floating world

this is ... the space in which I create

Since we moved into our house almost a year ago I have, for the first time, a dedicated space for my "stuff". It's only little, about two by three meters, but enough space for a couple of desks, a filing cabinet and a bookshelf.

It means that I no longer have to keep the sewing machine in a cupboard and take over the dining room table to sew, or have the computer in the living room, which is wonderful.

This is where I work, sew, plan and potter. The boxes on the shelf store all my fabric, wool, gocco supplies and other crafty bits and pieces, and the file boxes are full of old magazines, knitting patterns and  notebooks. It's a bit of a mess, but I love spending time here. And the best bit is that if Ali wakes up when I'm half way through something I can just close the door, leaving it set up until the next nap.

(Thank you to quilting mick for the "This is..." theme.)

hooray for chocolate slice (& links)

Good things from the internet:
Very quick to make and extremely yummy chocolate slice. Recipe from Sadie and Lance. Make some now! It's even quicker than the brownies, and as a bonus doesn't require chocolate.
Cool shoes from Andrea & Joen. I'm all about flats right now, and their Sunday range has lots of cute ones
Stick on wall decorations. I am considering this one for our bedroom. Or maybe this one
Two Thousand email magazine / Sydney guide
The lovely Icing blog
The Powerhouse Museum photo archive on Flickr
This gorgeous quilt, and this one too, found via Hop Skip Jump. I am extremely tempted to make one for my bed.
Beautiful prints from Yuki
Tapettitalo: gorgeous wallpaper from Finland. Can you tell I have decorating on the brain?

Ali and I are both much less snotty now, and it's a 4 day week here (Anzac Day is on Friday) so life is good.

new year, again

Wow, new years eve. Again. I can't quite believe it's the last day of 2007, this year has been such a blur.

I'm spending tonight at home, watching the glimpses of fireworks we can see from our balcony and doing a barbecue for dinner. The plan is for lamb cutlets with cumin, potatoes with rosemary and tomato salad, fruit salad for dessert (all Nigella recipes), and a glass of champagne. Trying to go out on new year's eve usually makes me cranky (although only in the planning stage - once I'm there it's fun), and attempting anything with a baby seemed potentially disastrous, so I'm feeling very contented about an evening at home with this little person. Because really, even with the house buying and country moving and everything else, 2007 was all about him. Becoming his mummy is by far the best and most exciting thing I've ever done.

Wishing you all a great new year's eve, and a happy and healthy 2008.

to do

• procure xmas tree
• put up decorations
• sew stockings
• hem curtains in spare room
• go to ikea for bedside lamps
• make / buy wrapping paper & tags
• make / buy & wrap gifts
• design, gocco, write & post xmas cards
• sew bibs for Ali, and some extras for mothers' group kris kringle
• bake these biscuits
• sew these shoes
• knit scarf
• sew new dress

The list of "Things I would like to get done before Christmas" is getting unwieldy and improbable, especially since Ali has decided day sleeps are not for him. I think I'll have to divide it into essential and non-essential, which is a shame as the less essential things are the more exciting ones.

The photo is completely unrelated, I just thought the fruit bowl was looking pretty today.

towering

Before I lived in Tokyo, London was home for 18 months. It feels like so long ago, but I really only left at the start of 2004. For most of the time I was there I lived in a tiny flat near the north end of Portabello Road, and I loved that area so much. It's not fancy, like the Notting Hill end, but had lots of character - there were halal butchers, Portuguese bakeries and grocers that sold exotic ingredients for Afro-Caribbean cooking. The Notting Hill Carnival started outside our flat, and we woke up on the first day to find people selling jerk chicken on our doorstep. The whole neighbourhood was dominated by the Trellick Tower, which I love... it has such great lines, and I used it to navigate by when walking home (I have no sense of direction) or to work
out where we lived when looking out at the city from tall buildings.

Because I have such a soft spot for the Tower, and it reminds me of the great time we had living nearby, I love these things from the very cool People Will Always Need Plates. I bought the tea towel (on the left) about a year ago, but haven't been able to bring myself to use it yet. I looked at the site again today, and saw that they now have mugs, badges and shopping totes too. I'm thinking that the tote might make a very nice nappy bag...

acting up

Not content with laying claim to the sewing machine, Momo has now taken over the laptop. It's missing a "T" key from where she flicked it off and chased it under a bookshelf.

quick nursery crafting

I managed to snatch enough kitten-free time to finally finish some sewing and other bits and pieces. The lamp is a plain one from Freedom, covered in a remnant of fabric from the Cloth sale. I also made a quick log cabin cushion cover with some of the fabrics from the quilt - I'm not 100% happy with it, it looks a bit lurid and I wish I'd put a plain fabric in there instead of one of the prints, but it's good to have it finished anyway. And the vest is a pattern from a Japanese book that I've been wanting to try for ages. It's reversible, and was very quick and simple - hopefully it will look cute over a singlet, or a babygro in cooler weather. Because I've been knitting more lately, I'd forgotten how quick it can be to finish sewing projects - with knitting, I'm still really slow so it feels like projects go on forever. In contrast, these were all really fast - especially the lamp, which involved no sewing at all, just gluing. It's good to do some instant gratification crafting for a change!

my assistant

This is the main reason that sewing has been limited lately. Momo loves the sewing machine, and dives up onto the table to chase the threads, which is a bit of a hazard. She also loves to play with the yarn when I knit, which is less hazardous but not very helpful. She is very cute though, so it's hard to be too cross.

The sewing machine in the picture is my mum's - I got rid of mine in Tokyo, because the voltage is different there, and haven't replaced it yet. Mum got this one for her 21st birthday, and it still runs perfectly - I love it because it is so portable (the flaps fold up to make a carry case), and also because it's the machine I learned to sew on. And it's really tough - I'm noticing a huge difference between it and the fairly poxy fleamarket machine I had in Japan. It's an Elna Lotus, and I'd love to get one the same, but unfortunately they seem to have a cult following, and they sell on eBay for more than new machines. I'm just happy that I can borrow this one in the meantime (thanks, mum!) and hopefully if the kitten sleeps later I'll be able to finish up some projects for the nursery.

happiness is a new sofa

There have been no house photos yet, but important decisions are going on behind the scenes.

For the 5 years that Mark and I have lived together we have always had extremely small sofas. The first flat we rented in London - which was, at 27m2, exceedingly small in general - came supplied with a Klippan from IKEA, which is 180cm wide.

The next one had one of those fold out futon sofa things. Then in Tokyo we bought a 155cm wide sofa from a shop on Meguro-dori, to fit in our very long thin living room. We brought the Tokyo sofa back with us and have been using it up til now - it's actually quite comfy and nice looking, but no good for curling up on. An added complication is that Mark is 195cm tall, and so not suited to small sofas at all, let alone sharing them.

I decided that with a baby on the way and probably more time to be spent at home, a comfortable sofa was a priority. And so the search began for a not-too-expensive, not-ugly, baby and cat proof sofa. We finally found one, and it was delivered on Friday... I feel so grown up. Now for other home-making type decisions, such as which rooms to paint and where to hang pictures. And, very importantly, what to do about the horror pink blinds.

interesting times

Things are in a state of high excitement here, because we bought a little house on the weekend! We've been looking since February, and it felt like everything for sale in Sydney was either too awful or too expensive. I'd almost given up on moving before the baby arrived, but finally we found something that ticked all the most important boxes, and should be moved in by the end of June. This will be the 8th move I have done in 5 years, and hopefully the last one for a while. After renting for ages I'm looking forward to being able to put up shelves, paint walls and hang pictures where I want them. And although I like apartment living, bonuses of being somewhere free-standing are that we can get a cat and have the paper delivered. All very exciting stuff (my 20-year-old self would never have believed that I would be so thrilled by thoughts of storage and newspaper delivery... although I was always pro-cat-ownership).