Thursday 25 August 2011

Just Enough Time For One More Post!

I found another playful photo for you.  Given the subject matter of the last post, I probably won't be staying here myself.
Actually, I bet not many men stay here either!

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Of Menopause and Quilts

At the risk of raising this old nugget again, we know that God is not a woman, right?  How?  Well we only need look at the menopause.  The male menopause is really quite laughable.  They get sports cars, younger women and okay, maybe a bit of testicular droop, but wouldn't you swap that for the raging hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings, dry skin, sagging bits and facial hair that we have ended up with?  Where is my Porsche and where oh where is my young hottie???

Well this was all on my mind over the last week as I neared my 6-monthly gynaecologist appointment.  I am in what is called the peri-menopause.  Well, that is a lot better than what I was in, according to Singaporeans.  When I went, in my mid(ish) forties as the symptoms started to appear, I was given a book by my gynaecologist called 'Your Golden Years'.  Sorry but NO WAY am I going to tell people that I am suffering from my Golden Years.  

Well, whatever you call it, for me it has not been an easy road.  Like most of the women I know on this well trodden path, we are kept sane by a mixture of HRT and laughter.  I thank the good Lord for sending me a supportive bunch of friends, a great gynaecologist and the most fantastic husband, who has been nothing if not supportive and caring about this time, stage or whatever you want to call it.  Only once did he falter and shout after me as I ripped into him, 'did you forget to take your hormones, dear?', and given the provocation, it was justified!  Well, as it happens I have been taking my hormones, and feel a lot better than I did this time last year.

Okay, where is this going you are now asking yourselves, or maybe that's you I can hear snoring in the background.  Stay with me now, I'm getting to the point.

My friend Shirl and I have been discussing different art techniques.  She posted on her blog a scan of her face, yes as in stuck her head under the scanner lid (her head is small, I mean really really tiny, almost the size of a large pinhead really).   This led me to trying that out too.  Suddenly an idea was born.  I merged this subject with my menopause musings, and made a small quilt, which explored my thoughts about the menopause.  Yeah!  I got to the point in the end!!!

Sunday 21 August 2011

Playful Photos

Have you ever wondered whether your partner would take you back if you had a fling with someone else?  I never have to worry about that, I know my hubby would welcome me back with open arms. 

Or maybe not..!

And whilst on the subject of signs, here are a few more.  The inconvenient convenience was contributed by Alan, which he sent from the men's toilets in his office building.  I have to wonder what he was doing in the men's loo with a camera, and judging by the picture, he had very shaky hands!
He CLAIMS that he went back out to get his camera.

I am constantly amazed by what the cyber world comes up with.  I have no idea why anyone would want this product or what they would do with it.  Please feel free to post your ideas.
S - don't buy one of these cameras, who knows what will happen when you hit the shoot button!

Okay, I know I can be a bit sick with what I find funny, but did anyone else see this news item?  Not to make light of it or anything, but isn't this a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted?!
Tibetan monk who set himself on fire is cremated
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
A monk who set himself on fire in an ethnically Tibetan region of western China has been cremated.
The Free Tibet campaign in London says 29-year-old Tsewang Norbu died Monday after dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire in Daofu county.
The official Xinhua News Agency says the monk's body was cremated Wednesday in accordance with Tibetan rituals. It says family members and monks attended his funeral.


Before I close, I know people were very worried about my friend Tom and what happened to him after he put the bird poop in his mouth.  When I asked him about it, Tom said he swallowed the poop as he didn't now what else to do with it in the circumstances (spit it out, gag and vomit are the first things to enter my mind, let alone rush to the nearest hospital).  Well, I checked up with Jerry, to find out if Tom was really okay.  He said he was, and sent me a picture to reassure me.

Here is Tom, looking the same as ever.

Jerry did say he had noticed one strange thing though.  Tom has now signed up with Twitter and can be found Tweeting all day long!!!

Monday 15 August 2011

Oh wow, look at those tiles man!

If my post sounds unusually chirpy, it may be because I have been glue sniffing!  Oh wow!  Just look at those colours man!  Oh, I have the munchies!  

Actually, they are working on the apartment downstairs, and are fitting new tiles.  The fumes are so strong, you just would not believe it.  I thought I would pass out in the lift.  

Maybe the workers were overpowered with fumes when they fitted the cheap, Chinese, piece of crap tiles in our kitchen (excuse the language).

Those tiles do not look like that because I never wash them.  Actually I don't ever wash them, Sam our helper does, but anyway, you know what I mean.  They are like that because they are cheap and nasty.  The glue underneath them has somehow marked the tiles.  Of course this didn't show until the kitchen (which was newly installed for us) had been used for several months.  What a waste of money.  Of course they can't be changed without a great deal of drilling up.  We also have the same tiles in our back hallway, which have also gone like this.  

There really is something to be said for not buying cheap.  I'm not sure why I think you would care about my floor tiles, but its my blog, so I can moan if I want to.

Well I guess the glue soon wore off!!!

Anyway...

I went for my walk to the supermarket and as I passed this sign for some apartments for the hundredth time I thought, I know I'll post this on the blog.  I mean, what were they thinking?!

Now, I don't want to give the name of the person that this happened to, but it wasn't me and it wasn't Alan.  

I have two friends, lets call them Tom and Jerry.  I don't know why I should call them that.  I was going to call them Frick and Frack, which I thought was the name of two cartoon chipmunks, which I thought rather cute.  However a quick and fortuitous look at Wikipedia, informed me that Americans use that as a term of derision for two people.  So Tom and Jerry they now are.  Where was I?  

Oh yes, Tom and Jerry went out to dinner last night at a French restaurant, run by a Thai chef.  It is a very 'local' place.  Tom and Jerry like to sit outside in the gutter area where the chef cooks.  Yes this really is true.  They sit there waiting for their steak, or foie gras, sipping some cheap wine and breathing in the exhaust, as yet another construction lorry manoeuvres its way past them.  Yes, they know a romantic spot when they see it.  

Tom had dessert, some sort of mousse I think.  He polished the lot off.  When the chef came past and asked was it good, Tom said great!  To prove the point he put his finger in the puddle of dessert that was sitting on the table and stuck it in his mouth.  Keeping a smile on his face, he managed to choke out: "Great".  What had he run his finger through and put so greedily in his mouth?  BIRD POOP!!!

Sunday 14 August 2011

Mini Me

This morning I thought, lets have a bit of fun!  Some of you will have seen this, but most people viewing this blog probably haven't.  It was made as part of a spoof television show dvd, that my Coven friends and I made.  The fun for me (apart from the acting), was that I was the only one who knew all the elements of the show we produced.  If you like it, there are more where that came from!


If you are unable to clearly view this video, click here to view it on YouTube.  Also, if anyone out there knows how to make these films show in a larger format on the blog, can you let me know.  Don't forget to add your comments at the end of the post!

Saturday 13 August 2011

My Latest Quilt

Okay, I accept that most people, unless you are one of about three people, will not understand the  name of this quilt - When Kaffe and Chris met Kim at Central

The reference is to my new quilt which I finished last night.  Now, I wouldn't normally name a quilt that gets thrown over a sofa as opposed to hanging on a wall, but this is how I think of this quilt.  Why?

Kaffe Fassett is an American quilter (and knitter), who is known for using an array or different colours and fabrics, to make very lush looking quilts.  I love the look of them, as long as I don't own them - they are way too busy for my taste.

Chris Brinnistool is a friend who made a quilt, the back of which I absolutely loved.  A bit of a backhanded compliment for poor Chris, but she's a quilter, so she gets it.

Central refers to the store where Chris found a hand-full of great fabric by Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler to name two.  We caused mayhem there on a couple of occasions, choosing fabric for my quilt and a bag Chris is going to make.

So, this quilt is my interpretation of Kaffe's and Chris' quilts, with fabric purchased from Central.  Listen, you can either name your quilts things like 'the splodgy one' or 'sofa quilt' OR, you can just be creative with your naming.  Maybe I should just get a life?

Moving on...

Here you can see the pieced quilt top, spread out on top of the batting and backing fabric on my studio floor.

As working with busy fabric is new to me, it took me some time to get an arrangement that I liked.  I gave up completely on one fabric, as it was just way too much for me.

The picture below shows the quilt spread out across the sewing table.  It can't be sewn this way, as the weight of the quilt stops me being able to 'free motion' the quilt ie, drop the feed dogs down and move the quilt by hand.

Above shows how a big quilt normally looks when I sew it. It has to be bunched up to get it through the small space between the needle and the body of the sewing machine.  It then needs to have a puddle of fabric sitting loosely around the needle, for me to move freely around.  Can you imagine if this was a full King sized quilt?  Well, that's one of the reasons I don't make them!
Here is a close up showing the meandering stitch, sometimes called stippling stitch, that I used.  It uses a lot of thread.  I worked it out.  I used 2.4 km of thread!

When you see one of my quilts, you can usually tell its one of mine as I quilt them to death.  I prefer a flat looking quilt, with texture.  I didn't start this way however.  My first quilt (which I threw away it was so ghastly), looked as though it was stuffed with a family of bumpy rats!

Here is the finished quilt after the binding has been added.  I am going to cherish this quilt, as I won't be making another one for quite a long time, despite the heavy hints from Alan about his study sofa looking bare!  The back of the quilt is just one colour, the bright pink to the right, which was the same fabric I used to bind it.
This is the finished quilt on my sofa.  I can't decide which way around I like best, but it doesn't matter really.

It may be strange to some of you, but there is nothing like sitting on one of my own quilts.  It is a bit like a love affair.  I can touch it and get a wonderful tactile sensation, which on my normal wall hanging quilts, is an absolute no-no.  If I feel ill, I love to pull our other sofa quilt over me, it wraps itself around me and makes me feel safe and snuggly.  Thank goodness I'm not into making the quilts with bits of metal on them.  I could have a nasty accident with a bit of stray metal, and as for poor Alan, he is still trying to forget the time I left the needle in his boxer shorts!

I forgot in all my ramblings to say, that the reason I choose this style of quilt, was because I wanted to interject some colour into my room.

Before you sign off, don't forget to click on The Coven Goes Global bog as I am also posting on there.
Oh, and please leave a comment, even if it is to say, I hate that quilt!