seen Google maps lately?

This is a bit freaky really. If you type in your own address, and provided you street shows up on the map with a blue outline, you can actually view a photo of your house.

For my example here I decided to show the lovely Cocoon in downtown Launceston (click on the photo for a better view).

I can see it's benefits though, Loobylu is planning a trip to Japan and she's checking out places before she goes!

friday fluff - late mail

I figure I can still get away with this considering it's still Friday in some parts of the world...

This photo was taken during my morning walk on my camera phone, isn't it the grooviest fence?! It's nice to see people turning the mundane into something creative.

Thanks also for the Etsy love - a little encourgagement goes a long way believe me!

Loves ya, Fer.

it's a shop

In fact it's my Etsy shop! So come on by and see my wares. It's very meagre at the moment but it's a start. Yay for me....

And I'm a bit slack with putting this up -
The ever-so-lovely Marlene passed on this award, which was very kind of her! I'm supposed to pass it on to 5 bloggers but there's too many to chose from - they're all special to me, otherwise I'd never read them. So, you see all them peoples down the right hand side of my blog? I nominate them all. I know that's piking out big time but I just don't have the time to decide. :)

Then the even more ever-so-lovely Marlene also picked my name out of a hat for her giveaway - about time I finally won one!!
I especially love the paper dolls pattern (if you can make that out from the crappy photo), make a great baby quilt. Thanks Marlene!

Phew, lots happening and mostly good too. Now I have to think of some Friday Fluff for tomorrow.......

ye olde Singers rule

The more I use this bad boy the more I like it.

We've all been there though haven't we, any new piece of machinery (car, lawn mower, computer etc....) is just that bit daunting at first. There was a few different things I needed to learn with The Thug as well, one example is threading - snip off the old thread before it 'enters' the machine and tie the new thread on, pull the old thread through the machine (after removing it from the needle) and it will take the new thread with it. The main reason for this is because there's at least one little hook that is mighty hard to try and get the thread around doing it in the traditional manner. I've also learnt that this is the best way to change threads in an overlocker/serger.

I feel I'm mastering all the little quirks with this machine, and are not finding him so much of a Thug after all - more a gentle giant. He is big, and the motor under the table is loud, but I'm amazed at how slow it can actually go which enables me to have a lot more control and precision.

But this is the thing, it seems that we can't really get to know new machinery until we give them a personality, even a gender. My bicycle is a girl, my sewing machines are usually boys (there's also Bertie Bernina of course), fortunately the animals have a gender or else I'd assign them ones as well poor things/girls. I know not everyone is as bad as me, for some reason I find it important - or maybe I spent too much time being single before I met Ant. :)

friday fluff

In keeping with the cat themed week, here's some Simon's Cat for you. I could swear this was Gracie -



I first saw this Simon's Cat video on Shannon's blog and loved it. The good thing is that there's even more!

And a Tifa update? She's not hissing at us so much now and was actually pleased to see me yesterday when I fed her, raising her tail and a pretty little "meow" to boot.

Edit: since scheduling this post yesterday, there has been a rather feisty cat fight in the hall while I was out for only half an hour. Tifa was quite shaken and Gracie is very smug. *sigh*

Have a great weekend everyone!

kitty chaos

Introducing Tifa, the silver tabby. My brother Ramon and his girlfriend Aya have gone to Japan for at least a year teaching English and have asked us to take in their little kitty. There was a lot of 'um-ing' and 'ah-ing' but we gave in and said yes.

She's very cute but extremely shy, and quite put out about being in a strange house with strange people. But then, wouldn't we all? I think the biggest problem is that this house belongs to another cat, who has been making her presence felt. Not in a bad way though, well, there hasn't been a proper cat fight yet.....

It's been interesting to watch Gracie's reaction. Normally she sleeps on the lounge room couch, but now it's our bed, sorry, her bed with her staff. Although apart from this she's behaving rather normal. :) very proud of my little girl!

Tifa has been set up in the spare bedroom with all her mod-cons - kitty carrier (shown above), bed, litter box and food, except that she's chosen to hide/sleep in the cooler bag that sits on top of the wardrobe and after Sunday night, rarely leaves the room. At least she's not trying to escape and run away.

I think our Miss Lucy has been feeling left out, which is absolute tosh as she gets walked every day and receives plenty of attention. Anyway, it's probably because she's been told she's not allowed in the spare room. So yesterday while I was at work our neighbour had to call the council to come around and cut her free from the iron fence at the side of the house, where she got her head wedged and made a loud fuss. Silly girl, she's done this before but always managed to extract her head but takes her collar off in the process. For some reason she thinks she can squeeze underneath, but that concrete in the ground ain't moving for no one! I've cable tied some strong steel mesh there now, hopefully this has solved the problem. I also let her inside the spare room this morning while Tifa was oblivious in the cooler bag, this seemed to cheer up Lucy a lot. We can only hope......

friday fluff

Originally uploaded by Flexiblelove.

This was one of the things that impressed us at Furnitex. Made of cardboard in a honeycomb weave, it has 2 wooden ends and can be flexed into many shapes. It neatly squashes up to be about 22cm (8.5") wide for easy storage.

Naturally you wouldn't want to leave it outside in the rain, unless you want papier mache, and we noticed that the cardboard collapses a little on the top from where people have sat on it. We did try it out and was surprised at how supportive it is.

Mind you, I'm not prepared to cough up $699 (Australian) for it!