cover your eyes

“You’ve got to just be cool” Mr You tells me. His Fonzie like mantra rang straight through both ears as I filled with excitement to the point of giddiness this week when I received a comment from Shauna.

Shauna’s What’s New Pussycat was the first blog I started reading regularly, and I still do, the first one that made me get the point of blogs. I’ve been reading her posts for years now; she’s wickedly funny, entertaining, and an impeccable writer. Even though I’m a huge fan (or maybe because of it) I’ve only ever lurked, so when she left a comment for me this week I completely freaked out.

Before thinking it through I dashed to her site and (sadly in the most uncool fashion) left the gushiest, most babbly comment EVER. I can’t even remember what I said now, something that resembled a giddy star-struck teenaged girl. I think I even compared myself to Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch. eeek!

It was pret-ty bad.

The next morning flashes of the incident popped into my head. That awful feeling you get the morning after a big drunken office Christmas party and awake with a bad case of make-up smear among other things, flooded my entire body. That feeling of distant, unsure, but impending regret.

Pensively, through and apprehensive grimace, I clicked on the link to where I last left the offending comment… and it was gone! (that’s a bad sign)
BUT what’s worse, the entire post on which I left the comment was also GONE! Completely disappeared! No trace what so ever. That’s a really BAAAD sign.
(I hoped that maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing, but in every messy morning after somewhere deep down you know it’s real.)

I don’t know what happened, and it hurts me to think about. I eventually ran the whole scene past Mr You, prefaced with “Am I being paranoid, or does this seem bad?”

“OMG you’ve done it now” He shook his head “What have I told you? You’ve got to just chill out and be cool”

After a day of biting my lip and chewing my fingernails I returned to the scene of the crime. They say the guilty always do. And as though under a socially-spazmostic spell (or curse) of some kind, I left yet another long babbly comment on the next post. I couldn’t stop myself. WHY????

Anyway, it appears that Shauna has been watching nature shows about being under predator attack in the wild and has assumed the favoured survival pose. Fold your arms in tight, protect your vital organs, drop your head, avoid eye contact, stay very very still and don’t… make…. a…. sound.

Sorry Shauna. (gulp). I didn’t mean to creep you out. I guess I've learnt that I’m more of a Joanie than a Fonzie.

farm flossy

My Illustration Friday attempt for "farm".

After realising (when I was young) that neither my parents nor Santa were ever going to give in and get me a horse, my next tactic was to ask for a cow. I may not have been able to trot along on top of a cow, but I had a vision of me walking through the neighbourhood lazily chatting away to my cow, easily leading her by a rope as she willingly followed chewing on a straw of hay. How could Mum say no to a cow? It could keep the lawns nice and tidy and give us milk, it was a perfect plan, (despite having nowhere to keep it).

When I asked Mum she laughed and told me “You couldn’t keep a cow, they have to be milked before dawn every morning”
I’ve always enjoyed sleeping in you see, it’s a bit of a joke for my family.
She continued, “By the time you got out of bed the poor cow would have an udder so full of milk it would probably burst!”

I never got a cow… or a sheep (which was the next thing I asked for).
So this illo is my interpretation of a farm run by me; tidy lawns, neglected cows.

more on twins

Last weekend gave me two new insights into my recent fascination with twins.

The first was catching up with a friend I went to school with (I haven't seen her in 12 years, she's here on holiday from New York where she now lives). She is an identical twin, or at least that's what I had assumed all these years... It turns out that they're not identical (they're the other type). Even though they look identical, one is left handed and the other is right handed. Who knew?!
She was telling us how they did a Disney-like switcheroo at school one day, and pretended to be each other for a whole day (although she said it was really hard writing with the wrong hand all day long).

Did you know identical twins have exactly the same DNA? I didn't.

The second insight, well not really an insight, more of an interesting fact really....
Anyway, it was when we were at the Ben Folds concert. He was speaking about his twin daughters, telling us one was born around 11pm before midnight, and the other a few hours later after midnight. So even though they are twins, they have different birthdays, and GET THIS, are different star signs!!!! How cool is that!?


EDIT: I should really get into the habit of checking my facts more before posting. Mr You quietly mentioned to me that Ben Folds has a twin daughter and son, not twin daughters as I had said.
And I also want to thank my good friend Jen from Island Arts who seems to know much more than me about twins. She let me know that my twinny-friend could very well be an identical twin after all as it is not uncommon for identical twins to have reversed features (i.e. right and left handed). Thank-you and sorry for the clumsy post, I just got a bit too excited I guess.

dreamscape

A while ago I had a crazy dream, Shoofly did a painting of it for me (for the swap we did), it arrived last week. Isn't it great?! I love it.
It's bigger and more dark and moody than her normal pieces, and the details are amazing; I love the spider in her hair and on her dress and the incredible Howls Moving Castle building in the background. But the coolest bit is that the girl even looks like me; big head, little body, blue-grey eyes and long hair with curls on the ends (the hair is even parted on the same side).
Anyway I'm so thrilled to have one of her pieces, it's beautiful and completely different to seeing it on a monitor.
Not only that, I also got a Polly print, a glass pendant and a colour-in book that Shoofly did for her job once! Such a fun package, many many thanks.

Last weekend's summer weather was short lived and we're back to pouring rain. We went to the Sydney Opera House on Saturday night to see Ben Folds play with the Sydney Symphony Ochestra. It was excellent, a bit strange at first but then they got used to each other by the second song and the rest was quite incredible.

Spent all day yesterday getting a start on sewing a new lot of bags. Rainy days aren't so bad when there are bags to be made.

safe as houses

My Illustration Friday attempt for "safe".

I would love to know how or where the expression "safe as houses" originated. Does anyone know?

archipelago

I have a little tradition: ever year I go to see the Spring Flower Show at David Jones (a fancy department store). It's on in the first week of Spring every single year, and every year I'm amazed. The window displays and whole first floor are decked out with live flowers, plants and trees. This years theme is "Archipelago: a sea of living colour", so amongst the orchids and frangipanis were palm trees and giant tiki totems, as the store became a mini Tahiti. The windows were decked out like Gauguin paintings, while others were like underwater reefs. It was less fragrant than other years, but still delicious.

shoofly's bag

Shoofly finally got the bag I made for her, so now I can share it with you guys without spoiling the surprise.

The brief from her was that she likes to carry a very small bag, 6x7 inches with a 51inch strap, and a zipper to close it. (She must wear it across her body with the bag part sitting at hip height). She mentioned that she prefers subdued colours and that she normally wears plain colours, (not a bright pattern person). I looked up her bio and found out that her favourite colour is green, so I started there.

Rather than using patterns as the main feature, I wanted to focus more on interesting fabric textures (but still keep it subtle).

I’ve had the soft olive green Egyptian cotton in my stash for a while. It has a lovely almost fluffy-flannelette feel to it, but you wouldn’t know this unless you touched it.
The main body area of the bag (the purple and brown) was loosely inspired by Shoofly’s recent shoe purchase.
I was a very happy shopper the day I bought the purple fabric. It’s a raw Indian pure silk usually costing around $70 a meter, but I managed to pick it up for half the price! There’s no other way to describe it but sublime. It once again feels soft and almost fluffy, and you’d never really guess it was silk as it has more of a linen look to it.
(Shoofly: Because of this silk you won’t be able to chuck the bag in the washing machine, unfortunately it’s dry clean only).

I added a very dark brown velvet ribbon, once again inspired by the shoes.

Back to the front flap…

The leaf fabric is a vintage piece of upholstery fabric that I have a few small scraps of. It was left over from the cushions of a cane lounge we had in our house when I was a child (when we lived in the hot, tropical, rainforresty, north end of Australia). I’ve sewn some light blue lines over the top for decoration, and left one of the edges unfinished. The other edge is bound with a bit of the bag strap (to make it more coherent), it comes beyond the bottom edge to make it easy to grab when opening the bag. I’ve also sewn on some buttons to tie all of the colours together, add weight and give a cute crafty look.

Engineering wise, this was the trickiest bag I’ve made so far, (I don’t use patterns when I sew, or recipes when I cook – mind you I probably should get a recipe book as I’m not very good at cooking at alllll).
Because the silk is quite delicate I lined the entire bag in a strong pre-washed calico, and also a thin layer of wadding to give it body and make it sit in the right shape (not go floppy and have the rounded corners sit round, even when there was stuff in the bag).



There were a few annoying yet common traits about small bags that I really wanted to avoid. Even though it’s small I wanted it not to be squishy so I added an inch of depth (which I lined with heavy weight interfacing to keep it sitting square). I also wanted to make sure that it was easy to get your hand in there; there’s nothing worse than a small bag that you have to force your hand in and out of. To avoid this I made the zip extend an inch down either side of the bag, not just along the top, to make the opening larger.

The lining is a cute pyjama like print, which once again ties the green and purple together. I prefer light coloured lining in my bags, it make it easier to find stuff.
And finally the strap is a subdued blue with a purple-ish pattern.

Shoofly has told me that she loves it (and I can’t tell you how relieved I am).
I had heaps of fun making it, and I hope she wears it every day!