Home & Family TO BE FIXED

The Weekend from Hell (part 1)

Anne S

Going by the title, you can guess the weekend didn’t quite go ‘as planned’ … but thankfully there is a exceptionally happy ending 😉  Mind you, after the news about my car problems, perhaps you could say the whole week didn’t go as planned, not just the weekend …

On Thursday night I managed to get 4 hours sleep before I had to be up to catch my taxi to St Kilda – the taxi arrived promptly at 5.45am, and we had a very short hop up the street to drop me off to the bus pick-up point.  At that time of the morning it was pitch black, and a bit discomfiting to be standing in the middle of the street, but I survived the ordeal.  After the time got to 6.25am (the pick-up time was supposed to be 6.10am), the bus finally sailed past the end of the street, but then didn’t come back again – I figured perhaps he had other pick-ups in St Kilda and will return to my stop.  By the time it was 6.50am I decided he definitely isn’t coming back, so I had no choice but to wave down a taxi and had to pay $55 for a cab fare to the airport – luckily I did it, though, as I arrived with just 10 minutes to spare before my flight!  When I called later and spoke to the bus company they said they’d look into it and call me back – 3 hours later I still hadn’t heard from them, so I turned into Miss Cranky Pants and called them back again … to find that apparently they hadn’t received the booking info until that afternoon (which I don’t believe, as she’d read back all my details when I first called in the morning hmmm).  Anyway, in essence I just told them their customer service is severely lacking, and asked for a full refund and I would just find my own way home – thankfully I’m getting the refund processed.

So, not an auspicious start to the weekend.  The flight itself was wonderful and uneventful, and on arrival in Perth I found a shuttle bus to take me to a bus station that would then take me to Victoria Park East  where I could kill some time browsing around Stitchers Corner LNS.  It turns out they took me to the wrong bus station, so I ended up having a bit of a tiki tour of Perth central, finishing at the Esplanade busport (as an aside I have now learnt that Perth drivers get very vacant looks and get upset when you call the busport a bus depot, and don’t ask for a “zone 1” ticket, because all you get are blank looks … one must ask correctly for a “1 zone ticket for the Esplanade busport” LOL).  Anyway, an hour later and I was finally on my way, lugging my suitcase behind me for good measure (geez I miss left luggage facilities), and I eventually I found Stitchers Corner where I managed to keep myself awake for a wee while longer while browsing the wonderful goodies.

The return back to Perth city was interesting again – asking the driver if he went to either Williams Street busport or Esplanade busport I was told “yes” … I then assumed that meant he goes to both (I wanted Williams Street) – but of course not!  We end up at Esplanade where he stops and stays … on enquiry I am curtly told Williams Street is NOT a busport it is a station … and no he doesn’t go there.  I got off the bus before I turned the air blue … Are you getting the drift of how my day was going?

I spent a short while walking around the central area of Perth, but I was too exhausted to go far while lugging my suitcase.  I ended up parking myself in a couple of different food outlets where I had a green curry lunch followed by banana split and cappuccino.  A bit of an odd combination, but it was yummy and helped to fill in some time.  I eventually caught up with my friend Hayley in the city after she finished work, and we wandered back to the Wentworth Hotel where I’d been told the shuttle bus returns from (I’d bought a return ticket that morning).  We arrived just as the shuttle was starting to pull away from the curb, and regardless of us waving he certainly wasn’t stopping … so we stood and waited for another hour before the next one finally arrived … and even though we put our arms out and waved to him to stop, he just waved back and sailed straight past … aaaarghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!  Another phone call to the bus company (this seemed to be the running theme for Friday) and I’m told you have to pre-book your return pick-ups … a fact that they neglected to mention.  As I said to the poor operator, do you think I would have stood here for over an hour waving at two separate buses if I’d known that … and no I can’t wait for another hour for the next bus to turn up, as I have to pick up a rental car in 1/2 hours time.  Let’s just say, I’m supposed to be getting another partial refund now … ho-hum.

So, it was back in another taxi again, and our driver was wonderful – he had a GPS system in his cab, and I’d never seen one in use before, so he showed us how it worked and gave us a demo so we could see it taking us to the airport – it was great!  Oh boy, how I want one of those things!!  And in hindsight I could really have used one over the weekend … which I’ll chat about next in a separate post, as it pertains to CA’s class.  After my eventful day, we opted to just get pizza in for tea and we sat and had a bottle of wine before hitting the hay for the night, ready for me to get up early to drive over the other side of town in the morning … and oh, what a drive and a half … 😉

PhotoHunt

PhotoHunt catch-up

Anne S


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I’ve been quite remiss over the last couple of weeks with the weekly Photo Hunt, so I thought I’d do the last two themes plus the current one all in one hit! I’m doing a cheat’s job so I don’t forget to post on Saturday … especially as I’ll be away from home after Thursday … so “here’s something I prepared earlier …” (ie, I put this post together on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and published it using the timestamp editor … gotta love WordPress for that little gizmo – it works a treat! It’s like a real “set it, forget it” system!) Rightio, on to the photos …

This week’s theme (14 April) is “Hobby“ … this is one of the photos I played around with when I was trying to make up a banner header for the Focus on Finishing blog – it encompasses a lot of the tools we use in my favourite hobby … needlework. I could have shown piccies of stitching, but I figure I do that every day anyway, so that’d be a tad boring 😉

The theme from last week (7 April) was “Clean“ … here is a shot of a duck at Lake Emerald Park getting him/herself clean at the end of a hard day (OK, perhaps stretching it a bit, but I always think it looks like it’s cleaning itself, not just preening …). I could have scanned a photo of me and my Goddaughter when she was a toddler cleaning my car, but I can’t be bothered finding it and cranking up the scanner … and quite honestly I just like the duck …

The previous week’s theme (31 March) was “Water“ … and my choices here are of Huka Falls at Taupo, New Zealand (there’s so much water going through there at any given time, it’s amazing!). Here’s an excerpt from the 100% New Zealand tourism website:

“The Waikato River, New Zealand’s longest river, moves gracefully north from Lake Taupo between banks 100 metres apart. Just before the Huka Falls it enters a shallow ravine of hard volcanic rock. The effect is nature’s large-scale equivalent of a fire hose feeding into a very fine nozzle. The previously placid waters roar and rumble at great speed along the ravine before bursting into space out over Huka Falls to crash into the turbulent pool 11 metres below. A foot bridge right at the top of the falls puts you in a prime position to get up close and witness the frightening display of more than 220,000 litres of water blasting by every second.”

Jul03 Graham (37)

Jul03 Graham (41)

The 2nd photo is of a waterfall located on the bush walk at the Buried Village, Rotorua, New Zealand. I love the slideshow on the website’s header – brings back lots of memories of the few times we’ve visited there.

Jul03 Graham (53)

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Happy feelings with a bit of Bordeaux

Anne S

Thanks for your positive comments about my decision to go to Perth for the CA Wells class.  The way I thought about it this morning was that there could be two types of regret … the first is that if I went I may regret it financially until I manage to rebuild my finances again, which might take a couple of months … the second is that if I didn’t go, I may regret it for the rest of my stitching life … when I looked at it that way it was an easy decision to make.  The short-term regret may start next week when I get my car bill … but that’s days away yet, and I’m going to enjoy this time away and not think about it too much – after all, as some of you have put it quite accurately, this could in fact be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity 🙂

I have to admit that once I’d made my decision I really enjoyed the day today – I feel as though a small weight has been lifted off my shoulders … and I’ve even enjoyed the wonderful public transport system that Melbourne has to offer.  It’s only when I have to use it more often that I remember just how wonderful it really is – and it’s lovely being able to sit back and relax, not have to think about where I’m driving, and enjoy a good book while being ‘chauffeured’ about Melbourne without a care in the world.  Today I took a train to Richmond, then changed trains and hopped on another one out to Surrey Hills where I spent the quickest time ever in Bustle & Bows … it definitely was a personal record!  I didn’t want to spend any money on things I didn’t need immediately so didn’t look around at all, and I was amazed that I managed to buy everything I needed in one spot within a 5 minute period – thanks to the owner showing me where everything was that I asked for! 

The main thing I needed (and which I was actually stressing about ever so slightly) was 4mm silk ribbon for the finishing of my Pyramid Etui this weekend – as luck had it, there was no 4mm silk ribbon that matched the colours I’d chosen, we ended up going for a ‘mock silk’ ribbon which matches beautifully, and the owner thought it would be more serviceable in what it was being used for anyway … put it this way, if it doesn’t work (as it’s marginally stiffer than the silk), I’ll just unpick it later and re-do with something else once I have my car back and can go shopping more far and wide (ie to Ringwood).  I was also surprised to see sewing machine thread in there too, so I picked up a cream thread ready to finish my cream button bag, plus a couple of other items in dire need of finishing (Just Nan’s And Many More needlecase being just one …).  I also picked up some red glass-headed pins, but on reflection I decided they were going to be too small and would be lost on a pinkeep, so they’ll now go into my sewing basket as they’ll be perfect for pinning things together.

On the way home I had to pass where I work, so I hopped off the train and made a slight detour – I had to pay for my PO Box renewal (of course I hadn’t been able to get to them during business hours recently because of my shifts/no transport, so it was now overdue), so I got that out of the way (another $110 hmmm), then cleared out the contents of my mailbox … lo and behold there was some squishy mail sitting in there from Carol – it’s true that gifts seem to appear in my mailbox when I really need them … I knew Carol was sending me another skein of my favourite DMC Variations thread, but I was very surprised to also find a wee Easter duck hiding in there too – isn’t he cute sitting in his little flowerpot? Hehe, I think he’s just gorgeous – I’m such a kid where ducks are concerned!  I love him, my friend, and he really put a smile on my face for the rest of the day 😀

 It was then back onto the trains again, where I made a snap decision while changing trains at Richmond station … I decided to jump on the Frankston train line and take the train to Malvern, to the Spotlight store there.  Unfortunately that particular store is the bane of all Spotlight stores (Mum and I hate going there on the whole ‘cos their staff know next to nothing, and everything is always a jumbled mess, plus you have to queue for 1/2 an hour for anything) – anyway, the other Spotlight store on the train lines was further away in Box Hill in zone 2 of the transport map, and I only had a zone 1 ticket, so Malvern it was …  I was actually surprised that they had what I needed, being some more berry pins, so that I can finally finish Tessa’s pinkeep for her and get it in the mail – yippee! Now all I need to do is stitch something that will warrant using the yellow, green and orange pins 😉

I’m booked in for an airport shuttle bus in the wee small hours of the morning tomorrow (before daylight), so I decided to hop on a tram into St Kilda so I could work out where the pick-up hotel was located.  I was originally going to just walk down to it, but seeing as it will still be dark, I think I’ll organise a taxi instead to the pick-up point.  I can’t believe the bus is only $30 return, whereas when I took my car to the airport for my Sydney trip it cost me $45 in car park fees (long-term parking), plus the e-tag toll cost for the freeway, plus petrol … I wish I’d known about this eastern suburbs shuttle bus sooner, it’s wonderful (it originates in Frankston and comes through the eastern suburbs before heading out to the airport – awesome!).

Anyway, all-in-all it was a wonderful day today.  Now all I have to do is get my stitching etc packed ready for the morning.  I’m going to have about a 5-6 hour wait at the airport on Sunday night after the class, so I need to pack something I can sit and stitch there over and above the CA Wells projects.  Because I’m travelling on a standby ticket, I’m not flying out until 11.35pm, and get home at 5.15am yikes.

Now, before I run away and start doing that, I thought I’d show my pitiful progress on Bordeaux this week … hmmm, hardly worth showing, really – I only just remembered it was SAL night at 11.30pm last night, and only managed about 1 1/2 hours before my eyes were almost closed.  I just got a bit more of the side border stitched, and started the golden blackwork – at least this band is a lot more fun that those pesky over-one grapes on the previous band (and yes, for those of you who are very observant, they’re still not done haha – I couldn’t fact them last night).  Hopefully from next week I can get back to my normal routine again with my stitching and my SAL’s … I wonder how my SAL partner Carina has been doing with the Macaw in my absence?

Anyway, thanks again for your lovely comments, emails and support – as always it’s really appreciated {{hugs}}.

Home & Family TO BE FIXED

I’m going to Perth

Anne S

I have made my decision today after a good night’s sleep … whether or not I will live to regret that decision will only be known later, but otherwise I’ve wasted all that time and effort over the last two months, not to mention wasting my birthday/Christmas money that was used to pay for the kits, by not going.  I’ve actually got $1500 set aside in the bank account ready for when we find somewhere to move into (ie a month’s rent/bond in advance), so if necessary it just means holding off for a month for moving … but I’m just hoping it doesn’t come to that.  I’ll also put my name down for overtime every single day for the next month or so and hope at least a few days come through confirmed.

I’ve since found out there is an airport shuttle bus that leaves from St Kilda, that only costs $30 return, which is awesome – it’s hardly worth taking the car anyway for that price (even if I had it), especially as I’m only taking a small wheelie case for luggage.  It now means that today I need to take a couple of trains for a trip out to Surrey Hills so I can buy some 4mm ribbon ready for the class (I hadn’t been able to get there before now thanks to my shift times, then being in Sydney, and then of course having no car).  Unfortunately they don’t have any glass-topped pins or machine sewing threads, or I could get all my chores done at once … I think I’ll have to wait until my car comes back before I get them.

Well, no time to stay sitting around here … time to jump in the shower and head out for a walk to the train station, then come home and get my packing done.  I have to admit, I feel a bit better for finally making a decision … regardless of whether it’s the right one or not.  Now it’s time to set the whole lot in motion …

Finishes, Stitching Smalls

A belated FAL item

Anne S

What do you do when you want to take your mind off things?  Why, you hunt around until you finally find what you were looking for almost 5 days ago, and get it finished!  I had a bit of a disaster with my FAL weekend … the best laid plans of mice and men went awry – first of all I had planned to finish my cream button bag, but then realised the cream sewing machine cotton was the one that Mum had used up and white cotton would look stupid for the topstitching … so plan B was to stitch a tie-on pillow from KarenV’s wonderful tutorial – I had the stitched piece and the fabric all worked out, but alas no ribbon wide enough to be suitable … and no car to pick up either cream cotton or blue ribbon … so, on to plan C … to finish off my Bumble the Bee Waxer Pocket by Moss Creek Designs … except it had disappeared off the face of the earth since Mum’s visit.  After that I just gave up on the weekend as a bad joke, and figured I’d pick up some cotton during the week.

Well, I turned the place upside down tonight, and finally found my waxer pocket … and I forced myself to get it finished.  I’ve never tried finishing anything like this before, but I think it worked out OK – I wasn’t entirely sure how to follow some of the instructions, but made a couple of things up as I went.  Anyway, here are the results of my efforts … very belatedly for the Finish-a-Long weekend.  Sorry for the bad photos but it’s late at night, and the lighting in here is shocking … but if nothing else it kept my mind occupied for a couple of hours!

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Decisions at the 11th hour …

Anne S

Well, I just had a call from the mechanics … unfortunately my car woes have just got worse … they’ve fixed the new clutch pedal, and took the car for a test drive, but they found during the drive that it’s the actual clutch that’s gone – and they can’t give me any estimate whatsoever to the costs until they know if there is any additional work that will need to be done … which puts me in a major quandary about the weekend!

I’m sitting here taking deep breaths but I have to admit I feel pretty upset about the whole thing – I just don’t know what to do … they’re hoping to have an answer for me on Friday, Monday at the latest … but by then it’ll be too late!  They haven’t given an even slight ballpark figure … I have no idea whether it will cost $200 (which I doubt now), $500, or even $1000 to fix this stupid car.  For the first month ever I felt as thought my head was finally well and truly above water after my end of 2006 financial woes … but it seems the powers that be have decided my testing phase isn’t complete yet.  I’m sure by tomorrow I’ll be smiling again … but at the moment I’m not sure which emotion to feel the most … let’s just say the air was ever so slightly blue a few minutes ago when I hung the phone up.

Time to go analyse the bank account with a fine toothed comb, I guess …

Cross Stitch

Test post for piccie purposes

Anne S

I’ve recently been playing with my Webshots albums and using their links for posting piccies in this blog … I have to say I’ve been really impressed with them, in that it’s really quite quick to upload the piccies to the album, and resizing the piccie is an absolute breeze!  I’m thinking of using them instead of Photobucket (which I originally created solely for the purposes of blog posting).  It makes so much more sense to have everything in one place, especially as I pay for my annual Webshots membership so I can keep scores of piccies online.  Anyway, I just want to test how to post a clickable piccie using Webshots, to see if it works … here goes … (unfortunately the largest size is nowhere as big as Photobucket, but for everyday stitching piccies, I think it’s probably OK).

 

OK, that worked pretty well considering … hmmm …

The thing that takes so much time in Photobucket is that I’ve been uploading the piccies twice, once at each size required, and the upload takes forever … with Webshots you just upload the photo once (which is heaps quicker in comparison anyway), and select which size photo you’d like the URL for, then you can just reselect another size and within a second the new URL is right in front of you … I love it! 😀  This is going to save sooooo much time online when uploading WIP and finish piccies yippee 😀

Blogroll, Home & Family TO BE FIXED, SBQ

SBQ & blogging in general

Anne S

Still no news on my car – I spoke to the mechanic while I was sitting at the train station on the way to work yesterday, and they’re still waiting on the new clutch pedal to arrive.  Apparently there was a cock-up at wherever they get their parts from … so still no idea when it will be fixed.  I still don’t have my airline tickets booked for Perth yet until I at least know what the bill is going to be.  By hook or by crook I’ll get myself to Perth for the class, as otherwise it’ll be such a waste of time and money, but I guess there’s only so much money in the bank, and if it reaches my limits then I’ll have no choice … at this stage, though, I’m still being hopeful.  

One of the problems in Perth, though, is that the friend I’m staying with has now moved, and lives out in Merriwa near South Geraldton, and the public transport options for getting to where the class is being held is appalling.  On Saturday alone the trip will take me (according to the Transperth trip planner) 2.51 hours … departing at 5.55am I would arrive at 8.46am, and the journey will have taken me on two trains, two buses, and included a walking distance of approx 2034 metres … bloody hell, I’m exhausted even just thinking about it!  And I daren’t even look at the Sunday schedules, as they’re usually worse.  So I’ve opted to hire a car instead, as even driving it will take me 1 1/4 hours according to the driving maps (and seeing as I’ll be on my own trying to follow the map, I’d better add on an extra 1/2 hour just in case) … of course that means an extra $120 expense without petrol costs, so one of the reasons I’m being cautious about booking my airline ticket yet until I know what money I’ve got leftover to play with.  Oh well, I’ve still got about 70 hours before the class starts … no need to panic! 😉

Anyway, on to the latest SBQ … Today’s SBQ was suggested by Heather and is:

“How do you decide which stitching blogs are worth repeat and/or regular viewings? Are there certain things you look for in particular? Are there things you wish there were more of? Less of? Is your blog a good example of what you like to read?”

As for deciding which blogs are worth repeat/regular viewing – piccies for me are probably first and foremost … I love to see stitching WIP’s and finishes, and piccies of stash bought – it’s definitely true to say a visually appealing blog makes me more likely to come back for more.  Then of course there has to be a good writing style to accompany the piccies – I like to read a mix of stitching stuff, with enough personal info that lets you get a glimpse into the blogger’s personal life and a feel for who you are as a person.  First and foremost it is the stitching content, though, that will grab me.  I suppose my own blog is a sort of example – I usually have a mix, although there hasn’t been too much in the way of stitching of late hmmm.

I have to say that it’s quite funny to have this question now, as it’s something I’ve been pondering myself over the last few weeks.  To be brutally honest I’m finding blogging to be a bit of a chore at the moment … I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m finding it difficult to both write my own blog and read other blogs at the moment, and wondering whether I need to take a small mini-break for a while.  One of the problems is that I have so many blogs on my reading list if I don’t check them daily the unread feeds just snowball out of control – even though I’ve been trying to read a few over the last week since my return from Sydney (and since Mum’s gone home), I still have over 500 unread feeds, and that starts to weigh on me a little bit, and makes it feel like a chore. But then again I don’t want to “mark all feeds as read” as I don’t like missing out on anything … it’s a catch-22 haha.  But the SBQ has made me consolidate my thoughts a wee bit, and I know a couple of blogging friends have been doing the same thing, in that I think I need to cull my reading list slightly.  There are some blogs I’ve been reading for a while that no longer, or rarely, have stitching content so I don’t get as much enjoyment from them as I used to.  It’s a difficult decision to make, as I don’t want to hurt any feelings in removing blogs from my blogroll, but I have to be aware there are only so many hours in a day, and there’s no point doing things out of a sense of duty if you no longer derive pleasure from the task.  What I’ll likely do instead is retain a list of all these blogs and make a once-a-month visit instead of trying to keep up-to-date with everyone together.

On that same theme, I’m also in the middle of rearranging my blogroll into folders – allocated as “daily”, then Monday to Sunday … we all have our favourite blogs (for whatever reason, be it that we’ve been reading them the longest, have made closer friendships with the blogger, or just that they’re so incredibly inspirational), so I thought of putting those top 10-15 blogs in my ‘daily’ folder … then I’ll divide the remaining blogs into days of the week, at least that way I can catch up on blogs once a week when I’m having a busy week, rather than having hundreds and hundreds to plough through – if I’m having a good week, I can read two days worth together.  I’ve been pondering this for quite a while now … and it’s harder and harder finding the time to keep on top of things as more new and wonderful blogs become known to me.  It also means I’m finding it more and more difficult to find time to comment on blogs, and that disappoints me because that’s the greatest part of blogging – giving and receiving support.

Anyway, I want to apologise in advance for anyone who gets removed from my blogroll when I start whittling it down – it’s certainly nothing personal, I just have to rationalise my online blogging time and try to make this enjoyable again.  Phew, that’s almost a relief saying it out loud and committing myself to actually doing something about it …

Actually, another thing I was thinking about the other day as well has just popped into my head … and while I’m on the theme of ‘blogs’ it’s probably a good time to bring up the question …

I use Newsgator for my blog reading, and just go into the blog itself when I want to make a comment.  A few of you have your blog settings to just show ‘partial’ feeds, so in my news reader I only get to see the first three lines of text, then I have to click on each post heading to read the full post … this really slows down proceedings as well, and I have to admit when I’m trying to catch up, I’ll leave those blogs until last because it’s so much slower to read – I was just wondering why some of you have your settings like that?  Anyway, that was just something that was running through my head … I have to admit I hadn’t even thought about my own settings, except I put my own blog into my feeds to see how it looks.

And I’ll leave it there for the day … there’s way too much thinking going on by this blog reader at the moment, and it’s hurting my brain 😉

Cross Stitch, Works in Progress

Peacock needlecase happy dance

Anne S

Aside from the satin/buttonhole stitches for the scissor sheath (which gets done last after the stiffening is ironed on), the stitching for the Peacock Needlecase for the CA Wells class is all done – yippee! 😀 

I had a slight distraction by a phone call this arvo, which took me a while to get back into stitching mode afterwards, but I managed to squeak in with the stitching just before midnight 😀

Sorry about the poor photography, but I can’t be bothered playing with my editing software much more tonight.  At least now I have enough stitched of both projects to at least get some of the finishing done during the class next weekend).

peacock-08apr07