TLM's first sleepover

I never know what to get the boy for his birthday, which is why I always ask him. And if he does tell me, and it's something I can get him, then he kinda expects another - surprise - present as well. Well this time, he decided it would be nice to send TLM off to the relatives for the night so that we could have one-on-one time with no pressure to get up early in the morning.

And we did.

We expected that TLM would be all for it. And we expected she'd be really excited about it and possibly not actually sleep at all. I really didn't expect that she'd let me go without at least a little cry of insecurity. But she seemed really okay with me leaving - maybe because she and her beloved cousins were busy making up her blow-up bed, and possibly planning midnight mayhem.

I'm just about to go pick her up now, and then I'll know how much sleep she got.
BTW, I got the boy a Wii Fit. I think he liked it.

Piggy pox

Is swine flu the piggies' revenge for their horrific treatment in battery farms?

We had a little of excitement at work today, when the big boss rounded us all up for an emergency staff meeting. One of my colleagues is off sick with suspected swine flu!

To be honest, I'm not at all convinced the poor woman has it. She sounded like she had a minor cold, and probably it was only her recent trip to Australia that alerted the folks at the medical centre. I hope she doesn't have it because she's pregnant and I wouldn't want her baby to be traumatised in utero.

But on the other hand, the prospect of being quarantined at home for a whole week - on full pay, I'd expect - is not exactly going to give me nightmares tonight. I wouldn't expect the pox to make me any sicker than that month-long cold I had not long ago. And the boy and TLM wouldn't have to stay at home with me - they'd get their Tamiflu and take off to the library or the shops or something, leaving me lots and lots of lovely sewing time...

I think maybe I could do with a holiday.

Rubbish is smelly when it's not encased in plastic

So I was at the supermarket with my mum, and I was toting 4 of those reusable grocery bags with me. And my mum asks me why I don't want the (still) free plastic bags that they give you at the checkout. So I try to explain to her that the world already has too many plastic bags clogging it's oceans and filling the landfills. And that is why the boy and I use the reusables.

But what do you use for holding your rubbish? she asks.

Um...the old supermarket bags that we still have from previous shopping trips, I tell her.
Well, if you've got so many then you can give me some. I have lots of rubbish and not enough rubbish bags.

And then I remember that we are actually running low on those very instuments of planetary destruction. And what will we do when we run out? Why, we'll leave our reusable bags at home on our next trip to the supermarket, that's what. Because we sure as hell don't want to start paying for rubbish bags, do we?

So...does this make us namby-pamby play-at-eco-awareness semi-lefty hypocrits?

The hang-onto-it society

I have had no luck finding "gems" in the op shops. The stuff in the Salvation Army shop is mostly ex-Glassons and other retailers that specialise in the cheap 'n' cheerful. The stuff in the Red Cross shop is more of the same (though I did once find a Robyn Mathieson dress that was, unfortunately, a terrible colour for me).

And yet, bloggers across America seem to unearth vintage pillowcases, antique lacy bridal gowns and 60's retro fabrics all the time - and for very little.

Either I'm just terribly bad at snagging bargains (which, I'll admit, I am), or New Zealanders tend to hang onto their stuff for as long as possible - before selling it off on TradeMe. If our car-owning culture is anything to go by (i.e. we hang onto a car until the bodies fall apart from rust, and them try to flog it off to a student for a few hundred bucks), then this is an equally likely explanation.

I think I prefer the latter.

Dumb...just dumb

I was reading the Sunday paper this morning, in between dropping my mum off at church and waiting for her to finish up, when I came across the dumbest newspaper article I've seen in at least a week.

The article was called something like "What will you do when the recession ends?" The dumb thing was not even the question.

The dumb thing was that, they must have asked about 20 different people this question - but no one of them was someone who has been directly affected by the recession. Like, why the heck didn't they bother asking someone who'd be laid off recently?!

The fruit of my loins gets the fruit of my labours

I found out about a discount fabric place just out of the central city, so I spent a couple of Queen's Birthday hours looking around there. Fortunately, TLM was quite happy to accompany me, even though there was absolutely no promise of Dora fabrics (there weren't any). She even went around giving cuddles to lucky rolls of fleece and silkys. She was very keen indeed on the costume section, and at one point I worried that I would end up buying a length of sparkly sequinned stuff for goodness knows what.
It's probably not surprising that I ended up spending far more than I intended to, but I did get quite a few items:
- 3 x 2m lengths of knit (including one of merino), from which I intend to sew at least 3 winter tops
- some white cotton and interfacing, for collars for the two refashions I am still procrastinating over (the bogan shell top and the mens shirt -->women's top)
- a bag crammed with trims of all sorts, which ought to be handy for all kinds of TLM-related sewing
- and a length of pink polar fleece for TLM's scarf.

We made the scarf that afternoon, based on some instructions I found in a library copy of Sew What! - Fleece. We cut a piece of the pink polar fleece, cut tassles into each end and hand-sewed some sequinned, pale green trim at each end. TLM chose both the fleece colour and the trim.

I think she liked it. At the very least, she doesn't have an excuse to wear my scarves now.

Sales, schmales

Due to the economic recession, there are big fat sales everywhere. Shops are discounting heavily in order to lure in customers and move stock. Airlines are offering dirt cheap fares and holiday packages.

Yeah right.

I have yet to find a shoe shop that is willing to sell me a pair of good quality black leather riding boots for less that $350. That's not a bad price, but it's not a discount price either.

And now it looks like I will have to miss out on going to a wedding in Aussie because the cheapest return airfare from here to there (and that's not including an additional internal flight plus a bus ride) is still around $600. I'm pretty sure that's the normal fare.

Am I just out of the discounts loop or something? Because at this rate it looks like I'll be staying home and sending a really big wedding gift instead.

Starr...trekkin'...across the univerrrrrrse...

TLM's best mate lives right across the road, and her parents are just as keen as we are, on the idea of baby-sitting swaps.
So TLMBFF's (TLM's Best Friend Forever - is that what BFF stands for?) mum is coming over tonight. And the boy and I are heading out shortly for dinner and a movie.

Once upon a time my ideal date would have been a swish dinner and an arty (i.e. subtitled) movie. But one time, my date took me to see a Japanese film with many awkward sex scenes in it. I thought it a bit much for a first date, though I'm sure he was as surprised as I was.

Therefore, I am perfectly fine with the fact that tonight we will go and see the new Star Trek movie. It will be a shot of nostalgia for me, and hopefully sufficient special effects for the boy. We might even get to have dinner somewhere nice, rather than at the boring food hall downstairs from the cinema.

I'm still trying to decide whether to go all out and wear some clean jeans for the occasion. Maybe even some lippy...

go on, it'll be fun!

I saw the poster a couple of weeks ago, advertising the Baby Pops - a one hour show for little kids, in which the local orchestra plays kiddie tunes like Twinkle Twinkle and Old MacDonald, and the audience are invited to get up close to all those bassoons, violins and trumpets.

It was mentioned on Thursday evening, and within minutes the boy had logged onto the ticketing website and booked two tickets for TLM and me. I reeled in horror at the $8 booking fee (almost a third of the total cost of the tickets), but figured it would be fun for TLM and only a once-a-year thing anyway.

And it was fun. The conductor was cheesy, the hostess was dressed like a young MacDonald and someone even stood by the entrance giving out conducting batons (plastic straws, actually) to the kids. We learned how to conduct ("Up...down...left...right...now faster...good!"), we practised our animal noises, we sang, we even had a chance at holding and playing a baby-sized violin. At least, I did all those things. TLM kept trying to hold my hands down and telling me to stop singing. I think she might have been embarrassed by me.

It took approximately 60 minutes to get out of the parking building, compared to about 15 minutes to actually drive home. If we ever get TLM to go again, someone else can bloody drive her.

Forgetting to be productive

I was thinking today, how handy it would be if there were pockets in more of my clothes. And then I thought it would be really handy to have a little zip-up purse-y thingy to hold tampons, lip balm and all those other things that I might want with me when I use the Ladies', but which don't easily and discretely fit into one hand (and which a pocket would be really useful for).

So in my lunch break I went into one of those beautiful-things shops, and saw some cute little zip-up purse-y things, and made tsk-tsk noises when I saw the prices of those things. I could sew one up myself and it wouldn't cost me anything, I thought. And as I walked home in the icy wind with multiple layers of fleece about me, I pondered whether to make it out of bleached denim or the lime green quilting cotton. In my head, I alternated between choosing a plastic zip, and the metal zip from the boy's discarded jeans (the ones which are halfway to becoming a corporate-bogan shell top), and tried to decide whether my purse-y thing should be cylindrical, cube-like or flat.

Boring as I am, I was actually excited about making my own tampon holder.

And then...I got home and completely forgot about it. Now it's time to go to bed and the most productive thing I've done is put TLM to bed and wash some dishes.

Hog Hell

I remember the first and only time I'd ever been in a battery piggery - I was in Yorkshire, staying with a nice boy I'd met on holiday and his mum invited me to go for guided walk around the farm. The smell was so appalling and clingy that afterwards I had to shower and put all of the clothes I'd been wearing, into the washing machine.

But the really appalling thing was the size of the pig pens. The pigs were penned up in small groups and even smaller crates. The sows were penned in so tightly they couldn't turn around - I was told this prevented them from accidentally squashing their piglets.

And I smugly assumed that piggies in New Zealand ran wild and free-ish, like our deer, sheep and cattle.

Then I saw some film footage last night on 60 Minutes Sunday, that made me realise how wrong I've been all this time. The pigs in this farm - and apparently it's not unique - were confined one to a crate, and the crates were so small they could not turn around. Some crates looked big enough to allow the pig to lie down in despair, others didn't. Sows lay effectively immobilied for years like big, pink piglet machines.

It was pretty much as bad as the hen batteries I've seen, only worse because pigs are supposed to be even more intelligent than dogs.

It was so upsetting, and this is all legal. I just don't understand why pig farmers aren't subject to the same rules of humane treatment as other livestock in New Zealand.
So, no more pork sausages on the menu. And we will get getting all our bacon from Freedom Farms from now on.

Edited 23 May - Sorry Antoinette, the TV show I saw this on was Sunday, not 60 Minutes (those hour-long current affairs shows all look the same to me). I couldn't find the show on Youtube, but I did find some similar footage - also received by SAFE - from another piggery in New Zealand (about a year old), here's a link to a news story following the screening and here's a piece about it from SAFE.

Just one of those senior moments

"Hello, Healthline. How can I help you?"
"I'm ringing about my elderly mother. She's got one of those pill organisers? Well my brother re-filled her week's worth of pills tonight, including the ones for today. And she must have seen all those pills in the Saturday compartment and thought she hadn't taken them yet. So...um.. she's taken her day's medication twice over."
"Oh, bless..."

It turned out to be okay, but I'm glad I'm not there right now, listening to her accuse her offspring of trying to off her.

M'am

TLM's got the pukes real bad, but I'm going to post about me instead. Because I, at least, am not sick (yay!).

The most appalling thing happened on my walk home from work tonight. A young woman called me "m'am".

I understand "m'am" is fairly commonly used in the States, but here in New Zealand it's not. And when a young woman calls me "m'am", I can imagine how it must feel to a not-quite-pensioner when a boy scout insists on helping her across the street.

First, I wondered whether my outfit made me look matronly - I was wearing a knee-length sheepskin-style coat over a bright green tunic dress and black top, black tights and black ankle boots. Was the effect a little too much like I was trying to relive the 60's (I'm not that old)? Or maybe, because I had my hood up, my face was in shadow and it brought out the dark circles under my eyes?

Anyway, it's a bit of a shock when, for the last 30 years, people have assumed I was much younger than I really was.

Mothers Day review - Pretty relaxing, overall

TLM and the boy got me a lovely pink Mothers Day card with fluffy bits on it (you can tell who did the choosing), and made me bacon and banana hotcakes for lunch. I'm still waiting for my Wii Fit, which was bandied about as a potential Mothers Day present, but all in all it was pretty relaxing and lovely. I even got to spend a couple of hours sewing, which is pretty rare.

I've been trying to refashion a discarded pair of the boy's Lacoste summer jeans, into a shell top for myself. It might all turn out horribly bogan and unflattering, but I can't fight the urge to make it anyway. Trying to find creative solutions to the lack of fabric (there's too much of me to cover, there are rips in the knees and the whole front legs are kinda worn, I don't have a "stash" to fall back on, and I don't want to go hunting around in the op shops because the idea of wearing another man's pants on my body (unless it's the boy's) feels a bit yucky) occupies my mind in an enjoyable way.

I didn't forget to get a card for my mum, though I'm ashamed to say that that's pretty much all I did. It's not like in my younger days, when I would lovingly hand-sew a pink elephant soft toy and watch her casually toss it on the sofa to be farted on at the next opportunity. Nowadays I want Mothers Day to be fun for me, which means not spending too much time with her (harsh, but sometimes true). Before you lambast me for the ungrateful daughter that I am, I have already volunteered my services on Wednesday - my day off - to ferry her to any number of banks, supermarkets and purveyors of very large sacks of rice.

We still haven't found any spots on TLM, but she was grumpier than usual - either it's that time of the month, or she's got another bug coming.

I am not one of the elongated people

Apparently, in fashion illustration you aim to draw people with quite different body proportions than you would in other kinds of illustration. (This one was swiped from the Cornell University website - I hope they don't mind.)

You have to admit they are hardly realistic, but I can see why they'd do it - to sell clothes. Everyone knows that just about anything will look good on a 2-dimensional version of a flat-chested Barbie.

But what I don't understand is, why do sewing books and magazines - aimed at people just sewing for themselves and their families - tell you to draw the same way? Surely it is much more useful for 5' tall, cello-shaped woman with a bit of a tummy to draw all of her design ideas onto figure drawings that are also 5' tall, cello-shaped and with a bit of a tummy.

spotty what

We had a worrisome evening last week when TLM suddenly got extreme shivers right after her bath. She felt too toasty to the touch and couldn't eat all the next day.

She seems fine now, but the folks at her daycare said to be on the lookout for measles. So we've been keeping an eye out for the itchy scratchies.

And now, I've just found out that her best-est friend is down with chicken pox.

Well, they always say that if you're gonna get sick it's best to do so when you're young and able to bounce back with nary a hacking cough.

Good bargain

I went to Arthur Toyes yesterday, on the off-chance that they were still having a half price sale on some of their sewing patterns.

There was a sign above the entrance announcing 50% off all New Look patterns, so I went through the whole catalogue and scribbled out a list of half a dozen potentials. They were, according to the catalogue cover, only $10.50 each. Score!

And then, after I'd selected two patterns to take home (and stash away for the day my cold gets better and I can think clearly enough to cut fabric safely), the nice old man behind the counter charged me only ten bucks for the 2 of them. He explained that the discount applied over and above the discounted price already there. Five dollar sewing patterns - super score!

And in case you're interested, the two I picked were 6824 and 6808. (Edit note: 6824 is the dress pattern below, not the one originally posted.)

Bad bargain

So, a while back we were in Borders and perusing the 3-for-2 table. And if you've been following this blog closely, you might recall that I settled on Jodi Picoult's Change of Heart, Bill Bryson's Shakespeare and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

I really only wanted the latter 2 titles, but the Kiwi bargain hunter in me couldn't turn down the chance of a free third book, so I picked the Picoult even though she's not an author I've ever been attracted to.

Well as it happens, I loved the Bryson and the Diaz. But the Picoult is a total disappointment. Her book reminds me very much of John Grisham (of which I read The Firm and Pelican Brief and -yes, even a third book which was much worse than the first 2 and the one that made me realise what a waste of my life these books were).

And that is my conclusion - Picoult is the anxious parent's Grisham. One of the things I liked least about Change of Heart was its religious theme - priest suffering a crisis of faith, deathrow prisoner who performs miracles a la Green Mile, fat single female lawyer who can't find a boyfriend - oh wait, that last one's not religious...or is it?

And then the realisation that I've been ripped off. The 3-for-2 deal gave us the cheapest book for free. The cheapest of our trio was the Bryson, while the Picoult was the most expensive. If I'd just picked up the 2 books I wanted in the first place I probably would have spent less.

The deed is done

Today it was all down in writing, that from here on my working days will be 6 1/2 hours long (plus lunch break).
Funnily enough, TLM chose this morning to be clingy when it was time to leave her at daycare. It was almost as if she knew some changes were afoot.

The timing of my new hours could've been better, because I still have quite a fruity cough and I can imagine how off-putting it must be for my colleagues to hear me hacking away like a pack-a-day smoker or - no offense intended - a cystic fibrosis sufferer.

And I'm still pretty husky on the phone. I wonder whether some of the people I've been calling today, think I'm some sort of sexy, whisky-drinking Marlene Dietrich-y woman with a dark past. Or whether they just guessed that I have a cold.

toothy pegs

The boy took TLM to her very first visit to the dental nurse today. Apparently she was a model patient - sat in the chair, opened her mouth wide and let the nurse tinker around in there with her instruments of torture.

And TLM was given a badge of clean health - a big sticker that says "I have healthy teeth".

bacon come home

The boy, highly intelligent and useful as he is, is still looking for a job (so if you're looking for someone who is both super-geek and super-senior IT manager, let me know). Which means that soon we will be trying to live off half an income.

I feel I should be putting myself forward for full-time hours, and I know that my boss is keen on the idea of me being available for longer - rather than swanning out the door at 2.30 to walk home and pick up TLM from daycare. I have until Friday to sign and return my employment contract, and this would be the time to ask for increased work hours.

But I hate the thought of spending all day at work - even if I still take Wednesdays off - and hate even more the thought of whole days in which I scarcely see my own daughter. Also, if and when the boy gets another job, then we'd both be working all day and missing out on hanging out with our daughter.

So what I'm thinking of is this - that I propose increasing my work hours but still have Wednesdays off; getting the boy to take care of TLM during the hours she is not at daycare; and asking to re-negotiate my hours if and when the boy is working again.

Considering we are in what I would call an employers' market, do you think I'd have a good chance at getting what I want?

Better and worse

For a while there I had started to feel much better. On Sunday I even spent an hour cleaning the bathroom, including the bits I don't normally touch because I can't reach or don't ever look that far up. I even opened up the hot water cupboard and vacuumed out the cobwebs, though I have to tell you it was a task that was sorely overdue. The webs were so bad in there it looked like duvet filling for the damned.

But my doctor had told me to go and get antibiotics if my illness hadn't cleared up by then, so yesterday I started taking them. And now I feel terrible again - phlegmy, sneezy, coughing so hard that I simultaneously have to clench my head and my pelvic floor muscles. And of course when I talk I sound like I spent the last 24 hours drinking whisky and singing the national anthem in a nightclub.

But compared to the boy, who it turns out is sharing my germs, I'm at least on the way up.

The Little Madam is very well, thanks very much.

Mirror mirror

Although my phone has a very good camera, there's one thing it cannot do that my old digital camera did very well - and that's timed self portraits. Even if I were to one day discover a timer on the camera menu, there is no way I could get the thing to stay upright by itself. So, for now, there will be now more photos of my backside.


This is my finished Burda dress (I made the view illustrated by the brown dress in the link). Actually, I still have to trim the excess off the hem and I might redo the sleeve binding too. But it's more-or-less finished.
I fear that there is far too much skin on show here, so I might prefer to wear it over a more modest top, like so.

Do I like it? Kinda. I'm just glad it's finished really, because unfinished work always bugs me.

By the way, if you want to read the gory details of this garment's construction ("Make it work!") just click on the Pattern Review icon over on the right.

Not that this is an ad for Australian tourism, but

...where the bloody hell are ya?
I'm at my most insecure when I'm sick, you know. So when 3 blog posts go by without comments, that's when I start wondering why I'm missing out on the comment-love.
...sniff...
On the other hand, I finally finished the Burda dress that I started way back when it was still summer, and I'm gonna blog about it anyway. Tomorrow.

Cough cough

I'm still sick and I haven't been in to work all week. Thank goodness I get paid sick leave, as of the beginning of April.

But I feel a bit guilty about taking sick leave so soon after becoming eligible for it - while I was a contractor I never took any sick days except when TLM was sick.

The good news is that after going to the doctor's, TLM got a course of antibiotics for her 2-month-long cold. The disappointing news is that she's been acting sicker since starting the antibiotics, than she was before. The boy reckons this just means the medicine is working.
I dunno though.

The boy is in fine health though.

Motherly ministrations

After putting TLM to bed for the night, I go to my mum's house to set up her insulin pens (this is something my brother normally does for her, but this week he and his family have taken a much-needed break out of town). She hears me coughing and wheezing but - miraculously - does not tell me for the billionth time that if only I'd dressed more warmly I wouldn't be suffering from another cold. Then she offers to administer some fung yeow.

The stuff she's refering to is (mostly) eucalyptus oil, pungent and probably lethal to a range of small insects, sold all over Hong Kong in tiny glass bottles. It's her wonder-medicine that fixes just about every minor ailment. Partly to humour her and partly because I know it actually does help, I let her rub fung yeow all over my shoulders, upper back and neck.

There is a slight breeze outside, and when I leave her house it feels like someone left the fridge door open and programmed it to follow me around (fung yeow literally translates to "wind oil"). But when I get in the car it's even worse in the enclosed space. My eyes sting from the eucalyptus fumes and I drive home squinting (that can't be safe).

I imagine that, one day when I'm older and motherless, I get a whiff of fung yeow on my mum's clothing and remember that it wasn't all bad having her as a mother.

The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao

I finished this novel of Junot Diaz's last night. Though when I say finished, I should admit that I didn't read most of the footnotes. The proportion of footnote to body text was so high that some pages were just footnotes - with a couple of sentences of body text added on for visual texture**.

There were a couple of other things about this book that I found a little annoying. One was the heavy-handed use of Lord of the Rings references, though I can see why it's there - it's because Oscar is a total geek and LOTR fan. The other thing was his liberal use of Spanish words, with no accompanying glossary at the back. True, I could get the gist of the meaning from the context. But I've no doubt that the subtler meanings were quite lost to me.

The good thing about this book is that it's a compelling story about a group of flawed characters whom I couldn't help but feel empathy with - Oscar, the overweight and constantly lovelorn geek; Lola, his Amazonian sister; Beli, their bitter and disappointed mother; and La Inca, Beli's adoptive mother. Basically, it's about a Dominican family enduring three generations of horrible luck, beginning during the terrifying reign of the dictator Trujillo. There is no happy ending as such, but it's not utterly depressing - just very sad.

The chapter that really grabbed me was the one about Lola, her desperate need to get away from home and the destructive influence of her mother, and her inability to sever the emotional tie. After that I was sucked in until the last page.

**Footnote about the footnotes: it's from Diaz's footnotes that you learn about the political environment that is the setting for this novel. They are a pretty unhappy read.

worshipping at the alter of chocolate

We like Easter weekends at least as much as most un-religious people in New Zealand i.e. we might end up going to hell for non-believing, but we sure do enjoy having a 4-day weekend, whatever the reason.

TLM went across the road to play with her new best friend this morning, and came back two hours later with a massive chocolate egg gift set. I'm sure she'll be okay to share it, but if she isn't then I suppose we can always hide it at the back of the fridge and dole it out in small pieces. As if that weren't enough, she's going back there this afternoon for the Easter egg hunt. I expect that it won't be a finders-keepers kind of thing, more of a find-and-deposit-into-the-communal-container deal.

My mum has been trying to get us all to go visit Dad's grave this weekend, but synchronising two households' worth of weekend intentions was all too much - they've gone without me. That's just as well; I have finally caught one of TLM's continuous colds and the last thing I want is to wander the chilly hills of a suburban cemetary, pockets stuffed with tissues and head stuffed with snot.

Stuff that makes ya go "Ooh!"

I'm betting this woman is on the slim side, because I can't see myself being able to make a whole jacket (albeit a tight-fitting one) out of a pair of my boyfriend's old jeans. She did though and it's pretty amazing. Here's another shot.

Not that I'm fashion police, but

I reckon if you have really large boobs, then - unless you're wearing a magnificently cantilevered brassiere - you shouldn't wear a high-waisted skirt. It just makes you look like your boobies have dropped.

In case you're wondering, I didn't come by this snippet of style advice from looking in the mirror. Because I hate having a waistband that comes up to my armpits. But I do look at what other people wear...

You better watch out!

So much for retail therapy...

With Daylight Saving ending over the weekend, I've been able to get in to work a little earlier than usual i.e. I had time for a proper lunch break. I had this plan to check out the half-price sale on sewing patterns and fabrics over at Arthur Toyes, or the new stock at Global Fabrics, or maybe even the full-price clothes at half a dozen of my favourite clothing shops around town.

But it was not to be, because when it comes down to it, I'm a lousy spender.

How I spend money follows this pattern - I get a pay rise or new job, and am flush with money. I continue to be careful with money for several months. Then something clicks in that part of my brain concerned with buying stuff, and I become comfortable with the idea of splurging. Then our financial situation changes and I have to cut back on spending. Only after I have endangered the household grocery bill several times, do I re-learn healthier spending habits.

Somehow, this cycle clashes violently with the sales, with the result that when there is a sale I don't want to buy anything, but after normal prices resume I am suddenly stricken with a desperate desire to buy a pair of black, knee-length riding boots or designer wrap dress.

Such is my version of consumerism.

The Fundraising Angel strikes again!

There I was, contentedly avoiding taking on voluntary work at The Little Madam's daycare centre, when **ring!** the leader of the fundraising team calls me up and asks me to take over organising our quiz night. As much as I wanted to no thanks, I'd rather spend my precious free time watching television or blogging or starting new sewing projects - I couldn't really.

It didn't start getting stressful until about a week before the big event, and we only had maybe 20 people sign up for it - out of a hoped-for 50 or 60. The fundraising team leader ended up moving things along at that point, which was a relief. I really prefer to work in a team, bouncing ideas of each other, that kind of thing - or else just being told what to do and getting it done. No leader am I. (Okay, and maybe I was a little slack because there is sooo much less pressure to fundraise at this place compared with TLM's last place.)

Anyway, it all turned out pretty well in the end. The bar where it was held, was really generous, the participating parents were relaxed and - importantly - knowledgeable, and no one minded too much when two of the big raffle prizes were won by the same woman.

The highlight, I guess, was when two teams tied for first place and it had to be resolved by a dance-off. You know that scene in of the early Desperate Housewives episodes where Lynette, who has recently returned to work, has to take her boss for a girls' night out and ends up naughty-dancing on a table? We had something like that last night (it wasn't me by the way - I was a sober driver).

So. We meet again.

For the last two months and a bit, I've been able to avoid going to meetings. Darn time-wasters, those things can be. Because I've been on a short-term contract and therefore not strictly staff, I didn't even have to attend staff meetings, though this did mean I had to answer the phones for a couple of hours every Monday.

Actually, there have been maybe three or four meetings that I was persuaded to attend. I don't mind too much, as long as I feel I can contribute - and sometimes they serve nice biscuits too. But the last couple of meetings, I have turned up and not had a single thing to say because the agenda wasn't followed and we didn't end up discussing the sorts of things I actually knew something about.

In fact, the highlight of today's meeting was that my name was misspelt on the agenda. Funny that I, of all people, didn't notice that someone had spelled it "Violent". Oh, how we laughed.

But they'd better not do that next time.

And my next challenge is...

I've had a few failed or stalled projects lately, what with the Burda dress's miniscule sleevelings, the 2-t shirt refashion that will now probably end up a small cushion, and the sweater dress that I haven't started because I realised that chunky knits make me look like a big marshmallow.

Then I realised that all these weeks I've been sewing my clothes too small, because I've been using the little screw on my sewing machine's throat plate as a seam guide; all this time I thought it marked 1.5 cm seam allowance, but it's actually 2 cm.

But I'm far too obsessive a person to let stuff like that stop me. I'm a human typhoon, wreaking havoc on my own wardrobe and devastating perfectly good fabrics in my path...right up until I lose run out of air and move onto to another hobby.

So - my newest in a middlingly long line of start-ups will be a shirt dress made from one of the boy's discarded stripy dress shirts. Clevergirl did a nice job of hers, though that collar wouldn't suit me. Riot-siren's is pretty blimmen' fantastic, though maybe a bit too out-there for a woman of my years.

I normally have a hate-hate relationship with button-down shirts; I just hope I can design and construct a shirt dress that's nice enough that I wouldn't rather go naked.

Friday night telly

On Friday nights, if the boy's out on the town, I tend to spend most of the evening either reading blogs or sewing. But I set the alarm for 9.30 pm, to avoid missing Project Runway (last week they had to create outfits for a flock of sassy transvestites - surely the most interesting challenge so far this season).

But when the boy is at home (which is true most Friday evenings - I'm so glad he's not one of those husbands who lives for Friday night at the pub with the lads), I spend less time at the sewing machine or with a Macbook warming my lap. It's usually tubby-telly time.

Right up until a few months ago I managed to not watch America's Next Top Model. But then I started watching, and...anyway the result is that now I watch New Zealand's Next Top Model because it fills the time slot once inhabited by the American one. And the strange thing is, in my own very limited viewing experience of these two shows, I find the Kiwi girls seem so much bitchier. It's kind of surprising, since we Kiwis are like the Canadians of the Antipodes. Or maybe the NZ show is just playing up the bitchiness more?

Right after the showful of legs and cheekbones, is Rove. I just don't find Rove very funny. The only interesting thing about it is that the host looks remarkably like someone I used to work for. He wasn't particularly witty either.

And then it's Project Runway and all is right with the world again.

Bedtime reading

My fiction reading list is currently interspersed with various library books and magazines about fashion, sewing and styling. But fear not, I have been feeding my literary side too.

I've just finished re-reading Charlotte Randall's The Curative, which I loved first time around. I don't know why it took me so long to read it a second time, it's such a good book. Considering it's set within a 19th Century insane asylum and almost all of the action is inside the head of one highly-educated and not-at-all insane (but morally objectionable) male inmate, it's a bloody good read. Sure, there are plenty of words used that I have no idea of the meaning of, but that's part of the fun. Lonsdale, the inmate in question, loves words. He doesn't seem to know why he's in there, but he's keeping himself sane by talking to whomever will listen, including his vegetative cellmate.

And now I have three new non-clothing-related books next to my pillow. Last time we were in Borders, I noticed that Bill Bryson's Shakespeare was on the 3 for 2 table. A bit of hunting around on that table turned up Junot Diaz's The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. Score! But it was not so easy finding that elusive third book. Finally I settled on Jodi Picoult's Change of Heart. I've never read her work before, and have heard that she's not a particularly good writer in the literary sense. But I've also heard that she tells a damn good story, so I picked it up and we had our trio of books.

Okay, so only one of those 3 Borders purchases qualifies as literary (Bryson's book being non-fiction). But who cares?

New clothes with an old lady smell

Over the weekend I completed a really easy refashion on a stretchy charcoal grey skirt and a two-in-one black and white top (it looks like a shirt worn under a v-neck jumper). All I had to do was shorten the skirt from calf-length to knee-length, and re-sew the collar of the shirt so that it doesn't look all buttoned up, and suddenly I had a whole new outfit to wear to work. Hurrah! It looked good with black opaque tights and the black ankle boots with white stitching, if I may say so myself.

But both items had been stuck in the back of the boy's wardrobe for the last 12 months. And you know that stale smell that clothes get when you leave them in a forgotten corner of the house for too long? It's not that nice is it? It smells like old people. Well, that's how I smelled all day today.

So, as long as you were a reasonable distance away, you would have been well impressed by my schoolgirl-goes-corporate attire. But you might have gotten a different impression once you got close enough to get a whiff.

Bad TV reviewer! Bad!

Having watched most of the first episode of the vampire show True Blood (it's on far too late), I've decided it's a good show. It's inventive, it's well-written, it's surprisingly free to cringe-y stuff. So, for the most part, I agree with Jane Clifton's review.

But then I got about two thirds of the way through her article, when I came across this unholy sentence:

"In short, this is Buffy or Charmed, only the X-rated grown- ups-only version - and much, much cleverer and funnier. "

What!?!?!? Wash your mouth out with soap, woman!! I scream (on the inside)...

Not only is Buffy much funnier and cleverer than True Blood (so far at least), but there is NO. FECKIN'. WAY. that Charmed should even be mentioned in the same phrase as Buffy - except to represent polar opposites. Charmed doesn't do funny, except maybe unintentionally. And I haven't seen any clever there either.

And there's another thing. TV reviewers often talk about Buffy as though it was all about Buffy and Angel. Well it wasn't - the romance was only one part of the many subplots and themes of the show. These people must have only ever seen the first two seasons of it or something. And that's hardly credible.

A lovely dress that I won't get to wear until next summer

There have been quite a few hitches with the dress I've been working on for the last 2-3 months. That's right, the Burda EASY dress that I downloaded the sewing pattern off the Burda website for free.

The latest hitch is the sleeves. They were supposed to be easy, short, puffy sleeves, finished with elastic. Supposed to be. First of all, I questioned the length of elastic the instruction sheet told me to cut. There was no way that 13 centimetres of elastic would completely wrap around my upper arm - even when fully stretched! True, I have fallen victim to that thing called "wings", which women are apparently prone to get once they get into their late 30's (unless she is Madonna). But surely "fit" young things i.e. models, don't have upper arms that are only 13 cm in circumference?

Anyway, I put in twice the length of elastic that was called for, and it still didn't really work because the sleeves were so short. They basically ended just past my big flabby armpits. So I ripped the sleeves out and haven't bothered with the dress since.

In the meantime, I started and finished a sleeveless tunic top made from ultra-thin cotton with a tribal-ly print. It looks like something that a West African woman might have made if she'd had access to a McCall's catalogue.

A family of invalids

TLM has pretty much been mildly sick for the last couple of weeks. I can't tell whether it's one bug that's morphing constantly, or a variety of bugs in quick succession. But it was enough to keep her at home on Friday (the boy stayed home to look after her and - guess what - there was actually more mess to clean up when I got home, than when I left that morning). She's still coughing a lot, but I'm determined to refrain from using the vaporiser in her room. That thing might help her sleep at night, but the walls look like waterfalls by morning.

And me, well I hurt my back again this morning. The first twinge occurred when I was lifting TLM's bike into the boot of the car, and it must've gotten worse while I was pushing her along on her bike on the school playground (she's only just beginning to "get" pedalling). By the time she was having her nap, I already knew there was no chance I'd be able to have my walk in the hills - not without either returning home a cripple, or stuck at the lookout waiting for a pair of kindly, strapping young men to fireman-lift me back down the track.

The boy isn't sick, much, but if he continues to do zilch share of the household chores then I might do something about that.

Jumping on the vampire bandwagon

I haven't been doing much sewing lately, because the sewing machine is in the next room where there is no decent heater. On the other hand, I've watched a lot of tv because the television set is in the living room where there is a very good heater.

There is a new tv show coming soon, called True Blood. Its star, Anna Paquin, won an Emmy or something for her performance on it - so it can't be that bad. And, unless its screening time clashes with Project Runway, Top Chef or Outrageous Fortune, I might watch it.

But the thing is this - coming so quickly after a certain vampire-themed movie that is currently drawing large crowds of teenage girls (and no doubt quite a few romance novel fans too), I'm fairly sure that the show is probably a lot closer in spirit to Twilight than it is to Buffy. And I know which vampire bandwagon I'd rather jump on.

wintry poshness

When the sister-out-law saw me this afternoon she assumed I'd just got in from work. I hadn't - it's just that it was bloody freezing today so I was wearing my black leathers i.e. long leather coat a la Spike, and high boots. Oh, and because I just got my hair cut this morning.

All the hairdresser did was lop a few spare centimeters off my classic front-bits-longer-than-back-bits bob. And voila - cheekbones!

See if it were 25 degrees Celsius, I'd have been in my manky sandals, old t-shirt and skirt - which is not at all posh.

Seasons greetings - a post of two halves

This is how I know that Winter is nipping at our heels:

• I have been able to wear knee-high boots to work, without cooking my feet
• The Little Madam is onto her second cold
• We sleep under 2 duvets occasionally and don't wake up sweating like Albert Finney's character in Broadcast News
• All the northern hemisphere blogs are going on about springtime

Of course, technically Autumn has only just started. Autumn is my favourite season, despite it's effects on my allergies:

• it's cool enough to wear coverup-y clothes (because I'm no fan of hot pants and halternecks) but not so cold that I must wear sheepskin and polypropylene with everything
• it's often warm and sunny during the day, but at night it's not too warm to sleep
• it's when the television networks start screening the good shows.

But it also means that yet another opportunity has passed for TLM to wear cute shorts.

It's the old housework gender wars again

I've been asked to stay at my job for the rest of the year. Even though I'll be taking a pay cut, I reckon it's worth it because in return I'll get paid leave and won't have to look for work again in a month's time. And I can continue to do just the 20 hours per week, arranged so that TLM doesn't have to be at daycare past 3pm.

Before this news, the boy had playfully suggested that I go for a full time position that would be coming up soon, leaving him free to get a part time job at McDonalds.

But there's no way I will let this happen because:

• I really, really don't want to go back to working full time. Because there's no job I will love enough to willingly spend 40 hours per week at. Unless of course it becomes a financial necessity - it isn't yet.
• I won't let the boy work at McDonalds. It will probably make him fat and pimply.
• But mainly because without a full time job the boy does not have an excuse to avoid doing housework. I can handle doing most of the housework (though to be fair, he does most of the cooking and taking out of the rubbish and recycling) if he's busy. But if he's under-employed I know I will still be doing most of the housework, and resenting him for it.

I can sit on the Golden Gate bridge

Probably the most interesting thing I've done lately is to turn my San Francisco t-shirt (great screen print, shame about the fit and the fact that it is so not my colour) into a cushion cover.

If you were to look at the back, you'd see that I've completely botched up the flap that buttons down that side - the buttons are too far in and too far from the sides, and the button holes got ripped up when I went to open them up.

But from this side, it's kinda cool.

Robot love

Ever since the boy brought home the DVD Wall-E about a week and a half ago, TLM has watched it at least once per day. The boy and I quite like it too - Wall-E is such a charming little beastie and Eve is a refreshingly un-girlie girl robot. She's pretty, but she's a bit fat around the waist - and she's got firepower to die for - not yer typical Hollywood heroine.

In short, the movie is about Wall-E, the last-remaining rubbish-compacter robot on an Earth piled high in rubbish; Eve, the robot probe sent to Earth to check out it's livability status; and a spaceship full of gravity-deprived humans who've been waiting over 700 years to go home.

This movie really made me think. Here are some of those thoughts:

• Wall-E is completely lovable and friendly, but if he were a person I think he'd be short, fat, balding and wear coke-bottle-bottom glasses.
• The Axiom is carrying what is presumably the remains of the human race. It's a damned large craft and there appear to be thousands aboard, at least. But looking at these people, I get the feeling they are all American. Maybe it's because they remind me of the stereotypical American tourist - large, mostly white, and unworldly. And they are all dressed in similar tracksuits.
• If there is to be a sequel, it will be really hard to make a believable one that doesn't have most of the population dying off from starvation and dehydration. Because these people think that you can grow pizza from seed.
• Also, did ya see the rubbish piles on board the spaceship? The people have evidently not learned the lesson about recycling and reusing. give them another planet and they will probably trash that one too, eventually.

One can only hope.

A bit of a skirt

Unfortunately my camera's batteries went flat just as I was in the middle of taking pictures of the finished skirt, and of course then something went wrong with the camera on my mobile phone so that none of those photos were saved.

So all I have to show is is this picture that I took of the skirt before I unpicked the waistband, sewed and topstitched a big dart in the front that went all the way down to the horizontal line of topstitching, and put the waistband back on.

But I did draw a picture to show you the before and after too. Only I placed 'em in the wrong order whilst scanning, so what you'll see are the after and before drawings. Oh yeah, and those are back views. The horizontal topstitching on the front view is straight.

Basically, I took a long skirt that was too tight at the waist and cut it in half. I took in the sides so they'd fit my hips, re-installed the invisible zipper (not very well), put in a narrow waistband/facing in a contrast-y fabric, added a little button and buttonhole tab to hide the uneven widths of the ends of the waistband, topstitched the hem because it was so badly sewn by the factory that it kept turning inside up, and then sewed the humungous big dart in the front to fix the large gape at the waist. Perhaps next time I'll use a pattern or another skirt to get the right hip and waist fit.

Anyway, another skirt to add to my collection.

Another thing they don't make like they used to

The photo-storing thingy on my mobile phone seems to have packed it in. I only discovered this after I finally finished my denim skirt reconstruction (from ill-fitting, frumpy skirt to well-fitting, flirty skirt - yay!) and took some pictures of it. Then I noticed that the phone's wallpaper had changed, from a lovely picture of TLM struggling to free herself from the boy's loving but vice-like grip, to an animation of floating dots.

So I checked my file of camera photos and...there were none.

This is somewhat annoying, because there used to be lots of photos in there. And I've only had the bloody phone since last August. And it cost me almost 400 smackeroos.

Now, in the old days...my first mobile phone, a work one, was about the size of one of those gold ingots they have at the gold museum in Johannesburg, where visitors are told they can have one for free if they can lift it up with one hand. It (the phone, not the ingot) didn't play music and it didn't take pictures, but it sure as hell didn't start to break down after 6 measly months.

They sure don't make buskers like they used to.

Busking just ain't the way it used to be, if the last busker I walked out on is at all representative.

This guy from Noo York spent about 20 minutes building up the audience - asking us to make loud, appreciative noises to attract passers-by, describing in mildly comedic terms what he was going to do ( he was an escape artist apparently), selecting volunteers to be the butts of his so-so jokes. Then I got bored and tired of standing around waiting, and moved on. I bet this guy only had one trick in his whole act. Okay, he did do one magic trick, but it was so unremarkable I nearly forgot about it.

Now, in my day, as a veteran busker might say, a busker would put his hat on the pavement and perform one trick after another, whether it be pulling scarves out of a lady's bra or pulling a balloon over his head. They didn't try to pull in an audience by asking a couple of bystanders to pretend they were having a good time; they did it by giving the bystanders a good time. Now that's the kind of busker I'd throw my coins at.

But what I saw in the weekend reminded me of that scene in Bedknobs and Broomsticks where Mr Brown the street conjuror sings "It really doesn't matter what I do, what I do, as long as I do it...with a flair" at his stoney-faced audience. Yeah, style over substance - it's really over-rated.

No thanks I'm sweet enough

I feel like I've spent the last decade or so dodging the diabetes monster, and it must be sneaking up on me occasionally to bite me on the shoulder (that's a werewolf reference). Although I've had myself tested a couple of times and came out negative, I can't help feeling that if I'm not pre-diabetic, then I must be pre-pre-diabetic.

This is because if I go without food for 3 or 4 hours I suddenly feel physically weak and am consumed with thoughts of loaves of fresh buttered bread (wholegrain). And after a large meal, I'm always fatigued. It's also because I have a frighteningly sweet tooth and cannot turn down cake or biscuits (unless they are made with carrots or an unusually large number of eggs).

Three days ago I decided that I had to do something about this oppressive tiredness that comes upon me soon after dinner each evening, because this is valuable time for doing stuff and shouldn't be wasted blobbing out in front of the TV, bleary-eyed and listless. I decided to give up sweets - even if this doesn't fix the tiredness, it certainly wouldn't hurt.

On day one, the only sugar I consumed was in the form of fresh fruit and well-diluted fruit juice. On days two and three, I allowed myself some Nutella on one of my slices of toast. I've bypassed the sweet muffins, the birthday cake left over from a daycare party, and the slices left over from a work meeting. I gave the boy strict instructions not to bring home cake for me.

Not even a Dutch Ring (nope, still sounds like an exotic sex toy).

Do I feel better?
Physically, no. Psychologically, there's a hint of moral superiority in my demeanor but not enough for other people to notice.

Let's see how long I can do this for.

The perils of ordering ethnic food over the phone

Sometimes I have to repeat our address over and over again until I'm almost ready to just get in the car and point to the menu in person.
Sometimes I get rung back because the poor guy sitting in the delivery vehicle with a bag of hot curries on his lap (well I hope it's not on his lap but I bet they don't drive very large cars) is outside the wrong house.

This time, I said we only wanted one of the complementary boxes of rice, because the boy prefers roti with his butt chick.

Which is why they gave us three...

All the fun of the fair

Ah, I love summer because that's when the city council puts on so much free family entertainment. Today I took TLM down to the beach, where a week-long suburban festival was underway.

Not that we actually went onto the sand (beautiful as it was, framed by deep blue seas and clear, ozone-free skies). We peeked into stalls selling trippy beachwear, animal-shaped balloons, handmade photo albums and driftwood sculptures, and headed straight for one of the bouncy castles. It was a hit.

Five minutes later, we crossed the road to the park and encountered - to our great delight - a petting zoo. This was TLM's first chance to touch a baby alpaca, pony, lamb or goat (the latter had such a silky coat that it was impossible not to joke out loud about winter jackets). There were also rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs, and a mile-deep queue to have one of the furries on your lap.

Then TLM got hungry, and of course she didn't want to eat the snacks I'd brought with me. But before trawling through the aisle of food stalls, I had to make a toilet stop. There is one public toilet cubicle at the park. It has two toilets in it, side by side. I can only guess that this is to make it easier for a mum with a kid in tow, as they can both do their respective business at the same time. Because I really, really, can't think of another reason for two toilets to share a single cubicle.

I don't know if you guys get these where you live, but one of the food staples of the local fair is the hot dog on a stick. Put simply, it's a cooked sausage which has been impaled lengthwise, dipped in batter and deep-fried, and finally dipped in tomato sauce for serving. It's quite yummy in an artery-clogging kind of way. I hadn't had one since I was a kid, and eating it took me back a few decades. But TLM wasn't interested in trying this culinary version of white-trash; she stuck to the other food staple of the local fair - hot chips.

Our long morning out was nearly capped by a ride on the merry-go-round, but TLM changed her mind when she realised I couldn't ride with her. Not that there was a sign forbidding adults, but it was a teensy little thing and I'm sure I would have tipped the whole thing over.

When TLM fell asleep in the car, I seized my opportunity to eat a soft serve from the McD's drive-in without her protests (where's MY ice cream!") ringing in my ears.

Partially helpful

It's not often I have to answer the phone at the office, but there was a tiny window of around 5 minutes when all of my work colleagues were either in a meeting or power-walking around the block (I'm assuming it would have been brisk because it was pretty chilly today).

I answered the phone and stuttered through the greeting, which included the 17-syllable name of the place I am working for. Then I had to repeat myself 3 more times, because the caller was an old lady from Idaho, of all places. So she was probably a bit deaf and completely unused to the Kiwi accent and our unique way of runningourwordstogether (that's "running our words together", if you're blind and relying on voice thingy).

Well, I have no idea how she got our number, but she was definitely looking for someone in New Zealand to tell her about how to emigrate to New Zealand. We had a nice old chatter about how her son is fed up with life in the US, the fact that his dogs wouldn't be allowed into the country without several months in quarantine even though they are so nice and house-trained, and - that old nugget - what time is was over here.

And then I told her to go have a look at www.immigration.govt.nz, and she thanked me hung up.

Baby dragons rule!

"There'll be dragons" I told TLM, hoping to excite her.
"I don't like dragons!" she answered, "they're scary!"
"Okay, there won't be any dragons" I replied, "but there might be free popsicles."
So TLM came willingly with me to watch the Chinese New Year parade.

It was hot (actually, only 25 degrees Celsius, but for this town it counts as a heatwave) and sunny. It was just the kind of weather that entices you to the outdoors, only to send you scurrying for the SPF 30 sunblock and a hat with a brim wide enough to support a pond-full of large frogs.

It was just the kind of burn-y hotness that made me anxious about the amount of time TLM and I were spending on the uncovered footpath, waiting for it to start.

Finally, we heard the distant crackling of what sounded like exploding Double Happies, and saw the glimmer of a long, sinuous dragan winding its way towards us in a cloud of firecracker smoke. TLM's face was alight with anticipation.

Then it got closer, louder and smokier. I tried to cover TLM's ears with my free hand (the other was holding her), but it had to divide its time between one of her ears and one of mine. Totally fruitless. TLM turned her face away from the spectacle and whimpered something about going back to the car. She'd forgotten that we'd taken the bus to get there.

The men under the dragon raised it up and down and wove in and out of legs, prompting me to wish I'd shaved my legs that morning.

But then TLM's mood changed. It was when some children from the Chinese language school passed by with more petite versions of the smoking dragon. I told her they were baby dragons and she chuckled delightedly.

There was more - Chinese opera performers with their faces made up in pink and white, drummers, men and women posing in beautiful traditional silk robes, a team of kung-fu exponents demonstrating whatever you call the kung fu equivalent of a kata, little girls in pretty red dresses (not sure of the relevance but they seemed a welcome part of the parade) and even Michael Tuffery's ox made entirely out of corned beef tins (click here and scroll down for a picture - actually the article is bloody hilarious!). The latter was present because it's the Year of the Ox, but what made it even more special for us was that we still have the children's library book of New Zealand art which features this very sculpture. But there were no free popsicles.

As I was saying, there was more, but as far as TLM was concerned, the baby dragons were it.

Learning through destruction

Um...some time yesterday, before I posted the previous blog post, I thought of posting the above title.

Because I've gained a lot of sewing knowledge in the short time I've spent pulling old clothes apart in order to re-make them into something I wouldn't be afraid to wear in public. Like, the fact that I really have to use an invisible zipper foot if I want my invisible zippers to be invisible. Or that even an el cheapo skirt bought from a catalogue, will have a properly constructed waistband - but the hem might still look like it was sewn by TLM on a Dora the Explorer sewing machine (you can get those, y'know).

But maybe 2 sewing posts in a row is too much, eh?

The semi-nekkid seamstress

You might not believe me, but it helps to sew in just your underwear. I know this after working on a couple of refashioning projects lately.

My first one was the large man's polo shirt with NYPD embroidered on it, which the boy got for me last time he was in New York. Needless to say, it was hugely unflattering because of it's very bigness. I only wore it with over-long bootleg jeans and heeled army-style boots; every time, it reminded me of the time I walked into a party thrown by a lesbian work-friend and realised that the room was completely full of short-haired women in lumberjack shirts.

I spent several hours turning that shirt into one more suitable for woman's body shape, mostly by trying on, cutting, trying on, pinning, trying on, sewing, trying on etc. There was an awful lot of trying on, so most of the time my top half was semi-nekkid.

The other project was to take an ankle-length stretch denim skirt that was too tight at the waist, and turn it into a flippy knee-length skirt. As before, there was an awful lot of trying on, so most of the time my bottom half was nearly bare.

This isn't a method I'd recommend using if your sewing machine sits in front of a large picture window, but it's fine if you have curtains. (Also, I mightn't be so keen in the winter.)

Before...

...and after...


(I haven't quite finished the skirt yet.)

The Historian

Last night I finally finished Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. I'm still trying to decide whether it's a good book or not.

It's very, very long.

If you ever wanted to know what it might be like to do Raiders of the Lost Ark but replacing the archeologist with a historian, then you'll be disappointed that the the book contains no ominous advancing boulders, hardly any guns and only negligible amounts of vodka.

But there is a huge amount of research. In fact, I got the feeling that Kostova might have spent years doing research on how historians do research, and couldn't bear to leave any details out of her novel. I'm fairly certain that this door-stopper of a book could easily have been half as long, without losing any of the story.

There were far too many transcripts of letters written by monks about trips around the Balkans. Worse, I was bothered by the unexplained, too-fortuitous meetings with complete strangers who turned out to have a connection to the big D (Dracula).

And so much of the story is told via letters - letters to the young girl from her historian father, letters to the father from his PhD supervisor, letters to the supervisor from his best mate, letters from the girl's mysteriously absent mother, and of course, letters between monks travelling around the Balkans with their bloodthirsty baggage. I know it's a literary device, but I couldn't help wondering why these people wrote such detailed letters - why didn't they just write a book and be done with it?

Last of all, the ending was predictable. And I'm not even one of those annoying people who see the plot twist in the first hour of the film and then tell everyone what's going to happen.

Having said that, I did manage to read the whole thing, and I only got bored with all the letter-reading about two thirds of the way in. So maybe if you've time to kill, like the idea of an adventure peopled by undead librarians and feisty academics, then this book wouldn't necessarily be a waste of money.

I feel some grunge coming on...

After the huge success of my jeans-turned-skirt (i.e. I've been wearing it almost every day and no-one's laughed at me yet), the idea of clothing reconstruction has become very attractive. And what's not to like? It's cheap, it's eco-friendly and...well it's cheap and eco-friendly.

The only thing that could be an obstacle is that, having Googled "t-shirt reconstruction", I get the feeling that the results tend to look good only on the young. I suppose if you're into your 4th or 5th decade, you should aim to look like you can afford to buy your clothes new.

But there's gotta be a way to turning all those ill-fitting souvenir t-shirts and that itchy alpaca jumper from La Paz, into something I can be happy to wear (or sit on, if it turns into a cushion cover). I'll keep looking around - I can't be the only person under 25 who wants to re-fashion their clothing.

Otherwise I'll have to start wearing beanies.

And now for something completely different

Here are my results from the Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz - most of it is spot-on, if I may say so myself.

You Are an Ingrid!

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

* * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
* * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
* * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
* * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
* * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

* * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
* * my ability to establish warm connections with people
* * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
* * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
* * being unique and being seen as unique by others
* * having aesthetic sensibilities
* * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

* * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
* * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
* * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
* * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
* * expecting too much from myself and life
* * fearing being abandoned
* * obsessing over resentments
* * longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

* * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
* * are very sensitive
* * feel that they don't fit in
* * believe they are missing something that other people have
* * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
* * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
* * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

* * help their children become who they really are
* * support their children's creativity and originality
* * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
* * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
* * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Click here if you're curious enough to take the test yourself. I found it on this sewing fashionista's blog.

How to make a preschooler sound like Tom Waits

First my mum got it. She had the sore throat and the sneezes; when she couldn't get through the day without a scary-sounding pneumonia-like rattle, I had to take her to the After Hours medical centre. A nebuliser, an x-ray and two courses of pills later, she's almost back to normal.

Now TLM has it. Fortunately for her, she is not an elderly woman with a portfolio of medical ailments. TLM is not likely to need a nebuliser or any kind of medication. But when she sings she sounds like Tom Waits and when she poos I am utterly grateful that she's finally cottoned onto the idea of putting them in the potty.

So we didn't get to go to the white-folks' Chinese New Year festivities. Ah well, there were no fireworks anyway, and probably no lion dance either. There is still a chance of attending the Teddy Bears' Picnic tomorrow afternoon (which is entirely unrelated to anything Chinese).

Otherwise it will have been a fairly dull, croaky weekend for TLM.

Happy Chinese New Year

Are you an ox? I'm not - I'm a dragon. Apparently this is gonna be a good year for dragons. It should be a good year of oxen too, because it's their year.

My mum still keeps up the Chinese tradition of giving out lucky money to the "children" i.e. my brother and I, our respective partners and our respective children. But neither I nor my brother wish to keep that tradition going. Because if we did, we'd have to stay home all day to avoid other peoples' kids. And if we stick to giving money to the kids within the family we'd just end up swapping similar amounts of money (well, we'd hope it's similar amounts)

We don't let off firecrackers at Chinese New Year, mainly because I think it's illegal to use fireworks outside of Guy Fawkes' Night. But we do have a special meal. I suppose in a Chinese family, food-related traditions are probably the last to go!

But there's some touristy stuff going on in town next weekend - y'know, food stalls, a lion dance performed by a local cultural society, um...more food...

Anyway, I'd like to take TLM to the touristy Chinese New Year celebration so she can have a taste of what it's about. She's already done the food and gotten the red envelope (and got to hold it for exactly 2 seconds before I whipped it out of her hand and put it in my purse, because that money's going straight into her bank account). I'd quite like her to watch a bit of lion-dancing, see a few pretty girls in traditional costume, get sucked into a human tide of new-clothes purchasers (if you've ever been in Hong Kong during this time you'll know exactly what I mean)...

Us Chinese may be cheap drunks, but we're expensive eaters.

In a spin

TLM is having her nap - I should be cutting out my fabric to make that dress I've been meaning to make for the last month, or re-starting my yoga habit, or something. But I don't want to do either of those things because, lately, I get dizzy when my head goes below my waist.

I don't know whether this is a symptom of a bug, or because my sleep has lately been disturbed by strange and...um...disturbing...dreams, or because of the hot weather (I have low blood pressure so it's not unusual to feel dizzy getting up from a hot bath). But it's very disconcerting.

Unfortunately, being light-headed won't get me out of cleaning the house.

Who knew?

Who knew that Christians had sex problems that could only be solved by Christian sex books? (I found this link when looking for websites about yoga.)

Ah well. You can go back to whatever you were doing now.

black and tan

When it comes to sunshine and tanning, I have a problem that is different to most peoples'.

Some people worry about the risk of skin cancer. Other people fret that they can only choose between two skin colours - pink or white. I worry about looking like an easy jigsaw puzzle.

See, my arms are almost black; my upper legs and torso are that sallow-white that you see on Chinese folk who truly shun the sun; my face and lower legs are something in between; my shoulders are off-sallow-white.

This is fine if I'm showing just my arms, or just my legs.

But I don't see myself swanning around in a bathing suit any time soon. Creeping would be more like it.

The time capsule in my drawers

I can still remember my mum and I down at the local furniture shop - one of those places that looks like it specializes in stock rescued from the backs of trucks - and picking out a small, unassuming student desk in a dark, mahogany-finish MDF.

It was my first ever desk, and I conscientiously did my schoolwork at it for the next few years – right up until I completed my undergraduate degree, actually.

When I bought and moved into this house, the desk came with me, in the guise of a stand for the television set. Later, I used it to support the stereo that I was looking after for a friend while he was overseas (somewhere along the way I lost the surround-sound speakers, but not on purpose).

And now it is my sewing desk. The sewing machine has in fact been sitting there for the last 5 or 6 years, but now I actually sit at it to sew stuff.

I hadn’t cleaned the desk drawers in years, so going through the contents of the drawers brought back a few memories: the Margaret Sparrow book on contraception, which was most valuable at a certain time in my life; the belt bags that I bought for my overseas trips and never used (because who wants to look like they eat twice as much pizza as they really do?); the grey fabric dye I bought to fix my favourite jeans following a laundry catastrophe (but they'd shrunk too, so I didn't have to fix the colour stain); the sewing patterns for clothes I never finished (there’s a lesson there); and the drawful of music cassette tapes.

There’s a lot you can tell about me from my collection of music cassette tapes, if you don’t have a million other things you’d rather do.

Spanning the 80's and 90's, it includes AOR, NZ indie, and stuff I can’t even remember listening to. Amongst the slightly uncool Hall and Oates, Beach Boys and Jimmy Barnes, there’re the mystifiying selections of Desmond Dekker, Ofra Haza (didn’t she have a dance hit in the 90’s?) and Linda Ronstadt singing in Spanish. Some I bought as souvenirs of my travels: Ram Narayan, I got while waiting for a bus in India; Aguas Claras, bought in Peru; The Peking Brothers after I saw them busking in London.

Some, I wish I’d got on CD, so I could play them now: Prince and the Revolution (x 2); Bill Withers; U2; Hunters and Collectors (x2); The Psychedelic Furs; Straitjacket Fits; Nina Simone; Hot Chocolate.

I’m faintly embarrassed to have: Nigel Kennedy’s Four Seasons (a present); Apache Indian; Jimmy Barnes (x2); and Kid Creole and the Coconuts. The Tom Jones tape belongs in this category, but then it was an in-joke referring to the time I got the Welshman confused with Sean Connery (and after I’d been living in Edinburgh for almost a year!).

I’m loathe to dispose of the little buggers, but we don’t have a cassette player – I don’t know whether anyone does any more. Perhaps I could just keep the cover inserts, for old times' sake, and ditch the tapes at the dump.

poos to you Blogger

I just wrote the wittiest blog post ever, and then lost the whole damn thing because the Save Now button wasn't working. So poo to you, Blogger.

I might look like mutton dressed as lamb, but I don't care. Much.

Contrary to my earlier post about what I was going to sew next, I decided to make an old pair of jeans into a skirt. You must've seen them around, especially if you were conscious in the Seventies because I think that's when they were really in.

I actually made a jeans skirt out of a pair of jeans back then (well, either the Seventies or the early Eighties - I don't remember exactly), but I messed up fixing the the crotch seam and ended up with bulges in peculiar places.

This time around though, I was inspired to try again when I saw these instructions on the internet. I ended up not following them exactly, but I'm pleased with the result anyway.

I'm just not sure if this kind of thing is appropriate on a 44-year-old.

Should never have been kissed

"Haven't you watched this before?" the boy asked, when he came into the living room and saw me watching Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed. I bet you'd be thinking the same thing - it's a very old film and it's almost unthinkable that Barrymore would look so nerdy, now that we've seen her all foxed-up in the Charlie's Angels movies.

So, no - I hadn't seen it until a couple of nights ago when it screened on the telly (because now is the time that the programmers schedule repeats of old shows, right?). I'd heard that it wasn't a bad movie. But actually, some of the movie is bad.

In case you haven't seen it either, Barrymore plays a 25-year-old newspaper reporter whose undercover assignment is to infiltrate a local high school and bring forth juicy teen gossip articles. Having had a truly hellish time at high school the first time around, our heroine is initially confident that the second time around will be much, much sweeter. Only it isn't because going back to high school would be like going back home. It doesn't matter how much you've changed, you'll revert back to your old self once you're there. Then her ever-popular brother joins in, pretends to be her cool teenage ex-boyfriend and wham! Barrymore's nerd is suddently hot stuff. She's one of the "popular" girls, rejected by the geeky (i.e. intellectual) friend, going to the prom with a studly 16-year-old (hmm...) and headed for an almost-inappropriate relationship with her tasty teacher (double-hmmm).

It's light and all, so I wasn't expecting it to be thought-provoking or life-changing. But still. I just have issues with the ending. The girl accidentally outs herself and her teacher is totally disgusted, which is quite understandable. Then the girl writes an article in the paper which resembles one of those confessionals you see in the trashiest of women's magazines, inviting the hurt teacher to meet her on a heavily-populated baseball field for a kiss.

As if, I thought to myself. If I were a teacher who's found myself falling for an underaged student, only to find out the student was under cover and under orders to find a scandal, the last thing I'd want to do is go kiss her in front of a huge crowd (not to mention tv cameras).

But he does.

And that just ruined the whole experience for me.

Is it because she's a lefty?

TLM has been quite accident-prone lately:

This evening, she walked into the bathroom door on her way out and turned her pretty forehead into something Frankenstein-ish.

Yesterday at her best friend's birthday party, she went to pick up her party favour off the floor (what do you call those little whistles that unroll when you blow on them, hitting people in the eyes?) and banged her head on a lowered desk lid.

Last Friday as we walked out of the living room to get to the front door, TLM inexplicably tripped over her feet and grazed her chin on the industrial-grade (i.e. not soft) carpet.

On the first day of our holiday - and after TLM's first dip in the resort pool - TLM slipped on the wet tiles and into a nearby rock garden, skinning both feet.

I've heard it said that left-handed people are more accident prone, and I can offer myself as a prime example. Okay, so it's either because she's a lefty, or because she's inherited clumsiness from her mother.

Oversleeping

This morning we all overslept and didn't get out of bed until nearly 8am. But I put TLM down for her nap at 1.30 anyway. And she did exactly what she's been doing all week - fluffing about in her room until 3pm and then falling asleep. She'll probably need to be woken up at 4.

That means she'll have been in her room for, like, 3 hours. And she'll still be having her bath at 6 and be in bed for the night by 7pm - even if she spends the next hour or 2 reading and singing before falling asleep.

So, she's in her room a lot. Which means a lot of down-time for me.

Does that make me a bad person?

Wii fun

The boy and I had sweaty fun playing Wii tennis tonight. I say sweaty, not because of the undercurrent of sexual chemistry running between us through every serve, parry and double-bounce, but because the games room (formerly the study) is suffering from sun-trap syndrome i.e. it gets tons of afternoon sun and we tend to leave the window closed because the boy likes it dark and cave-like in there.

I might have another go at Wii Music, but I'm still sulking because my first attempt at conducting the Wii orchestra yielded me around 11 points, compared to the 100 or so points that TLM got.

The next project

I'm just gonna put that trouser failure behind me for now. Next up is this Burda tunic dress (it's the brown print one in the picture, though I might add the collar from the red dress below it).

The pattern and instructions can be downloaded off their website for free, so I spent most of TLM's nap time today printing and taping all 24 pages of the pattern together. It's supposed to be easy, and it's loose-fitting so I shouldn't have all the fitting issues that have made trouser-sewing such a hassle.

I would love to get into the fabric shops right now (when their sales are on) and find a nice print to make the dress up in, but unless I get there in the weekend then I probably won't get a chance to even start this until some time in February. Still, it's nice to dream.

Time for some feminism training

Yikes. Yesterday TLM declared that doctors are boys and nurses are girls. This, when her own GP is a woman, and the mum of one of her ex-playmates is a doctor too.

Good grief.

Two-nil to the pants

After giving up on my first trial pair of trousers (which frayed to the point where I lost my seam allowance, and which were too tight at the waist), I re-measured everything, re-adjusted the sewing pattern pieces, cut them out in a new fabric and set about pin-fitting them on myself. It took ages. But eventually, I thought I had it sussed. So I transferred my adjustments back to the tissue pattern and sewed it all up, leaving only the hem to finish.

Alas, they make my bum look a couple of denim beachballs.

They're also a little too tight across the bum, the waistline sits too high and the legs bag at the back. And the zip is pucker-y at the lower end. Sigh.

I'm not sure whether to just plough on and make trial pants number 3 (with another attempt at fitting them), or back up a bit and make something a bit easier, like an unlined waistcoat.

last night at the beach

Today was our last day here at the beach; by lunchtime tomorrow I expect to be home again.

While I'm not looking forward to the end of our holiday because we'd been looking forward to it for about two months, I reckon I'll be glad to be home again.

TLM too - even though she's absolutely loved being in the pool every day and having both parents to play with all week, she's said that she wants to be back in "the old house". She probably misses the rest of her toys, her friends and the much cooler temperature of her bedroom. The bedrooms here are damned hot, and the mattresses are a little bit hard. Although having a dishwasher is pretty damned cool.

My holiday highlight is - still - probably the miniature train ride (and I'm not even a trainspotter). I don't know what the boy's highlight was, but my guess is it was teaching TLM to walk on her tip toes in chin-deep water and generally having a splash-tastic time with her. As for TLM, it's either the daily dips or the Maisy pop-up book that opens up into a dolls house.

Happy New Year.