Quote

"Take your needle, my child,
and work at your pattern —
it will come out a rose by and by.
Life is like that . . . one stitch
at a time, taken patiently."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Pugly

A staffy visitor to work today reminded me how much I miss my two. Alas the new casa is not big enough for a doggie, but in my future there will be more Staffies. Oh yes.
And one of these:
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Oh yes, they will be mine.

PS. All these prints are available from allposters.com.au who have an incredibly impressive range of stuff for your walls. Yay! I'm off to buy a Staffy print now.

My happiness

Hooray it's Friday.
And a happy song...

Countdown as the weeks trickle into days.
13 days.

Have a great weekend!

PS. I love the original video for this, but the mean rekkid company won't let me embed the vid. Blah.

Antique Shed

As in, not an ancient shed, but a shed full of antiques. One of the places down my end of the world that I love is the Mornington Antique Centre (65 Tyabb Road Mornington open every day from 10-5). My Monday-itis was still getting me down yesterday, so I went for a wander after work. Last time the Fella and I were there, nothing really jumped out at me, but this time, various things said "Take me home Steph", and even though I ummed over the prices of a couple of them, the following items came with me:

Stuff on my kitchen bench... as you can see I've FINALLY found a metal soap shaker (that was the one that I ummed over the price). Everything else is just nice bits for the casa. The orange tin is a little vintage watercolour set, the blue jar is an Avon perfume cream jar and I was taken with the funky perpetual calendar, so I grabbed that too. And some art glass for my new e-bayed buffet, which Dad is hopefully dropping off on the weekend.

Sigh... I probably shouldn't be so pleased about acquiring stuff, 'cause after all they're just material possessions. But following William Morris' "useful/beautiful" theory... yay for nice things.

Fear

My mother's afraid of the subway
It's a living bad dream
I hold her hand as the doors close
And she pales and stifles a scream
Ali's afraid of Ad-libbing
Of improvising at jams
She is not very happy right now
And spends all her money on grams
Ade is afraid of commitment
So Carla dumped him today
She is very disappointed
She was hoping he'd beg her to stay
Ayo he just wants a girlfriend
He's afraid of dying alone
He doesn't go out very much
Sits at home a lot getting stoned

You see fear is only holding us back
Look closely amongst all your peeps
There is usually one thing that keeps
Us off track
It is fear, It is fear, It is fear

Ella is worried about her weight
She won't eat in public anymore
She is fucking her ex again
When they've finished
She sleeps on the floor
Nate has a heart of gold
But give it away he will not
His mother abandoned him at ten
It's a pain he has never forgot
Mary's afraid of herself
Her sentences often cut half
She will never give her own opinion
She's afraid that people might laugh
And I am afraid of sharks
I will not swim out past my head
And sometimes I worry
My boyfriend will die
My first love is already dead

You see fear is only holding us back
Look closely amongst all your peeps
There is usually one thing that keeps
Us off track
It is fear, It is fear, It is fear

You see fear is only holding us back
Look closely amongst all your peeps
There is usually one thing that keeps
Us off track
It is fear, It is fear, It is fear

Candy is having a baby
She fears she will be like her mom
Her friends say relax take a
Deep breath
And march to a different drum
Sachas afraid of her Marco
She think's that it's all her fault
But if he did what he does to a
Stranger
He'd be locked up and charged
With assault

You see fear is only holding us back
Look closely amongst all your peeps
There is usually one thing that keeps
Us off track
It is fear, It is fear, It is fear

Coffee Break

Everyone knows that I love a snot block. So as a cure for Monday-itis, I purchased one with my mid-morning coffee. And immediately thought of taking a pic of it to show Selena, who is also a fan of the vanilla slice.
But then I thought, that's not very inspiring:


So I jazzed it up a bit, which brought to mind this post of Toni's:


Did it taste better? You bet!

Super Pops!

Ah we all love the Curly Pops. She's a great chick. So when I saw the SuperPops challenge, I knew I had to play along. Plus I'm counting down the days til the end of the month (for other reasons) and so I thought this would keep me busy. Go check it out. And play along. There's even chocolate involved.

Blanket Malarkey 1

Just a WIP pic. Don't look too closely, there's a few mistakes. Who said I could count? Not me!

I also have a quandry, as I'm still not convinced that I love the granny square...I'm trying to envision a finished blankie, as I think it will all come together okay...but I'm finding I prefer the look of the round crochet medallions without the cream square edge. The problem would be, how to join them?

PS. Like my new side table? I pinched it off mum and dad... they had another larger one. Mum said they picked them off the street on hard rubbish day (ssh don't tell the council). Who are the nice people of Kew throwing out good mid-century furniture? Hope they keep it up!

Just in case

You were wondering where the blog's name came from.

Blanket Malarkey

...which is what the blanket construction project will be furthermore known as, aptly named by Tania. Upon arriving home yesterday, I found a nice fat parcel of yarn on the doorstep. Hooray! After dinner and the usual tootling around on Facebook, I ripped into it. Here's what it contained:

As you can see in the pic, I made a few experimental crochet squares as I'm still pondering the crochet vs. knitting method of blankie construction. Whattaya think?

Top

Just thought I'd show you a pic of the (machine) cross-stitch on my new top that I'm wearing today... last Friday's purchase from Tar-jay*. It has two of my fave things - orange and embroidery. Yay.

Double yay, it's Friday!

* you know I mean this store.

Further thoughts

On my crochet blankie. After finding this knitting book at Savers on Tuesday, I'm considering making a knitted blankie instead. See the knitted dress pattern? I think the scallopy stripes would look good as a big knitted blanket too. Pro - knitting uses less yarn than crochet? Con - I am the world's slowest knitter. Yesterday a nice lady from Bendigo Woollen Mills rang me about my order, God love her, she sounded like she was about 65... so my yarn will be arriving soon, and I'll give the knitting a burl.

Amongst the knitting patterns at Savers there were some real 50s 60s and 70s gems, especially for men's knitted waistcoats, but practising rare self restraint, I only bought the ones I'd actually make... And I really like the designs in this book, retro goodness!

Cute skirt and top.

Cute cardis with bow.

And just a shot of some scary eye makeup...I'm thinking late 60s?

Fave colours

Oh more eye candy! Or retro decorator porn or something! So sweet it's rotting my teeth.

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PS. Why have I got an out of control craving for a ham and cheese toasted sandwich?

"Cup of cheer"

Just some eye candy...and my fave blue.

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Ikea, I kill ya

I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea. Well maybe a like/hate, I can't say I actually LOVE anything there. But for the often lazy (yes that's me) they do make household necessities affordable and accessible.
Do you think I can assemble the furniture though?
Ahem.
I've always considered myself a reasonably intelligent, competent human being, but those instruction leaflets just do my head in.

Ikea tally to date:
success - 1 x chair, 1 x sofa
FAIL - 2 x chairs, 1 x TV locker. And a glass lampshade that cracked on me.

Oh dear. The TV locker is one of these, a single door model, and in my infinite wisdom, I put the lid on back to front, and now I can't get the damn thing off! You may think not a big problem, but to put the door on, you need a hole in each right corner for the door pins to go in. Oh noes. So here's the cabinet as it looks at the moment, waiting for someone strong and burly to put it to rights. And someone who can be bothered...both the Fella and Dad decided it looked better without a door anyway.

Now I also bought chairs called "Harry" from Ikea a few weeks back, and tried to assemble them. Oh dear. (!) I ended up ringing the Fella in despair, who told me to go and have a cuppa and leave it till he came over next. So I did. My spare room was beginning to become a testament to my Ikea failures, for it now held the locker door, one partially assembled Harry, one Harry still in it's box and a side table that I hadn't bothered with, as I'd grabbed the wrong one and didn't realise at the time. Sigh.

Last weekend, the Fella was over, and set to put my chair disaster to rights. He couldn't get it to work either, until he realised that I'd put one of the seat braces around the wrong way "Look Steph, it fits easily when you put it in the right holes." ...because my main problem with Harry chair was that I couldn't get the dowel pins to sit right in the holes. So as usual, I had everything arse about. Oh the shame! I'm an Ikea failure. The Fella looked around the room and said "Don't worry Steph, you're good at decorating, and knitting" in an attempt to console me. Sigh.

So now, you'd think I'd have learnt my lesson and should avoid Ikea. Or at least don't unpack anything that needs assembling when I'm on my own. But the thing is, I need a queen size bed, as the double I have is a bit patethic really... so I'm currently coveting this one:

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Of course it has a complicated headboard/shelving combination, I think I'm a bit of a masochist sometimes.

And I'm also considering one of these as a home for some rather gorgeous coffee cups that I op-shopped yesterday. (Or this one.) Me, Ikea, and glass shelving?! Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

to be continued...

Okay

...so why is it, I can sit at home of an evening and not feel like crafting, but the minute I'm supposed to be working, all I can think about is playing with wool (and boys, but that's another story.) Further to this post, and totally inspired by this post, I have bitten the bullet and ordered a nice range of colours from Bendigo Woollen Mills for a crochet blankie...everyone's doing it, dahling! Eyeing the colour card, I decided that the following range of colours did it for me:

Except, big poo, no Cappuccino left...so now on the hunt for a nice 8 ply brown cotton yarn. Any ideas?