rockin' and rollin' all week long

I don't know where the analysis part of my brain has gone. Not quite true. I do know I've been thinking about some things that don't belong on my blog. I speculate that the relentlessness of winter has something to do with it as well. I haven't blogged about anything more thoughtful than sewing for weeks.

Tonight is not the night for breaking through the puffy stuff either. So I present to you, with nary an intelligent caption, a favourite of my childhood:

I found him here. My Dad had this old battery radio, butter yellow with red casing, which I used to prop up beside the trampoline and jump and flip endlessly to the sounds of Radio Nelson. If it occasionally was temperamental, I would bang it just like the Fonz, to make it go again.

This afternoon I took the kids and my elderly cousin M to the art gallery (we only have one in Wetville) to see the local photography competition entries. They were fantastic, and now Fionn has seen the under 12s section, he wants to enter next year.



I've started on the yoke for my flowery curtain fabric skirt. I ran out of flowery curtain fabric for the back yoke, so it is blue with white spots instead. I never tuck tops in, so I expect the spotty fabric won't show much. I do like the heavy, firm weight of the curtain fabric in sewing terms. It stays in the right place, which is more than I can say for those stretchy knit fabrics I tore my patience and tension up with not so long ago.

Fundraising season continues. It's never too cold or dark too early for fundraising it seems. I shelled out $20 for kindy raffle tickets today as I refuse to hawk tickets round when all my friends are also finding money for their own kids' activities. A notice comes home from Fionn's school every week inviting me to gift sugar or corn chips or bottles, plus endless opportunities to gift my time and skills. It can only be one thing. Gala season. I'm expecting league raffle tickets just as soon as I've shut my wallet for five seconds.

Quietly not ticking away at all is my contribution to the next Blackball working class history museum exhibition on care workers. Which puts a stretch on my next thought, which is that in the light of a comment from HarvestBird earlier this week:
I worry, on and off, about the gradual withdrawal of empathy in the rest of the country, as colleagues recount stories of being lectured by people in call centres and other service contacts on the question of “why don’t you just leave?”
what could I do or get a group together to do, which would be fantastic for Christchurch people? I'm really pleased with our dressups for Christchurch kindies project, which yielded two big bags of play goodies, mostly dressups, for the ravaged preschool play spaces. Perhaps, in light of my lack of achievement on the Blackball museum front, I should just send money to womens refuge and throw some project energy closer to home. Hmmm. maybe. Maybe some play jewellery for the women's refuge... Frivolous, but couldn't a little frivolity be a welcome distraction?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

McCalls 7288 & altered Style Arc Barb pants

Image
Black never photographs that well, but it's pretty useful otherwise.  I need to wear the jacket a few more times, but at the moment, it clearly needs a narrow shoulder adjustment, and that will also bring the armscye upwards.  It's a little too big from the waist down as well.  So the cuddly jacket is working for this one, but I might make the shorter version.  I had been thinking of the pleated back again, but maybe I will go classic, after seeing some beautiful online versions.  I didn't get the button placement right for the collar to sit flat, and now that I've lost my jacket-sewing virginity, I decided I was ready for Jackets for Real People to teach me how.  Book Depository really is like a late night addiction for nerds, and just to make things efficient, I ordered Elsa Morante's History as well. The trousers are my first foray into sewing pleather.  The walking foot handled it beautifully.  I started with Style Arc Barb pants and kept on trying them o
Read more

Livingstone daisies

Image
I love them. Just bought and planted another punnet's worth. Those psychedelic pink ones are particularly appealing. The very cool picture is, of course, not mine, but one I found on a google search. I am making progress on my camera layby though. Also planted out what I think are marigolds from the Italian stall in the Wood (Nelson). I mounded my maori potatoes and weeded out lots of unwanted yams. Also planted out more lettuce from the garden shop plus repotted some of my own lettuces which I grew from seed. They are not quite ready for the big wide world of the open garden where the blackbirds and slugs love to feast, so they can get a little bigger in bigger pots first. I repotted six sungold tomatoes and planted out another cucurbit. Is that the correct generic name? I sowed zucchini, squash and pumpkin seeds in the same tray and now they are indistinguishable. I would like to be able to know the zucchinis from the pumpkins and next year I will do a little more careful label
Read more

Heartburn & Paris Etc

I never seem to read anything in sequence for book group anymore.  Wrong book for the wrong meeting, or I have to go home because I was falling asleep because I spent three hundred hours of my life filling in forms for the government to satisfy itself that I am doing my job (generally ensuring that I don't have time to do my job) or some other thing. So here is my record.  Not even all about books.  After the wonderful America is not the Heart by Elaine Castillo, I read Nora Ephron's Heartburn , (originally published c.1983 and recently reissued by Virago Classics, for the first time. After reading almost everything I could find about Elaine Castillo after finishing her novel, this is what stuck in my mind: What is striking about “America Is Not the Heart” is how it’s unapologetically Filipino, peppered with expressions in Ilocano, Pangasinan, and Tagalog and nuances like wearing tsinelas, calling everyone Ate, faith healing -- with no italics, no footnotes, no glossary
Read more