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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, this happened...

Tonight I went looking for stripey fabric, found a really old demo Kindle and pulled it apart with a butter knife. I found it very interesting, but I realise that such antics are not particularly good blog fodder. Also, I cut my finger. Not like, bad, but it hurts. Kinda like a paper cut, but on the inside of a Kindle.

That's only fair, I guess, since I was prising out it's innards with a kitchen utensil.

Whoops

Earlier tonight I randomly picked a whole heap of games for mum's new tablet. And we could say that I sent the last 4 hours thoroughly testing their suitability, checking that they ran okay without too much lag or bugginess, and turning off all the annoying music and sounds. And while that would be true, it would be more accurate to say I got distracted flinging marbles at one another, exploding little blobs of goo and joining rainbow pipes together, and lost track of time.

Thankfully, I made the case first... But I forgot to take a photo, and it's too nice here in bed to get out and go and get it.

Tablet sleeve test

Mum, Dad and Maddy are off to Bali on holiday in a few days, and Mum bought herself a tablet to take with her, which arrived a couple of days ago. Tonight, I had a go at making it a sleeve, and I'd have a go at an idea I had a while back for a zip down handle, which could make it be a bag too.

The zip curves around the entire top of the bag, and only the bottom side of the zipper is sewn for the whole length, while the top zipper is attached at either edge.

I like the idea. But I've realised that the top curve in particular warps the body of the sleeve a bit too much fr me to be satisfied with, so next time I'll do it with two short zips so they only curve one way, and only in the middle of the bag as opposed to on the corners, where it's more noticeable.

Also, as usually when I make a sleeve for a piece of technology, it's ever so slightly too small. It fits, but barely, and it makes the edges where the closure zip is (I could only find one pink zip) stick out weirdly.

And now I'm off to play the moustache drinking game. Happy Thirsty Thursday everyone

:{P

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!

serblerghfnek.

An evening spent trying to install Windows and all it's associated important drivers and connections and programs and the thirteen-disk monstrosity that is the Sims2 suite has left my brain in a small pile of mush. Also, note the use of the word trying - it hasn't been a great success. Windows was fine, I've done it enough times now that I can do it in my sleep, but it's on a quite old computer, without a whole lot of power, and I'm not sure if the USB drives are all working or not, and I can't get the modem to work, and without that I'm struggling to do much of anything, since I need to hope I'm downloading the right thing when I get it on my laptop and obviously in places I'm not, because it's just not coming together. So I'm giving up and going to bed, since I have to go back to work tomorrow.

I finished hand sewing the binding to the holiday quilt though, so I did at least achieve something today.

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.

Settling.

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

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

Grumblemumblemumble

Casey was watching old episodes of Angel on my bed and she must have had dirty shoes cause there's nasty gritty stuff all over my quilts :( Grumble mumble mumble.

So today I started working on a tablet case using only measurements found on the cnet.com specs page. It's about a third done, since it shall be quite embellished, but I figure, even if it isn't a perfect fit, there's so many different tablets, all with dimensions a few millimetres different, that it will fit something. Yay positivity!

I had to go with a slightly darker grey than I wanted to because the local shops had a depressing lack of options. I considered doing the machine embroidery in white instead of black so it would show up more but then I thought - I'm not that good at freehand machine embroidery. Maybe it's better if you can't see it as clearly. I've done an okay job considering. And it didn't shrink it down too much, so it should still fit okay.

The other thing I did today was put a heap of little x and w on a calendar to work out what weekends I'm working for the next few months. Since it seems I'm not working the weekend of the 20th November, we'll be doing the Mini-Me market again - hopefully we'll do a bit better with it being just before Christmas.

Blablahblahblah.

I had planned on a lovely, coherent post for tonight, but then I ate half a block of cheese and that always does funny things to my head, so I've decided to ramble instead.

It makes me sad when I open the fridge and find out that we have no fritz. And then I think of all the poor people interstate and overseas who have never had fritz in their fridge, ever. They're missing out on the delicious, finely textured, slightly dubious processed meat of the gods. Fritz whups devon's arse.

I'm really not good at sizing cases for small electronic items. As they get bigger, a half centimetre of leeway is less of a concern, but for an 8cm wide phone, it makes a big difference. For instance - My phone fits perfectly, if it doesn't have the jelly case on it.

I can't take a photo of it with the phone in it, because I'm using my phone to take the photo. It's a vicious cycle.

I can't find the smaller bag magnets. This makes me sad too.

Magnets on little narrow flaps are about the hardest things to do in the whole wide world. Turning them right-way-out is like childbirth, but without the screaming and the blood. Well, sometimes there's that too, but they don't give you special drugs for it. And then you sew it on about 5mm too far down on the back, so it doesn't sit quite right.

Or maybe the magnet just needs to be further from the edge?

The bruise I got on my leg on monday when I was being a mountain goat really really hurts. When my leg jiggles as I walk it hurts. When I sit down and my jeans pull tight on it it hurts. I was favouring the other leg today. It's a freaking bruise, it shouldn't be causing me to limp. But it hurts.

I even took a photo of it, and unlike most photos of bruises it even looks really bad. But my thigh is a bit hairy.

Today Meagan and I went to look at engagement rings. For her, not me, obviously. We were kinda agreed on our favourite, but the lady that she knew at the jewellers was trying to talk her out of it, because it came from the other jewellers. But we agreed, it was our favourite. And that lady that she knew (Meagan was friends with her daughter in primary school) was kinda annoying.

I took Kelsey her birthday present, a mini backpack in another of the fabrics I made her quilt in, and completely forgot to take photos of it. Whoops.

Would it be easier or harder, do you think, to make a case using only the measurements of the device without a physical device itself? Would the numbers 175, 15, 272 make it easier or harder than having something to plop on my ruler for a size reference?

I need some gray fabric. Gray is not a prominent colour in my stash.

It's a rich man's world.

Oh dear. Having spent a little bit of money, I am filled with a desire to spend much, much more. Dell has dropped the price of my chosen next phone by $200, for all that I can't buy it because I don't have an American address (I may at some point need to borrow someone's) and I've suddenly been filled with an overwhelming urge to have a TV in my room. I've not had one for the last 23 years and I'm suddenly worried I'm missing out. A 19 inch from Kogan (they're a cheap online company - Dad's telly on the boat came from them and it's going great) with DVD and USB input is about $200, but I've seen them on sale for less. As much as I'd love a big bitchin' screen, that's about the biggest I can fit on the wall opposite the bed. It's still plenty bigger than my 12" laptop though, and way bigger again than the 5" I can spare in the corner of my screen when I'm using the internets. I may wait a while on that though - the Dell Venue Pro has dropped to $300 and whereas before I was just vaguely considering the notion (as I am now with the idea of a telly) now with the price drop it's left me thinking maybe I should keep paying rego in 3 month lots instead of doing it for the whole year all at once and buy the phone with the money gap - kinda like a very odd buy now/pay later.

It's kinda a wonder how I manage to do my own taxes and still get plenty of money back, when I'm clearly useless with finances - I'm not sure "I want that" (add to cart) is the best financial strategy...

Nawww.

I really tried. I started charging my phone regularly*. I bought it some new batteries. I started using it to check my emails 3 or 4 times a day.

And now, it's gone and fucked itself.

Naturally, I'm a bit bummed. I like my phone. It came from Hong Kong a couple of years ago and cost me about $150, which was fantastic at the time for an unlocked phone with a full qwerty keyboard, running Windows Mobile. We've still got crappy Nokias in at Woolies for more than that. And sure, I might not have used it all that much, but it's web browsing was fantastic and it let me check hotmail from the same screen as my text messages. It could play Top Gear, and I could read novels on it, or use it as an MP3 player. With the exception of the fact that it sometimes refused to sent SMSes (easily fixed with the well documented turning-it-off-and-on-again function) it's been utterly, utterly fantastic. Except that time the front fell off at the Longerenong BnS ball, but I superglued it back on.

Thankfully, it's not fucked-fucked. It's still on, and looks fine, but it's taking at least a minute to load into SMSes, and twice that for emails. I tried to add a contact today and gave up at the end of my 15 minute tea break, having spent at least half of it trying. I suspect, since I use it so rarely, that it will suffice for the next month or so, and I have my spare phone if I get desperate.

Tonight, in the best traditions of sticking with what I know, I've found my phone again on eBay and bought it. Not the exact same one, this is the 3G version.

Clearly, it's a bit longer, but when you consider the sheer amount of stuff in my handbag, an extra centimetre or so of phone wont make much difference. What's more it cost pretty much exactly the same as the last one.

Unfortunately, that's money I could have spent on a bundle of Central Park. Or put towards some new boots. Or paid my car rego in February, or gotten my licence renewed.

It's my birthday on Saturday people. Though I'll settle for Jeremy Clarkson's new DVD (The Italian Job I think it's called) or a bookshelf/cubeshelf thingie. 1.2m wide, 1.8m tall please. Don't mind the colour, and 40cm deep is plenty.


*by "regularly", I mean sometimes. And by sometimes, I mean occasionally. When I remembered, and I could find a cable that fit. And could be bothered.

There are so many better things I could do with my time, but...

Even though it leaves a lot to be desired as a drawing program, I love playing around in flash.

It uses something called vectors, which is a way the computer cleverly works out what you meant to do from what you did. In high school we jokingly referred to it as a make it good button, and I'm in love with the results. I was trying to do some cute versions of drinks to add to my Lower South East Ladettes collection, but then I got distracted by the urge to draw monsters. I'm still particularly proud of my little cocktail with an umbrella in the middle. That's really cute, but not something any of us really drink. Bundy Red is our "official" drink (even though Casey prefers Stones, I like Cruisers and Becky will drink anything) but my tiny version of the bear on the label is rubbish, so these at least will remain silly, self indulgent, I-didn't-get-enough-photos-from-Helen-to-do-what-I-was-gunna-do-tonight procrastinations.

Also, I appear to have forgotten to put tyres on my little ute's hubcaps. Whoops. That will completely spoil the ride. Good thing I'm taking the Swift.

I think the reason I'm distracting myself is that I'm feeling an urge to get sewing all afternoon, but I'm stuck working. Real life sucks. I have three more days of 8 hour late shifts before I can get stuck into something, though I'm not sure what. Hopefully work should start to ease off now that the public holidays are over, and I wont be so desperate to just bum once I get home, and I'll start sewing after work again. 

And maybe I'll run out of Time Team and lose that as an excuse to procrastinate. I've got about 7 complete ones left, and that's only a night or two's worth. Not that I have an actual project cued up, but I've got plenty of part-done ones to get cracking on.

And I want a cute case for my tablet. I'll make it a pretty outfit as thanks for playing all my Time Team, and leaving my laptop free for doodling and trawling the internets.

This, that and the other...

So my tablet got here today and I've spent most of the night playing with it. I've installed MioPocket over the silly onboard OS without bricking it (yay) but it's taking forever to load anything, so I think I'll be fiddling for a while yet. I wish I could just put the same version of pocket PC that I have on the others onto this - it's older but it does everything I want it to. It's a shame that that's not how these little buggers work.

I also got a dozen fat quarters in the mail today - flourish by alisha.place.frost for STUDIOe

There are a couple of doubles in there, but I only paid $26 for the lot. I really like them though, and even though I've got a full week of work ahead of me before christmas, they are making me want to get into doing another quilt. I still haven't decided on a backing or binding for the other one yet so there's no progress there, and Bob's quilt is still rolled up on my little pile ready to be quilted (with the Autumn Nutmeg quilt, which also hasn't got a back yet)

Fortunately, I'm all done for Christmas, with the exception of making two jellybears for Helen to give to Bob and Esther. If I had to do any more than that I'd probably chuck in the towel and say I didn't wanna do it. Christmas that is.

I'm kinda amazed at how into Christmas some people are. I guess 22 isn't prime Christmas age. I have made a headband out of some Christmas fabric and that's about it, if you don't count the spending of hundreds of dollars on present and the resumption of binge drinking.

Speaking of alternate reality party me, in the truest traditions of party photos, most of them were blurry, over flashed, and too close to the face to use. This one is kinda blurry, and still doesn't really show you much of my top at all, but at least I look fairly nice.

I wish I knew why my eyes always come out as brown in photos, when they're blue in the mirror. And I wish I knew how to fix it in photoshop without making myself look demonic.