Vroom vroom!

Doesn't this bright cushion make you want to rev your engine! Should I call it Hotrods, or Vroom Vroom?

I love Echino fabrics - there's nothing quite like high-quality linen/cotton in smashing prints and colours to brighten your day. I think the yellow colourway is my particular favourite - it's not quite mustard and not quite ochre, definitely not lemon and not even close to butter. Let's call it "hepatitis".

I had some scraps left over after making a series of my One Car Off The Road totes, and as I pushed them around on the table I was struck with the idea for this piece. It's 60cm x 40cm and I've used my favourite feather and down insert inside, so it's supersoft and you can plump it up beautifully. I used to use polyfil inserts in my cushions but I'm not fond of the way they eventually go sad and flat over time. These feather ones are much better - and of course, you know the Lincraft saga that relates to them.

So this lovely thing is coming with me to the Shirt and Skirt market tomorrow down at Abbotsford, and if you think the boy (or girl, we're not sexist) in your life could do with a Vroom Vroom pick-me-up, well then you know what to do.

That reminds me to tell you of another thing that happened to me during that long month away recently - my stall at the Shirt and Skirt Market was filmed by the Postcards crew! Postcards is a Melbourne tv show that tells you all about the cool things you can do in and around Melbourne, and in February they visited the market for a shoot.

I wasn't interviewed like one lucky stallholder, but they came and did some overlay shots of my bright and colourful stall - especially the Arnotts vintage brand cushion and my Hoots and Ellyfumps. I was also filmed tying one of my fabric necklaces round the neck of the host (though I am sure they will cut me out of the shot and just show the host, no doubt), who then played about with it for a while on camera; and then picked up one of my Ellyfumps and did cute play-acting things with it. Nice!

It was only the briefest of brief segments, but I really hope I make it onto the show! Apparently it will go to air in September sometime, so you better be watching to find out .....

Even the garden won't save me

There'll be no sewing today. I haven't the temperament for it.

Yesterday's market went well enough, given that it was both bloody hot and violently windy .... not the most conducive of environments for an outdoor market, you might say. Toof was the first thing to sell, and then the mint and pink flannelette cat, then a tiny red polka-dotted bird. A few doorstops, a tissue pack, some lavender sachets.

My new tote though, One Car Off The Road, (made from more delicious Echino fabric) sold as well, and I only finished it moments before the market. A small four-year old dressed in a bright red t-shirt that said "Fire engines to the Rescue" decided he wanted it for his library bag, and refused to budge, in that stubborn way of four-year olds.

I think he liked the colour and the cars more than the ecological statement the tote makes .... but never mind. As long as he likes it, that's the main thing. Perhaps the message will seep in subliminally over time.

But I don't feel like sewing or being creative today. I just want to be stodgy and quiet.

I had (I just typed "hate"accidentally and had to delete it, that probably says enough about my state of mind) ... that is, I had a night of bad dreams last night, bad dreams about just about everything. And so today I've woken up in a mood.

Even going out into the garden didn't help a great deal, and usually it can pick up my spirits in a moment.

Today, stepping onto the path, I breathed in the delicate perfume of the white roses. They spill like seafoam over the top of my picket fence, and at the moment the scent is rising off them in the warm sun.

Ordinarily I'm not fond of the Iceberg virus that infects so many inner-city gardens. I'm more a Tequila Sunrise kind of rose lover - vivid orange petals with bright yellow hearts to them. Or Adof, warm deep apricot. Or Lagerfeld, a cool and delicate mauve, similar to Blue Moon but ever so slightly more regal.

But these Icebergs were here when we moved in, and I haven't the heart to rip them out. They're slowly being overshadowed by the giant grasping robinias though, which started out as moptops and get bigger every year, despite me taking to them every spring with a hacksaw and giant snippers. One day they'll swallow the roses altogether, and they'll stop frothing along the top of the fence.

Having watered the gardenias, I thought briefly of taking some box hedge cuttings. The plants have had a burst of growth after the week of misty rain we had here in Melbourne, and they've grown long arms that wave over the brickwork. If I catch them at the right time I can pot them up, and hey presto, extra new box plants, for free.

But there are other things to do in the backyard today ahead of taking cuttings. There's ugly wire trellising to put up against the ugly south-facing wooden fence. It's a festival of ugliness out there right now, but once the trellising is in place, I can start training the passionfruit vines along it.

And hopefully in a few seasons time all the ugly will be gone, and instead there'll be fresh warm passionfruit to crack open in summer instead.