29.4.10

red & pink





so this week i finally finished this quilt - that i started two and a half years ago. oops. i launched into it with enthusiasm at the time, but was put off when it came to the "sandwiching" and binding. had read about it in magazines but somehow it seemed really hard and i shelved the project, temporarily. the other day i decided i wanted it done by this winter and hatched a plan to cheat on the binding to make it be done quicker. my mum said "no no no, the binding is the easy part" so i was like "ok then, you have to help!"
one long afternoon later it was actually done, and it wasn't anywhere near as hard as i thought it would be. things were not helped though by my poor choice of fabric, and general laziness/insistence that it just be done, today, no matter what.
the final result is somewhat bumpy, lumpy and skew-if, but i'm not concerned about that. it does however weigh a tonne rendering it not as practical as i imagined....
oh well, things you learn.

25.4.10

blue

a pin cushion, with little chinese people clinging to the edge.
so i had a busy week and i let my google reader get a bit overgrown... had a nice time this morning catching up on everything but was quite amazed to come across not one, not two, but three blogs that i read categorizing their photos by colour!
on wednesday pip from meet me at mikes posted about green here then red here.
on tuesday the satorialist posted a series of pictures about hot pink (but i can't seem to make it link to just the story).
and on monday abby from abby try again posted a story about blue here.
nothing brings my mind serentity more than seeing things sorted out by colour, and it is the reasoning behind this entire blog. by the same token, seeing colours that don't belong together, or just seeing too many colours at once, makes my brain somewhat unsettled.
most stuff in my house is clustered by colour, the wardrobe, the linen cupboard etc. it started with the book cases - i saw a photo in a magazine about 6 years ago of a woman's bookcases that had all the books organized by the colour of their spines and it suddenly became a mission for me. once i had done that it made so much sense to me i somehow kept going with other things!
so... weird to see 3 other bloggers sorting by colour in one week... what does it mean??

22.4.10

red & white

my niece ella, making gingerbread men/ducks/fairies/shapes on the weekend.

17.4.10

pink & green

the wasabi peas i was eating yesterday when i came home from work. the rob ryan tea towel was a freebie with the current inside out magazine, which i think is a pretty awesome score. the little dish is one of a set from the op-shop in various pastel shades. i love wasabi. it canes me, but i can't stop eating it.

13.4.10

red & white

seven stars praying mantis kung fu - yes its a real thing! but it sounds so freaking awesome! according to a random website here the moves in praying mantis kung fu replicate the moves a praying mantis makes to capture and maim its prey, characterised by a claw hook made with the hands. seven stars is the most popular variety in china. "the praying mantis insect, with its quivering intensity and aptitude for cannibalism, is hardly the model of a "gentle" kung fu style. Thus, one should not be surprised to learn that praying mantis kung fu, or Tang Lang in Chinese, is perhaps the most ruthless kung fu style of all". seen on william street, northbridge.

9.4.10

brown



for some reason i have managed to gather myself quite a collection of fondue forks - that i never use. i have had fondue a few times and think it makes for a very strange meal because every bite you eat kind of ends up tasting the same and after a while you feel a bit sick. but i like cheese. i'd like to have fondue again. just a little bit, not so much i feel sick. and really just so i can use the forks.

3.4.10

yellow & brown



many years ago, at a place of previous employment, i found a plastic bag full of cotton spools under the sink in the ladies loo. i asked around to see if anybody would mind if i took it home and nobody did. nobody seemed to know why on earth it would be there in the first place. it was mostly the old wooden sorts, like these, with a few of the modern cardboard ones as well, and also a few zips, two tins of dress making pins and receipt from 1956 for a cardigan from "the economic store - perth's popular price store". its in ye olde pre-decimal money which i have never understood so i can't tell you how much it was. its so old the phone number is tiny and has letters in it: BF1745.
according to the receipt the economic store was on the corner of hay & william streets, but i'm not sure which corner. i would assume the one where the train station is now. google tells me it was destroyed by fire in 1921 but not much else. there are records for pictures of it in the state library so they must have rebuilt or were a chain or stores... but i'm not going to research it now.
also in the bag was a packet of "british snaps" which sounds like a biscuit or something but they are actually what are now more american-ly known as "press studs".