Yuck! ... i found a blog entry that defies description ;-)

The things I find when I am riffling around on people's blogs ... Touchwood: What Movie am I in?
... I am not sure what to actually say about that blog entry - LOL ... or the comment someone posted - and no - it was NOT me, even though she seems to have the same first name (I would not have posted as "anonymous" ... I would have logged in and posted as aykayem )
btw ... I actually found this blog by following a link from someone else's blog ... but I actually know both the person whose blog I followed the link from, and one of the members of the band whose blog this is (but not the one who posted about the pink vomit ), from a Quilting yahoogroup ...

Now I suppose I should go and find the thing I was going to post yesterday (i didn't get around to it then ) ... and post it now ... if I don't get side-tracked again first ... LOL

actually I got side-tracked before I sent this off ...
... and I should be asleep
and the B#$^%^& washing still needs hanging up
(and it won't hang itself up ... grrrrrr)

the thing I was going to put here yesterday will probably end up being tomorrow ... or later ... LOL

goodnight

(maybe ;-)

while I am (still) here ...

Oops - I am still here ...
I went to look at the web page I was at while I typed the last thing ... and I found something ... and I just had to post this (below) to a crochet yahoogroup I am on, as well as here ... so I posted it there and am copying it here ...

Hi All,
I was just getting lost reading a blog (one of several I have just been looking at ... I keep following links ... getting lost in cyberspace as usual ) ... and I found this link - http://www.murilla.qld.gov.au/events/2005/teacosy.shtml

A tea cozy contest ... and the entry fee - is your tea cozy (it says there is no entry fee but they keep the tea cozy)

so ... my "to do" list now has another thing on it - "make tea cozy" ... LOL

... now if I can just go and DO some of the items on the top of my "to do" list - I might eventually get down to the more interesting items on it ...

Andrea,
disorganised in Dunlop

... and what better place to put that quote I sometimes used to put under my sig line ...

"Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cozy, doesn't try it on"
- Billy Connoly


and now ... I really AM going to go do something else ... the kids are driving me nuts (both want a turn on "the good computer" ... and dd has resorted to sitting beside me at the old computer (not networked/online or anything) and watching the screen saver with the coloured pipes on it and raving on about the colours they are at the time ... and that is driving ME nuts ... (that is probably her evil plan ... even though I told her that annoying me only distracted me and made me take longer *big evil grin*)

talking about pipes/plumbing ... and all those other p words ... I need a "P" too ...
so I am going to go ... and "go" ...
I could say "brb" and that I won't p long ... but the washing won't hang itself out, and the dog needs a walk ... and ...

bye

the other good blog I keep forgetting to tell u about ...

2 posts in one day ... eek! ... LOL
The kids were arguing about who would get to to use the computer when we got home ... so I decided it was MY turn - I have been looking at the blog I posted about a couple of hours ago, and also at this one, which I have known about for a while, but keep forgetting to mention in here - this is also another very interesting textile related blog - Musings of a textile itinerant ... and I know I know this person ... I met her by e-mail (on an art quilters mailing list) and since then I have met her in person too ...

... and now, for something completely different - dd is in here waving a HUGE zuchini at me ... life is never boring? lol
(we bought 2 plants a while back ... the snails ate one, and the other one went mad ... it has paid for itself and then some ... mmm bbq zuchini ... zuchini in salad ... and 2 or 3 happy people at work got one to take home too ...

... now where was I ... oh yeah ... posting this ... LOL
it is probably time I let dd use the computer and went and did something useful (like hang out the load of washing I put in the machine yesterday! ... and then maybe see if I can find a bit more of my sewing room under the mess ... instead of having to shove the stuff aside to try and make quilts/etc with the bits of stuff I can find ... like I did the other evening! (I made a weird bag - more about that later maybe - I should post about it, to a bag yahoogroup I am on ... once I do that I can then copy it to here ... and maybe even take a photo and put that here too ... can't do that right yet ... the bag is in the load of washing I need to hang out - I used it to take to "Skyfire" (fireworks display) the other night and spilt the gravy (from the take away chicken) on it )

anyway ... I have been at the computer for ages ... I kind of pressed a "button" on the other blog I posted about today ... and ended up here - Australian Weblogs ... and of course I got lost for ages looking at even more odd blogs ... dh came in while I was reading one, and I said something like "gee some people write some weird stuff in blogs" ... and his answer? - "yes YOU do"
oops?
LOL

anyway ... time I did something useful ...
bye

Another good blog

Hi All,
Here I am ... actually having a lunch break (yes - I am at work) ... while eating lunch at my desk (couldn't be bothered taking it elsewhere), I decided to have a read of Jenny's blog (the one I posted about the other week - the one I said is better than mine ... because it is ... lol) anyway ... there was a link on there - to this one - the department
... so now I have another one I want to keep going back to - it has some very interesting photos ... and haiku too ...
(hmmm ... her name isn't on there ... but I think I know this person ... I think we have met by e-mail ... )

There is one problem with reading blogs/etc in my lunch break ... it means I am at my desk ... so people can FIND me ...
... "have we got any ... ?" "can you do ... ?" ... and my desk is in full view from the staff room door too (I work at a school) so I am the person that students/etc see when they come knocking at the door wanting to know "can I see Miss/Mr ?" ... which usually happens when they are busy ... or not there ... then they all seem to think I should know exactly where is ... LOL

oh poop ... there goes the bell - almost the end of lunch ... already ...

... I better go finish looking at that blog ... before someone else wants something ...

... at least my desk isn't the one right next to the phone ...
(that is usually a good thing ... except for when I am at my desk (or even further away in the next room) and the phone rings and nobody else is here ... and even worse ... it is cordless ... and sometimes both handsets end up at the back of peoples desks ... people who have since left the room ... so when it rings the rest of us all have to run around and find it ... oh well ... keeps the job interesting ... LOL

anyway ... better go ... the end of lunch bell is about to go soon and I have stuff to go do (and the rest of that blog to look at if I still have time)

bye ...

oops - there goes the bell ...

as promised - a post about my adventures with some fabric and some condy's crystals

Hi All,
(if one can call the one or 2 people who might actually ever read this "all" LOL)

I was posting a reply to a fabric dying yahoogroup ... a very quiet fabric dying yahoogroup ... lol ... when I remembered I had not posted here for a while, and the reason I started up this blog was to put this stuff here ... and I also did promise, last time I posted, that I would post about this "in the next day or 5" ... oops - it is a couple days longer than 5 actually - oh well "better late than never"? LOL
so ... here is what I just sent to that poor quiet little fabric dyeing list ... (except that the X had the name of the new member, who the original message was to/about)

----- Original Message -----

> This list is not very active, in fact not active at all at the moment,


... in fact it has been so quiet I had forgotten about it! LOL

Welcome X (and anyone else who has joined while I wasn't looking ) ... and Hi All ...

The funny thing is ... I actually DID some dyeing recently ... in the last few days actually ... that if if you call messing around with fabric and condy's crystals (potassium permanganate) "dyeing" ... I am not even sure potassium permanganate even IS a dye technically ... but it makes the fabric change colour .
My "potassium permanganate" experiments started with a passing mention, from Mum (who was down visiting for a weekend about 2 weeks ago), about how "you know how you dye silk and put salt crystals on it - well you can also try putting condy's crystals on fabric, but don't leave them on too long or you get holes" ... or something like that ... the subject kind of changed and I forgot to ask about it again ... we were probably too busy messing around with some other fabric that I had dipped in silver nitrate (I try all sorts of odd things - the silver nitrate thing was someting I had done once before, and I just happened to have a little bit left over from a science lesson at the school I work at - so I saved it because I knew Mum was coming down and I knew she would have fun watching it go brown in the sun ... it goes brown on skin too - it actually dries out/burns so that is probably one of those "don't try this at home" things ... )
anyway ... with the condy's crystals ... that makes your skin brown too (I had a brown "pinky" finger for a day or 2 because I had a hole in that finger of the rubber glove ) ... I wet a bit of fabric then I sprinkled on some crystals and thought "oh what a pretty purple/pink" ... then I and rolled it up and shook it and stuff - so the colour spread around a bit more ... then I rinsed it ... and it went brown ... LOL
... actually it was a pleasant surprise ... (not that I should have been surprised ... I am sure I already knew it stained fingers and stuff brown ) ... it was a nice effect ... and some bits kind of looked a bit like sand ... and I thought "hmmm - I need some sand fabric" (for a quilt I am planning to make) ... so (a day or 2 later when I had some more condy's crystals) I got another bit of fabric and wet it and spread it out on the back lawn and got a bit of stocking and shook a heap of fine crystals all over the fabric - and after it was rinsed - I had my "sand" . Oh - and I also had a bit of fun doing some sort of tie dyeing too - when I did the "sand" and another bit of fabric, I gave them the first rinse in a very little bit of water in an old ice cream container (one that lives in the laundry and won't get used for food/etc again - is not good practice to use the same utensils for food and for science experiments ) ... then, later, I used that pretty pink "water" to dunk my tied up bit of fabric ... it came out pale, but interesting effect . (the hardest part of all that was finding somewhere to hide that container of pink stuff, where the dog, who just had to watch and help with everything I was doing , wouldn't try and drink it! LOL).

hmmm ... I have some more spare white fabric, and some condy's crystals left ... and it is still daylight outside ... maybe I should try another experiment? LOL ... I was just wondering, as I typed part of this e-mail, what ELSE I could do with condy's crystals ... and thought ... "pity it isn't sun activated or I could do leaves and stuff ... " then I thought "hmmm ... I could use leaves/etc as stencils and spray the stuff on!" ... then I got to thinking about how strong a solution I might need and if it would work better on dry fabric ... and now I want to experiment ... LOL
... all I need is a spray bottle ... I have one somewhere ... 2 actually ... but I only know where 1 is ... and I can't use that one because that is the one I use to spray water on my stick insects (yes - I have pet stick insects ) and I am not sure what it would do to them if I used the same spray bottle for them after it had been used for potassium permanganate.

eek ... this has turned into rather a long rave about who knows what!
(I think I might have to copy this lot onto my blog - yes- I have one of those too - but I haven't put anything on there for a week or 2 ... )
Is this post long enough? ... got enough to read now?
(I know - u are all probably glad I don't post very often, and/or wishing I had stayed quiet ... LOL)

Andrea Carew,
disorganised in Dunlop (a suburb of Canberra)
... heading off to copy most of this into a post to my blog (especialy seeing I just noticed that when I posted there about a week ago, I mentioned that I would tell a story about my adventures with condy's crystals ), and then I might go find that other spray bottle .
(hmmm ... I might need to find some nice leaves or something to use as stencils too ... and I might have to hunt around for that spare fabric because I am not sure where I put that either ... aaaahhhrrrggghhh)

btw ... anyone want to borrow my nose for a day or so (just until it stops running ... I seem to have caught a cold and all the sneezing and snorting is driving me nuts ... lol)

Hmmm ... I can't sign of with "goodnight" either - because it is still DAY time ... LOL
(and yes - I do have a kid beside me, who wants me to finish this so he can steal the keyboard ... the online game he is playing doesn't work as well on the laptop as it does on here ... but my e-mail is on this computer and I came in here to actually have a look at some of it ... lol)

Yes ... I still DO exist ...

er ... hi All ...
I do still exist ... I am alive ... not sure if anyone is reading this anyway ... but, just in case ... yes ... I am still alive ... LOL

I am at my friend Janice's place ... at a BBQ for her partner, Dave ... it is his birthday ... but he has crashed (fallen asleep) already ... LOL

... and i am trying to listen to the conversation Janice, someone else, and I are having ... at the same time as posting to my blog ... lol

... I am sort of mostly sober ... LOL



... and now ... an hour or 3 later ... I am still sort of half sober ... LOL


we thought about a walk up the local hill (Mt Taylor) but Janice decided maybe when we get up ... yeah ... sure ... LOL

I might actually post something half interesting in the next day or 5 ... LOL (like maybe an account of my adventures with some fabric and some condy's crystals )

goodnight (maybe? LOL)

Andrea ... up too late, as usual ... LOL

This blog is better than mine ...

Postcards from Cairo ... is one blog that I WILL be visiting again ... and again ... ;-)

I actually know Jenny ... I "met" her on a quilters e-mail list ... and then met her in person when she moved back here after her last overseas posting ... but even if I didn't know her - I would still enjoy reading all the stuff she writes ...

... and she makes amazing quilts too!
She has a website at http://www.jennybowker.com/ ... you have to enter her site, then click on the link to "quilts" if u want to look at them ... I just did (I had been there before, but not for a while ...)

hmmm ... isn't it funny how someone can make a work of art (which these quilts are!) and to them it can mean one thing ... but to someone else it can mean/look like something else?! ... like this one - http://www.jennybowker.com/alchemist.htm ... to me it looks like the after effects of the "alchemist's furnace" that devastated large areas of Canberra Just over 2 years ago - the bushfires! - in many areas where they passed through, all that was left was rusty brown dirt and blackened bits of what used to be trees ... I was thinking of making a quilt in those colours myself ... and, had I got around to it yet, I might have even used that design (because I have the book with it in, and I want to make it sometime ;-) ... but it looks like Jenny has already done it for me ... LOL
... I guess I will have to go with one of the other 101 possible colour schemes I had in mind for tht particular quilt design ... and if I ever get around to making a"burnt landscape" quilt it will definitely be different ...
(actually - most people think my quilts are "different" lol ... in fact most people think I am "definitely different" LOL ... i guess they are right ;-)

anyway ... I really should be doing something else ... like finishing that B&^*&^$^%%$ sorting out! - I can't make more quilts if I can't even FIND my sewing/craft room under all the mess! ... I wish I had a huge mansion to keep all my piles of junk in ... and I wish I had the money to take a trip to Cairo and see all that stuff and go mad buying piles of those beads and stuff! ... and I would even be happy to stand in line at the airport with my luggage and passport if I have to ... lol

monkey see, monkey do ...?

... what will "they" think of next? ... someone told dh about this ... he laughed at it ... but now we have all 3 computers (yes we have a main one connected to the net and a couple of laptops wireless networked to it ) running the "Monkey Shakespeare Simmulator" LOL
worse still - dh told some of his mates about it ... and they laughed about how stupid it is ... but now they have it running on their PCs too ... it must be catching ;-)

This site apparently exists because someone once said "A million monkeys typing on a million typewriters would eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare." ... so someone decided to try an experiment to see if that was possible ...

btw - "dh" means "Dear Husband" ... those who know me from quilting and crochet yahoogroups already know that though ... come to think of it ... that is probably all of you ... that is if anyone IS actually reading this ... which is highly unlikely considering how boring it probably is ... that and the fact that i have only mentioned this blog once or twice on 2 or 3 lists 3 or 4 weeks ago ... or something like that ...

yikes ... I am typing in my blog during daylight hours! LOL

(but I really should be doing something else ...)

I think I have "lost it" ...

... lost my marbles? ... gone totally nuts?

yes - probably ...

Last night, while daydreaming or something, I found myself thinking up a crochetHaiku! (a type of Japanese poem with 3 lines and 17 syllables, that doesn't have to rhyme or anything silly like that ) ...

it actually is about something I made ... lol -

I joined in a "crochet along" where we leart filet crochet and made a fairy from the person's pattern ... the idea was that if we finished by a certain date, and sent in a picture, we get entered in a draw to get sent a copy of one of the pattern books she has written ... but I just wanted to send mine in anyway - if there wasn't a deadline I never would have finished my frustrating fiddly freaky filet fairy ...
well - I finished it a couple weeks back ... and I blocked it (wet it and pinned it out to dry in the right shape) just before tea yesterday evening (at the lastminute ) before taking photo and sending it in, and then, whilelooking at photo on computer just before I attached it to the e-mail - I noticed that my fairy's foot is BACKWARDS ... aaahhhhrrgghhh ... LOL
(it got sent in anyway - so now the others who did one can all have a good laugh at me )

anyway ... this is the Haiku I wrote -

my scary fairy
filet crochet gone insane
came out two feet tall

btw - yes - my fairy IS 2 feet tall (possibly even a bit bigger - have not actually measured it yet) ... oops? wrong hook? use finer thread next time? (yeah - like there is ever likely to BE a next time?! LOL) ... or maybe it was meant to be that size? lol
(actually she is one foot short at the moment - I unpicked the "wrong" one ready to re-do it the right way ... then i couldn't find where I had put my printed copy of the pattern ... I could just print it again but I think that is a silly idea (waste of ink/paper/etc when i still have the other one somewhere in my pile of mess ... yes - that mess - the mess I still have not finished sorting out )

I went to bed and found my brain trying to make up even more Haiku too! ... thought about getting up to write it down ... but never quite got there ... wonder if I will ever remember what I made up? ... I might remember the words sometime ... if I could even remember what it was actually about - LOL

I just thought up this one though ...

have I gone insane?
up late posting to my blog
I should be asleep

on that note ... I probably sholuld go get some sleep

(if I had half a brain I would be dangerous ... oh - I have 2 halves of my brain - a left and a right - so if I have 2 times "half a brain" ... does that mean I am doubly dangerous?)

er ...

goodnight

oh my gourd?

Hi All,I just fell over this website - http://www.thegourdquilt.com/ - and I had to share it here ... LOL ... the things that people make quilts out of! ... yes - a quilt made of tiles cut from gourds!
... actually the "here" originally was the scquilters yahoogroup - yes - this is another "copy and paste" of most of the contents of an e-mail I sent to a list ... LOL
I mentioned that someone on that list might be interested because last year I went to the "fringe retreat" that she organised (a sort of quilty retreat) for a group of us from that yahoogroup ... it was at the persons siter in law's place (a fairy garden that is open to tourists and sells plants and stuff ... including the painted gourds ) ... now back to the copy and pasting - ... and she grows gourds ... and she paints them (very nicely too, imho ) ... and I was allowed to bring a couple of her gourd "rejects" home with me (unpainted ones that were a bit mouldy looking and had holes in them, that were lying around in the garden ) ... now I am inspired ... lol ... but not to do a gourd quilt! LOL - I actually found the site while following a link that I followed from another website that I had found by following a link from a basket weaving website (and yes - I AM subscribed to a yahoogroup called "basketweaving101" LOL) ... and that (making some kind of basket thingys) is what I might do with these gourds ... and/or some crochet stuff (maybe even using free form crochet too) ... although I could possibly do something, to at least one of them, that involves actually attaching some patchwork/quilting to the gourd ... but I definitely ain't cutting them up to make a "quilt" of gourd tiles! LOL... the site I was originally at is www.nativetech.org ... which is an interesting website all about American Indian "technology" (baskets, clothing, beading, etc etc etc) ... I went there because I was looking to make sure the site was still there and that it still had instuctions for pine needle baskets - because someone on another yahoogroup I am on (called basketweaving101 ... LOL) wanted to know how to make them and if there was any info on the www ... yes - baskets are another crafty thing I dabble in ... LOL
hmm ... y not? - I was actually going to copy and paste this anyway ... before I got side-tracked and ended up posting that gourd tile stuff to the scquilters yahoogroup ... LOL ... here is what I said to the basketweaving101 people ...
Hi All,
I fell across www.nativetech.org a few years ago ... and it is still there but even better (they keep updating it ) ... it has stuff about all sorts of crafty things done by the American Indians, including pine needle baskets ... in fact there is even more stuff about basketry than there was last time I was there - http://www.nativetech.org/basketry/index.html seems to have info about all sorts of basket weaving that they did (and has a list of links as well, but I have not looked at those yet) ... if you go here - http://www.nativetech.org/basketry/coilindex.html - then there are links to info on pine needle baskets and some instructions on how to make them ... I think I actually used instructions from this website when I made a couple of pine needle baskets ... but the page has been updated once or twice since then - LOL (and I still have NOT finised the last couple of baskets I started ... they have been "lost" in my pile of mess for a year or 3 ... LOL)
if you go to http://au.photos.yahoo.com/aykayem and look at the album called "more crafty stuff" ... there is a photo of a pine needle basket (that I made) in there (is 3rd one in the album) ... it is pine needles and grass and stuff ... I think I need to take some more photos and put them up somewhere - I have a couple of other baskets I have made out of pine needles and other stuff (using the same technique) ... and I have also done some woven baskets - there is one in that "more crafty stuff album" actually (it is the 11th photo in there) - I think that is the first basket I ever made (probably nearly 10 years ago now - eek!) ... unless you want to count the "stubby holder" (thing u put your bottle of beer in to keep it cool while you drink it ) that I made out of jute when I went to an open day at a craft center one day in about 1986 ... eveyone else just ended up with whatever shaped jute basket that ended up happening as they wove it ... but I worked out how to shape mine as I went along ... so I knew that basket weaving was something I wanted to do more of ... just took me a few more years to end up getting to do it ... I will have to remember to try and find it - then I can take a photo of that and stick it in my yahoo photo albums as well ...btw ... the last photo in that album is a turtle thingy I kind of invented ... that is the best photo I have - someone liked it so I gave it to them ... but I never got around to making another one for myself ... lol
btw ... for those who might be wondering - yes that photo titled "yes - cooking IS creative" - it really IS something I made - the recipe calls them rum balls I think ... but I usually use port because I usually have port in the pantry but not rum ... I took the photo because I made them for a canberra crochet group meeting we were supposed to be having at a friends place but she got told, at short notice, that she had to work that day - and had to cancel the meeting - so I e-mailed her the photo of my "afternoon tea" I had made - just so she could drool over what she had missed out on (I did make her some more later, and took them over to her, to make up for it )
oh - I just read those instructions and realised - they mention how to do the weaving - but they don't seem to mention how to prepare the pine needles first! - which those who have done lots of basket weaving with natural plant fibres might already know but a beginner who is reading this may not - it helps to know how to prepare the fibres/pine needles before u start weaving - with mine I just did what I was taught to do with other plant material - I collected dry ones (and I have also collected green ones and dried them out, but I have not actually woven those yet) and then before I started weaving the basket I soaked them in water (warm water for a short time - forget how long it took - until they are soft enough to bend without breaking - seems to work ok if one is not into planning to far ahead ) ... one could probably use fresh (still green and soft) ones but once they dry they tend to shrink so the basket will become loose and floppy ... so it is probably best to dry them and soak them so that you avoid that problem ...
btw ... (seems to be my favourite "word"?) - I have also used a similar idea to the basket weaving, to do crochet baskets - using yarn/etc and crocheting around a length of cord ... and ending up with a similar sort of basket but with crochet around a core of cord instead of stitching around a core of pine needles/etc ... but I have not put a photo of that on the www yet ... (I will when I get around to it ... it was only in the last few weeks that I have done those, and I only took a photo of them yesterday ... lol)
Andrea Carew,
disorganised in Dunlop (a suburb of Canberra, Australia)
... heading off to look at some more of that Nativetech website - as those who looked at my photos might have noticed - I am into all sorts of crafty stuff ... and that website seems to have a LOT of crafty stuff on it ... LOL (yes - I have made dream catchers - learnt how to do that from looking at one that one of my Husband's friends made ... but I have not made moccasins etc yet ... lol)
yes I did look at more of that website ... followed a link ... that had more links ... followed some of those ... and ended up finding that gourd quilt thingy ... LOL
hmmm ... my writing e-mails and stuff - in fact my whole life - seems to be one side-track after another ... I wonder if I am really going anywhere? then again ... does it really matter WHERE I am going in the end? ... as long is the journey is good ... LOL
... maybe one day I might have to type up the stuff I wrote (years ago) about how life is like swimming through pea soup ... and how it is hard sometimes, but pea soup is good for you ...

I suppose I really should go to sleep ... have to get up in the morning (unless it is raining cats and dogs or something) because the plan is for my dh (darling husband) and I to go for a motorbike ride with a few friends (kids can stay home and play on the computer or whatever ) ... he rides, I am a pillion passenger ... which kind of led me to a rather weird idea for a quilt or something ... it kind of came from the fact that the reflections of the passing trees on either side of the road look rather interesting in the back of dh's helmet ... LOL ... the round shape kind of distorts the reflection - so that my head/upper body looks vaugley like a butterfly body with "Wings" of curved trees on either side ... so ... IF I can ever manage to draw u some kind of design that sort of looks like that ... then I might eventually make a quilt (or something) of it ... and maybe call it "papillion" ... LOL

er I think that is enough raving on and on and on for now ... LOL

but ... it probably isn't "goodnight" quite yet ...
(soon, probably quite soon, ... but not right exactly now )

B$%^%^&%^&

Where did the school holidays go? ... well - the kids don't go back to school until Monday here ... but ... I have to go back to work in the morning (ugh - I wanna win lotto and not have to go to work) ... and I never did finish all that sorting out ... so I guess I will still be sorting, instead of sewing, for a few more evenings/weekends until it is done ... because I can't find most of my sewing/quilting/crochet/etc stuff with things in the mess they are in right now!
Of course I had to have another idea for yet another thing I want to do ... but I guess this one is also sort of finishing something I started years ago too ... I was looking at some pictures of some free form crochet dolls (sorry no URL - was in the members area of a yahoogroup I am subscribed to, so you wouldn't be able to see them unless you were a member - in which case you would have already seen them anyway ) ... anyway ... the point is (I think ;-) ... I got to thinking ... (and writing in an e-mail to friend who wrote the crochet bear pattern I was talking about) ...
" ... maybe I should dig out that bag of crochet bear UFOs [these are something I started a few years ago ... a friend gave me a simple crochet bear pattern she had written so, me being me, I modified the pattern ... and then just kind of kept making the things until I had a pile of them either done or half done ... then I moved on to other things ... lol] and do some freeform stuff with them ... I never did make that rastafarian one [I have plans to do one with dreadlocks] ... maybe now is the time to side track backwards (or is that back track sideways?) from the weird coiled pots I was doing before I got way laid and started working on a visual diary cover for that challenge for [a textile art group I am going to join], which I have nearly finished now, and see if any of my half finished bears could be improved by the addition of free form hair/clothing/jewelry/etc ... LOL... that is if I can find them under the piles of mess ... LOL Oh well - got the diary cover thingy to finish, and a crazy quilt block I left out where I could find it because it is for Mum if I get it done by the time she visits here in mid Febuary, and the bits for 2 more weird pots in my bag ready for in case I actually get a chance to crochet at morning tea time or something at work ... speaking of which ... I probably should be asleep because I have to get up in the morning and I probably need to be at least half awake at work ... LOL"

... of course here it is an hour later ... and I am still UP ...

btw ... this long gap between posting here is probably now going to be a more normal thing ... I always expected that it would be once I went back to work ... it just happened a bit sooner because I have been busy all week - trying to get that B#%^%^& sorting out finished ...
yes - the sorting out that I should have been doing more of, when - instead of sorting out/etc - I was in here messing around in cyberspace posting stuff to this blog and surfing to strange websites etc ... which I always tend to do instead of reading the messages on the too many yahoogroups I am on and/or deleting some of my mountain of old e-mail ... it kind of piles up until I start to loose things in there ... and I DO have it set up so stuff gets sorted into folders as it arrives ... I am just not organised enough to read and delete it (or file it away if I want to keep it) as it arrives ...

er ...

goodnight ;-)


btw (By The Way) ... I hope those other Aussies who are reading this (that is if ANYONE is actually reading this waffle ;-) had a good Australia Day ...

I better go ... before the dog decides to find something else to rip to shreds ... the next thing might be something that wasn't going to be thrown out anyway ... (he just destroyed a box that some computer game originally came in ... if the owner of the game - my daughter - had wanted to keep the box then she should (and probably would) have put it away instead of leaving it in the middle of the floor in here for weeks on end ... LOL

I should be asleep!

Goodnight (again ;-)
- I might actually post this mess and go to bed this time ;-) ... that is if I don't get side-tracked for too long on the way between here and the bedroom ... I need a drink ... and where did I put that filet crochet fairy I should have "blocked" so I can take a photo to send to someone ... need to dig that out to remind me to "block" it tomorrow ... or at least take a photo of it all curly/wonky so they know I did finish the darn thing ... LOL ... er ... I did say I "might" go to bed ... LOL ... actually I have to go soon ... or it will be almost time to get UP again ...

Goodnight ... yet again ... LOL

(I have to go soon or I will run out of colours I like ;-)

and now for something completely and utterly useless ...

While hunting around (for that stuff to "copy and paste") in some old saved e-mails - I came across this - http://www.geocities.com/petzlx/
... rather hypnotic isn't it ... that is if one can bear to watch/listen to it for long enough ... LOL

Methinks some people have way too much time on their hands ...

then again ... someone reading this blog (if anyone actually does that?) might think the same about me ;-)

goodnight ...

... and ... something I posted to a crochet yahoogroup a week or 2 ago

While I was doing the "copy and paste" thing (which I was before dh arrived home with the fish and chips ;-) ... I figured I may as well bloggify (I invented that word) the other thing I had saved in my e-mail for just that purpose ... this time it was something I sent to the australiacrochet yahoogroup (and it was probably only a day or 2 before I started this blog ;-)

- it started off as a reply to someone posting about what they were making with their latest yarn purchase ... but, as usual, I ended up raving about all sorts of other stuff too .

so ... here is the copied and pasted bit ...

... trouble is - it makes me want to start creating stuff with my "feathers"/etc yarn ... but I am too busy sorting out the house at the moment, and most of my yarn is buried somewhere in all the mess! - I seem to have stuff everywhere and the more I tidy the messier it seems to look ... dh says he has a solution - chuck out all the stuff! ... lol ... but that kind of defeats the purpose of having collected it all in the first place ... LOL
I actually bought some more yarn today ... we went to the shops again, to buy clothing for dd (warning - if you have a choice in the matter - don't take an 11 (almost 12) year old girl clothing shopping - major AHHHHRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH )
... and I ducked in to Lincraft
... and they had some yarn on special
... I got some fuzzy/hairy looking stuff ... and some "feathers" ... and a "Knitted cushion cover kit" ... but am I going to Knit the cushion? - NOPE ... at $4.00 for a kit with 5 balls of yarn in it - who cares if the pattern is for Knitting - I just wanted the yarn! LOL
... unfortunately I only bought one of the kits (they had 2 colours of the $4 one and some $3 ones with 3 balls of yarn too) ... I probably should have got more - at that price it meant the yarn was less than $1 a ball ... but DH was with me ... and he complained enough about what I got as it was ...
- it wasn't the $ I was spending - it was because I still have not used the last few lots he saw me buy, and the fact that I don't have anywhere to PUT all the sewing/crochet stuff I already have, let alone more ... .
I still haven't found a home for that "car load" of fabric I got the other week yet - that is part of the reason for all the sorting out ... the other reason is that the rest of the house is still a mess from my last reorganisation of my sewing/craft area - when, more than a year ago, I decided that the only way to organise my craft stuff was to move the whole lot up to the other end of the house ... that area is now full - and there is STILL stuff down the other end! LOL).Andrea,disorganised in Dunlop... wondering if I should collect up all my loose change and sneak back to Lincraft later? LOL

Hmmm ... that gives anyone reading this an explanation as to why I keep telling you that I should be sorting out instead of messing around on the computer ... but ...
- now you might be wondering about that "car load of fabric" ... LOL

*andrea hunts around for some more bits of e-mail to copy and paste*

This (the blue bit) was part (most actually) of an e-mail I sent to someone on the last day of work before I went on Christmas holidays (the day school finished - about a week before Christmas) ... they had asked if I had enjoyed my birthday, which was earlier in December ;-)

I did get myself a sort of birthday present a week or 2 before my birthday - a whole pile of fabric/etc crafty bits for $5 at a garage sale, and a whole heap more for free at the same garage sale
(maybe I should elaborate a bit more here - I arrived after almost everyone else, in the afternoon - they said I could fill up a couple big boxes of "that stuff down the side there for about $5" then they gave me some more bits, then a couple of us looked in the big rubbish skop out the front and I found some interesting bits of stuff in there ... then they plonked a HUGE plastic bag of stuff out the front and told the 2 of us left to "share that lot between you" ... the other person was walking home and couldn't carry any more - so I took the lot - I kind of stuffed the whole bag into the front passenger seat - because the back seat was already full!)
... the poor little car was literally FULL of fabric and stuff! (it was stuff that had belonged to a worse hoarder than me, who died recently - and it had been in a shed for who knows how long and a lot of it is dusty or worse ... so it all needs a wash ... which it is getting done bit by bit with other washing or whenever I get around to sorting more out )Anyway ... dh is home now and I still have not sent the e-mail I came in here to send ... LOLAndrea,disorganised in Dunlop... now on holidays until the end of January ... yippee!

er ... sad thing is - it is now almost the end of January! ... and my sorting out is still NOT finished ... sigh ...
- so much for getting a heap of quilt/etc UFOs finished or anything like that ...
and the worst part is ... when I go back to work ... guess what I will be doing a lot of there? - yep u guessed it - sorting out stuff! (they have several store rooms of stuff that has been there a lot longer than most of us who are now working there have!)

I really should go DO some more sorting out ... sometime ... LOL

something I posted to a quilting yahoogroup a few weeks back

... if I had already had this blog I would have sent it here too ... so I am sending it here now instead ;-)
(that was part of my reason for having a blog ... somewhere to collect a whole pile of my weird ravings on that I send to all sorts of different e-mail lists and people, including myself *vbg*, all in one place ... so that someone who is mad enough to actually read it can do so ... )
anyway ...
This was a reply I posted to scquilters (which was the first of (too) many yahoogroups I have joined over the last few years ;-)
Subject: SCQ: Where is you VERY FIRST quilt now?
er ... it is sitting on a pile of empty cardboard boxes in the passage behind me (well it was until I got up and got it to have a look at while typing this e-mail about it ... now it is beside me) I had forgotten all about it, or that it was probably my first ever "quilt" (not sure if I made it before or after the baby rug I mentioned some other time - but the rug wasn't pieced anyway - but this was ) - I found it in a pile of stuff when I was moving all my linen/etc from the wardrobe in here (which doesn't have shelves ... so I had made do with left over boxes from moving ... but they didn't work too well) into the cupboard in the laundry (which does have shelves ... but they were full of stuff - half of which I threw out ... because it hadn't been used since before we moved here ... and half of which I managed to find new homes for). Actually it isn't a quilt as such - but it is my first quilted item ... it is a baby sling (one of those thingys that is like a square of fabric/etc with ties on the 4 corners - so u tie it on you and the baby snuggles on your front - nursing mothers were selling them so I decided I could make my own instead ) ... I made it back in 1991 - soon after ds (my first child) was born ... I used some polyester sheeting remnants that I had bought in Toowoomba (I was posted there when I was in the Army - that is where I met DH ) ... and I cut out some squares (they are not quite 2" big and I don't think I knew about 1/4" seams yet either ) of different colours and arranged them in a sort of pattern ... I put a border around it ... and a bit of "wadding" (well that is what the shops called it when I bought it ... now everyone seems to just call it batting) in it, and a backing on it ... no binding as such - I just put it together wrong sides together and wadding inside and turned the edges under - so they were in between the layers and sewed a line of stitching really close to the edge . Then I started hand quilting, in the ditch, in a sort of pattern between some of the squares ... note that I said "started" - I never did FINISH it! - LOL - I finished everything else first - so I could start actually USING it before the baby grew out of it ... with the intention of finishing the quilting in between using it ... but I think I did what I still do now - moved on to other things and never got back to it! LOL. I just looked at the quilting - double thickness of thread, and the stitches are almost 1/4" long! LOL ... and it is puckered!I will keep it ... and I might even use it again (no - I don't plan on having any more babies ... but I might be a grandma one day and I might end up babysitting baby grandkids or something ... ) ... but I doubt that I will ever actually FINISH the thing! LOL
Andrea,
disorganised in Dunlop
... who probably should take a photo of said "quilted item" and stick it on my website ... I actually have a whole heap of quilts, bags, crochet items, etc that I need to do that with ... one day I might actually get organised and dig them all out and have a "photo shoot" ... it is a bit hard to put photos of stuff on the www if I don't actually have any photos of it! LOL
btw ... I still haven't taken those photos ... LOL

Going potty?

I just typed most of this (below) as a reply I was posting to one of the yahoogroups I am on ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AGirlCanNeverHaveTooManyHandbags/ ) then ... I decided it actually belonged here! - so now it will be in both places ... which is actually part of what I had planned to do with this blog all along - when I post things to my lists, and I end up going off on a tangent and raving on about weird odd things I am doing/want to do/have seen/etc then I can copy and paste the relevant bits in here too ;-)
(and now that i have told you about it, and that is was always my plan, it is NOT cheating ... lol)
The topic we were on about (on the yahoogroup) had to do with someone making a bag out of flyscreen wire ... and someone else saying the quilt shops had it in different colours ... and someone mentioning a bag made out of a pink rubber bathmat!
... and my reply was this ...
Don't u just hate it when you think of something different and new to do ... then search the www or read a magazine or something and notice that it has already been done?! LOL... it seems that nowdays - even the weirdest stuff is normal ... sigh ...I have been collecting old computer/telephone cables for a year or 2 ... with the idea to eventually crochet something out of them (not sure what yet ... had not got as far as deciding what to make ) ... but I bet, by the time I get around to doing it, someone else will have done it and it will already be in all the fibre arty magazines and all over the www ... LOL (that is if it isn't all over the place already ... lol)
btw ... I have been crocheting coiled pots too ... but none of them are bags (which that yahoogroup is about) and they look nothing like the ones Janice (boadacea_cat) is doing ... lol - mine are done with string or yarn crocheted over cord or whatever ... one name for that is "clothesline crochet" ... and they kind of look like bits of pottery ... very weird pottery (just ask Janice - she has seen some of them ) ... I will put some photos online somewhere eventually (maybe my yahoo album or somewhere) ... if I don't tell you where in the next few weeks - remind me, bug me, whatever , until I do . In the meantime, my next crochet coiled pot might* be a kind of bag thingy ...
(* - might means it probably will provided it doesn't do what the last one did, once I started crocheting it, and turn itself into something else! .. in this case it became a pot ... that can also be folded to become a mushroom!)
hmmm ... I have collected a LOT of odd stuff because I have some weird idea or another for something I want to make with it ... then I seem to spend more time trying to keep it tidy, than actually making things with it! *sigh*

hmmm ... the dog has just stolen another tissue (used) out of the bin beside me ... y do dog's like chewing stuff like that? LOL
... maybe he is trying to tell me that I have not taken him for his walk yet! (he even has a new trick for that - when I am here at the computer late in the evening, he goes and scratches at the back door, where he usually goes out, and then when I get up to let him out he runs toward the FRONT door, and stops while still where I can see him, and gives me THAT look ... the one with his head tilted to the side and a look on his face that says "well ... you ARE going to take me for a walk?")

This ...

... is the OTHER look ...

Maybe I should go take him for a walk ... 1 O'clock in the morning (!) is a fine time as far as he is concerned - he will go for a walk ANY time someone wants to take him! (lucky for me, we live in an area where I CAN walk the dog at this hour of night and know I will be as safe as I would be any other time of day) ... actually he prefers night time ... especially at the moment - because for one thing it is cooler at night (his fur coat is a bit hot on a hot summer day like we have been having lots of lately) and also ... there are foxes around here (we live right near some paddocks and a new housing estate with mostly vacant land still, where the foxes come and scavenge for food etc) and they come out at night ... and he likes to chase them ... (not sure what he would do if he ever managed to catch up with one - probably try to play with it! ... he did that with a young Galah once ... by the time I caught up the bird was covered in doggy drool ... but otherwise quite ok ... just a bit frightened and cranky about being slobbered all over ... LOL)

er ... I WAS going to have an early night too ... lol
(well - I was going to try and go to bed around now, rather than in another hour or so ... and I was going to have done a few more things first too ... but I came in here to check my e-mail ... and I got lost in cyberspace ... again ... oh well - I AM still on holidays ;-)

... you are still reading this?!

;-)

chaotic and irrational ...

Someone posted this link - http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2004/589 - to a free form crochet yahoogroup I am subscribed to (in case the link is dead or something - it was a news article about how a couple of mathematicians have used some weird chaos theory thingy, called the Lorenz equation, to write crochet patterns ... that "Lorenz Manifold" thingy (the thing they crocheted) looks pretty orderly for something chaotic ... LOL
hmm ... Some of my crocheting looks rather chaotic ... and my sewing/craft area, and at the moment the rest of the house too, looks even more chaotic (in other words - it is so messy that if some house theif was in the area, they would take one look in the window and go to another house instead because they would think that this one had already been ransacked ... lol)... so ... I guess that if such order can come from chaos - then there is hope for me yet ;-)

btw ... after seeing this, and having seen/read a few things about stuff like Fractals and chaos theory and things like Fibonacci numbers etc ...

Ok ... now u don't have a clue what I am talking about eh? - well ... I used to play with some program that draws Fractals it is called "Fractint" and ... I just did a search - it even has a website where u can still get it for free - http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html - but I haven't used it for a while ... not even sure it is on the computer any more - DH (Dear Husband ) tends to remove things that he thinks nobody is using) ... and to find out about fractals just do a search for "fractal" and you should find more than you knew there was to know about it ... lol ... ditto for Fibonacci numbers ... actually - http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fib.html was the first thing that came up when I just did a google search

now ... what was I saying before I got side tracked? ;-)

knowing about all that stuff, and now reading about those weird mathematicians crocheting that Lorenz Manifold thingy ... I now have this weird idea that I want to experiment with trying to do some kind of Fractal crochet ... LOL(maybe I could invent free form fractal fibonacci fibre art? lol ... except, like a lot of weird ideas I have, it has probably already been done ...)

hmmm ... there is some stuff on that Fibonacci website that talks about how the rational answer, to what they are talking about, is the irrational numbers (see here - http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat2.html#irrational ) ... maybe that explains something about how someone who was never any good at maths at school is now interested in these weird mathematical theories etc (chaos and fractals and fibonacci and the golden section etc) ... and the even stranger thing - I think I even understand some of what they are talking about ... LOL

btw ... I have actually made a quilt called "The Fracticality of Threedom" ... I wonder if I ever did get around to putting a photo of it online? *andrea goes looking at her yahoophotos website* ... er ... I probably did - but not on yahoophotos - it would be somewhere that most of u can't get to (because u have to be a member of that yahoogroup to look at the photos that are posted on there) ... so ... *andrea ducks out of this window again and goes hunting around on the computer for photos* ... hmmm ... this could take a while ... and look what I found while I was looking for the photo I want ... I forgot I had this one of me! ...

This was taken 2 or 3 years ago (at a get-together for "Southern Cross Quilters") ... and yes - I crocheted THAT hat! ... and those are 2 of my quilts that are hanging behind/above my head ... the pink and green one was a mystery quilt - people probably thought I was mad choosing those colours for a mystery quilt - but I really like how it turned out! (the other one is a bit hard to see because the light is shining through it ... it has a kangaroo in the middle and I made the rest of the quilt because I made the kangaroo block at a craft group and then I decided I may as well make it into a quilt ;-)

Ah Ha - found it - this is "The Fracticality Of Threedom" quilt -

I actually made this for a challenge for Southern Cross Quilters (also known as "Scquilters" - it is a yahoogroup I am on ;-) ... the theme of the challenge was to do something to do with "three" ... so my odd mind came up with all these odd thoughts about 3 and free and 3 divided by 3 divided by 3 being fractal etc ... I guess this is one of those things I was talking about when I mentioned that website with the "tampon socks" on it and said that what she said about where her ideas came from also applied to some of mine ... ie I don't really know where they come from - they just do ;-)

btw ... talking about chaotic crochet ... which I sort of was ... LOL ... I have also been getting lost at this website tonight too - http://www.crochet.nu/ ... I have dabbled in this sort of stuff, and want to do more ...
... actually ... come to think of it - a lot of that sort of stuff is kind of fractal ...

... and ... maybe the www is too? - it is definitely chaotic! LOL

so is this blog ...
and so is my brain, I guess ;-)

Sometimes things work ... eventually ;-)

I sent those 2 e-mail blog entries about 3 days ago ... and gave up on them as lost because they didn't turn up in here ... until last night that is ... LOL
... it was funny to notice that, while I was sitting out the back at a friends place (crocheting and talking over a drink or 3) that apparently I was also posting to my blog, without even knowing I was doing it ... LOL
btw, I Was going to send that link again anyway ... and I might still do that - because it didn't come up as a link ... which is what I was interested in finding out ...
here is the perfect gift for the girl who has everything - http://www.feliekevanderleest.com/gallery_objecten/tamponsokjes.html
The rest of her site is here - http://www.feliekevanderleest.com/welkom/welcome_uk.htm ... for those who want to look at the rest of the weird stuff she does ;-) ... I like her comment thingy about why she does what she does ... it kind of applies to a lot of what I do too ...

Fw: I wonder how well ... make that "IF" ... e-mailing things to my blog works?

----- Original Message -----
>I wonder how well blogging via e-mail works? ... only one way to find out
> - send something ... LOL
> here is the first "something" I found ...
> I think I just found the perfect gift for the girl who has everything
> -
> http://www.feliekevanderleest.com/gallery_objecten/tamponsokjes.html
> ... I wonder if the URL comes up as a link when I blog via e-mail, or if I
> have to do the html thing?
>
seems it doesn't ... lol
so, after logging in and fiddling with something that shouldn't have made it
not work but might have, I will send it again ...
... now, knowing my luck ... the other e-mail will now arrive at the server
the blog is on, and so will this one and the stuff at the top of this post
will be in there twice ... lol

I wonder how well e-mailing things to my blog works?

I wonder how well blogging via e-mail works? ... only one way to find out
- send something ... LOL
here is the first "something" I found ...
I think I just found the perfect gift for the girl who has everything -
http://www.feliekevanderleest.com/gallery_objecten/tamponsokjes.html
... I wonder if the URL comes up as a link when I blog via e-mail, or if I
have to do the html thing?

I like spiders ... but ...

I like spiders ...

This one was piggy backing her young around our back yard a few weeks ago ...

... what I don't like is when I KNOW there is a White Tailed Spider in the room with me ... but I can't see exactly WHERE it is ... lol
(White Tailed spiders are those ones that, if the spider bites someone, it possibly causes them to get an ulcer that lasts for months (years?) and just won't heal up)

I know there is one in here with me ... it WAS crawling up the wall behind the computer ... but by the time I found something to stand on that was NOT a swivel chair ... it was up near the ceiling out of reach ... and when I found something long to squish it with ... it ducked out of the way and fell to the floor ... behind the computer! ... down where my feet usually go!! (needless to say - my feet are NOT on the floor at the moment ;-)

I just did a google search and found a website about them http://www.amonline.net.au/factsheets/white_tailed_spider.htm ... seems they may not be so bad as the media have us believe ... but they do bite and it does hurt and it can become infected ... so I am still probably going to squash any that I find inside the house (which is the only place I seem to find them!) because I don't want to get bitten and I don't want the kids to get bitten (and I guess DH doesn't want to get bitten either ;-) ... it's a pity they bite people ... they are interesting ... and they eat redbacks and black house spiders - which also bite people ...

something keeps tickling my feet ... and making me jump ... LOL
- it's probably a mozzie or something ... but it is annoying me ... probably time I was asleep anyway ... I actually have to get up fairly early in the morning (well 9am IS early for me! ... when I am on holidays from work anyway ;-) I am going to meet some other quilters (from a yahoogroup I am on) for coffee ... and a visit to the nearby fabric shop ... then I am going to visit my crochet designer friend and (if it is not too stinking hot) I am going to help her sort out a spare room or 2 that are full of junk ... even though I probably should be staying home and sorting out MY rooms full of junk! LOL
(I will explain that one later ;- )