If no-one else will speak the truth, then I must.

The hashtag for Finish It 2013 looks like it says fini shit 2013.

Maybe consider a hyphen next year?

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.

Still Alive.

Hi everybody. I just wanted to let you know that I'm not dead. Nor have I joined the circus, or a cult, or the French Foreign Legion. Nor, contrary to what you may have heard, do I have a new boyfriend, and, especially, I have not gotten back together with my ex boyfriend. Really.

Actually, the reason that I haven't been posting anything is because, quite simply, I haven't been sewing anything. Until before a couple of nights ago, my sewing for the last month or so had consisted entirely of me hemming jeans and adding ribbons to kids sized shirts to be waist ties. Kids sized shirts aren't that flattering to the waistline.

A couple of nights ago though I remembered that it was only a couple of days till christmas, and more to the point I realised that, even after buying pretty much every single red and green checked fabric in the Mount, that I at no point had bought the right one to make myself a replica of the stocking from the the season 3 Community christmas episode, but then I realised that that it didn't matter because the pink and green on-point-check from the DS range (I think) before last that was chilling in my stash was kinda perfect in every way except that it was pink instead if red, but whatever, no-one cares. So I made a couple of stockings in the fandom-y spirit.

Not that anyone really gets it. But for those who do, yes, they are big enough to wear as a hat.

And then, of course, yesterday, I realised that I knew exactly what to make a couple of my friends for christmas, but, in pretty much the story of my life, I had like 5 hours to make them all.

First up I made another stocking for EmmStaff. It's ever so slightly smaller than the green ones, and she forgot to come in and get it in time for christmas, so Annalise and Hamish held it up tonight after work while I took a photo after work. But it's made with some Birds Of Norway fabric (it's a Kaufman from a few years ago) and it's one of the most innately cool fabrics I've ever bought, without at any point giving away the fact that it knows it's an innately cool fabric. Which pretty much sums up Emm => very cool, doesn't realise it yet, and cause it's not actually a christmas fabric, and because she turns 18 in eight days, she's gunna use it as a birthday stocking.

And then I also made some tumblr things into plushies. And didn't take photos. Annalise took a photo of hers though: a pair of plusies comprising the message icon and the notification icon.

I made two of the other girls plushies too, I just need to wait for them to put them on the internets. In th meantime, happy christmas everyone, from me and the 6 ciders I drank earlier.

Puh-ride.

So over the weekend the kidlets got to go to a big dinner thingie and get their award from the mayor for the pageant. Tonight when I got home I noticed this next to Graham's bowls. I think he deserves it.

Life choices: Validated.

My mum said to me a few weeks ago (I think it was when I was churning out the adorbs halloween animal ears) "why can't you and your father use your powers for good instead of evil?"

However, all my life choices were validated when ABC local radio's Stan Thompson said that he was particularly impressed by my dinosaur dog costume, as worn by Graham in the local Christmas Pageant on Saturday.

Admittedly, in all the photos it looks like there's a stuffed toy dinosaur trying to hump him. I'm gunna say that it's my retaliation for all those times when he's humped my leg. Powers For Evil!

Anyway, The Bedrock Kids float won the "encouragement award" and made it into the paper. There were 5 copies of The Border Watch in our kitchen tonight when I got home... one on each of the 4 tables, and one in my hand as I walked in.

Honestly, encouraging us isn't that good of an idea. With no encouragement at all my father built a four-bike-powered Flintstones car on a whim and I managed to design, draft and construct a perfect doggie-dino costume in an evening. Admittedly, I did need a bit of encouragement to help with the kids costumes, but that was because mum assembled them and then wanted me to sew the spots and triangles on them. And she always wanted me to do it in the mid-morning, instead of at 2am like I normally would.

And she's got the nerve to call me evil. I think it's not only my father that I get that from...

Story of my life.

This week I altered a dress for a friend for her 18th birthday this weekend. Then on friday night I sewed myself a gorgeous navy blue cowl-neck sheath dress to wear out with her.

Unfortunately we got a bit carried away with the celebrating and the drinking and forgot to take any photos :(

It's working... *cries*

 

Two weeks ago, a man from telstra called my mum and told her that he could upgrade her internet plan. We were going to be getting 500gig of internet a month, at higher speeds, and a bonus free wireless dongle to use if we were away from home.

What we actually got was a 75 hour internet dropout and a new, separate phone bill for $30p/month for the wifi dongle. Data usage not included.

I've spent the last 3 days either on the phone to tech support or waiting for them to call me back. Someone today finally told us that the upgrade was actually a cancellation of the old plan and a commencement of a new one, so all our usernames and passwords were different, and that got us back online for all of 10 minutes (basically, enough to say thankyou so very much, we love you, bye and for it to die again) before the modem went aargh, I can't cope with ADSL2+ I don't wanna and gave up.

Tonight I borrowed a modem from Steven and smashed the keyboard until it took pity on me and worked. I tearfully hugged my mother and she went to bed (it was 3am by this point. She was working at the pub tonight) and I moved it all to my room and smashed the keyboard again until it all started working down here as well.

I'm so over tech support. And I still don't know what a DNS is, or why it was so hard for all these things to find it, but I don't care right now.

Happy Halloween.

It was so nice to come home tonight and not have to make anything. I think I was so excited by the fact that I could just spend the night on facebook and tumblr and youtube that I got a bit carried away, which is why it's now 5.30am.

Anyway...

A cool cat, a cow and little red riding hood. All made by me.

A cool cat and a cow holding tails, and getting photobombed by the boy who couldn't be arsed doing a costume, so we made him wear teddy bear ears.

The ears of the cow... she didn't wear them because they kept flopping over her eyes.

Group piccie.

As much as I was sooooo sick of working on this stuff by last night, I'm also so glad I did it. Only two of the daytime staff did anything, and only two of the people in this photo (the witch and the bloodsplattered guy) aren't wearing at least a little something I made. But we had a fantastic night, got quite a few compliments (a couple were skeezy, but they were balanced out by the adorable ones from little kids) and generally enjoyed ourselves.

The fact that I can now, still, 7 hours on, still feel the ghosts of the sunglasses/headband combo pressing against the sides of my head seems like a small price to pay.

And it's over...

As of 10 hours from now (8 hours of which will be spent sleeping) my holidays are over. Sad times, though, admittedly, considering it was only 5 days off, short times too.

I've spent most of the last 5 days sewing costumes for Halloween, from a whole heap of ears:

To a truly bitchin' Red Riding Hood cloak, that I don't even get to wear because I agreed to do it for Chantelle.

And a cow print onsie that's given me a lot of trouble because it's for someone who's a completely different size to me. And that doesn't matter with animal ears or badass crepe georgette (why did I pick that fabric? It was horrible to work with) cloaks. But on me, the crotch is almost down to my knees, and the legs are waaay too long, which stopped me from putting feet on it like she wanted. I've put some buttonholes at the ends of the legs though, so I can make her some button on feet later.

And a half dozen boring black capes that I'll probably insist management wear, since I like the idea that they can be the villains of the piece. I'm still going with being a cool cat. Brittni (who we often call Britta) is going to be one too, so I think that means that halfway through the shift I need to get myself some white wings and a halo and be the cool cat that had too many drugs.

Hopefully I'll meet some more Community fans in the process. The world needs more cool cats.

Me ow.

The distinct advantage that quilting has over dressmaking is that the photographs, and therefore the bloggage, are a whole lot easier. But, as ever, I'm busy being too obsessed with my wardrobe to quilt. And too crap at taking selfies to logically explain the last few days worth of sewing. Also, I just realised it's 5am, which would explain why I can't words.

...Anyway. I'm still very into Community, and Britta, with my spirit wardrobe, was wearing a denim jacket with grey fleece sleeves and a hood. I still had a denim jacket in my cupboard that had survived every round of salvo-ing purely for the reason that I felt it was important that I still owned at least one, even though I haven't worn it in at least two years, due to a strong fear of coming off too double-denim-y. And I'd rather die than come off double-denim-y. But last weekend I dyed a pair of my skinny jeans black, and that means I can wear a light blue denim at the top without looking at all matchy-matchy. So I chopped out the sleeves and drafted myself a hood design and the only grey heavyweight fleece they had at Spotlight was kinda weird fluffy on one side, slightly silky on the other and it was $13p/m but hey, I wanted a denim jacket with grey fitted sleeves and a hood and I wanted it by the next day. And I did it, and I had it, and it's bitchin, and it's nice to know that after two years of just chilling in the cupboard, it's going to go back into rotation.

As well as this, it's Halloween on Wednesday. Now, for the most part, I'm very opposed to having Halloween in Australia. Good on the Americans, it seems like a lot of fun, but when it's done in Australia it comes off as a Valentines-Day-esque grab for the consumer dollar. On the other hand, we don't get to do enough fancy dress, and Wednesdays are (sadly) not really drinking days (though admittedly, I drank this Wednesday) so the initial plan for a fancy dress drinking party got canned. But there was vague mention of Woolies going fancy dress for the day and I'm pushing for it. I want this. I want costumes at work day, to the point that I have drafted a onesie pattern to make for one of the girls at work in cow print. I want this to the point that I bought 5 metres of black cotton lawn from the $1 clearance rack at spotlight to bulk churn out some capes. I want this to the point that I've offered to make some animal ear headbands, because animal-ears are a traditional lazy-person's costume.

Hey look, teddy-bear ears. And my newly altered jacket. Twofer selfie! I'm actually still wearing these, four hours later. I think when I get up tomorrow I might put them on and pretend like they're not even there, just to see people's reactions. I think they are adorbs, and plan on mauling the faces off anyone who disagrees, just like a real bear in a badass re-purposed jacket would.

But, keeping with the theme of wanting more of Britta's wardrobe, my personal animal ears option is the "cool cats" from season 2.

My sunnies are a bit different and my leather jacket is out in the car, and also on this first version they're a bit too big, but I'm sure I can pop them on someone's head. I need another cool cat to be cool with me.

The handy thing about making these is that I'm sewing the ears onto the headbands by hand, and you can still watch TV while you're handsewing.

DVD commentaries, come at me.