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.

Be afraid... or at least slightly baffled...

So tonight I figured I may as well have a go at some alternative ribbon handle setting ideas.

There's coming up at a diagonal from the side seams, like I considered last night.

And there's making into a big loop and sewing it right around the bottom.

After these were all finished I made an amazing bit of scaffolding out of some coathangers from which I could nicely photograph them.

I think dark magic may have been involved in making it work. I took it down in case it tried to attack me in the night.

What I did today

What I did today:

If you click on it it should zoom to full size and you can play the "what fabric is that?" game. This is 3 of 8 tubs.

What I've decided to repost after a good three four hours of random internet trawling, that I did instead of getting a 4th tub:

If you are feeling bored or glum, I got them from this website. If you could magic into my brain the knowledge of where I've put my copy of Hunter S Thompson's Kingdom of Fear, I'd really appreciate it, cause I can't find it and I want to read it like, right right now, and I can't find it on the internet. If you want to share the song that's stuck in my head at the moment, here it is on youtube.

Ugh... So... Tired... Must... Finish...

Quilt # 3 is finished but for tying off my little bits of thread. I'm feeling a bit naff now that I said I was giving it to Kylie's baby, because I really do like it, and, naturally, want to keep it. It looks like a proper quilt, not that the others don't, but it has angles, and wavy stitching, and is very cool.

Have had a shuffle around in the bedroom, got the proper sewing cabinet in here, though the height adjuster still terrifies me - It's been at least 3 months since last time and the little bruise is still under my thumbnail. Damn thing is vicious.

Also realised that I quite much prefer the free arm to a completely flat sewing surface (there's a plastic thing you put in when the arm is level with the bench - so you can free motion I suppose) because it gives you some air space to grip your fabric properly. But that is just my opinion.

And now I have to tie off my little threads (9 lots of them, due to the slightly awkward path I had to sew around to get all the big seams) and wash it before I work out how I'm gunna get it to it's new home. They're giving her the rest of her presents tomorrow morning, but I really want to wash it before it gets passed on, as I've no idea how the bamboo will hold up in a wash. There was no info on the label on how far apart it could be quilted before there would be shifting - each point of the stars is about 8" from point to centre by 5" wide, and the internet said that there were other bamboo battings claiming you could go 8" between, so I'm hoping this one is okay. Nonetheless, I will be testing it, on cold and drying it naturally, just to make sure, since I don't want to give it to them, have them ooh and ahh over it, then have it shit itself on its first wash.

Annoyingly, Honeycat at this moment is sitting on it, probably to get back at me for making her get off the keyboard while I typed this. Babycat has opened his eyes, but I'm getting worried about the size of his belly and the fact that I still haven't seen any babypoop.

Days off are more tiring than workdays...

I ended up getting 6 cot sized ones (that was all they had) and one queen sized one, total cost $130.

Quilt # 3 is bound but not quilted, because spotlight had sold out of the stripey fabric I was going to use for the binding, so I had the most pathetic strop in history, and did the cheat fold-over-the-backing binding thing. It still looks nice, if a little more boring, and it means that I'll have to do a neater job of my start/finish points of the quilting, but I'm feeling good about the progress I've made - even if it isn't finished, it almost looks it, but for the pins.

I also concluded that my current setup of sewing machine on shoebox on dresser is killing my back and is generally bloody inconvenient, so I've started the process of getting a bit better setup, by bringing the proper sewing cabinet, with the height adjustment and stuff, to my bedroom, not that I really have room for it. I've had to tub a whole lot of stuff, and those tubs are going to have to be shedded till I can get rid of the dresser, which I can't do till honeycat is willing to let babycat move out, and put the tubs where it is currently. I've considered and quite quickly disregarded the idea of going back to a single bed now that I no longer have a boyfriend to share it with, but as soon as honeycat leaves the nest and goes back to sleeping exactly where I want my knees to be, the extra bedspace is necessary.

The only problem with having the sewing cabinet on the other side of the room is that of course there is no powerpoint on that side, so even though I've done the heavy lifting and would like to celebrate by getting this quilt finished so I can stop stressing over it,* I cant finish it because, of course, we have no free extension cables at the moment.

So I'm thinking I might instead go and finish the last of the prewashing... I put it in the machine before I went in to do my shopping and haven't got around to putting it in the dryer yet, but it would probably only need 20 minutes before it would be fine to iron... or, I could sit here, and go on facebook and ebay, and waste yet another night off.

Haven't decided yet.

*Not that its bad, in fact, I'm actually worried that its too good to give to someone I've never met, who's already been bought $100 worth of presents by the rest of the staff... Should we be sharing the babylove instead of spoiling this one particular baby?