Buh Bye...

Remember a couple of months ago when I lost my voice completely for 12 days? It's going again.

I wonder how long for this time?

Because it is already after 5am, and there are still tumblrs that need to be read...

Today there was sunshine. It was terribly strange, but then, I have barely talked for 11 days now, so my very existence has started to go a bit weird. I find myself regularly going and laying in odd places, staring at the light fittings or the bit where the door meets the roof, just because, as a person who is made up of words, and who has no words, life is weird. Also, did I mention it's 5.30am? Just as well I have no voice and got my shift replaced for tomorrow.

Back to the point, it was sunny today, and I went into work late (they'll let you be in charge with no voice, but not actually serve the customers) so I had time to go out and take some pretty pictures.

This quilt is so unlike all my other quilts that I almost love it the most, because it's so unashamed to let it's freak flag fly.

This is the holiday quilt, hand quilted by me, while I was high on the glue fumes from spray basting together, in a motel room in Adelaide, the layers of pre-pieced plaid, pink polar fleece (batting) and wool coating (backing). And I hand sewed on the binding too, which is actually woven polyester tape.

This is the Carried Away Miniquilt. Some point soon I want to re-do this in the solids I originally designed this to be in, and as a nine-patch.

The block itself is what I came up with for the GenQ block design competition, and since the magazine is out now, I think I can do my excited squeally they picked it!

This is the original colours. I only had enough to make this one block, which got turned into a cushion, which was promptly stolen by Casey, and then by Maddy. I also made a really hideous one, in a selection of other new DS fabrics, that I tentatively titled when bad things happen to good fabrics.

Naturally, one of the girls at worth thought it was kinda funky when I showed her the photo, so I've quilted it ready to eventually turn it into a cushion for her.

My new favourite.

So a while back I bought this pattern off the Vogue website along with a whole heap of others that were $3 each.

The reason I picked this one is because it has a whole lot of collar and really slim sleeves, which is what I've been looking for in a jacket. I had already found it actually, but they were asking $95 for it, and it's not even real leather. I'd pay twice that if it was real leather, but it isn't, so I'd consider my budget to be half that.

And tonight, since my voice is still hiding behind a couch somewhere and my asthma is playing up to the point where I chickened out of going to Longy Bns even though I wasn't working, I decided I'd make the night at least slightly worthwhile and have a go at the pattern. I had some dark grey wool/acrylic blend medium weight coat fabric that I bought so long ago that it was in a cupboard in Becky's room and some quite thin black cotton for lining and I went for it. I skipped the pockets, since this was pretty much just a test run, slimmed the sleeves way down (even though the pattern said they had to be made from at least 10%+ stretch fabric) and decided I'd line the entire thing instead of facing the front and the collar in the same fabric as the outer and then having a part lining.

Of course, I completely disregarded the instructions. I've never made a pattern exactly as it says to, ever. It's not that I think I know better than people whose actual job it is to know this stuff, but I've got my ways that I'm used to, so I lined it in what I think of as "handbag style" because it's how you line handbags: basically you make two the same, one in inside fabric and one in outside fabric, and then you sew around the edges and turn it inside out and topstitch the edges. Of course, the ends of the sleeves are a bit more complicated than that (you sort of pull them out of the inside once you're half done and then turn them inside out again and... it's complicated...) but it all came together great. Narrow sleeves, massive collar that doesn't really have any bulk and therefore drapes nicely, full lining so it doesn't scratch your underarms when you're wearing a singlet... I hated having to take it off to take a photo of it, but I suck so bad at selfies it had to be done.

And that coathanger just doesn't wear it as well as I do. It's pinned closed here since I didn't have any press studs to put a closure on it but I'll happily wear it open for now.

Now I want to find myself some waxed cotton drill and do another one.

Finding the bright side in the dark.

I've found the best thing about laryngitis. It's going out into the kitchen, in the middle of the night, wearing headphones, not turning any lights on, having a groove in the dark, singing along at the top of your lungs to your mp3 player.

No-one can hear you! It's brilliant! It's like being home alone, but, we'll I'd say it happens less rarely, but this is the first time I've ever had laryngitis, whereas I've been home alone plenty of times, so there goes that theory. Oh well, it happened tonight, and I was loving it sick. That's the important thing.

Anyway, before I was being Bruce Springsteen, I actually got a little bit of quilting done, just boring wavy lines, but yay progress. Until the bobbin ran out, and I stopped. Because clearly, my sewing machine wanted me to.

I hereby declare Wednesday to be non sequitur day!

Today I decided I would sit outside for an hour. I did, I finished a book, and I made a point of breathing in and out quite hard. It didn't really help with anything, but I felt better for having done it. Having asthma and a nose that doesn't really work very well I don't consider myself to be particularly good at breathing, and I'm an inside/nighttime person too so I don't get much fresh air either. By Mt Gambian winter standards the weather today was quite nice, and since I'm still off work, I figured I'd go for it.

The nice doctor man made me wait for 40 minutes and pay him $60 so that he could tell me that I do actually have laryngitis, and to give me a piece of paper that made a giant robot pharmacist poop out a little bottle of pills for me. Apparently my voice should be back by Saturday, which means I have to go back to work on Saturday.

I'll probably be crazy by then. Weirdly, even my inner monologue appears to have lost it's voice. I'm talking to myself, mentally, soooo much less than I normally do. I'm freaking myself out with the awkward silences between me and me.

I appear to be quite badly allergic to shar-pei fur. A friend had hers out tonight and I ended up with a rash all up my forearms when I carried it to the car. Sucks, cause it's cute as.

Mixed Berry Mini-Wheats are a huge disappointment. I lived on the Strawberry ones in year 12, but they got discontinued and I had to switch to blackberry. The mixed berry ones only just showed up at our store, and I was toats excited, but the flavour is a bit too... If I say warm, that makes no sense. The blackberry flavour is sharper and stronger. The mixed berry one reminds me of juice that's been out of the fridge too long. It let me down.

It's hard to find graph paper this time of year, and Maddy "borrowed" most of my stash, leaving me none with which to design a nicely balanced wrapped-candy block, or calculate sweet, sweet maths to make it.

I had a go with some lined paper and a pencil, but I think the centre box needs to be a bit bigger - I don't want it to go all the way to the edge though, possibly if I had half sized squares I'd go to the next one out. And I don't know how to assemble it yet, or what colours to use. Graph paper is magical, and it would have the answers for me.

I need to find some graph paper.

Blah Blah Basting

The problem with basting is that, much like being sick, it's boring and uninteresting and no-one cares.

Still, it's the first crafting I've done in ages, with the exception of the statistical anomaly that was the holiday quilt, and I figure it's a good place to start. Spotlight had 30% off today so I got myself some batting, and a 108cm wide quilt can handily be backed by a single width of quilt fabric. Of course, I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it, since it's a very odd design that really needs an all-over free motioning, but, um, I still can't do that. I even gave it another quick try today, and I've got the shapes down pat, and my stitches don't vary too much in length, but the tension on the back is still utterly utterly horrible, and I'm still too cheap or lazy or both to get it serviced. I might end up doing wavy lines in both directions à la the pavement quilts, since that looks like an all-over while actually being a side to side, but, baby steps.

And on the voice thing, it's baby steps on that too. I have some vowel sounds. This is progress. I'd probably make more progress if I didn't keep going in to work, but they keep guilt-tripping me. Tonight I did reversion - basically taking down all the old specials tickets so new ones can go up tomorrow. I answered any customer queries with obscure hand gestures and interpretative dance. I hope one of them was a mystery shopper, because I'd love to read their review of my silent service.

... continued

As predicted, today was no-voice Monday. But getting up at 12 for a 1.30 start and finding the house empty meant I couldn't get anyone to call in sick for me and I couldn't do it myself either (obviously) so I just had to go on in. Since I went home sick on Friday the first thing everyone asked was if I was feeling better, to which my response was, (again, obviously) "..."

Actually, I said, "Yes, I do, thanks, but, um, well..." but what came out was "..." with some lip movement. Unfortunately they were a bit understaffed so I ended up hanging about till 5.30 anyway, mainly doing self serve (I can mouth "thanks a lot, see you later" with such conviction that people's brains insert the words) or smokeshop (people usually know how much their smokes are going to cost them) or supervising (though someone put on their help light and I went to help but they were still talking to their customer and I was trying and trying to get her ask her what was wrong and she was ignoring me and eventually another supervisor came up and helped her and I sulked away unnoticed) but we all agreed that I couldn't really supervise tonight because I couldn't talk to customers or answer the phone or make calls over the PA system, so really all I'd be doing is bumming about as all my employees amused themselves by saying "what?" at me over and over again. So instead, I came home, so my family could do exactly the same thing to me.

And I watched the first episode of Big Brother (and probably the only one, since I work nights and don't get to watch real* telly) and the new episode of True Blood (bye Molly and Hoyt... sad face) and spent a whole lot of time on etsy looking for the perfect fabric to make this top and being saddened by the fact that they've already got pretty much the perfect fabric. Gods of perfect plaids, why have you forsaken me?

Oh, and gods of voice, you too? At least the gods of finding a good car space still like me.

*Admittedly, Big Brother isn't reall telly anyway, but I mean stuff that our antenna picks up in real time, as opposed to stuff I download and watch

...

To say that I have no voice is a slight overstatement; I'm currently audible on about one of every five words. But thats a rate low enough that, should it continue tomorrow, I probably won't be able to work, even though I'm starting to feel a bit better. It's the best kind of sick day really. Who doesn't love a day of sitting quietly?

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!

Small victories.

Today I threw off the guilt-trip-induced shackles of the frontend of Woolworths Mt Gambier, hugged a security sensor pole so I didn't fall over, gallantly talked myself out of throwing up twice in an hour, came home sick and built myself a blanket fort on the couch. I'm declaring this to be a victory, and a much needed one after I spent last night coughing up blood.

And now, from the comfort of my blanket fort, I'm gunna watch the leaves on the trees sparking in the sunshine outside, because the DVD player is too far away.

/startsulk

I am a sucker. More to the point, I am a sick sucker. Last night I spent 8 hours at work in horrible pain every time I tried to swallow, only to come home, have a shower, mumble something about dragons at my mother and pass out on the floor in front of the fire with the towel still wrapped around my wet hair. Then today (I wasn't supposed to be working, but they appear to have fucked up my roster this week) I worked 6 hours, coughing and spluttering and feeling pretty miserable. Tomorrow, also when I'm not supposed to be working, I've been rostered 10-3, which contravenes both my don't-work-fridays and my don't-work-before-lunchtime rules.

And, even though I have over 200 hours of sick leave accumulated, I go to work, I suffer through it, I share my germs with customers and I devote at least 40% of my concentration to mentally telling myself not to throw up over and over again. Because whenever I try to call in sick they get all passive aggressive; "but we don't have anyone else, wah wah" on me. And meanwhile, the department manager randomly takes a day off a month out of sickleave to "help keep the budget down"

Oh, and the best part? If I quit, I lose all that sick leave. Nearly four grand worth.

/endsulk.

In actual good news, the first issue of GenQ magazine arrived today with my bonus 8 kickstarter bribe fat quarters. Especially loving the brown and pink zigzag one.

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.

Achoo.

The fact that I'm allergic to my best friend's dog literally makes me cry. Literally, as in my eyes water and my nose runs. That's what literally means, contrary to what you may have read on some people's facebook walls. When I read the word literally being used in the wrong context in a facebook post, I literally mentally disapprove of their inability to correctly use the word literally.

In the meantime, I need to go buy myself some more demazin.

It's a shame rainbow has only two syllables... it would work better in song with three.

So today, before my doctor's appointment I got my rainbow beanie/beret finished.

As evidenced by the last selfie, I'm not great at it, so I figured I'd take pictures on my bed head, as opposed to my actual head.

I think from the top/behind it looks like a gobstopper when you break it and look at all the layers

I wore it to my doctors appointment, where I got all chopped up (I've got a hellova lot of bandages for a 1 1/2cm incision) and the doctor recommended I give Bricanyl a go, if Ventalin was doing nothing to stop my cough. I did, but it didn't help, and the side effects of the Bricanyl are somewhere between being quite drunk and having had way too much coffee - an odd combination of tense and jittery and kinda dizzy and woozy, with an inability to concentrate. It's not been fun, and I'm back to work tomorrow, which is equally sucky.

Hopefully tonight though I get to sleep a bit earlier: I was up till 6am coughing, and since mum was working at The G till 3, she came in last night offering to take me to the kiddy ward at the hospital, since I last sounded like that when I was 4 years old.

I said no. Their wi-fi probably isn't all that great.

Ironically whinging post.

Most nights, before I go to bed, I click on the bookmark for the latest xkcd comic. They only update 3 times a week but I press the random button a few times, just to see which of the thousand or so comics pop up for me. It's kinda like a weird fortune cookie/horoscope type thing.

Last night:

Having a positive attitude is almost tautologically good for your mental health, and extreme stress can hurt your immune system, but that doesn't mean you should feel like shit for feeling like shit.

I know that it's actually about his girlfriend having breast cancer, which is a whole lot worse than having a stupid cold, but the mouseover text (I put it as the caption) seemed to ring particularly true. At the end of last night's whingey post I considered hashtagging firstworldproblems onto the end of it, so everyone knew that I knew that I was being whiny and pathetic, but it got a bit too meta, and I already have a headache. Thanks to this though, I'm gunna feel shit. I'm gunna roll with feeling shit. I'm gunna shove tissues up my nose, drink Demazin like it's cordial, pop Panadols like they're smarties, sit in my electrically blanketed bed and watch all of season 1 of White Collar tomorrow. I'm gunna take my sick days, like a normal person would, and in a few days time, my nose will stop running, my eardrums will stop popping every time I blow it, and I will once again be able to bend over without feeling dizzy. This will happen whether or not I spend tomorrow in bed, but I may as well make the best of a snotty situation.

Oh, and the stunningly pretty yarn I bought to crochet myself a beret with is 100% wool, and not quite as soft as the cotton or bamboo I would like it to be.

#firstworldproblems.

Pathetic whinging post.

I have a cold.

I woke up feeling okay, even managed to get in a half hour of actual sewing before it hit. Since then I've had tissues shoved up my nose whenever I'm alone and I've been shooting back Demazin like it's $4 shots night at the pub (including saying "nostrovia" or sometimes "za vas" as I do it)

Worst of all, it's my full weekend on, and, short of throwing up all over a customer, I don't have much chance of getting to go home sick tomorrow. Like Sundays aren't bad enough when you're feeling good.

Maddy was home from school yesterday (with "sniffles") so I assume I've gotten it from her. Only good thing is I made a doctor's appointment for Tuesday for something unrelated so if I'm still feeling crap I'll see if I can at least get a few weekdays off work. I don't even remember the last time I had a sick day, but then, I also don't remember the last time I felt this sick.

I can only hope all the cough meds make me fall asleep instead of lying about feeling sorry for myself for the next 4 hours.

I did some stuff!

Today was not good. I haven't been that hungover since the night that I can't remember any of. I need to stop trying to drink as much as Casey drinks. She can drink more than I can, I need to accept that, and not try to keep pace. Lesson learned, until next time.

So anyway, I could barely stand, let alone sew, for most of the day. I know, theoretically, that it's better for you to eat something as soon as you get up, and get outside and moving, but I just don't want to. I just want to nap a bit more, maintain horizontality, and maybe be sick a little bit. The alternative makes you feel better sooner (I know that from BnS balls) but when you're feeling shit, you may as well wallow in it.

I didn't get started sewing till 9, but I've managed to do all the faces on the custom monsters, and I've sewn and turned the arms too. Five of the eight new monsters have horns. Horns are popular, it seems. Hard to turn those little points, but I found a bobby pin.

It's been a bit weird to be making pairs, but it's not the first time - I made a matching set years ago for one of my friends from work's sons.

Ergh

See that bit of the plate that's got nothing more than a light sprinkling of pink sugar on it? It WAS chock full of sugared peanuts. But I ate them all. I don't feel all that well now.

Idea.

Today I got up, went to work, spent an hour huddling in my coat as if I were a turtle and it was my shell, and came home. I built myself a blanket fort on my bed with all my quilts and the cushions that I made for but didn't sell at the market, and slept for 5 hours, only to be woken up by my tummy, which was cross that it hadn't been given all the junk that it would normally eat during the 3 breaks of an 8 hour shift.

It was while I was trying to build a blanket fort that I could carry around with me that I decided I need to make a new quilt. A long quilt. Essentially a quilt shawl, as it were, twice as long but half as wide as a normal quilt, so that you can wear it a bit more easily than a regular quilt.

But not tonight. Tonight, now that my tummy has enjoyed some nuggets, I'm going back to bed.

Ergh

I slept till 5 today. It was really really nice. And then I had to work, and it was nice how all of my colleagues came and told me how terrible I looked. And I'm not saying that in a sarcastic way - it just means that if I'm still feeling crappy tomorrow, when I call in sick everybody will be like "Oh, I'm not surprised, she was looking horrible last night" and I can spend the day in bed feeling miserable and reading a book.