This Beautiful Boy

is my nephew. He spends lots of time here with us. On a Thursday afternoon he comes home from school with me. We were having a conversation (he LOVES a chat) and I made a cheeky comment about being the eldest is the best.

He said, “Idon’t think that is a very fair thing to say, Tracey.”

“But you’re the eldest too, that makes you the best. ” I defended myself.

“I am not the eldest!” he cried. “Your kids are much older than me.”

“No, no. I mean the eldest in your family.”

“Your kids are in my family.”

Again I try to defend myself. “I mean the family that lives in your house with you.”

“That’s not a family. That is just my mum, my dad and my sister. What about my cousins, don’t you remember that cousins are in your family.” By this point in the conversation he was speaking to me as though I was quite simple.

I conceded defeat, “Yes I see your point. How silly of me to forget that cousins are in your family.”

We really ought to just give up and move to a kibbutz. It should be communal living for these cousins. They just love each other!

The Top Ten

My sisters and  I are in the habit of ranking things into our own personal top ten. You may think that I mean music – yes we do that a lot, but we will rank anything. We have top ten vegetables – roasted zucchini has just edged its way into my top ten, favourite episodes of Buffy – the singing one is in there; we will truly rank anything.

When one of us says, “You know, this is in my top ten.” It brings a hush to the group as we all nod sagely. It is a very big statement to make and is given its due respect. This does not mean that you will not be mocked for a top ten selection – who put choko in their top ten vegetables? In truth our top tens probably contain twenty to thirty items. We never ever nominate the whole list, we just say when something is in the top ten. The highest accolade of all is to be nominated as being in the top five. This is our ultimate tribute and is taken very seriously.

We never suggest a number one for any list. We are much too egalitarian for that. We don’t want to hurt the feelings of the other thirty items on the top ten list. We don’t want to make that commitment. Our lists are very fluid, items pop in and out all the time depending on mood, whim or even weather.

Recently both of my sisters made top five nominations for their song list. I think that both songs are ipod worthy, but they don’t appear in my top ten.

I however, after some serious reflection, feel that I am able to nominate a number one on my song list. This has never been done before. In true Morrison fashion there are two songs which take the number one position, but both come from the same album, so that is just fine. The number one position is gained because both of these songs have been in my life for a very long time (they were released in the year of my birth). I am never disappointed to hear these songs, but I don’t have to listen to them constantly either, they are not a fad. They make me cry when I am sad, they make me smile when I am happy. They are unique in the world of music and untouchable. (Despite sacrilegious uses of one song by an advertising campaign!) Sussanah, who loves a cover, sent me looking for this version by Ben Kweller – who happens to be in my top five male singers not in a band. A nice blend of two lists.

What is in your top ten? Or even top five? DO you dare to nominate a number one?

Let it Never Be Said That Romance is Dead

On the weekend I found this beautiful expression of love in our local paper.

 

He loves her with his heart and his foot. How romantic? unnecessary? dirty?

My Pete thinks that it might be an acronym something, maybe sending our love eternally or single ostriches love elephants or shaved orangutans like eggs (my son’s contribution) or silly old loser entymologist (a whole family effort; it’s fun, fun,fun here).

In other romantic news….Sussanah put my wedding photo on her blog today. Her blog entry spoke about her glory in the eighties and yet she chose to illustrate her point with my photo. Admittedly she did say I was pretty, but she neglected to show her own photo. I shall now rectify this for those commenters who were howling at the injustice of her photo selection. Note: I have naturally curly hair, she however, has a PERM.

I notice, in this photo of her dancing with our paternal grandfather, that she has let her enormous puffy sleeve get a little crushed. This is not good. We spent a good deal of time at my wedding ensuring that our sleeves had just the correct amount of puff. She, it seems, has let us down and this moment has been captured for posterity.

The title of this post comes from the first line of this song.

Risky Business

Today my son came to me to ask if I had a needle.

“Mmmm, what is it for?” I asked.

“I need to fix my sock.”

“I could just buy you some new socks”, I offered.

“No need, these still fit me. I just need to sew up these holes.”

(He does have his leg propped up on one of the dogs here, but only because Percy refused to move.)

He is such a frugal little guy. He still has $250 in his wallet which was accumulated birthday money from eleven months ago. He says that there is nothing that he really needs right now, so he’ll wait to spend it.

Maybe if he stops risky businessing in the hallways he won’t get any more holes in his socks!

My first song since my blog move….Yesterday I came into the studio to hear this song at volume 500 with both of my children singing along at the same volume. I love it! Enjoy it and sing along.

Global Warming?

I don’t think so! It seems to me that we entered an ice age…on Thursday. We were enjoying days of 28 degrees C (82F) then without warning Thursday was only 18 degrees C (64F). That is 5 degrees (9F) below our June average. Absolutely ridiculous.

 I HATE the cold. I cannot even describe to you the foul mood which cold weather provides me. Talk to the members of my family and they will gladly tell you. I HATE the lack of humidity that goes with it too. I have spiral curls that turn to frizz. My skin looks like a reptile’s skin. I get static electricity build up that leaves me terrified to touch any conductive object. I feel constricted by wearing too many clothes. I always have cold toes, fingers and nose that simply will not warm up. I don’t want to get out of the warm cocoon that I create in my bed under my three quilts. I hate that the house becomes stuffy because the fresh air is too damn cold to let into the house. I hate that the sun has gone down by 5:45pm.

Luckily this weather doesn’t usually last for longer than a week or so in the tropics. Lucky for those that have to survive my mood. I could never live any where south of here.

Now I come to the great winter con… a warning to all, heed it carefully.

I went to do the grocery shopping with my children- fuel to a winter mood! My daughter found some hot chocolate that she would like to buy. Good idea in this cold weather. It was $6.00, but I agreed. It came in a nice tin and I am a sucker for packaging like that.

 SO…. we took it home and opened it, just look what was inside

It’s just melting chocolate! This is available in the cooking aisle for about one third of the price! Clever, evil marketing genius has caused me to pay $4.00 for a TIN!

It does make a delicious chocolaty drink, but I would suggest that you buy the cheap stuff, so as not to feel bitter as you drink it. Put a cube or two of melting chocolate into half a cup of milk and heat it in the microwave for one minute to melt it, then top it up with cold milk. You had best use low fat milk though, it will even out the calories.

Oh, and who is the winner of my raffle??? Whose name came out of the hat? (I could use the $4.00 tin as a raffle ticket holder I guess) 

 rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (drum roll)

Wow, she turned a significant age and won a raffle in the same week. Her cup is brimming over…but not with expensive hot chocolate.

An Almost Weekly Event

 My son is four years younger than my daughter.  For all intents and purposes, she has finished growing. Her feet have been the same size for five years. She still wears clothes that she bought four years ago.

My son, on the other hand, is growing like a weed. His feet are enormous, he needs new shoes every six months. His wrist hang out of last year’s long sleeved shirts and half his leg shows in last year’s long pants.

He is just a fraction shorter than his sister now. He checks frequently in eager anticipation of the day when he has to look down to meet her eye. It will be a very special day for him, but I’m not too sure that she will remember it so fondly.

She has always taken a very motherly role toward him. In fact, a downright bossy role. He delights in watching her rant about him making her late. He wanders the house searching for a lost shoe, at an aching slow pace, as she melts down into a full rant. I see the sly smile cross his face as she starts to bluster. She has never quite worked out that her best option is to walk away. I have tried to tell her, but I think that she often enjoys the opportunity for a justified rant.

I wonder how his height will change the relationship. I intend to just sit back and watch the dynamic change.

 PS Today is the last day to leave me a comment if you would like to be included in the giveaway quilt. Don’t forget!

Post 100!!

Today I write my one hundredth post, my first on this new blog.

 To mark this exciting occasion I would like to show you this.

 

A beautiful new quilt that I made on the weekend using our hand-dyed fabrics.

Want a closer look?

 In honour of my new blog I am delighted to offer this quilt as a gift to one lucky commenter. Would you like it to come to your house? I’ll happily post it to you . Leave me a comment before this Friday. On Saturday morning I will draw one name out of a hat and you may be lucky enough to win this quilt.

Good luck, and thanks for coming to find me here!

Opinions sought

The beautiful Flo and I have been hand-dying our own quilting fabric. It is good fun, we do it for the pure pleasure of creating colour with our own hands. It is not particularly cheap though. We need to create an income from this process in order to sustain it. If we want to dye more fabric – and we do – then we need to get some money from the stuff we have already dyed.

We had go at selling our fabrics at a market last year, but it was not at all successful. We decided that we would need to create quilts with our fabrics in order to make any sales. Being the smart people that we are, we have realised that our best bet for sales was to make something for children. Here is our first (almost) completed creation.

You can see that I haven’t put the binding on it yet. The quilts are about 1m (40in) by 1.1m (44in). The background is a whole piece and then our original drawings (this one is Flo’s) have been raw edge appliqued onto it. I have then quilted it quite heavily and added detail to the applique shapes. We have used a brushed cotton or flannel on the back to make it snuggly for a little one.

I have quilted ferns in the background because it seems appropriate for dinosaurs.

So this is what I would like to know, dear readers. How much should we charge for these? We are thinking to charge $85 – $95 Australian. This is our logic:

1. We are selling them at a craft market, we think that $100 is a psychological barrier at that venue. They may be worth that, but if no one buys them then it is pointless.
2. We will cover our purchase costs, but not really pay ourselves much for our time. That is the bane of the craft sales world. You are making one off items, you can’t really pay yourself for that until you have a designer name.
3. Selling them (we have made 18) at that price will give us enough funds to buy PLENTY of materials to make more.
4. We enjoy making them and are happy for this to be a self-sustaining cycle – sell them to make more – rather than an earth-shattering business to put us onto the rich list.
5. We want each one that we make to be unique. We don’t want to take orders to re-make these ones. We want to design quilts that match the fabrics we dye because we love the serendipitous nature of hand-dying fabric. This is pure fun for us and we would like it to remain so.


Given all of that information, would you buy one of these for your son, daughter, granddaughter or grandson. Would you think that paying $85 to $95 would be a reasonable price for a hand-crafted original item purchased at a craft market. Please give me your honest feedback. (See that email address up there? Use it if you feel you have a lot to say.)


Oh and by the way, if you see one that you love, but can’t come to the craft market in Townsville at the end of July…make me an offer!

Streeeetch

Today we pulled out some winter clothes so that my son could wear them to the movies. Twelve months ago we were turning a cuff on his jeans because they were too long for him. Look at them now…

I guess we’ll be going shopping this week. The problem is that he is so skinny that even these very short jeans are too big around the waist – he cannot jump without holding tightly to his waistband.

I hope that he slows down soon or that three-quarter length denims suddenly become this season’s must-have item.

A teaser – look over to your left and you will see that this is my 97th post. Pretty good! You will want to be here for my 100th post. I have some exciting stuff planned.

Farewell

One of the first things that I bought with my own hard earned cash was a sewing machine. A little Janome that cost me around $350 in 1984. At the time I was at uni and my car was worth less. I clothed myself for many a year with that machine.

Five years later I was married and living in Brisbane while my Pete was at uni. I was teaching, so I had an income. We had no debt and no children. I went to the Brisbane Ekka with my mum and on an impulse I upgraded to the top of the line Janome. Instead of spending $20 for the day on show bags, I spent $1700 on a sewing machine. My Pete was a little surprised when I came home to tell him.

The machine was computerised and did lots of fancy stitches. I had just begun quilting, so I played with all of its features.

I just loved it. So much so that when I bought a new machine about nine years ago I couldn’t trade it. Instead I gave it to my mum. She loved it as much as I did. She has made clothes and quilts and bags and curtains with it.

Today my mum and I met to make a quilt for my cousin’s wedding. We turned on the sewing machine and it didn’t work. This message appeared on it screen…

I rang the lady at the local Janome shop and she gave us very bad news. This means that the board has gone and it cannot be repaired or replaced. The machine is no more, it is an ex-machine.

Good bye faithful machine, we have stitched many, many kilometres together.