Test run, yum, mum

Cute, no?

I took my little sewing machine for a test run today. I was pleased I actually remembered how to thread the cotton and the other basic stuff, so I'm not an absolute beginner. I started off sewing a few lines of straight stitch and zig zag on scrap material, then moved on to the project that prompted me to buy the machine: a corsety-belt using some wide, black trim I found at Clegs fabric store. It's decorated with horizontal rows of fake leather, satin ribbon and fancy stitching. I sewed the raw ends with the machine, then hand-sewed a row of D-rings on each end so the belt can be laced up with ribbon.  I didn't have enough D-rings to complete the belt, so I'll show you when it's done.

I cooked corned beef for dinner tonight. Yum. And there's leftovers for tomorrow night. I cooked dumplings again too. I froze half of the last batch of dough I made last week and tonight I thawed it and cooked them in the pot with the corned beef. 

I had a very domesticated day today. As well as the sewing and cooking, I cleaned, did the grocery shopping and even some ironing (which I do maybe three times a year). It was a good day to stay in.

I called my mum for Mother's Day tonight and had a long chat.  

I took this partial rainbow photo from my 

office during the week

 Brightly decorated cars are the traditional way

 of celebrating Buddha's birthday. 

Spotted on Collins Street yesterday

What remains of the Bill & Ted-inspired sign

 I mentioned last Sunday

New toy, golden, pixie tuffets

I bought myself a new toy last night - a mini sewing machine, which is designed for beginners. I still class myself as beginner because it's been a looooong time since I learnt to use a sewing machine at school, and the couple of sewing classes I did two years ago weren't enough to advance my rudimentary skills. 

I bought the mini machine because I have a few small projects that will (hopefully) turn out better sewn by machine, not by hand. I didn't want to spend more on a full size machine in case the novelty wears off quickly and it ends up in a cupboard gathering dust. 

If it turns out I'm not completely inept, I might upgrade to a full size machine in time. I'd love to be able to make my own clothes, probably due to spending too much time browsing Etsy and crafty blogs, but also because I often struggle to find things I like in the shops. I like the idea of sitting on a stool at Lincraft or Spotlight, leafing through all the pattern books, choosing my own colour combinations and producing a one-of-a-kind garment. I bet it's also a great feeling when someone asks where you got your skirt and you can say, "I made it myself", then bask in the glow of their admiration.  

Hopefully my enthusiasm doesn't grossly outweigh my talents. I will also need to overcome my habit of buying all the requisite bits and bobs for a project and then not actually sitting down to start the project. 

It was a lovely mild autumn day in Melbourne today, with another gorgeous golden glow lighting up the city in the late afternoon.

Check out these photos of Tasmanian fungii. I love the red ones with white spots - they're like tuffets for pixies. My mum saw some of these when she visited Tasmania a few years ago but we were there at the wrong time of year. 

Soggy, sewing and phwoarness

City in the rain

I got caught in the rain walking home today. My leather thongs got all slippery and squishy and hard to walk in and the bottom of my jeans got soggy and dragged along the ground, but it was ace all the same. So refreshing.  

I'd been over to The Thread Den with my friend Anna practising sewing in zips, and it was really humid and sticky when we emerged, drained but (sort of) triumphant. The rain really cooled things off.

And it's still going now - it's been coming down steadily for hours. I hope it's still going when I go to bed.

I think I might watch one more episode of Angel before I call it a night. I watched the first episode last night and the opening music gave me goosebumps. I'm loving it...especially loving seeing David Boreanaz (who plays the role of Angel, the demon-slaying vampire-with-a-soul) in a black singlet....and with his shirt ripped open....and in a towel...Phwoar. *fans self*

See what I mean?

Looks like someone else got caught in the rain. Here, let me dry you off....

Speaking of sewing, Anna and I struggled with putting in zips, but I think we'd got the hang of it by the end of our sewing session. They weren't pretty, but they were functional. Learning new things is hard...but at least it might help to stave off dementia.

Big day out

I am all tuckered out from a big, long day today. I was up early (for a Saturday) and it was another gorgeous sunshiney spring day, so I walked to my sewing class in North Melbourne.

As predicted, zips turned out to be a challenge for Anna and me. I would have been a bit crap at it had I been awake and alert, but as I was practically catatonic with fatigue, I struggled. I was like Dory from Finding Nemo. "Sorry, what do I have to do....What was I meant to do again? Um...what? What are zips? Where am I?".

Fortunately, the zip we found the simplest is the one we are going to have to sew into our A line skirt...although, it wasn't until my third attempt that I got it right and even then it was against the odds - the teacher said I'd done something wrong, but I still did a really good job of it. I took that as a compliment.  The zip was functional. If it were attached to a garment, it wouldn't fall down around my knees.  But clearly Anna and I need to log a few hours of zip practice before we proceed to module 3.

After that I wandered up the street to the Art House at the North Melbourne Town Hall to see Leonardo's Last Supper, which is a Melbourne Festival event (although it's on until 8 November). It features a "perfect sculptural three-dimensional clone" of Da Vinci's Last Supper as the centrepiece for a show that merges visual arts, cinema, music and cutting edge technology" (too tired to think up my own description).

I didn't realise it was a 3D replica to begin with - I thought it was a trick of light that gave it depth, but no (fatigued, I tells ya). I was probably more impressed with it when I thought that! It was still pleasing to the eye - almost like a biblical music video at times.

After that I wandered up Queensberry Street and happened across the old fashioned corner store Grigons & Orr, which I've read about lately. I only stuck my head in for a quick look since I can't stuff my face full of artificial colourings and flavourings at the moment. Regardless, I am pleased just to know there is a milk bar in Melbourne where you can buy mixed lollies  - your very own selection chosen from lollies stored in big jars, not a selection chosen by Allens. "I'll have 5 bananas...and 5 milk bottles and 5 teeth and..." Just like in the olden days.  I bet 20c doesn't buy you 10 or 20 lollies like it did when I was a young un.

I continued on to the Melbourne Museum to see A Day in Pompeii. I hadn't planned to leave my visit until the last weekend, but that's what happened. I had to queue for ages and then the earliest session I could get into was at 6.00 pm, three hours hence.

To fill time, I wandered through the rest of the museum, spending most of my time in the Mind & Body exhibition where I was fascinated and a tiny bit grossed out by the real body parts that are used to explain the various part of the human body - digestive tract, immune system, nervous system, reproductive systems and so on. Real human body bits, donated to science! If only those people who left their bodies to science could somehow know they ended up as a star attraction at the museum, not just cadavers sliced and diced by med students. I'm sure they'd be proud (except maybe for the guy whose penis ended up on display. It's grey and very skinny and icky).

Being juvenile, I wanted to take a photo of the poo (fake, I assume) that is the finale of the digestive tract display but I didn't want people to see me. The poo is popular. There's even a little button next to it that makes a farting noise. I bet it's the most pressed button in the museum.

I was also fascinated (in a grown-up way) by the information on the condition known as synesthesia. Although I had heard of it before, it just seems too weird to be true! In synthesthetes, the stimulation of one sense provokes an involuntary response from another sense - for example, they can "see" or even "taste" sounds or "hear" colours. Freaky, hey?

The exhibit features the story of one synesthete who didn't know until he was 14 that not everyone sees music in colour (cello music is dark red). Although it's "abnormal", most people with the condition find it's a blessing rather than a curse. Isn't the mind bizarre and wondrous?

Finally 6.00 arrived and I got into the Pompeii exhibition. It was fascinating and quite moving, particularly the casts of victims who were fleeing from the volcanic eruption or huddling together in their homes. Interesting also to see how petite they were compared to modern humans.

The exhibition reveals in some depth what life was like in Pompeii at the time of the catastrophic eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD - what they ate and wore, how they did their laundry, their entertainment, what their dwellings were like and their fondness for graffiti - as well as detailing the disaster and eventual re-discovery of the lost city. That's the kind of history I like - wars and political maneuverings leave me cold. 

After that, I walked back to Flinders Street and caught a tram home. Today's distance walked - 13.77 kms.  I'm rather weary. Sleep in tomorrow, methinks.

(I haven't inserted any links in this as yet...I need to go to bed now.)

Got my glee back!

Yup, I've definitely emerged from my grump. Phew.

Today I was up way earlier than I needed to be (in hindsight) and as it was a sunny day, I decided to walk to my sewing class in North Melbourne. It was only about 5kms in the end. It was a little chilly, but fine and there were rowers on the river and more people than I expected in the city, possibly due to the Caulfield Cup (big horse race...as in a major event, not large horses).

The sewing class was great. Our teacher was a guy! That was unexpected. Yes, he was gay and also very entertaining.

Importantly, I didn't suck at the sewing. In fact, when we were winding the bobbins and threading the machines, it all came back to me from my high school textiles classes. Well, hazily, but I didn't feel like a total novice. We made this:

It's a wallety/clutchy kinda thing. Yeah, I know my thread doesn't match. That's not the point, people (I'm not actually going to use it).

My friend Anna and I were so pleased with ourselves we signed up on the spot for the second module, which is next Saturday. Button holes and zips. This could test us... We're both excited about the class where we'll be making an A line skirt. I even went to Lincraft on my way home to have a look at fabric (I have to say fabric, rather than material, now that I can sew).

I had lunch and a chat with Anna afterwards (oopsie, diet fail) and then I decided to walk home. I'm the peripatetic version of Forrest Gump. Walk, Frisky, waaaaalk!

I stopped in at Queen Vic Market (not the food bit) and bought myself a self-heating gel heat pack that's shaped especially for your neck and shoulders (I've had a major pain in the neck this week, which didn't help my mood). You press a little metal disc inside the heat pack and - voila! - it gets hot. Toasteeeeee.

I also adopted another member for my giraffe family. That's him rear left.

By the time I walked all the way home, I'd covered just over 12kms. Whew.

Then tonight I walked up to Hamer Hall to see the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. It was an experience and, in the interests of trying new things, I'm not sorry I went, but the music for the most part was just a bit...well, noisy. I won't be buying the CD (yes, there is one). I think if I go again I'll stick with the classics or the pops series, rather than contemporary stuff.

But the conductor was fun to watch. I actually laughed when he first started spasming and twitching about. I wondered if he deliberately keeps his hair floppy so he can flip it about while conducting. And I also pondered how the orchestra bosses select the person who clangs the cymbals. Would there really be much separating the talents of one cymbal-clanger and the next? Most of the time tonight the cymbal dude just sat on his stool, waiting to clang. Oh, and gong. He had one good bong of the gong.

Imagine if you're the clanger/gonger and you meet an attractive lady at a party and she's all, "So, what do you do?"...

Clanger/gonger (swaggery): "Well, I'm in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra actually."

Attractive lady (with interest piqued): "Oh, really? A musician! And what do you play?"

Clanger/gonger: "The cymbals. And also the gong."

Attractive lady: "Oh? Oh. Well. If you'll excuse me..."

I imagine that's why the term "percussionist" was invented, though personally I prefer clanger/gonger.

Anyway, it was a night out and now I can make out like I'm cultured because I've seen the MSO perform.