Meeting Tone und Lina.

I love this woman.

And all those years ago, I was worried that I wouldn't.
6 foot red head Norwegian Pisces.
What's not to love?

We first met in December 1997 at Munich station when Tone was my brother's girlfriend.
We took just one look at each other, hugged, linked arms and walked away together, each with a new sister.
Time and distance has made precious little difference to our relationship since that day.
This clip is 10 years later, January 2008 at Cologne station.

I had been wondering who would cry more, Tone or me?

It was me.
And this is surprising because I'm not by and large a watery person. Tone certainly is.

I dislike crying.
I shall fight tears on the beaches and on the landing grounds. I shall fight them in the fields and in the streets. I shall never surrender.

So, this clip tells me that I'm more inclined to cry from joy than from misery.
I suspected as much.
I hope it's not another 10 years before I cry for this reason again.

So sew UFOs.

I finish things.
Unless I don't like them or they're for me.
But, other than that, I finish things.

These are the things I'm working on at the moment, or have abandoned for one of the above reasons.
Both very good reasons too.

So, anyway, here are my UFOs (unfinished objects) in their crumpled, I don't like them anymore glory.

Actually, the ant block is going to be for Bronwyn's June mail out. Last time I was there, a very handsome team of kitchen ants were making her kinda cranky, so I thought I'd dedicate a block to their uneasy relationship. It will be finished this week, so it probably doesn't count as a UFO as such.

The cat block is for Clair. She knows why. It is finished except the tail and maybe I'll crayon it a little bit.

The cross stitch is for Clair's bubba. It's 2/3rds finished and I only started it 2 weeks ago.
It has bunnies on it.
And we know this because if you look closely enough, you will notice (even without backstitching done) that they are losing the scrum.
That's OK. I still love them.
I now have needle holes in my right thumb and my left forefinger (in addition to my other stigmata), from stitching too much, so...

The lamby-bag with the areshole contains what will be a pram blanket for Clair's bubba. It's just that I like lamby to look full, so...

The Rabbitohs logo is mine. I was originally going to do maybe 6 or 7 of them and sew them into a quilt. But then I realised how badly it would wash, so...

The hexagons are MINE and I love them. They will never end up crumpled in that container under my sewing table.
Such is my resolve, that I did a couple of stitches in total blackness the other night when Adrian turned the power off.
They were fine.

The orange quilt, well, I'm just over orange and I never really decided what it was destined to be at all. Quilt, table cloth, cat blanket? I think it makes a fine UFO. It's ready to be pinned and quilted, but frankly, I don't like it's chances, so...

That little thing was going to be a button wall hanging, but then I remembered that I don't particularly like buttons. Or wall hangings.
Hmm, nope, I got no plans for it, so...

The larger checked thing was made just to see whether I could make a whole quilt out of scraps or not.
Well, I can. But apparently I don't like to use the same fabric twice.
Does that make me wasteful and shallow?
Or eccentric and diverse?
Of course, around this stage of the project, I realised that the butterfly in the corner is really pretty similar to it's ugly, disgusting, hillbilly cousin, the moth, so.....

So, is it OK not to finish things if you have a good reason?
Is it OK to sew my dad's 1974 coat buttons as aresholes onto lamby-bags from Spotlight?
Is there really a quilting mafia?
And if there is, is that where the term "made" comes from?

Anyway, I'm heartily ashamed of myself, sew...

Full moon in Merrylands.

So, I'm on the phone to a customer, scratching my head, inspecting my stigmata and frantically reaching for my cup of jasmine tea, when she busts the following question out onto me...

"Is it true that you should only take bee pollen if it's gathered by bees who fly within a 60km radius of your house?"

I'm going to repeat that, just in case you think I had a seizure while typing and simply chanced upon that combination of words.

"Is it true that you should only take bee pollen if it's gathered by bees who fly within a 60km radius of your house?"

Now, although desperate myself to know the idiotic mechanics and possibly alien origins of this brand of logic, I had to refrain from all lines of questioning, in a feeble attempt to stave off a most unprofessional amount of laughter.

So, I'm not able to expand this theory for you.
Pity.

If you're wondering about my response, the best I could come up with at that moment was,

"If you like."

And I'm not repeating that either, as I'm not terribly proud of it.

I can tell you what I was thinking however, as I stared, glassy eyed with eyebrows painfully raised, into the bodybuilding section.

I thought, "Is it a fucking full moon, or what?!"

But, as we know, it's pretty much always a full moon at dear old Merrylands.

Ah yes, Merrylands.
Home to the world's hillbillies.
Each and every type of people represented at their very, very strangest and most charming.

A place where I've met folks who drink their own urine.
A place where the local Naturopath thinks she has stigmata.
A place where people bring me in gifts of illegal medicinal herbs and freaky giant zucchini.
A place where people knit Souths Sydney Rabbitohs dolls for me as well as for Paul, the local Santa, and let's not forget, a place which boasts people who are no less than "lactose intelligence".

I ask you, why would you want to be anywhere else?



And, yes, I said stigmata.