Ahem. Excuse me...

Still no sign of Honeycat. Tomorrow I'll do the rounds of the vets and the pound, and if there's still no sign, I do what I did last time a cat vanished into the midsts of time, and quilt with a fervor not seen since... I dunno. Someone did something fervently, I suppose.

Sorry, my brain has appeared to turn into mush. Actually, although the human brain does appear quite mushy, even at the best of times, it is actually a fragile and delicate thing. That's why we have skulls, to protect it when we need to go around headbutting people. Which is thankfully not often. But sometimes. So thankyou skull.

Fortunately there's only tomorrow at work before I have a (clearly) much needed day off. I think I might use it to do the super easy quilt top in the black, red and white Mingle bundle. Or I could quilt Bob's quilt, like I've been saying I will. That should bring Honeycat home, she loves to sit on whatever it is I'm trying to wrangle through the machine.

Dunno. But no matter what I'm doing, I will be wearing my totally awesome Lower South East Ladettes shirt.

Casey doesn't want me to because she doesn't have hers yet, but as I've repeatedly pointed out, that is not my fault. She, like the rest of you, simply has to pick a hot pink* polo to her liking, take it to Jagga Jagga and give the man $20ish. My work is done.

*I've even offered to dye a white or differently-pink top if it helps.

Worried.

Honeycat has gone walkies. I last saw her yesterday when we had a big ol' snuggle at about 3 before I went to work, and last night Casey said "Hello Pookie" to something* while I was in the loo having a read while I waited for Casey to get off my laptop and give me my bedroom back, but noone's seen her since.

And I know cats have a tendency to disappear and reappear, but Babycat went walkies and never came home, so I'll be over here, doing my worried thing.

Even though Terry Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat is very funny and often scarily true,  contained therein is the knowledge that cats can travel through time, and that makes going out in the yard to find her a damn sight more difficult. The sound of a shaken box of food obviously travels, but through time? Even though I clearly have a Schrodinger cat, I don't think I have Schrodinger catfood.


*one of our friends has a cat called Pookie. I'm convinced Honeycat will end up with serious psychological issues from having two names, but they can't seem to help themselves.

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.

Bogan-geeking. It's the new thing...

I think I've been watching too much Time Team - my brain is starting to dribble out my ear a little bit. But it's not like when I got caught up in Chuck, where it all flowed into each other, because I'm not even watching them in order. But paired with the distractions of New Years shindigs, I'm not even feeling motivated to plug in the machine. I feel bad about it, but then I come to my laptop and put on Time Team, and, currently at least, get cross at the French for daring to try to invade Mother England. Obviously I'm not British, but in the same way I tend to get passive drunk while chillaxing with the bogans, I find myself getting passive GB patriotism when I watch too much Time Team or Top Gear.

Maybe if I could find a decent quilting show as opposed to the hideously staid American ones on Austar, I could get passive craftiness?

I'm thinking of getting going on Casey's Southern Cross Quilt in hopes of getting it done for her birthday (on the 15th, the same day as the Harrow BnS ball), but I've bought her a real present so it's not super important. One thing I really need to do in the next two weeks is sew up the tear in my epic fur coat which got torn by a boy at my last BnS ball, as well as find my ball gown - I think it was lucky enough to be in the back shed, and not get landed on by a tree in the main storage shed, so all it should need is a wash and it's sorted.

What I'm really looking forward to is going to Jagga Jagga on Tuesday to get my Lower South East Ladette shirt. Casey wouldn't let me go pick it up before we went down to Nelson because I hadn't organised to get hers done (mine was the test run) and I wasn't allowed to have it if she didn't. I spent a damn long time on those designs, and I wanna see how it's turned out. I'm also immensely proud of the fact that I managed to leapfrog Becky's shirt plans, and that mine will be way more awesome.

Would I be taking it too far if I spoonflowered the designs and made a quilt from them? The opportunity to bogan-geek-out on that scale would absolutely motivate me to start sewing again. 

2011 Resolutions.

Tonight I figured out my new years resolution. A little bit late, I'll admit, but oh well. Last year I went with "drinking cranberry juice even when I can wee" and it probably lasted about 4 months, which I deemed a success. I figured I couldn't do "eat less fast food" since I had KFC for tea, and "buy less fabric" just doesn't feel right. "Blog more often" is a bit of a silly one for me - "blog less" might be a better one. I've settled on two resolutions.

Resolution 1 - Try to keep my phone charged. I would say that currently at least two days a week my phone is flat. I've bought 2 spare batteries but they're taking their sweet arse time getting here. It's on the charger now, so, yay, progress.

Resolution 2 - Check my junk folder more. I never used to bother, but hotmail keeps thinking that you guys commenting is spam, so I've been going there more. From now on, any time I see there's anything in there, I will see what it is, and either delete it or move it to the right place.

So there you go. Resolutions. But lazy ones.

My first Posting of Lyrics. I've turned to the dark side.

So in the spirit of all this self worth we've been finding lately, here's the opening verse and chorus of a song I've been liking recently. It's called If the lights go out and it's by Katie Melula.

They say the world must end somehow,
They say the end's not far from now;
I think they're wrong,
Don't worry your life away,
Start living for today,
Don't think about tomorrow.

And if the lights go out on all of us,
In just a year or two.
And if the sky falls down like pouring rain,
Then I'll be here with you.
I'll go down with you.

And like many a great song, I first heard it on the Woolies instore radio. A lot of my teenybopper co-workers diss it, but I think someone's done a damn good job, and they don't get any recognition at all. So Happy New Year to that person too.

Once again, all the blog titles I wanted have already been used.

I realised when I woke up this morning that I had gotten so distracted by new episodes of Time Team last night that I completely forgot to do a blog post.

Whoops.

Crafternoon got a bit distracted by a trip to the movies to see Gulliver's Travels, which was quite good, and then, since I was in town anyway, I figured I'd do all my running around. So I bought hot pink shirts, and went into Jagga Jagga, and talked to the man about getting them printed, and bought clothes, and booze, and food, and an esky for tonight, and I went to Spotlight too but I only spent $10 on a heap of eyes and a very cute red fabric with little birds on it, which doesn't match anything in my stash but which I think will make nice headbands.

After that - is a crafternoon still a crafternoon if it's held in the evening? Crafterevening doesn't have the same ring. And silly me had only taken the terribly not-fun task of cutting out the patterns for monsters. I got bored after 6 or 7, and gave up. And I got a blister on my thumb.

I used to love scissors. Helen called me SaraScissorHands when I was little because I was always always using them. But for the last 6 months I have been spoiled by the existence of the rotary cutter, and it's blister free method of chopping fabric into little bits. But I'm willing to concede, it's useless for cutting around the fiddly little bits of a small plushie. So am I really. Once I have picked a craft I can really only temporarily stray from it. Doing a couple of monsters in their entirety would probably be easier, but I still feel that it's more efficient to cut out all the bodies, then do all the faces, then make all the damn things at once. It just feels quite uninspiring to me at the time, especially since they're all ones I've done before.

No time for crafting today, since it is new years eve, and much fun/feralness/dunkenness/ boganness is to be had. We are boating from Donavans to Nelson thisafternoon. I have 16 cruisers and two ruskies. And a cute new esky, which is the exact right size for 18 premix bottles, which worked out well.

So, since I won't be in range of an internet :( till tomorrow night, Have a Happy New Year everyone. Personally I think that statement is a bit far-reaching, and we should all settle for having a lovely Saturday, before planning a lovely Sunday, just like we do every day, but what the hell. Every day should be nice, and we shouldn't only be saying that on December 31st.

Dude... Sweet... Dude... Sweet...

I really need to stay off the Vistaprint website. Everything I get off of it is the epitome of pointlessness, but gosh darn it's cool. Today I got two keyrings, a notepad, post it notes, a cap, a stamp, some little magnets and a big one you can stick to your car. All printed with our silly little "Save a horse, ride a lawnmower" logo*.

Yeah. You're all jealous you're not members of the Lower South East Ladettes. Logo by me of course, on my funky touchscreen, prone to overheating computer.

I should point out that we went with it because the boys wouldn't get us South East Pisshead Association shirts. But ours is so much cooler, because we have a proper custom logo as opposed to their silly picture of a ute. We're gunna get the logo printed on hot pink polo shirts. Might see if I can get that sorted tomorrow. Because... I don't have to work for the rest of the year! And I probably should get on with it, because it's two weeks till the Harrow BnS ball.

Before that though we have Crafternoon III - Crafters Never Sleep, and then NYE on Friday. I'll be going to Nelson with my bogan homies, and I don't start work till 5.30pm on Saturday, so that's plenty of time to recover. Some big days ahead, but I can't go to bed, since my Time Team episodes finished downloading today while I was at work. And I've loaded them onto my tablet to watch so my laptop doesn't overheat, and it's much too awesome of a setup to tell it to stop. Which is a problem because I've loaded seven hour-long episodes onto it. And I'm only onto the third. And it's after 2am already. And I need to be out of bed by lunchtime at least because I need to pick up Kelsey at 1.30. The name of Crafternoon 3 is surprisingly apt.

I know. My life is too awesome for words.

*which is an adaptation of last years NYE celebratory shirt logo (the big lady in a floating inner tube), and in honour of Big and Rich's excellent song Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.

Crafternoon II - Keepin' on Crafting

So today was the epic sequel that everyone's been waiting for. I had planned to go to Lincraft before I picked up Kelsey at 1, but then I didn't get out of bed till 12, so that didn't happen. Lucky me she needed buttons too so I still go to go to Lincraft.

Even though I was only gunna get one bundle, I ended up getting 3. These are the two I brought home - the third I bought because I was suffering from Getitforestheritis, a horrible affliction caused by the knowledge that Helen's making a retro tickertape quilt for Esther, and an uncontrollable desire to unnecessarily help. I have no idea what I'll do with these though, since I don't really have a design on the top of my head of a 16 fabric spectral retro quilt.

Since I've no plans yet for that, I figured I'd get started on one of the other ones. The purple, green and blue bundle I assembled ages ago seemed to be preferred to the pink, white and brown bundle, so I went with that. I only got as far as cutting my big squares before the girls went home, but I got stuck in while they had tea, and it all came together around 8pm.

Ah, the joys of photoshop. This is cobbled together from a couple of photos because I took the photo at Helen's right after I'd finished, and I didn't have a stool to take it from. Here's a real life photo.

I got home about 10.30 but unfortunately, the speedway was still on. Tonight was the start of the season and because we live so close, it's annoyingly loud. I haven't gotten anything done since I got home (not including the consumption of yet more mini pavs with whipped cream) and I'm not planning on it, and tomorrow will probably be a washout too since I'm back at work.

More money = more fabric though, so I suppose I don't mind. And it's my last shift for 2010.

Interesting... (or maybe not...)

I just posted in a comment that I have 5 USB sticks, two SD cards and a transflash in my handbag. This is interesting (to me anyway.) Four of the USBs (one on each keyring and two more) are 4gig and the Smiggle one with a ball maze on the back, which my little sister bought for me in Queensland is a 2gig. One SD card is a 4 and the other is a 2, and the Transflash is a 4 as well. So not including the Transflashes in my two phones (a two and a one) I have 28gig of data storage in my handbag.

Our pretty much useless home computer only has 20...

I have another two transflashes - and 8 and a 4 - for my tablet computer and three 2gig SD cards spread between my camera and two palm pilots. And I have two 750gig external harddrives that I know the location of, since there's another couple that have been lost to the mess of my room, and the tendencies of my father to drop trees on our storage sheds.

Not sure that there's a point to this, I'm just a bit shocked at myself. It's possible, just maybe, that I have enough.

Maybe.

Anyway, back to being a craft blog. I took my laptop to Crafternoon I - The Craftening (tomorrow will be Crafternoon II - Keepin' on Crafting) because I had to start work at 4 and knew I wouldn't get to really do much, so I figured instead I'd take the opportunity to pimp Helen's blog. I also got my neat 16ths cut for the first of my 3 bundles, and, tada!

The colouring looks quite strange in the photo, but I like the look of it in real life. That's the problem I suppose with taking photos in the middle of the night from directly above while standing on a chair, and it's why most of my final photos are of quilts lying on the grass.

There's also a big boo-boo in this quilt, but I think it's hard enough to see that noone will notice it. That's the great thing about this design - very few points have to line up, and the pieces are big enough that you don't notice when some of them are 2cm bigger/smaller than they're supposed to be. Yes, I could have shrunk them all down to the same size. But I'm lazy, and when it should only take two hours all up, you don't wanna add another 25% onto that fixing a piddly mistake.

So now I need to think of something to do at Keepin' on Crafting, the sequel to this Summer's smash hit "The Craftening" (because sequels to blockbusters tend to come out on Boxing day, and the public holidays this year are weird)

I think I'll go to Lincraft beforehand, since they still have 30% off, and maybe get another 8 f/q bundle. Then I only need to de-stash one more and I can make another quilt top.

Hopefully not fucking up this one. Even if it is only a little bit.