Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Here’s a site worth looking at if you’re at a loos as to how to clean something. While the articles have quite a bit of information, don’t forget to read the comments too, as there are lots more ideas in there too.

http://www.howtocleanstuff.net/

From my friend Dave G who said: “Tighten your WHAT? Hell of a name for a vessel full of seamen…”

By grabbing an hour or so each afternoon after finishing work, as well as this morning (Saturday), I’ve been able to make all 32 coasters for the wholesale order I received last week.

My customer chose two main fabrics from my stash — an orange flower on black, and a cream with a gold paisley pattern. I used a matching backing fabric for each main fabric, and several matching threads for the free motion quilting I did on them. When it came to finishing, I used various thread colours for the satin stitching — each set of four is finished with a different colour (exception: eight of the cream/gold fabric coasters have the same edge finish as that colour matched really well).

For each main fabric, I did one set of four coasters in gold metallic thread. But metallic thread — while pretty — is a sod of a thing to use even with a topstitch needle…

Here are pictures of the finished coasters:

Want your own? Then check my Etsy store for coasters and other goodies I’ve already made.

Cat owners and cat lovers? This is for you!

My friend Bobbie sent me an email with these two photos and captions. I think these photos vindicate our decision to not have children or dogs!

Should I get a dog?

Should I have children?

Some of you probably weren’t even born then, but I was!

I was in high school and they packed all the kids into the school hall. Some teachers had bought in their black and white TV sets (there was no colour TV in Australia until 1975) and set them up on tables around the hall. We watched very grainy pictures of the moon walk live! It was just amazing.

But I’m not sure how much we really appreciated this achievement — it was just something on TV after all, and all the usual suspects (boys, mostly) were being a nuisance.

I still remember being in the school hall for the moon walk. It was one of those defining moments you remember. I remember Kennedy’s assassination but I can’t remember where I was (I think I was a bit young to realise the significance), and I can remember hearing that Churchill had died (1965) when we were travelling in the car and it was announced on the car radio. And I remember exactly where I was when I heard Elvis had died (Geraldton, in the kitchen drying dishes). And I know exactly where I was when Australia II won the America’s Cup in September 1983 (Wickham, 2:30am, watching with a sailing friend drinking lots of wine and screaming our lungs out!)

Happy 40th anniversary to the REAL moonwalkers!

Last Saturday was a day for making more things for my Etsy store. But my creative process got hijacked by the Emergency Room episode. And then there was work all this week, but finally I got around to taking photos of my little creations late yesterday and adding them to my store late today.

I finished off some ends of ladybug/ladybird fabric and a whole fat quarter of summery, bright watermelon fabric, as well as a couple of other bits of fabric I had lying around that were just the right size for luggage tags and bookmarks.

Here are some pictures — if you’d like to purchase any of these items or want to see more, visit my Etsy store:

The lovely Craig (who’s blog URL shall remain anonymous) posted this on his blog a couple of days ago:

…especially as skin cancer was something that has occurred in the family tree.  Admittedly on a branch of the family tree that should have been sterilised out of existence, but what can you do?

Guess he’s not keen on that side of the family, huh? 😉