A minor brush with fame

Yay! I've just packaged up "I Ate Too Many Buttercups" Hoot, who is flying off to a lovely bloke in America tomorrow.

He was looking for a present for his niece and thought my Hoot was just the ticket. Hip hip hooray!

I made up a little drawstring bag for Hoot to go in, too. It's bright yellow with white polka dots, and I've threaded it with a lovely pink ribbon. That should brighten up the parcel a bit.

Right now though, I'm off to make a few new ones for the Made N Thornbury market on Saturday. I want to make sure I'm all stocked up with gorgeous little toys. I really love this market, it has such a nice community vibe to it and there are always lots of people who come to visit.

It's going to be a squeeze this Saturday, because after the market finishes at three in the afternoon, I've got to pack up my stall like lightning, shove all the boxes in the back of the car My One True Love will drive up, and then together we will spin off to the airport with tyres screeching and the wind in our hair.

I'm catching a plane to Sydney, you see, a little more than an hour after the market finishes. I'm off to Sidders for a girls' weekend with Mountaingirl and the Sister Of My Heart. There's Avenue Q in there somewhere (the Muppet musical), and hopefully a whole lot of Project Runway - Mountaingirl's taped the en-TIRE series and - bless her - is waiting to watch it with me, I so admire her restraint as I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to demonstrate such self control!

Hey, that reminds me - the guy from the last series, the one who styled like Vivienne Westwood, the one who came second? I saw him at the Rose St Artist Market last weekend! He was wandering around looking at things (not my stall, probably not a lot of call for children's items in his life I'd say) and if I'd been capable of moving or speaking past the massive, massive headache I was trying not to vomit through, I'd have run up to him and screeched You Should Have Won!!

Lucky for him, I was rooted to the spot. Maybe next time .....

The new atmospheric ribbon jar

Ah ...... coming back home to Melbourne is always such a joy.

Nothing beats seeing My One True Love again after a few days in absentia - absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

And I'm always overjoyed to see the furry babies too; I miss their furry faces when I'm away. There's something very special about the welcoming smooch from a puss that hasn't seen you for a little while.

Along with all the other loot I brought home from Sydney, I also carried this beautiful glass jar, all wrapped up safely in six metres of cream polar fleece which I took onto the plane with me as carry-on (don't ask, even the flight attendants thought I was peculiar, and one exceptional wit [well, certainly a "-wit" of some kind] asked if I had brought my own parachute. I say: no one who works for Qantas is really in a position to joke about things like that since the oxygen-bottle-blowing-a-hole-in-the-side-of-their-plane incident last year).

But I digress. Mountaingirl gave me this gorgeous apothecary jar as a present for my birthday last month, and I think it's wonderful.

Doesn't it look absolutely spectacular all filled up with my orange ribbons? It's sitting on an orange patterned silk scarf that I use as a tablecloth for one of my side tables in the sitting room.

I keep all my ribbons colour-coded and in separate ziplock bags so they're easy to find. Mountaingirl though is slowly weaning me off the awful plastic and onto these divine glass jars, which look like the sort of thing you'd find in a fantastical lollyshop, or a dusty old chemist.

I love them, and my ribbons look SO much better when displayed properly. Thank you Mountaingirl!

Amazing giveaway response!

Wow everyone - thank you so much! You are totally awesome and I love the way you're embracing the giveaway concept. 21 new followers so far AND forty comments to date on the post below! I am overcome. And I can't wait to see who the winner eventually is on May 23!

Fatpuss is absolutely beside himself with pride. He is taking all the credit , that greedy puss, for being the one who *really* inspired you all to take part, and he would like to thank everyone for the nice compliments about him and his magnificent haunches. That cat's got booty, he truly does. He is without doubt a truly marvellous animal and is pleased you all recognise it too.

There's been nearly three days break in transmission, which is primarily due to my having flown to Sydney for a girls' weekend with the Sister Of My Heart and Mountaingirl, who live (conveniently) very close to each other.

And what have I made them do while we've been having this girl's weekend? I've made them go to fabric shops, naturally, even though neither of them are the crafty type. They're good friends, these gals. They have the kind of patience I wish I were able to develop.

Want to see what I bought? I had to come all the way to Sydney to get it, but LOOK and BEHOLD - my magnificent new corduroy collection.

(I just need to say something first: Penrith Lincraft, you suck. Apart from your one nice boy at the service counter, you suck big time. You need to know this.)

But Penrith Spotlight, you totally rock!! If anyone out there is in need of a wide range of corduroy I cannot recommend this store enough. I've never known a Spotlight like it. The lovely Jo who served me actually knew about fabric, and showed an interest in what I was buying, and even managed not to fall over with hilarity when I asked if she could whisper the total price to me so I didn't faint. (It was $362, if you're wondering. See? Now you understand why I needed it to be whispered.)

And I got this lovely variety of 30's inspired cotton as well, which I just love.

Of course, it's completely the wrong kind of weather to be sewing it up - I think I'm going to make it into clothes - but it was one of those moments where I knew I wasn't going to be back here for a little while, and I had to weigh up the possibility of not buying it and never finding it again, against the overweight baggage fee and the near-impossible chance of sneaking it into the house unseen by My One True Love.

It was a mighty internal struggle and I dithered for .... oh, at least fifteen seconds.

In the end there was really no question. Reader, I bought it.

And then I bought these two pieces as well. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, eh?

A long and lovely weekend

Despite having lived in Melbourne off and on for ... (counts on fingers) nearly eight years, I still can't get the hang of having the Labour Day long weekend in March. In New South Wales, where I grew up, we have Labour Day in October.

So it always comes as something of a surprise when Labour Day rocks up in March and I find myself a bit flat-footed as I scramble for things to do.

This time around, I flew to Sydney for Mountaingirl's housewarming - her place is amazing, this woman has lived here for about 10 weeks now and it already looks like a house out of a magazine. Gah. The skill! The dedication! I've lived in our place with My One True Love for nearly three years and we are still unpacking boxes.

Mountaingirl has a real knack for making a house a home. Before I give away too many details I'm going to stop myself, as I plan to do a special post on Friday in honour of her talent, so be sure to check back then ... let me assure you, you really want to see the book nook.

The other highlight of the trip was catching up with the Sister Of My Heart, and her offspring, (and my godson) the Miniature Genius. He's a very serious and sober child most of the time, but this is a kid who isn't two yet, but who can count to ten, read his name - and the word Bunnings - and pick letters out of the alphabet. He's a smart cookie.

My primary job as godmother is to work on his vocabulary. This weekend we learnt travel-related words - plane (on a plane, off a plane, plane in sky), airport (go airport, home) - oh, and peekaboo, which he pronounces "keeky-boo". It's adorably cute.

On returning to Melbourne less than 24 hours later, I fell victim to some kind of fever on the way back from the airport (off-a-plane), and instead of driving myself home, accidentally drove myself to my favourite plant nursery and spent a vast amount of money on assorted plants, compost and soil instead. Ooopsadaisy.

It's because I've been looking at the bed in the back garden, the one along the fence, for some time now. It's got three silver birches in it, but it's too narrow to do any real layering underneath, and I've been stumped for what to do. And of course the thing about being stumped is that it puts me into paralysis, and I never do anything as a consequence, except gaze in despair at the bed hoping for some magical wand to make it a garden instead of a frustration.

I think my subsconscious brain took over and directed me to the nursery, where instead of wandering about aimlessly as I usually do, I sought out a giant pile of drought-tolerant plants with the determined aim to just plant the damn things in the damn bed and fill up the damn spaces I hate so much.

FIVE BACKBREAKING HOURS LATER, I stood back and took in the view from the verandah. Not a space to be seen. Instead, masses of dark-leaved purple sedum nestled in amongst violet heliotrope bushes and red verbena ground cover. Indigo salvias butting up against unnamed bushes (no label on the pot) crowned with spires of blue flowers. A couple of ballerina roses, not true roses at all, their long red flower spikes topped with dainty pink butterflies. Snowgrass planted along the front of the bed, it'll mass up and create a kind of edging effect. And here and there, a dwarf goblin daisy that will flower in red and orange.

Ahhhh. Much better.

And then today of course I sewed madly, as I have a market each weekend for the next three weekends. All thoughts of the garden forgotten. Photos yet to come.....