Mikes Week of Happy - Day 4

Todays happy is my happy shopping from yesterday......

This beautiful fabric from Kimono House makes me happy.....

These bag rings and buttons from Buttonmania make me happy......

My sweet Hokey resin ring makes me happy.....

These zines from Sticky make me happy.....

Tomorrows Bizarre Bazaar inside the Spiegeltent on The Arts Centre forecourt makes me happy....

Some very talented girls will be selling their wares and I'm off to check them out!

Head on over to see Pip for much more happiness....

Love Fridays....in the City - Part 2

Continuing on with 'The Excellent Adventures of CurlyPops, Drewzel and Hokey' from yesterday......


We met up nice and early at The Nicholas Building and caught the lift upstairs, to begin with a visit to Buttonmania. We ooohed and ahhhed and looked through boxes of buttons before finding a few that we loved, and making some purchases.


Next stop was Kimono House. There were so many beautiful fabrics to choose from. I chose a couple of lovely fat quarters.


I've given one of my fat quarters to Hollie, and she is going to use it to make me a gorgeous Hokey wallet!

We popped in to Lincraft at Melbourne Central to pick up some matching thread and then it was time for a coffee/tea pitstop and of course, a bit of cake.


We decided to head down to Degraves Subway next.

We checked out the current art installation....

.....and visited Sticky to pick up some zines.

Look, there's a Mixtapezine poster!

By this time, the very excellently unpredictable Melbourne weather had taken a bit of a turn for the worse. Our next stop was supposed to be The Rooftop Market at Curtin House, but alas, it was cancelled. We drowned our sorrows with a visit to the Metropolis Bookshop instead.

It had started to rain lightly by the time we reached Cottage Industry, and then we made a pitstop for lunch at a nice little cafe in Gertrude St.

By now it was pouring rain, and we headed over to Sydney Rd to visit Sherrin who was holding down the fort at Olive Grove

Sherrin was working on some of her gorgeous Christmas cards .......

The time had flown by, so it was back to the city to make our departures. Last stop on the tour, Max Brenner for a chocolate fix....need I say more!

Just a minute.......in August

Sheesh...time flies when you're having fun.
August is nearly over already so it's high time for Just a Minute....

Reading

.....at the moment absolutely nothing except for about 150 blogs and the online newspaper. I have an appointment next week that lasts for a few hours (and so requires a book and MP3 player while sitting there). I'll be raiding the bookcase Wednesday night to see what I can find.

Listening

.....it's been a weird mix this week. I've listened to a few cd's while sewing...George, Kasey & Shane, Ministry of Sound (no rhyme nor reason nor theme nor consistency) with this lot.

I also listened to the Emily Martin podcast yesterday courtesy of the link that I found on Michelles blog.....then the weirdest thing happened today, I had the Sunday morning Marthathon going in the background while I was cutting up fabric in the kitchen, and they just so happened to replay the episode where Emily was featured.

Watching

.....well, I watched a lot of the Olympics (tv on in the background while doing other things). The channel 7 coverage was abysmal as per usual. When did Peter Colquhoun and Tom Williams become qualified to commentate sports like kayaking and BMX racing??? Why did we have to sit through so much mens gymnastics when there weren't even any aussies in the finals?

I'm still loving Project Runway Australia and Flipping Out and Dexter. Last weeks episode of Dexter was fantastic...looking forward to tonights!

Eating

.....I bought some nice Danish Butter cookies from the supermarket, they are lovely with a cup of tea in the afternoon. I really want to make some of the yummy carrot cake that Sherrin bought along to the Thornbury Sewing Bonanza. I bought the White Wings Organic flour that has the recipe on the back....but I just haven't got around to actually making them yet.

Making

.....with lots of encouragement from others, I'm currently making some baby items for The CurlyPops Shop and more kiddies pants for my nephews. I still need to make myself a bag with the beautiful piece of vintage fabric that I received from Cathy.

To join in Just a Minute, head over to visit Jen and sign up!

Sorry about the weird spacing...blogger is having a coniption!

The Big Cat Bonanza!

I had a lovely crafty day out at the 'Thornbury Sewing Bonanza' courtesy of the very generous Cathy and Ms L. It was great to catch up with Serena again and to finally meet Sherrin and Juddie...

We began with a table full of scrumptious food (photo here on Cathy's blog).... and we ate and we chatted and we laughed, and in between, we actually did some sewing too!


... and with some help from Serena, and a zipper foot courtesy of Juddie, I managed to sew my first zipper...yippee!


I made this little zippered pouch which is fully lined (the lining is actually a bit too big but it's not bad for a first attempt). Sherrin made a lovely denim zippered pouch too ....great photos here.

I didn't get photos of everybody's creations...but luckily the hostess with the mostest did!

I also managed to bring home some of Cathy's textured canvasses to hang on the wall in my half craft room / half spare room..... and some of Ms L's choc chip biccies (which I'm going to have for brekkie in the morning)

....and I had soooo much fun that I came home a little too late to go to the supermarket, so the cat is getting lemon pepper tuna for dinner!

Oh Bernice....

With all of the excitement thats been happening at CurlyPops headquarters (olympics, mixtogether, brown owls, head in a bucket), I forgot that the lovely Bernice had bestowed an award on me last week. I only remembered when I was blogsurfing lastnight and read Sherrins blog.

So now it is my bloggy duty to share the love and bestow this award on some more crafty bloggers.....this is really difficult because there are sooooooo many fantastic blogs (about 170 at last count) that I read religiously.

Big Cats Emporium

Leni & Rose

Hokey

Kittys Kaboodle

So these are four of my faves...if you haven't checked them out yet then you definitely should!

Thanks Bernice.

PS. Thanks for all the get well wishes.....they definitely worked!

PPS. Blogger is throwing a spacing wobbly...sorry about that.

Overlocking along....

Well it's taken me over a year, but my Ebay overlocker has finally been switched on and stitched up!

My in-laws came over for lunch yesterday so my mother-in-law gave me a quick overlocker lesson. It took me half an hour of searching the house to find the power cord (for some reason it had ended up packed away in the study).

My overlocker is a little different to my mother-in-laws but she worked it out quick smart. We just had to play around with the tension a bit to get the stitching correct.

My next challenge is to use some of the beautiful corduroy that Sherrin sent me to make a pair of pants, but I think I might make a pair of cotton drill pants with the overlocker first before I try with corduroy.

Wish me luck....I'm going to need it!

Birdy Loot

My Name that Birdy winners have now received their little parcels in the mail so I can show the prizes......



First up, we have Sherrins new apron, proudly modelled by the very attractive pool fence...... hmmm, that pool fence is looking a little thin..... it may need some more chocolate.



.....now here's the lining of the apron, proudly modelled by the kids outdoor table on the deck.......



.....and in a speedy backroom change, the kids table is back, quick as a flash, this time modelling Sherrins new potholder.


What have we here? An about turn in the colour range ....... I'm not sure this collection really belongs together....

Here's Jess's pleated apron, modelled by the patio table......


..... and the reverse side. That patio table is showing some talent being able to swippity swap on the catwalk like that.

..... and finally, the kitchen bench wanted to get on into the modelling action, this time with the little drawstring bag consolation prizes for Jess's littlies.


* Note....I am attempting humour...I really don't think I'm very funny!

Channelling or Coincidence?

Do you ever have one of those days where a really strange coincidence happens and it's just unexplainable........???

I decided to go through the stash lastnight to pick out some fabric for The Great Pants Challenge. I emailed Sherrin to get a couple of tips on fabric selection because I truly had no idea what I was doing......(thanks for those great tips and photos Sherrin).

I decided on corduroy because I knew that I had some in the stash from a recent shopping expedition..... and because Sherrin showed me how to match up the grain!

I recently joined up for a little pincushion swap with Fi and Michelle.... and in todays mail is this beautiful little pincushion from Michelle. It has my favourite colours, favourite print (floral of course), and corduroy (one of my fave fabrics)! The photo doesn't show it but on the front, the grain of the corduroy is perfectly horizontal, but on the back it's perfectly vertical...fab detail!
Thanks so much Michelle...I love it!

....and now for the freaky bit....this is the corduroy fabric that I pulled out the stash lastnight and left on my kitchen bench for today......

......only to discover that it's only big enough to make half a pair of pants (drats)!