A new quilt and too much other information.

Once again, it's been a while between posts. But the combination of "ergh, I'm so much ache right now I could die, I'd better say my farewells" and "OMG OMG OMG I actually made a quilt" have come together to inspire a post.

Second things first; that's right, quilt! A whole one, pieced top, quilted, bound, everything. Admittedly, it was a fold over the back binding, but whatever, I was rushed. It was for a birthday last Tuesday, though fair's fair she really only wanted to show it off Saturday night, and I made it Friday night so all's well.

It's for Casey, obviously, and tells the gripping tale of a man and his tractors. I'm not sure where he gets these tractors to try and fail to pull up a tree, but maybe there's a prequel panel somewhere out there. It's about 1.3x1.6, and the backing is butcher's twill. Never in the whole of human history has there been a quilt so perfect for someone.

And last night, quilt showing-off night, was Harrow BnS. My first in over 6 months, what with missing Longy with laryngitis and Paruna getting cancelled. We took two virgins (by that I mean people who'd never been to a ball before) and a 5L keg of strawberry cider and about 100 jelly shots. And we drank and danced and ended up funny colours and found boys and new exciting ways to inadvertently injure ourselves.

As a result, I suspect this will be my last ever post*, what with the culmative aches acquired on the weekend all banding together and leaving me convinced I won't survive to the morning. A nasty bruise 3/4 of the way down my spine. Don't know how I got it. Another quite large one on my left leg. A painful, odd looking friction-burn-and-bruise combo on my right elbow that I got by miss-executing a decent down the chain ladder on the playground. And a friction burn on my knee that I got becasue I managed to pick up the only guy there with a swag smaller than mine. But I guess that's what I get for picking up floppy haired emo boys at BnS balls. "But I love them... They're my favourite" I say when anyone warns me against it. Of course, they're not quite as specific as, "Don't do it Sara, he'll have a tiny swag and very long gentleman parts and it will be quite awkward trying to reconcile the two in a sexy sexy manner without injuring either yourself or him" and I kinda think they're worse friends becasue of it.

Real friends will violate the laws of space and time and find this shit out for you and travel back and let you know to hook up with Dreamboat instead, in order to avoid the kinds of aches that follow an evening with a boy still in his teens. But it's okay, I am, for another 48 or so hours at least, still in my early twenties, and can therefore still choose the 19 year olds instead of the 30 year olds.

Even if it's a terrible decision. No matter, I'll be dead soon. Remember me fondly, and raid my stash fairly...

*I am of course, being over-dramatic for comedic effect. When I don't post for another month, it'll be because I'm too busy being an alcoholic and watching sitcoms to post, not because I died from the assorted aches of a debauched last-big-weekend-before-entering-the-mid-twenties booze-and-boys-fest.

Oh My God!

I used a ruler and a rotary cutter and a mat to cut up some actual quilting cotton today. Granted, it was two rectangles to make a pencil case for Maddy, that I said I was gunna make 3 days ago, but whatever. This is a massive achievement.

Little victories

Four hours ago I thought to myself, "I might have an early night tonight..."

Clearly, I didn't, but I fixed Casey's pants for her, so I'm still declaring tonight to be a rousing success.

My saturday night.

So my little sister, who's nine, by the way, doesn't really ever sleep on her own. Ever since she was tiny she slept with mum and dad, and now that she's bigger, she'll sleep with mum if she's home or Casey or dad if mum's at work.

She and mum and dad have been on holiday for a fortnight, and mum drove them back from Adelaide this afternoon. Apparently, Maddy slept in the car the whole way home. Which meant tonight, as one by one everyone else in the house fell asleep, Maddy kept on shifting beds. And since I was the last one still awake, she ended up in mine, watching 2 Broke Girls while I fartarsed around on the laptop. She was fairly sure she was ready to pull her first all nighter, right up untill 5.05 am when she informed me that she was ready to go to sleep now.

I'm not very good at sharing a bed with someone. Especially not a nine year old with a tendency to kick you in the face as she sleeps. So I'm on the couch.

I should just pull an all nighter. But honestly, tonight was the first night in ages when I thought to myself at about 2 am that I was ready for bed. But it was full of gangly pre-tween and bad sitcom, so I waited.

I should have just gotten drunk...

Another jacket, that I'm slightly less excited about.

Because I spent all day wearing my bitchin new jacket, Maddy decided she wanted one. The pattern was a misses sized one and I used the biggest for me so while I was at Spotlight getting some press studs I got some tracing paper and Mum picked an embroidered denim for the outside and a pale blue drill for the inside, and I came home and traced the smallest size. She thought the arms on mine were too narrow (they are a bit tight when you fully bend your elbows) so they got widened too, and after stopping for a couple of hours to watch The A-Team, I finished it off.

She tried the lining on for size before she went to bed and that fit okay, so hopefully she likes it when she gets up in the morning. I didn't put press studs on it (we can do that later when I know where she wants them) but I made her a belt with the leftover bit so she can tie it closed till then.

Favourite Finds Friday

My favourite thing tonight is finding something that you were worried would be lost forever. Last night we went out and had too much to drink (yes, on a Thursday night: Becky got home from her tropical holiday, after Casey got back from hers last Saturday, and, before we all remembered that we don't actually get along, we decided to go out together) and this morning when I woke up (after not remebering actually getting home - sure sign of a successful night) I couldn't find my watch.

I have quite a history of losing watches on nights out - by that I mean I've lost 3 of them. I've never lost a phone or my wallet, just nice old watches that I've found on ebay and fallen in love with. And then, tragically, lost. So when it was neither on my wrist or in the little pile of them next to the computer, I naturally assumed that it was gone forever. Weirdly, I also couldn't find the wireless mouse for my laptop though I was pretty certain I hadn't taken that to the pub with me. But then, I've also misplaced half my memories of the night, so it's possible I did.

Fortunately, at about 2am, after I'd spent the night on the couch reading random wikipedia articles, the urge to clean my room kicked in, and I found my watch in the bottom of my bed, on the opposite side to the one I sleep on, as I was changing the doona cover. And it felt good. And the mouse turned out to be in the lounge, hanging with the other mice. Which is toats handy, since the desktop and Blogger aren't speaking to one another right now, and it would have been a right shit of a job to write this on my phone.

Favourite Things 5am Saturday

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm glad I'm not an actual parent.

At what age should someone stop believing in the tooth fairy? Maddy is nine now, and even though I don't know at what age I stopped believing*, I'm fairly sure it was younger than that. Along with money, we have sometimes written notes, so maybe it's our fault

Is fault the right word to use? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that she believes in the tooth fairy? I believe that stories such as the tooth fairy are important, since it primes us as children to accept things that don't exist (like santa or the easter bunny) in preparation for the grown up things that don't really exist that we nonetheless have to believe in to be functioning members of human society, (like truth and justice)

But then that's a theory I got from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, along with a belief that the most logical set up for tooth fairies would be some kind of franchise operation.


The internet seems to think about 10. But I think my internet either has some kind of separation anxiety going on, or either it thinks I'm fat, because whenever I go out to the kitchen, it stops working. It's fine if I go to the bathroom, or to work, but if I go to the kitchen, dropout. So clearly it's deranged, and not to be trusted.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I'm worried that my otherwise very smart little sister is going to be derailed into a life of Nigerian bank scams and fake European lottery wins because I fabricated some quite flimsy evidence that the tooth fairy exists, based solely on the fact that once upon a time I used to do all my as like the computer does instead of like a circle with a stick on the side, which is how Maddy thinks I write. If she falls for that, how will she be able to tell if that email from paypal is real, or a nasty phishing scam?


Ooh, hey, new justification for not giving them the good desktop. Yay!


*I have to think very, very hard about what I did last week.

My brain leaked out my ear and it made me start typing like an old Italian lady.

You know how I love quiltmathing? I'm not so keen on other types of mathing.

Tonight, I have spent 4 hours mathing out a number hunt for my sister and some friends to do for a hen's night this weekend. They have hired a bus and are going to some local country pubs, where part of the challenge is to write down some numbers and add them all up to work out what the answer is.

I'm quite confident none of them read this blog. The answer is boobs. Or, more to the point, the answer is 58008 upside down on a calculator. It's also the bride's nickname, and it was an easier number to work toward than 10,032,012 which is the date of the wedding, and our original plan. We roadtripped it a couple of weeks ago to find some numbers and I had to work them all together. And then I had to write little poems for each of them.

I don't even get to go to this hen's night. I'm working. I don't even get to go to the wedding! It's one of my sister's best friends, she's the maid of honour, we run in the same circles and go to all the same BnSs and bonfires, but I'm not invited.

It mak'a me cross.

Actually, I haven't done all the poems. I've done ten, leaving Casey with three, and even though they're the last three on the trip, they would seem to be the hardest. How exactly does one write, in four lines, the 2nd and 4th of which rhyme, that in the pokie room at the Bellum there's a machine called the Enchanted Forest that has "Aristocrat 540" written on it and we want them to write down the 540 and add it to all the other numbers?

Casey gets that one. She's lucky I like her or she'd've got them all.

Finally

I did so much sewing last week and now I'm nearing the end of this week (and therefore my holidays) I'm getting a bit disappointed about how much I didn't get done.

Still, today at least I didn't do too bad.

I made a skirt.

Which I will be re-making tomorrow in the same fabric in the grey colourway - it's a rayon that was on the clearance racks at spotlight for $3p/m and it's so soft and drapey and beautiful, and because it has no stretch it sews like a dream. 60cm cut of it's 144cm width, sew it into a circle, hem the bottom and put some wide elastic in the top, and it's done. I made a belt for it too, just grey homespun with a little cumberband buckle, but I've chopped it up ready to re-do it tomorrow with interfacing.

The reason for the clothes making is that it's one of my my sister's and one of my best friend's birthdays early next week, which means parties this weekend. Becky had family dinner tonight and is having a big piss up here tomorrow night, which I will be leaving after an hour or so to go to Anna's. Becky is getting a Spotlight voucher and instructions to buy herself at least 3 metres of quilt fabric, since after the bag I know she'll decide she doesn't really like whatever fabrics I pick for her. Anna is getting a potential quilt too, since apparently her Dad's buying her a swag, but since I don't know the actual size I just made her this.

I bought the fat quarter packs a while ago when they were on clearance for $6 each, so I've cut them to their biggest square (44cm) since squares are easy and used the strips from the edge to do this, since pillows really only come in one size*. And then I chopped the leftovers of that into 3cm on-point squares, and sewed her a card.

It's not much, but today I sewed everything I needed to sew, and went to the pub for a bit too.


*okay, yes, there are Euro pillows and bent pillows too, but regular pillows.

Prototype'd

I devoted most of tonight to cleaning my room.

Well, I say that, but really, I devoted most of today to standing about my bedroom with my hands full watching Long Way Down, or staring at my fabric shelves coming up with new ideas, and moving my clothes around. Still, my room looks a bit cleaner, mainly because the clothes are in the cupboard and/or the laundry.

And once I had performed the nasty task of re-compressing the mess after it'd been magically expanded to fill the whole room and, worse, cover the bed I was wanting to sleep in, I sat down at the machine for two minutes to have a got at this little prototype.

Two birthdays this weekend, and both of them are getting quilts I wont have made - Becky because she always seems to have a problem with the fabrics I choose so I'm giving her a Spotlight voucher and instructions to buy at least 3 metres of quilting fabrics with it, and Anna because she won't be getting her swag till after her birthday, so I don't know how big a quilt she'll need for it. I figure a tiny quilted card is the solution, and I wanted to see how my machine would go with the card. Great, as it turns out, except the bobbin ran out half a square before the end.

Oh well, it was only the prototype.

The Next Generation....

Tonight, I couldn't be bothered doing real sewing, so I watched a lot of youtube videos and cut out some more monsters instead, only now I have a blister on my right index knuckle from the scissors. Ow.

To which the correct response* is "shit story, needs more dragons."

And while I don't have more dragons, I do have this.

Maddy's first ever quilt. It's only little - they're 10 cm squares from the hundreds I still had left over from the very first quilt I made, but no matter. I pulled out the other good-condition machine the other night for her to use without the foot (just turning the crank by hand) and she'd made herself a couple of simple shape cushions with my help that night. Today though we got up after our 6am hometime arrival from our spontaneous country music festival adventurising to find she had made a freaking awesome SpongeBob, without a pattern, out of some of the felt we bought at Spotlight on Friday.

Unfortunately, I think Mum's hidden it to keep forever and ever, so I don't have a photo.

With that I concluded that she was probably grown up enough to start using a foot pedal, but the one I used to use was still broken, so we had to send Dad out to fix it.  And then we had to gaffa tape a pencil sharpener underneath it so that it woudn't go above a certain speed.

And no matter how insistent I was that we maybe just piece some cushion covers first, she wanted to do a quilt, so I haggled it down to a little blankie that we could use as a mat or for one of her toys. It seemed like a lot of hassle to iron out our seams, and I also figured it would be an easier bodge job for me at the end if they weren't, so we chain pieced it in it's entirety and just pressed the seams to one side. And since I hate having to bind stuff that I've sacrificed my good fabrics and many many hours to, I just put the backing on right sides in and told her to sew around it, and we'd leave this one without any batting.

It was at this point that the kids from next door came over and asked if she'd like to go out and play, and therefore it was also at this point that she became a real quilter.

Because it's not finished, and is therefore her first real WiP.

*This is a response to pretty mych anything in our house.

Progress.

Progress is, um, progressing. Casey's quilt top is assembled and the lines of quilting have been done either side of the vertical seams so tomorrow it should only take me an hour or so to fill it in and I can get on with the very nasty job of binding.

Progress on everything else BnS related hasn't progressed at all.

Bugger.

Remember when I said yesterday that it was a bad idea to try do any big sewing projects in the same week as a BnS ball?

I kinda forgot is was my sister's birthday this weekend.

Well, not really forgot. I know it's on Sunday, but my brain didn't really reconcile the fact that it was her birthday this sunday with the fact that it's her BIRTHDAY on SUNDAY.

My brain is dumb sometimes.

Anyway, I remembered remembered this morning and so I figured I'd better get on it. I haven't actually made Casey a quilt yet because she has an amazing ability to be both very picky AND very vague - she's always very specific about what she does and doesn't like in what you're doing, but then she'll go "Can you just make me (insert whatever here)... I don't care what colour/fabric/width/shape..."

So where does one go with that? Well, I've started with the back, which is the two yards of half-naked-cowboy fabric, added an altered version of what I was planning on doing as a top to test my new back arrangement and sacrificed to the cause a quite nice collection of solid Konas in the green to purple section of the spectrum.

The colours in this photo are all wrong. The purples are way darker and those yellows are actually greens.

Not yet actually assembled, but I got the math done, the colours picked, the fabric cut and the blocks sewn in 5 hours, so I'm happy to stop now.

If it looks like a bit of an off shape, it is - since I'm making this top as something to have on the other side of the back, which is what's actually featured, it's the same size as the back, ie long and skinny. 105x175 is what I've mathed to, which is about 42x70 for those of you that think imperial. I considered shortening it to make it a bit more or a normal ratio, but one of the girls at work pointed out that a long quilt can go across the knees of two people, so I took that as a decent reason not to chop it up.

It'd be a shame to lose any more hunky man-ness than I need to.

In related news, and in celebration of Harrow BnS being only 3 days away, this video made me laugh.

Most Sparklyest, Rainbowest Present Ever!

If I'm honest, I'm glad it's over. I'm not a huge lover of Christmas, since it always feels like it will be a huge hassle, and, yeah, usually it is. There's lots of driving about, often with people in your car you would never otherwise have, the awkwardness of having to say hi to relatives you loathe for a variety of reasons and the always fun job of pretending to ignore the fact that two of your sisters are hating on each other, and that your dad is slightly too drunk on account of how he hates Christmas too, and probably for the exact same reasons. Except the driving, cause that's not allowed after a whole bottle of Wild Turkey.

This Christmas though, contained a ray of light not seen every December 25th. And while I loathe surprises and being out of the loop, this was my present from Helen and Casey this year.

I found it on ebay a few weeks ago and put out an open invitation on facebook for anyone to buy it for me, but it was near enough $100 so I doubted anyone would. It ended and was re-listed at 20% off and I seriously considered buying it but by then, someone already had. I took it as a sign, since really, I don't live the kind of life that caters to a wardrobe of rainbow sequined dresses, but today I opened up a little box and saw some sequins through the tissue paper and almost peed my pants.

If it hadn't fit, I probably would have locked myself in a bedroom and bawled for a bit. 

Apparently though, pretty much everyone except me knew I was getting it. I messaged Anna as soon as I got it since we'd cooed over it together and she already knew, as did Mum and Nanny. As someone who doesn't really "do" secrets, the fact that everyone around me does is somewhat disconcerting. Thankfully they've (so far) only used their powers for good instead of evil.

So thankyou to Helen and Casey. I must come up with a suitable occasion to wear it. And some new boots to wear with it.

I'll post a link to them on facebook when I do. My birthday is only 4 weeks away now...

I think I'm doing it wrong....

I'm not particularly good at this "Christmas decorating" thing.

Though some of those little arms do look kinda like stockings.

All this batch of monsters are fully faced now and all their little arms have been sewn, but not stuffed, cause I didn't get out of bed early enough to make it to Spotlight and Casey got there at 5.25 and didn't think to name-drop her way in. Silly Girl. Stuffing is another of those things I have *somewhere*

I'm feeling extremely grateful that I have the day after tomorrow off, since I still have a lotta lotta stuff to do. My goal is to get these guys sewn and stuffed tomorrow night/friday morning and drop them into Helen, and hopefully she'll be nice enough to sew them closed for me, since I hate that job.

Lying.

Have you ever made someone something and then been all bummed that you don't get to keep it?

Any of you that said no, I'd like to remind you that Santa is watching, and you've only got yourself to blame if you don't get anything on Sunday. If I know you're lying, then Santa does too.

I've been working hard* on Casey's bag tonight, and I want it. Want want want. Sulk. Maybe I will steal it later. It's not yet finished yet, and I have some distractions, maybe I can pretend that it can't be finished, and then sneaky finish it and keep it for myself.

The distractions I mentioned are a sudden call for lots and lots of monsters, in the next 4 days. Helen put them on facebook, and people went and bought them all, and wanted more. And they're not having Alex (he remains my monster) so I'll have to see what I can do.

*Just because I spent long periods of time getting distracted by making myself a new headband, cooking some rice, playing with some zippers, painstakingly cutting some fabric on the grain, and wrapping a couple of presents, doesn't mean I wasn't working hard, y'know, in between all that stuff.

I am a dull and uninteresting person.

I know that music aficionados say that the richest sound comes from vinyl. I know that the best method of digital compression and storage for audio is FLAC. I know that I much, much prefer being able to download an album in 17 seconds. I know that it took me 3 minutes, and the assistance of one of my sisters to work out how to merely open the one remaining cassette player in our house today.

I didn't know that cassettes ran two channels of audio. Or maybe I just hadn't thought of it. Cassettes were a dying breed when I was in my formative music years, but I was there for them. My first ever album was on cassette (it was Hanson. The ones that sang MmmBop. My favourite song was Yearbook.) I can remember friends bringing over their cassettes and CDs and making mix tapes. You couldn't do that in 17 seconds - you did it real time, having one play in slot 1 while you recorded in slot 2. 

Today I didn't make a mix tape. Today I did the reverse. Six weeks ago I wrote about a song called The Melbourne Cup which I couldn't find anywhere. My sister (the same one who can remember how to open a cassette player*) told me that it was on the Home Among the Gum Trees cassettes we had when we were little. I looked on eBay, and there was one lonely copy available. I bought it. "That's excellent," said Casey. "You can put it all on the computer for us and then give it to Nanna Joy for Christmas."

So it's on the computer, in 25 minute blocks of 7 songs per side. Digitized by plugging an audio cable from the headphone jack of the almost-never-used sound system in the lounge to mic jack of mum's laptop, and pressing record in my music editing software, and waiting 25 minutes before flipping the cassette. Each channel of audio is different, and I'm breaking it down into little bits by listening to the beginning and end of each song through my headphones, and yeah, one ear is hearing different things to the other.

It's not beautiful sound. There's a lot of noise in the background. Not actual noise, of us putting up our Christmas tree, which we finally did tonight at about 11pm because it was the only time all six of us were home, but the faint buzzy cracklyness of the cassette.

Weirdly, even though I'm listening to it through the sound card on a computer, it feels soothing. Familiar. Songs I haven't heard in 15 years, from a cassette 25 years old. I wonder if it's because of the cracklyness. I'm planning on having a go at cleaning it up some other day, but maybe I shouldn't. Maybe it's important.

Also, I have the worst Deja Vu of my life. Not just cause I'm listening to songs from when I was a kid - I don't think I ever listened to these songs at this house, just in Dad's ute or on the houseboat. But I feel as if I've sorted this audio before. Maybe just because it's taken me the last 4 hours to get halfway through.

Anyway, if any of you remember any of these songs, or maybe want them, or came here cause you too realise that, for reasons beyond your control, your identity is tied up in some songs sung three decades ago and now unavailable to anyone not lucky enough to do the right eBay search on the right day, message me and I'll send them to you.

Home Among The Gumtrees - Bullamakanka

Old Man Emu - John Williamson

Ridin' - Smoky Dawson

The Gondiwindi Grey - Johnny Greenwood

Click Go the Shears - The Hawking Bros

Redback on the Toilet Seat - Slim Newton

I was only Nineteen - Redgum

Downunder - Men At Work

Put Another Log On The Fire - Bill & Boyd

Little Boy Lost - Johnny Ashcroft

I'm The Sheik from Scrubby Creek - Chad Morgan

Theme from Picnic at Hanging Rock - Paul Lennon

Tenterfield Saddler - Peter Allen

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Bushwhackers

Our Don Bradman - (No artist listed)

The Wild Colonial Boy - Smoky Dawson

Waltzing Matilda - The Sundowners

Theme From Rush - Brian May and The ABC Showband

The Melbourne Cup - The Hawking Bros

Santa Never Made it to Darwin - Bill & Boyd

Flash Jack from Gundagai - The Bushwhackers

The Ettamogah Pub - Ray Kernaghan

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport - Rolf Harris

Come On Aussie Come On - Frankie Davidson

The Dog on the Tuckerbox/Road to Gundagai/Back to Yarrawonga (Medley) - The Sundowners

Theme From Cash & Co - The Bushwhackers

I Still Call Australia Home - Peter Allen

As for craft, today I did none whatsoever.

*The stop button is also the open button.

Progress

I think I might be bored with HSTs now. I finished the top of the christmas quilt and pressed it all and thought, well, that was fun, time for something new.

Except, well, I can't really start anything new, since I have a whole lotta stuff still to be done in the next week. I did pretty good today though - after I finished the top I got it basted and quilted - now all it needs is trimming down and binding. I've already got the strips cut, and I've got the strips cut to bind that red and green one I made a few weeks ago to see how much I disliked wool batting, but I'm puting it off. I hate binding.

I got the other three christmas sacks finished today too. We always used pillow cases as a kid and then we would lug the pillow cases around to wherever christmas was that year, so this year I have made us some ones in pretty christmas fabric that are still the size of pillow cases, but have squared off bottoms and handles. Handles are handy, as the name suggests.

I made the lining for Casey's bag, and devoted some time to berating myself for deciding to make hers a fancy bag.  Bags without pockets and with handles that go from one end to the other instead of up the sides are much, much easier, but she wants a little bit of leather from the back of some jeans sewn to hers and for whatever reason, that makes me feel like the bag has to be as fancy as the pants it came off of.

And I made a stubby holder, just to see if I could remember how to do it. I can - yay me!

Unfortunately, at some point while I was doing all this my phone went flat, so I couldn't take any pictures. It's charging now though, so I'll take a heap in the morning.

Uuuummmm...

It's much harder to choose a fabric for someone else than it is to choose one for yourself. And it's much more difficult again to choose a single fabric. A quilt, where it's a whole big cohesive thing, that's practically easy compared to picking a single fabric to make a bag for someone.

Two someones actually: I'm planning on making a bag each for Casey and Becky for Christmas. Casey thinks that maybe she wants a red, blue and white check that I've already used to make an identical bag for Meagan, and even though it would look a bit different if I put it on point, it's not that different. And I don't really like re-making things. And all the other yarn dyed* checks at Spotlight are horrible crappy loose weaves that look scratchy and horrible. Except gingham, and that looks a little bit too cliched.

Becky's even harder to pick for, mainly since I don't really get on with her that well, and therefore have no idea what she likes - as far as I'm aware, it's the colour orange, taking my things without asking and making a mess in the bathroom. And I've failed (unsurprisingly) to find a fabric that encapsulates these things.

I'm gunna have to pick something fairly soon though - I have 3 days off this weekend and then just next friday off to get everything done.

I think I'm still a bit thrown about it being less than a fortnight away cause we still haven't been out to get a tree yet. Yes, that's right, I'm the only person in the blogosphere still without a Christmas tree. 

There has to be someone who's last, right?

*Unless it's printed on point, in which case it's okay, a printed check just doesn't look as good as a woven check. I can't explain why, but it looks more "right" - actually I can explain why. It's because it is right.