight, so it could theoretically be anywhere. And replacement ones are in the $40-$100 range.

Today I bought 3 pairs of jeans, a nice puffy jacket, a polo shirt, 4 wine glasses and a slightly nasty 80s formal dress for $40. For $100 I could get this (almost)

Of course everyone's asleep now, so I can't go ferreting through their bedrooms. I would like to, but I guess I'll have to wait till tomorrow.

Grrr.

*when I say nothing, I'm not including working my way through 3 call centres to find where my slightly ridiculous purchase of a second tablet ended up (it has android, and dodo are giving it to me for $9.90 a month with bonus internets) or scoring $300+ worth of jeans (one pair are RM Williams ones) for $20. Or working 5 hours, or installing a whole heap of games on my new tablet, or finishing reading The Wee Free Men. I didn't get anything made, therefore I achieved nothing.

The feeling of making a quilt is not dissimilar to the feeling of climbing under one...

It was such a nice feeling today to get up and not worry about having to sew stupid satin. It was so nice that I went back to bed after a half hour so I could do it all over again.

I'm cool like that.

But anyway. I pulled out the 6fq bundles I'd made to do mini quilts and had a go at pairing them with some metreage to see if I could work myself out a big quilt. And then I decided it was too much thinking for a Monday morning, and got started on a quilt I've been gunna-ing for a long time. Since mid August actually. And since I dont know if any of you read that far back, you might not have seen the story behind the page header.

Here's the thing. While I have no trouble installing a slightly shifty upgrade of Windows onto my Mum's laptop, I can't for the life of me work out Electric Quilt. Granted, I have a slightly shifty copy of that too (I think it's about version 5) but my complete uselessness with it makes me glad I didn't spend money on it. The problem I think, is that I am a proper nerd, so I use Paint. It might seem a bit less straightforward, downloading the .zip file of fabric swatches from Moda's archive, printscreening the icons and carefully cutting and pasting them into little boxes before assembling them into a jigsaw of perfection, but that's how I roll.

And the first one I ever did is the one you see above. If the words and the cute little sock weren't there, you'd see something like this.

This also has lines, but that should give you a better idea of what I'm actually doing. I've no idea why this has sat on my gunna pile for so long, since I love the fabrics and the design as it is above so much. It's looking different in real life, obviously, but the colours are so beautiful and rich, they actually remind me of these 4 pack food dyes. The blue especially, since it's almost the same colour as the little spots that have been on my boots since Longerenong.

Today I got as far as all the cutting (which of course I did wrong; if you cut it into 3 parts you calculate for TWO seam allowances, der) sewing the darker fabrics together and getting them ironed out. But since I also went on a tree stealing adventure with Batman, the Elf Princess and HighVis Girl (I'm not making that up) as well as doing a horrible nasty Monday night close (once we get the money out of the roof, I'm gunna set fire to that bloody airvac system) that's as far as I got.

But it was a lot more enjoyable than trying to sew a top.

And now, I have a confession to make. I bought one of those Tablets. $160 including postage, 7" screen, running Windows CE 6. It's not my fault, the guy reduced it by $35...

Sunday. Market day.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I need to keep telling myself this. Over and over again. I need it tattooed in reverse on my forehead so I see it in the mirror, and written on my hands. I need to rearrange the keys on my keyboard so they spell this out. I need it scrolling along the taskbar.

Anyways, the market. It was stinking hot. Well, low 30s. I wasn't too bad except for me feet - I had sneakers on because apparently I have bunions, which is why I can't wear sandals, but Helen was really feeling the heat, and the car was like an oven when we put stuff in there at the end of the day.

The 8am wakeup was nasty for me, since I'd been up till about 4 getting the monsters finished, but that's just as well, since they were the biggest sellers. A couple of the other ladies who had toys said they were underpriced at $8 each, but they were made to be cheap things that people would buy, so I guess they achieved their purpose. I only brought 3 home with me, Alex, (dark green/blue dots, one eye) who I decided I was in love with and needed to keep, Weirdo (the really tall blue one) and Devon (the yellow one) 

About half of the tissue pouches sold as did a few of the random laptop sleeves I made about a year ago, but only one quilt to my Aunt Liz - The Retro Bright (#20) Still, that put total sales at about $190, and I had told myself that if I made $200 I'd buy myself a tablet.

That's cutting it pretty fine, and I knew that when we packed up for the day, so I demanded that Helen come with me to Spotlight (because she had another one of the $40 off vouchers, and she gets the addiction) and I figured if I spent some of it straight away it would be harder to convince myself that it was okay to buy yet another not entirely necessary computer. Helen went home after picking a couple of things and I put them through with mine after I'd picked it all - some more of the drill I used for my handbag (because I am in love) some more of the off white homespun (because it was cheap) and a lot of hot pink satin backed crepe, because at some point in the near future I need to make myself an outfit for the work Christmas show.

I'm gunna have a couple of days off from sewing though. Well, definitely tonight anyway.

Actually, I'm gunna go to bed early...

Like, right now.

Grrr Bloddy Grrr.

I'm very glad I didn't do a post about how much I'm liking the new charger for my laptop, since it just exploded. Flash, bang, scorch marks on the bed and everything. Casey says there's burning smell but that can't be personally verified.

Laptop fortunately is fine, and since I only unplugged the other charger yesterday, I still knew where it was.

I'm pissed off though. 25 hours of usage, and it blows up. This is why I don't leave feedback as soon as an item arrives.

The other thing that I find weird is how they say "we will refund your money if you still give us positive feedback" when clearly, it hasn't been a positive experience. There's a black smudge on my quilt cover. It's not one of my actual quilts, but I'm still miffed. Even though I can't actually smell the smoke (have I mentioned I have no sense of smell? The official word, for those of you playing at home, is anosmic) I can kinda sense it. It's annoying me. So I have said I'm willing to not leave any feedback, positive or negative, and that's my best offer.

If it had happened when I wasn't here, if it had happened in a different spot, it could have burned my house down. I think I'm being pretty damn reasonable.

Letters to people, places and things...

Dear Baybcat, it's been a week. Come home please. I miss you.

Dear the writers of White Collar, I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to season two, but my internets didn't get big till this week. That's not actually what I wanted to talk to you about; if you've killed off Mozzie I'm gunna come over there and beat you up.

Dear USA Network, fix your website. Streaming video should not use that much processing power. Also, there's a problem with your audio, but since the ads sound fine, I think it's shoddy sound recording, as opposed to the player's fault, for all that it has it's issues. Also, if you're gunna play adverts before EVERY video clip, get more than 3 of them.

Dear laptop power cable. Just stay in the damn hole.

Dear blog readers, I got the top finished. I also made two headbands for bandanna day tomorrow. But I only have one picture.

A headband is just a headband. Well, two headbands. Made especially to fit my head, but still giving me a bit of a headache. I'm not a headband girl, but I'm even less a bandanna girl. But it's bandanna day, so hey, it's only a short shift. I typed that initially as shit. I'm supervising, so it probably will be.

Dear universe, I promise I'll do the two tyred top in two very different prints one day. Maybe it's trying to separate the colourways in my brain that's giving me a headache.

Dear Headband, Sorry I blamed you. We'll see tomorrow night if I take it back.

Whoops.

A multi-end power cable that fit the laptop cost me eighty freaking dollars!!! I can get a proper one on eBay for $17... But I really couldn't cope without a lappy for 3 weeks. And once I'd spent that, the seal was broken, and I spent money at Kmart, and the book store, and the Reject Shop. And then I came home, and there was an email form vistaprint, on the same day that my new business card/quilt tags got here, and well, I planned on only spending $40, but then I accidentally pressed the "with return labels for only $7 more", and then it added another $5 to my postage, and then I was cross, so I unsubscribed from their mailing list so it doesn't happen again. But not before getting us some completely awesome Lower South East Ladettes business cards (to go with the shirts we really should get around to getting made), a Kooky Couture banner (for if we end up doing this market thing) and stamp that's not gunna be relevant to anyone but me and Casey, which I hope gets here before Birchip next weekend, because we will LOL. and then go around stamping people with it.