Okay, kinda a little bit dead.

Remember back in MAY when I said I was gunna make quilts?

I procrastinated. 

Remember how I said they had to be in America by September? 

It is September.

Now, these fuckers have 1200 pieces per top. I'm gunna blame my procrastination on the fact that my laptop was in a truly terrible state*, and noone wants to try designing on something that takes 5 minutes to open a file in photoshop. I’d designed the first one, and got a top made, but the other two just weren’t working (though I ordered some fabrics based the requirements of a design I didn’t love, in a fit of misguided optimism) and I slogged through attempts with about 6 different reference pictures to no avail. But then I got a new laptop, and I could use photoshop again, and make the designs work. I ordered more fabrics, and some spoonflower labels before that, and waited. 

When the labels didn’t arrive on their due date (the 26^th of last month), I worried. Then a couple of days before the solids were due to arrive (I was hoping for the 5^th), with the labels still nowhere to be seen, I discovered I had my due date wrong. Not only was the post office not giving me what I needed, but I’d fucked up all on my own too. They needed the quilts by the 19^th, not the 26^th. 

On the one hand, I accepted my fate. Got over it. It wasn’t possible. No more worry. I agreed to work an extra shift that weekend after all. I made plans to go out and get drunk afterwards.

On the other hand, the universe had had my back on this one thing – Spotlight happening to have the one exact shade I had incorrectly ordered. So it came down to: if the solids got here by that Friday, and I could organise some kind of express courier to get them halfway around the world in a week, it would be possible. Not necessarily a good idea, but a doable thing. A thing that I could do. Possibly.

The fabric came that Friday. I still had a full quilt top and a half to do, as well as making the backings and doing the actual quilting for all 3. I timed my steps along the way:

Cutting:                      3 hours

Sorting:                      4 hours

Chaining:                    4 hours

Pressing:                    2 hours

Pinning:                      2 hours

Sewing Rows:             4 hours

Pressing blocks:          1 hour

Assembling:               1 hours

Backing:                     2 hours

Basting:                     .5 hours

Quilting:                     4 hours

Binding:                     3 hours

And even considering what I already had done, I worked on these for over 60 hours in the past 10 days. I cancelled on the going out and getting drunk thing, but I still worked 36 hours too. Oh, and uni, though I gotta confess I did the summaries I had to and ignored the rest. And...

Tomorrow I need to get up really early and call the DHL people and find out who I need to drop the box off to so that they can send it for me. Like, 7am early. The kind of early I’ve been going to sleep at (cause you don’t do secret projects in the middle of the day).

The nice man on the phone when I rang to check on Friday said that if they got it Monday afternoon, it would get to Dallas by Thursday. That’s the goal.  

*To be fair, I spilled hot chocolate on it.

OhMyGodMail!

So one of my best friends is getting married in about 5 weeks, and since she's a short arse, she decided that us bridesmaids could all wear flats while she wore heels. I'm cool with this, since heels at a wedding pretty much inevitably mean either strappy ones or pumps, and I try to stick to boots when it comes to heels. But looking around the mount and a few shopping days in Adelaide hadn't turned up anything, so I had a look on ebay and found these.

I'd ordered them about a week ago and today when there was two blue parcel cards in my post office box I just assumed that, because I hadn't made it to the post office on friday, they'd accidentally just put one in both days. But no. As well as a little pink box of shoes, there was also a big brown box.

With cookies!

And gold lame fabric! And a crocheted snowflake, but I forgot to take a photo and yeah, I'm blogging from bed. But it was white and waaaay more symmetrical than any of my misguided attempts last year.

And it had come all the way from Thea in California! There was a card in there saying that she had thought of the gold fabric for my rock star-looking jacket from ages ago, but I'm not sure that it has enough stretch for the elbows so I think I might make myself a badass new pub bag with it. I might even use some studs on it. And a fierce, chunky chain link strap.

It might take me a while to get to though, because it feels as if I'll be spending the next five weeks in the lead up to the wedding making ties. Because I'm working in the afternoons when the other bridesmaids could help out with making invites and table decorations and so on, and also because I'm the only one that can sew, I agreed to make the ties for the boys in the satin to match our dresses. It's taken some trial and error with patterns and interfacing and such, but I've got my patterns sorted and now I've just got to work through the hours and hours of handsewing that the damn things need*.

I may resume quilting in a procrastinatory rebellion.

*I only need to make 5 regular ties, two boys ties and a baby tie, but blergh, they're so boring.

For Science!

The worst thing about going to the post office right before work is that you then spend your entire shift wanting to go out to the car and open up your packages.


And unsurprisingly, new fabric doesn't so much inspire me to create, as it inspires me to sit about and fondle new fabrics.

Some cute little farm animals that will probably end up with Meagan's baby, whenever it decides to get here.

 

Some lime greens I'd bought to go with the bundle of lime green fabrics from the new DS line, but the spotty one is too bright, so it's just going into stash.

Pinks and Greys to go with a couple of other fabrics from the same line, and some grey to go into the blue and grey re-done quilt.

My favourite fabric - they had 3 yards left but it was a 1/2 yard cut and a 2 1/2 yard cut, but I don't care. The diagonal stripe for binding on the white-sashed-nine-patch that's still hanging on my curtain.

Some organic cottons I bought mainly because they were only $5p/y.

And if you'll remember, postage was $22, fabric.com seemingly having finally gotten their ridiculous overcharging sorted.

Look up the top.

The scientist in me now insists we buy more stuff, just to see if the low postage cost in relation to real-world figures was some kind of statistical outlier. Seriously guys, I'd be doing it for the science*.

*And I request all my fellow Aussies buy something from them too - the larger the sample size, the more accurate our findings will be. If husbands/children/credit card statements complain, tell them it's for science.

Hey...

Good news for my fellow Australians on this most solemn of days: fabric.com have finally got their act together with regards to international shipping prices. It was the only place I could find any of this, my new favourite fabric,

that I baulk at paying $24 a metre for from Stitch and Knit. I bought half a metre, because it really is that nice, and fabric.com only had 3 yards left, so I can't be the only person who feels that way. In the past, they would only fit 4 1/2 yards into a flat rate ($16ish) envelope, and then it shot way up, into the $50-60 mark to get the 9 yards that fabric shack would send for $8.

Tonight I decided I would try for 5 yards, and that worked! $16.95 postage. So I tried 7 1/2. And that worked too! I upped it to 10 yards before stopping, and even though it went up a little ($22 postage) I typed "fabric.com coupon" into google and it came up with BRTH11A, which got me 15% off my $70 of fabric.

Granted, there wasn't one of their super specials on like last time I bought a massive box from them, but still, even with postage, that makes them all about $8 a yard.

And after that interlude, it's back to quilting. I want this one finished by the time everyone gets up at 4.30 so we can head down to the Pt Mac dawn service. That's one of the good things about staying up all night - not having to get up early in the morning.

Everything's a thing...

Today I did both a lot, and nothing very much at all. I washed and dried the new quilt.

The front, unwashed

The back, unwashed

The front, washed and dried

The back, washed and dried

I got a package from Thea in the mail, including some uber-cute flannelette, and I need to buy some more thermal interfacing to make this into a new stubby holder.

And in case she was wondering, this was the watch she forwarded to me, saving me $30 in stupid, OTT ebay postage.

And when I got home I finally worked out how to sync firefox across my two computers, I made a little pouch to check I still remembered how to do it, I packed some clothes, I found some car chargers, and I ate half a box of breakfast cereal. As I said, a lot, but not very much, and tomorrow will be more of the same, what with lunch for my dad's birthday, and going off to Adelaide to sew some zips and spend a whole lotta money.

First Finish of the Finishathon!

It's been a pretty good day. I got some good packages in the mail: vintage flannels and peeled cows from etsy, and a massive stack from Hancocks, which also included this:

After spending an hour or so cooing over it and making imaginary bundles in my head, I got to finally quilting the Green Pavement quilt. I wont lie, it was dull, slow and unfun. But 2.5 hours of quilting, 45 minutes of pinning, 30 minutes of handsewing the corners and 30 minutes machining the binding down and it's all done.

I did a foldover for this one, since the backing was not only on point, but I like it better than the front. I'd cut the wadding to an inch bigger around than the top was because I wanted a wide border, and just folded and pinned it to the width that covered the edge of the top. I was telling myself that I was being artistic and organic, but better adjectives probably would have been haphazard and lazy. Still, I really like it, especially from the back. The lack of an edge, both of the design and of the binding, is something I've decided I am a big fan of.

Hopefully I comes out of the washing machine still looking nice.

Aww, pretty...

Packages from fabricshack are great just becasue there's so much in them. They squish in 9 yards for you, so there'll usually be a couple of quilts worth in each package. Mine today had: This bundle of gender neutral solids for Meagan's baby.

Four of the solids in this pile (supplemented with a couple of stash - It seems that the pink/orange/yellow combo is something I'm really feeling right now)

A half yard each of these Spirit fabrics.

And a few randoms. I got 2 yards of the wonky check, but I wish I'd bought more than just 1 yard of the blue tye-dye. It was clearance and they don't have any more :(

Anyway, after I'd pawed over them for a bit, I decided I'd try a new zipper pouch design, just because my brain was quite insistent that it would work and I wanted to check. It did, but of course I made the turning hole a bit small and trying to get it right side out was like it was giving birth to itself. And when it was out, the doctor said "congratulations... it's...

...an ipad cover..." and everyone was like, well, this is awkward, since we don't own an ipad. So we don't know if it actually fits an ipad, only that it's 26cm tall and 19cm wide, and that's how big wikipedia says an ipad is.

More importantly, the opening is 19cm wide, because I used one bit of zipper looped around instead of two sides, and I curved down the other ends (this was the bit I wasn't sure about but it's come up great) so it doesn't have the tabs at the ends that so many tutorials insist on. Which stop the ipad from getting in, even if the rest does fit perfectly.

On tomorrow's to-do-list: hunt down an ipad, ask if I can borrow it for about 35 seconds.

Drawing a blank.

So ebay have returned a list of your purchased items to the main myebay page. That's good. While I like having the increased-to 3 years of purchase history in the sidebar, I like having the last month or so's worth there on the main page to remind me of the things that haven't arrived yet. There are actually ones I'd forgotten about. Maybe the post office is holding out on me?

For those of you who don't use ebay, myebay is the page that has your watch list and your saved searches and info on what you're bidding on and, although it disappeared for a month or so there, a list of what you have recently bought. Very very handy when you buy so much you can't remember all of it.

That's all got to stop now, cause it's NOvember now, and also I have no money left after tje weekend. And it's the first Tuesday in November*, AKA, Melbourne cup day.

Something's been bugging me. See, I remember this song about the Melbourne cup from when I was little. But noone at work had heard of it, and neither it seems, has the internet.

Oh the Melbourne Cup,

Brings Australia to a stop,

From Darwin down to Hobart, 

From Perth up to Ayers Rock,

The nation's in a fever, 

You're bound to be caught up,

First Tuesday in November,

They run the Melbourne Cup.

I'll have to ask Mum and Dad tomorrow. It's not the one by Slim Dusty and it's not the one by Mike Brady. And if I google those lyrics, I get... this blog. Cause I posted it last year on the first Tuesday in November. And I didn't know any info on it then, either. Bummer.


*Well, an hour into it. Thus why I don't yet know who will win.

Distractions.

Blogger is chucking a hissy fit and insisting I'm not following any blogs. What a poo bum. So if you've done a post today, I'm sorry, I can't read it.

There's not much point reading this one either, since I haven't actually done anything tonight - well, anything sewing related. Today there was not one but two big boxes from Vistaprint and I've spent the last 3 hours cutting out shapes from a magnet with a razor blade. Those things are in serious need of a ergonomic redesign - my fingertips feel very strange, and it took me at least two dozen goes to get the lighter to work. Good news though, sheet magnet burns just fine, but I really need to empty out all the ash from the fireplace. I need to get one of those blades on a stick tomorrow, but the best I could come up with at midnight was a raid of Dad's shed. Lucky I have a wide range of cutting mats to use in conjunction, and I discovered that the back works better because it doesn't have all the little bumps and ditches caused by cutting on the same line over and over.

Now that The Thomas Crown Affair has finished, I'm gunna go to bed, and try to get up at a reasonable hour (by which I mean 11.30am instead of 2.30pm)

Stuff!

Okay, time for a proper post now. Today, instead of actually getting anything done, I just got stuff.

As well as the aforementioned stylus, the post office had a lovely big box of fabric for me.

In it was two 1.5yard pieces of funkadelic flanelette, which I will use for backings when I come up with a suitably funkadellic front.

14 half yard pieces of various fabrics. Randomly selected by the "ooh, that looks nice" method. They were all $5 a yard I think.

I kinda forgot I had ordered this - possibly I should have waited to finish off the Autumn Nutmeg back and added this in. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make another one :)

Seven half yards, and I think it cost me about $19. They're still $8.59/y at fabricshack.com.

After getting all of that, I still had to go to spotlight to get some gold coloured thread to quilt with. Normally I just use white, but I really didn't like the look of it for this one. While I was there I got a half yard of some tulip fabric for the back of Helen's quilt, and they had finally got some big metric rulers in.

Despite the fact that I already have two 15x30cm ones, it's not the same as having a 15x60 cm one. I had a 20% off voucher too so it was about $12. Jolly good. Oh, and the little bundle is a fat eighth that I get sent with the big box of fabric. They sent a quilting magazine too. I think the 13.5 yards of fabric cost me about $115 including postage, and their communication was fantastic. I got lots so my postage was a fair bit - over $40 but it was a box because I got some flanelette and the postage cost written on the box was within a few dollars of what I paid. I don't know that they would be that cheap if you were getting full priced fabrics, but they had a big range of clearance fabrics so that made it pretty good value. I'd say way better than fabric.com but not quite as good as fabricshack.com's $7 postage.

It just keeps on coming...

So it's back to the grind. I started work at 2 today, but after 3 days of pre-9am wakings, I did a proper sleep in. Got up at 12. Had a shower. Got to the post office with just 20 minutes before work, having not yet had lunch.

There was three blue cards in the box. No actual mail, just 3 blue package cards.

Now I know I was expecting a pack from fabricshack.com, since I'm a complete sucker for their $7 postage. Their fabrics could be terribly overpriced, and I'd probably still go "yes, but fabricshop.com would charge me $45 to post that fabric" and I wouldn't even be lying to myself. There was a pack from ebay too, but I wan't expecting that one for a week or so, since Australia Post have really slowed lately - apparently it's customs holding everything up but I don't care, if you used to be able to get me my fabric from America in under a week, you should still be able to. It's just I no longer expect you actually will.

The third pack was a heap of Cocky's Circle books I bought on ebay for Maddy but had completely forgot about. This happens a lot to anything that isn't fabrics.

So, (not including the books) here's what I got.

First up is the binding/possibly part of the backing fabric for the Soiree Header Quilt.

It's actually from the range Summer Soiree, which has nothing to do with the actual Soiree line, in fact it's from a completely different manufacturer, it's just that it happens to have pretty much exactly the same colours. I've shown half the width of the fabric there - Those stripes are fat. This was an eBay one, and I bought the last 3 yards the guy had left.

The orange smudge and the purple smudge are from the eBay guy too, while the yellow and the pink are fabricshack.com. There's a yard of each. I'm buying a lot of solid pinks in the quest for the perfect one. That one's a Benartex.

These are half yards and no joke, the pink in this one (Bright Pink - Kona) is exactly the same shade. The brown spotty fabric and the blue and green geometric are eBay.

I got a half yard each of the second colourway of Nutmeg. I've got a project going in the first colourway which I need to make a back for soon. Not sure whether I'll use these for that or do a completely new project with them. But that's the joy of stashing, right?

More central park. More laying out and cooing. Half yards. I'm thinking I could maybe do the zigzag with prints instead of colours, but I'm not sure.

Of course, all of this is wonderful now that I've got to take them out and fold them how I like them and coo over them and take pretty pictures of them and show them off, but it wasn't as much fun at work this afternoon, knowing they were out in my car waiting to be looked at.

Because I was busy cooing I didn't make Kelsey's dinosaur/dragon toy tonight, but I have tomorrow off (Yay!) so that's my only plan.

Except for maybe some more cooing.

I'm not liking this "working" thing...

My much searched-for "Spring to Life" Mingle bundles arrived today, still looking like bundles, so no chance for me to spend a half hour refolding them and getting a good lookie innie, but that's okay. I'm not gunna start anything with them straight away, since I need to make some more progress on a DVD player case for one of the girls at work, who has boys, and therefore picked a blue fabric with cars on it.

Now, I like cars (actually, gimme a sec, I need to go download that new episode of Top Gear... done) but these are not particularly nice kinda Nascar-y ones. And the background is a nasty navy. I like pretty fabrics, but I understand that boys don't. Even worse, it's up to a bit with hand stitching, which is the other reason I stopped.

Still, I had better start it again soon, since she's going on holiday on Monday and that's when she needs it for.

But I really don't like hand sewing.

In other news, Helen, do you think Poppy would lend me the Falcon for a couple of weeks? Becky says it's an auto...

Damn.

Don't you hate it when you find a truly wonderful seller online, who not only has ridiculously good prices, but also responds quickly, packs your items in the cheapest way possible, charges you the same for postage as what the post office has charged them, and posts super super quickly?

No, you probably don't, because when you find a seller like that, you're all "woohoo! this seller is awesome! maybe they don't have a huge range, but I don't care. What they have is so nice, and so cheap, that I'll take two of every bundle they have. Hell, some of them I'll take 3. It would almost be a crime not to stock up on such nice, pretty, well priced fabrics!"

I on the other hand, don't get to buy anything new for probably the next 4 weeks, which is about how long its going to take to earn enough money to get my car fixed, as well as how long I have to wait till it can actually get into the mechanic. Which is fortunate I suppose, since part two cant happen without part one. But still, no more fabric buying for me.

At least I have stuff still arriving, including these today, from the aforementioned seller.

Robert Kaufman, "Mingle" in "Newspaper"

Robert Kaufman, Nautical Stash Stack

Robert Kaufman, Cherry Cordial Stack Stash

The thing about all these bundles is that, in order for the postage to be so cheap, the seller has to take them all apart and refold them nicely so they'll fit into a flat rate envelope. And that takes work. It's the kind of thing that the people at fabric.com, for instance, cant be bothered doing, which is why their international shipping is so freaking high. Of course it means that at the other end I have to reassemble the bundles, but that's worth the $15 or so it's saved me in postage. I'm actually quite good at it.

Anyway, here's an open letter to anyone selling fabrics internationally on the internet. Be considerate. Think about what you're doing. If it's something nice for the person who's buying it, they might really like you and buy more from you, or tell everyone who's reading it to go and buy some stuff from you*, because you are so awesome.

On the other hand, you can be like fabric.com, and have a massive range and fabrics at $3 per yard, so that I put up with the fact that postage costs me more and it takes your packages a month to get to me. But the thing is, I wont be saying nice things about you. Your staff are rude and your postage pricing scheme unfair to international buyers.

I much rather buying things from and supporting the small-scale fabric sellers on eBay and etsy. This week though I have to support my local small-scale mechanic, because the big dealership service centre didn't even notice that my catalytic converter had disintegrated...

Still, 2 more packages of fabric, plus more rotary cutter blades, and the next set of custom necklaces, including Kelsey's slightly late birthday present, are on their way.

If only I could get to the post office to get them.

Damn.

*but seriously everyone, don't buy it all, because I want for there to be some left when I have money again, so that then I can buy lots more, mainly of the Autumn Nutmeg and the Mingle in the Blue/Brown/Orange I used for the wonky quilt, so that I can make a bed sized version of it....

Home safe...

...And glad to have chips, juice and a wireless internet connection again. Not that I didn't have juice or chips while I was away, but things are always nicer at home.

Unfortunately, my car hasn't magically repaired itself, so I cant run into town and go to the post office, to see if any of the 3 packages due any day now have arrived. But also unfortunately, I have to work tonight (5.30 start) so I suppose I can get someone to take me in early so we can get there before they close at 5.

I'm getting a fairly big urge to start making stuff again too. Nothing too big just yet, while I get in the swing of working a real job again, but I'm sure I can think of some mini projects. I've got a shelf full of notebooks I'd like to make some pretty covers for, and Helen has been having a go at some patchwork bibs, which also look like something interesting to have a go at. But then again, something I get in the mail might inspire me to bigger and better things. There's the purple and green mingle bundles coming in one pack, the same fabric in red white and black coming with a blue and brown bundle and a red white and blue bundle, and the box from fabric.com, which, among other things, includes more fabrics to add to the autumn nutmeg bundle I got a while ago. So there's plenty of combos that i could put together in quilts.

Also, I kinda wanna finish Dad's cover and the purple quilt, just so they're not hanging over my head.

Whatever I end up doing, it's good to be home.

A small sense of achievement.

Casey decided she wanted to fall asleep on my bed tonight so I had to stay out in the lounge getting stuff done. I'm still not feeling it, which is why I had to push myself to 2/3rds of the cutting.

Dad's quilt, obviously, that being the one that's currently top of the list. All the skinny lines are cut (7.5 x 21.5cm to make a 6 x 20cm stripe) as well as the green backed fishes (15.5 x 21.5 to make 14 x 20cm block) leaving the fishes on light and dark blue still to be cut.

The main difficulty with the fish is that half need to face one way and half the other. I couldn't quite manage to do it with the contrast fabrics, since 13 is not a number that divides well and there was no way to make the bits fit without at least one of them having a weird seam. But I have 3 times as much of the fish fabrics, even though technically I only need twice as much.

Sure, this generates heaps of scraps, but I don't mind. I'll feel better if they all face the same way, and I have enough to do it.

I also came up with a nice little story for the fishes. But first, there's a reason for a story.

Dad was shitfaced last night but fortunately everyone else was still up too and he couldn't really focus on upsetting any particular one of us (except Maddy, who was cross that he wouldn't shut up and let her sleep. It's a school night.) The only problem he could pick up on with what I've been up to lately was that the fish on the fabric didn't look scared enough. Any fish in or around his boat, he felt, should have a look of terror on their faces, because he would be coming to get them.

The Odyessea fishes on the other hand, are happy (well, expressionless but prettily patterned) so I've decided that they are the souls of all the fish he's already caught, in a fishy heaven.

Yes I know I don't believe in the ideas of souls or heaven or any kind of afterlife for that matter, but how the hell was I gunna make some cartoon fish look scared huh?

In other news, fabric in the mail day.

I had had a good feeling it was gunna be today.

I've got a US$45 cart waiting at fabric.com, half of which is more of the Nutmeg Autumn fabric that I got in that bundle, and there's still that money in the paypal account (believe it or not, I haven't actually been doing much internet spending, what with all the real world spending I've had to do) and in the past I've gone with a rule about not buying more through an unknown channel until the first lot is here, which it is. So I could get it, and wait a month (this lot took 34 days) for it to get here.

Or I could get something else that would get here a bit quicker.

Finafreakingly...

Not only did I only have to do 4 hours at work this afternoon, stuff arrived!

Lots of stuff!

So much stuff that I've gone and done a Kelsey, and, after cooing over it and neatly folding all of it, put it away because it's just too much to deal with.

Tragically I haven't instead picked up the purple quilt, which I really should be doing as I'm stuck with a 9 1/2 hour shift tomorrow and will therefore make no more progress till Wednesday if I don't get started tonight, but...

...well, I started the season 2 DVD of Big Bang. I wasn't gunna, but it seemed the thing to while I was folding them and now...

...look, there's only 2 episodes left on this disk, and maybe I'll go out to the lounge and do the next bit of cutting then...

...maybe.

Wooooo! Tax Cheque!

Got the BlueGreen finished late last night, but worked all afternoon and haven't had a chance to wash it yet.

Discovered that doing a smokeshop close is an excellent opportunity to get your Quiltmath done - just get some of yesterday's reports form the recycle bin and do your sketches and calculations on the back of them - you pass the time, look vaguely like you're doing something important (keep it all in code, then say its shelf layouts) and don't have to do at at home, when you could be doing something more important. Not the quilt though, (which is a test using the cheap cotton quilt you bought at target as batting and are hoping works well, so you can go back and buy a lot of, because they are $10 cheaper and a lot bigger than the regular quilting batting) cause it turns out you needed 1.25m of each fabric, not .75m.

But its not so bad, because my tax cheque is here! Why doesn't firefox want me to spell cheque like that? Ah, Wikipedia says that Americans spell it "check." Silly Americans.

So, I will be off to spotlight in the morning to redeem my $20 discount for spending $80, buying .5m more of each of my 4 purples, as well as .8m of something for binding, 2m of something for main backing and .6m of 2 contrast backings for the piecing. As I'm making it out of $4/m clearance fabrics, that will be waaaay not enough to make the $80 total, (it comes out a bit over $20) but I can fill out the other $60 with stuff I don't really need, because my tax cheque is here! And it's really big! And even after I spend $500 on my car's rego which I have timed brilliantly to take advantage of my tax cheque) its still heaps!

In other news, I discovered that the Jelly tots sold in specialty stores in Australia are different to the ones in England, ie. they taste shit, and I'm hugely bummed about this fact, especially as my sister just bought me 5 bags. Basically the difference is they they are all artificially favoured, and even though I may have said that 25% fruit juice is way fruitier than I remember, at least it is fruity, whereas the bag I opened last night tasted like plastic. Also a bummer is that the seller I bought the last lot off of says that the combined postage discount is a mere 20p (about 35c) per 8 bags, which is a bit of a rip off, so I have emailed the other seller of jelly tots on eBay, who have no Australian postage costs listed, to see what they can do for me. I've asked for 36 bags.

And I've just remembered that I have an Aunt (Liz) holidaying in England right now. Sweeeeet.

Okay, she's been facebooked. I believe it's late afternoon over there, so here's hoping.

In the meantime, it's a craftalong at one of my other Aunt (Helen's) house tomorrow afternoon. I'll take the retro (which is in dire need of a wash) and the blue/green (I'll put them in together in the morning while I go shopping) as well as the make life bundle, and we can work out how big she wants her baby quilt.

Finally, as well as my nice big tax cheque, I got a 4 fat quarter bundle in the mail today, not much compared to what I'm waiting on, but at least it tided me over for the day and stopped me dashing down to spotlight before I'd done my math.

Looking forward...

I've almost finished the quilting for the blue/green quilt, and, unusually, I'm already looking to the next one.

Thus far, I've pretty much just pushed myself to get to the end of whatever quilt I'm doing and then, once it's finished, taken a while to get stuck into the next one. The design part is the hardest part for me, because it's all most people see. Noone's going to notice that there's a point that doesn't line up, or that the waves on one row of quilting are longer than the ones next to them. They'll look at it and go "why did you decide on snot as a colour scheme?"

Because it's a quilt for me, and I fucking like it, okay?

This time however, with 12 lines of wavy quilting left to do before I get stuck into binding it, I'm starting to think about my next project.

There's 3 main options.

Mama Jan's quilt. Needs to be done eventually, and is all neatly cut and bagged ready to go. But it's going to be very dull piecing, and then we get to trying to fit the panel, and then there's quilting it, which will be a first in that I'm using an actual quilt as the wadding, which is waaay thicker than even the wool I've used in the past. and I still haven't worked out how I'm going to quilt the panel.

Helen's Baby's quilt. This is the one I'm doing with the make Life fabrics, which are all washed and sitting safely in a ziplock bag. I've got 12 fabrics, so it's gunna be smaller than what I've been doing lately, which is 15. And 12 might be too big. I might ask Helen on Saturday how big she thinks she want, whether a little thing would be more practical for a newborn or she'd rather something bigger for when it gets a bit bigger. So it's a hold on that one, even more so because I'm still waiting on the fabric I will use as either the backing or the binding, depending on how big it's gunna be. I've no idea how long it is till she has it either. Must ask that too.

Tickertape test quilt. I bought 5 metres of white flannelette at lincraft's half price thingie, and even though I need to use a couple for a warm underskirt for a ballgown, That leaves me with enough to make a mini tickertape quilt with the rest at double thickness. I think I'd like to make a special thing for the trip to Longernong, which is in about 2 weeks. I'm thinking I might piece some of my collection of 10cm squares together and cut them into a longhorn for the middle, and then tickertape around it, though I'm not sure if that's completely not in the spirit and I should tickertape the longhorns in 1 colour and the rest in another, so it's more subtle. This is my favourite option, as it's new and interesting, but that could change in a couple of days.

Still nothing in the mail today, and I'm starting to get a bit despondent, even though I know that there's 25 metres making its way to me in a big arse box, as well as a bundle of soiree, and another box with 10 meteres in it which, like I assumed, was all in one box, and which should be shipped fairly shortly as it was paid for this morning. It ended up coming to US$38, which is a bit cheaper than I recall it being (somewhere in the $50s I think) so that's good, but not good enough to warrant doing it as often as I would obviously have liked to. I think it comes out to around AU$6.90 per yard, which is good, but not magical. Oh well, it's probably for the best. Also on their way, though I'm not expecting them soon, are 2 pouches for the boat quilt, though I'm not sure that I can be arsed making it for him now. He's being a jerk about Babycat, and no amount of broken glasses apparently are going to change that.

Day off tomorrow and I'm planning on spending a goodly deal of it in town, away from home, trying not to spend too many moneys as the big tax cheque still isn't here. I need to send the camera back to the lady, hopefully pick up many goodies at the post office, spend some more time talking to Vodafone's computer before being randomly disconnected, and... something else... I cant really remember what.

Dunno.

Umm, how bout no..?

So I finally got an email from shipito last night saying that they had received my packages. All 3 of them. But then I went to the website and there were only 2. But there should only be one, and since they are both exactly the same size and weight, I'm thinking there is only 1.

What's more, they initially said it would cost $120 to send them, which is almost 10 times what it should be ($13.95 for a flat rate envelope)

If I lived in America, I'd set up a company especially for foreigners who wanted to buy fabric. I would fold it all neatly into seven yard bundles and put it in flat rate envelopes, saving everyone hundreds of dollars. And since I'm fairly sure I could do a bundle in about 10 minutes, I would only charge about $4 per package, as that would earn me over $20 an hour.

It's a good business opportunity for someone in the US. And I would give sooo much business to anyone who offered it.

In other news, I sent off an email to camera lady saying I would be returning it. So another big wait for the inbox, as well as the postbox.

Yes, or nu, nu, nuh, No? (it's a Meatloaf reference)

The dollar is still improving, and that makes me happy.

There was no fabric in the mail today and that made me sad.

But Lincraft had 50% off fabric today.

But it was 1 metre minimum cut, so I only got 2 fabrics (a rainbow to stash and a green and blue stripe for backing)

So I guess that's a draw then.

In other news, I've done the quarter blocks for the bluegreen quilt (which is number 6, due to Mama Jan's barely started quilt already having gotten a number) and I'm trying to sort out the design. I originally had a regular repeating one that looked very nice in my blue and green paint document, but in the real world, in 15 different fabrics, it wasn't so good.

So I'm trying to sort out a randomized pattern, but randomness has never been a strong point. I fluked it with my first quilt, but a) there were hundreds of squares left over and b) there's parts of it where I wish I'd done stuff different, to the point where I'm not even fond of looking at it too closely.

Here's how it is so far, out on the lino.


Not a great photo, since in real life it's way brighter, and for some reason, the green is way more prominent, so prominent that Casey has referred to it as "snotty".

I've shifted bits here and there for the two hours, but I'm still not entirely happy. There's one fabric that's used twice as much as the rest, and it's hard to not get it next to itself. I've got it down to one touching corner, but the blocks aren't the same, and that's the main thing. Every time I decide to move one bit I end up moving a whole heap, so at some point I'll have to suck it up and just go with where its at now.

In other news, I'd kill for some apple juice. But I wouldn't drive into town and go to the servo for some. Why is that?

Actually, maybe I will. I'm not working tomorrow. I can do what I want. I'm not 27 anymore (that's a psych reference, it being Thursday and me having a new episode and all) so maybe I will.