The great apron gathering gets underway

Yay! Thank you to the lovely people who are keen to be part of the great apron gathering!

There's a few of you so far - Margaret at Konstant Kaos, the inimitable Curlypops of course, Gina at Clutterpunk, no-reply-comment Jennie (is that you, Cravings Frocks?), and Michelle at the Toy Society ... this should certainly help get the apron gathering underway.

It's not too late to join in - this new project of mine has no real delivery date, it'll be delivered when it's finished. All you need to do is collect a vintage tea towel for me and I'll make it into an apron for the Sacred Heart Mission dining hall; or of course you can take matters into your own hands and make an apron from scratch.

Every donation, large or small, is very very welcome. Sometimes it's the littlest things that make the biggest difference.

Calling for vintage tea towels and aprons

Recently I misplaced my sewing mojo and have felt pretty uninspired. Another Hoot? A skirt? A new pencil roll? Gah. Same old, same old. I've needed some new motivation to get going again.

And now I've got it. I've decided I'm going to make some aprons to donate to the dining hall I volunteered at for the Sacred Heart Mission. All the helpers wear aprons to protect their clothes, and some of the ones they had were pretty threadbare... and one of the leaders made an offhand comment about how they need more of them. Now that's something I can do!

Inside the hall it's very cheery, there are lots of hanging lamp pendants, with all the shades made out of vintage tea towels. It brightens up the bare space incredibly, and gives the whole place a fantastic retro feel. When you walk in, it just makes you feel .... cheerful.

And immediately I thought of the fantastic aprons that the lovely Ms Curlypops makes ... what a great idea Curlypops, thank you! I don't have an apron pattern but I'm sure I can find one somewhere.

This afternoon I went for a wander along High St on the lookout for old tea towels - they're actually harder to find than you might think. But I scored this fantastic Flo's Pumpkin Scones one for the grand price of $2, which I was pretty pleased about. It's Flo Bjelke Petersen! That's a real blast from the past.

If anyone would like to donate to the cause and send me a vintage tea towel - or even a modern one - I will very happily make it into an apron for you and put it in the package for Sacred Heart. Or if you'd like to whip up a whole apron of your own - either made with a tea towel or without it - that would be great too!

Those guys deserve all the support they can get, and it makes me feel good to donate my skills as well as my time.

If you want to be a part of this small effort, please leave a comment and let me know you're on board so I can get in touch with you. I get so much out of being part of our lovely crafty community - let's band together and use our talents to make a difference, even if it's just a really, really small one.

Beautiful buttons by LouLou

I woke up this morning and one of the first things I did was caress my lovely blood transport box.

I'm going to line it with pretty paper and use it to store my silks in. Who else do you know will use a human blood carrying case to keep their pretty things in?!

I bet the previous post surprised some of you. It's a lesser-known facet of my personality ... but for some of you who know me well, it won't have come as a surprise at all to see the arch side of my soul emerging for just a moment.

But time now to leave my fascination with medical objects to one side. I will return to it, I'm sure, but right now I need to show you the beautiful things I bought at the Made N Thornbury market from Saturday. You can check out the wrap-up from the day over at Curlypops, she has done a wonderful job of capturing the event!

I have a rule when it comes to markets, and it's this: NO BUYING ANYTHING BEFORE LUNCHTIME. It seems to work ... that way I get to do the rounds of all my lovely neighbour stallholders, and I can spend some time ruminating about all the gorgeous items I'd love to purchase.

I was *very* restrained this time around. I desperately wanted one of the mini totes from Pepperberry & Co, but My One True Love and I are trying to enforce the New Frugality (it's an epoch, believe me), and I knew what he'd say if I came home with yet another gorgeous bag.

So I limited myself to a selection of mini beauties from ButtonsbyLouLou ... (because they're tiny and I knew I could bring them home without them being noticed). Also, my new short crop demands pretty hair ornaments. World of small clips and bobbypins, here I come.

I think my favourite is the badge at the very top. It's so fresh and bright and feminine - the perfect thing to wear to the office on a miserable Melbourne day when everyone else is coccooned in their safety layers of black. Not me, though! Colour ahoy!

Today for example, I am wearing a skirt and top made from a silk cotton I bought in Beijing on holiday a few years ago. It has a yellow base, with blue and red houndstooth print. The skirt is A-line and has a centre pleat with yellow button highlights.

I've teamed it with a cream top underneath, a blue bauble necklace, and low blue heels in exactly the same shade.

Overall, the effect is quite stunning, and usually has *exactly* that effect - it stuns people I work with in the corporate office - and not always in a good way. Some people are frightened of anything other than black, navy and grey.

But not me! I don't do neutrals that well. Colour ahoy, I say, colour ahoy!

Love the Thornbury market

OH MY GOODNESS, the Thornbury market totally rocked today!

Yes, there were lots of people coming through, and quite a few of them buying, and that was fantastic. Whoever did the marketing for this event really knew what they were doing.

But more than that, I got to actually meet some of the crafters whom I've only known through their blogs before. It was like walking down the street of a movie set and meeting all of your favourite characters.

Curlypops and Tinniegirl were sharing a spot next to me (I ordered a lovely orange corduroy bag and admired the beautiful orange Happiness apron until a very clever person bought it), and Finki was showing her beautiful jewellery behind me.

Buttons by LouLou was just across the way - I now own some lovely navy blue polka dotted bobbypins that I coveted all day long, and I'm musing about buying a gorgeous chocolate brown brooch with a bird on it .... and Beccasauras stopped by and shared with some great op shop tips, and Hoppo Bumpo introduced me to Bargy, and Lara from Thornberry had her lovely laptop bag on ... and I'm sure I spied Taccolina and Dear Fii there for a moment as well.

And then (drum roll), then I met the High Priestess of Handbags, Nicole Mallalieu. Of You SEW, girl fame. Yes, the very same one! I nearly fainted with excitement. I may have danced a little jig.

This is the Nikki Mallalieu of the wonderful purse kits - and purse feet, people, feet, which cannot be bought anywhere in Melbourne that I know of apart from her shop - and patterns, and marvellous bias-tape-making geegaws; and we had a wonderful conversation. I am SO going to visit her shop at the first opportunity.

Honestly, if I hadn't sold a thing I'd still have been happy to be surrounded by such lovely neighbours whose blogs I read nearly every day. Okay, maybe I'd have been slightly miffed about not selling anything, but let's not worry about that.

It's so lovely to have found a crafty community, especially one which is both so geographically and philosophically close. It really has helped to bring everything to life for me.

Ahhhhhh. Hear that?

I am breathing the contented sigh of the sated admirer.

I'd like to thank the Academy ....

Well looky here! Look at this! This button to the left!

This is my first ever blog award. It comes from Andrea at A Cat of Impossible Colour, over in New Zealand. There's Andrea over on the blogroll to your right.

I am so proud. It came to her via Mervat, who has a fashion blog.

Mervat writes: "These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

Mervat and Andrea, consider your cleverly written text incorporated into the body of my award.

Andrea passed this award on to me and and one of her friends, Ally, because both of our blogs make her smile daily.

I know I should be modest about this, but I am really very happy and it's hard to contain the excitement. My blog makes someone smile! I'm so excited! Ah, little blog, you're only young - 10 weeks old - and already you're making your mark on people. Just don't bite, little blog, don't bite.

In return, I'm passing this award on to Curlypops, who I latched onto right from the start and who graciously keeps answering all of my blog-related questions, not to mention very kindly letting me know where I could have my new Flickettysplits labels made up. Yay!

And to Tinniegirl, because I love surprises and hers are delightful - plus she is the instigator of my favourite meme, Love Fridays (and I looooove Fridays, so she definitely gets the gong).

And to Kootoyoo for her My Creative Space meme, which is slowly convincing me that I really need to start tidying up more often ....

Share and share alike. Please keep reading!

Come to the Thornbury market

Right, people. Time for some shameless advertising.

See this picture at the very top of that right'hand column? The one titled "Come To The Market"? The one advertising the Thornbury craft market? That one right there? See it?

I want you to come to the market! Support your local community. Feed a local artist. Come and finger my wares. That is, I mean, you know, pick up my pretty little things and admire them. And then hopefully buy them too!

At this market I'm going to be all stocked up with soft toys - Hoots, and Ellyfumps, and Pussycats, and I'll have some new things as well. I think a fish. And perhaps a giraffe. Maybe a dinosaur as well - we'll see how much time I can snaffle for sewing between now and then. I'm really going to have to take in my machine for a service soon before it expires with a last exhausted gasp.

Or if you don't want one of my things - crazy, I know, but possible, in an alternate universe type of situation - maybe you'll like one of Curlypops' things. She does lovely bags and other goodies.

Or perhaps one of Tinnigirl's things? She does lovely tins with surprises inside - nice ones, not nasty. And gorgeous recycled album covers filled with papery goodness on the inside. Sometimes there's nothing nicer than a little surprise, is there?

So come to the market. Support your local community! Feed a local artist!

Responding to the Victorian bushfire crisis

I've developed a crippling headache this morning, one that's fixed on the right side of my forehead above my eye, and it's a piercing pressure inside me.

The numbers keep going up in the bushfire toll - 173 at last count this morning - and I think I may be starting to respond in a physical way to it.

Work is busy, we're doing a lot through our employees and communications, so that's occupying my mind and my time. There's a lot of pressure of course, and we even have people who've lost their homes but still insist on working through it, so I can hardly complain about my little headache in the face of that kind of solidarity.

People respond in so many different ways to tragedies of this kind. Some cry, others hit things, a few lash out, others collapse inwardly.

Me, I get right in the zone. My emotional range narrows to the sharpest of sharp points. I become very cool and detached and unemotional; and focus on executing the task at hand. This channels my emotions into actions instead, which actually energises me and provides me with the bounce and resilience to do what needs doing.

This can be a good thing. In becoming dispassionate and re-directing the energy (and it's not something I actually think about, it just happens naturally) it gives me enough room to do what has to be done and not get teary/angry/upset or otherwise lose the ability to perform. I am, after all, a perfectionist.

However, it can also be a bad thing. In not displaying any emotion, and sometimes actually seeming ruthlessly efficient, others can think me cold, and that I lack compassion or sympathy. The uber-professional comes to the fore.

But of course I'm feeling it, it's just that my conscious mind pushes it deep into my subconscious until I have the right situation and ability to deal with it.

It does mean that I have to make myself consciously aware of my feelings at times like this.

When doing radio interviews, for example, I need to deliberately moderate my voice to reflect the seriousness of the situation. Earlier in the week I recorded a bunch of news grabs for a radio station in Sydney, and about 15 minutes after I'd hung up, I realised I sounded far too cheerful for what I was saying. So I rang them back and re-recorded them all, this time making sure my voice was much more appropriate.

And in writing about the bushfires, I'm conscious that I probably haven't yet come fully to grips with the reality of the situation. It's difficult to express my thoughts without sounding saccharine, or insincere, or melodramatic.

It's been so good to see other members of the blogging community do what I always fail to do in this kind of situation, which is to spring into action on behalf of the victims.

While I'm busy using the mainstream media to give messages to customers and people who want to donate to the Victorian Bushfire Relief Fund (BSB 082 001 Account number 860 046 797), others like Curlypops and Meet Me At Mike's and SillyGilly are rounding up volunteers, holding charity auctions, and doing lots of other useful, helpful things that give us all the opportunity to contribute meaningfully.

This is why we need people with different attributes in our lives- because some get on with the job, some show kindness and compassion, others think of practical ways to help.

Together, we all do something that someone else can't.