The Titanic of Quilting and Other Tales from My Week

Super E came for a sleepover on Friday so parts of my weekend have been focussed on 5 year old fun. Despite not having played the Wii at our house before he could reel off every game we have in our arsenal. He also told me that he can only play games with a "G" on the cover and promptly hounded me to play Mario Karts with him. When he got tired of kicking my sorry butt ( Video games are so not my forte and I spent the majority of my time trying to extricate myself from walls while being hit by lightning bolts and falling into burning lava) he chilled out with Grandpa who is a video game champion. I assert that little boys never really grow up to be men as evidenced by the concentration on my husbands face in this picture. I also had to mutter "tone it down " to Mr. P fairly frequently when he was going all out and trying to come first in every race - sometimes you have sacrifice your own personal Mario Kart victory to enhance a kids self esteem ...sheesh. 

We answered the question of what happens when you hand a 5 year old the garden hose to water your agapanthus? A water fight ensued in the front garden to the utter astonishment of the neighbourhood (nobody in the Pyjamas clan is quiet when we're having fun) meaning that Super E and I both ended up having to change clothes and I blow dried my hair for the second time in a morning. What the hay - the water fight was the most fun I've had in a long time. 

A quick trip to the fabric store to stock up on some fabrics for Miss Elizabeth occurred on Saturday with Super E tagging along and doing a pretty darn job of helping me pick out matching fabrics. He has quite the eye for colour matching as most of these were his choices. 

I washed my postage stamp quilt this weekend in preparation for delivering all three of my donation quilts to the Mary Potter Foundation next week. Abject disaster struck when I bunged it in the dryer after washing totally forgetting that I had inserted 100% wool batting into this quilt. It came out 8 inches smaller on two sides and looking extremely antiquey...I'm renaming this Titanic because she struck disaster on her maiden washing. I furiously googled until my fingers were little nubs to see if there was a solution but apparently no cigar since I've chucked it in the dryer and I did wash it again ( as if somehow that would swell it back to the right size? ) and stretched the crud out of it like I was some kind of medieval torturer but this one is destined for the bin or as a very ugly dog blanket. 

My nephew's wedding is fast approaching and this weekend was the traditional boys night prior to the wedding. My nephew elected to have it up river , and Mr. P went along. I received one text telling me they had arrived safely along with this accompanying picture. I don't want to know what else happened because I suspect it got fairly messy. I did facebook my other nephew this morning asking if my husband was alive and got the message back "Yes -unfortunately" so I suspect Mr. P may have been a ringleader of sorts in the hijinx department. 

This would be my nephew- in a dress and a girly hat - and this was well before any drinking started....

I had planned to sew and study today.  This stack of papers needed to be looked at and bits and pieces committed in some form or other to memory for a presentation I'm giving this week. 

Looking at that stack of papers gave me a headache and I decided to go clothes shopping because I have to have something pretty to wear to the wedding right? Clothes shopping revealed that I have been eating too many Krispy Kremes because not much I tried on made me look stunning but I settled on this little number with new dark blue nail polish to match.

I'm at the sewing binding onto the baby quilt stage so I'm hoping to get that finished this week. mental note to self : Don't put this one in the dryer...

Mr. P Glams it Up

I think some of the differences between men and women are genetically imprinted by those pesky XY or XX chromosomes.  Examples that spring immediately to mind include the love men have for just about any sport,  their unnatural relationship with anything that has wheels , and their aversion to shopping  of any description.

Fed up with Mr. P looking like the King of the Dag people, we set off Saturday morning ostensibly to buy me new undies, but I was hatching a plan in my head to convince him to get some new clothes. Call me crazy, but I think wearing  a T-shirt in Vietnam that proclaims “Man Whore” across the front  is going to get you all the wrong sort of attention.  Mr. P’s  T-shirt  collection is especially vile and he has needed new jeans for at least a year. He tells me he  attempted to find new jeans six weeks ago without my assistance and couldn’t find anything he liked. That’s because last time he went jeans shopping it was the 1979 and bell bottoms were  all the rage.  I strongly suspect that his attempt to find jeans in August  entailed running past the front of the 23 jeans retailers at our local shopping mall and calling that trip done.

I essentially shoved him into Jeans West on Saturday morning , grabbed a sexy young thing to flatter and assist him (men never say no to a young pretty thing) and said “My husband needs two new pairs of jeans”. Fifteen minutes later he was done. See? That wasn’t all that hard.

Next stop – shirts – shirts that dont have crummy slogan writing on them. The only reason I'm making that damn T-shirt quilt is so I have an excuse to cut up some of his shitty old T-shirts that he simply won’t part with. It's win win. I dont have to worry about him being seen in public with those awful shirts anymore and he gets a quilt out of it. This part of the shopping experience entailed me throwing about 100 T-shirts at him and muttering  “Try this on” and then barking “It fits , it doesn’t have anything offensive on it –you’re getting it“.

More success. And not one of them looks bogan. This will set him up until at least 2023 when we have to do another decennium clothes shopping assault. Im sure that in about a month these will have Pho stains on them that I cant get out but for now my husband has a decent wardrobe.

I've been doing last minute details for our holiday and decided I want to do a day spa. For about 75 bucks I'm getting 4 hours of pampering. Sadly, it appears that the only kind of massage Mr. P can get is one with a happy finish so he misses out. Sucks to be a bloke. 

A Post for Patty

My Mum called me yesterday to comment about my lack of quality posts of late. Apparently I've been boring the pants off my own Mum with my repetitive sewing posts. So this newsy post is especially for Mother of Pyjamas so she can see I do things other than sew. 

On Friday night I dragged my sorry bum home from a week at work around 5.30pm and had my pyjamas on by 5.35 pm. When Mr.  P arrived home I told him I had no intention of cooking dinner in 95 degree heat and sent him out on an important mission to bring me back a triple cheeseburger. He also had strict instructions to check the burger before he left Macca's because they already ripped me off once this week by giving me a double instead of a triple. I was too lazy to go back the first time because 1 patty of mystery meat really isn't worth my time. Yeah- I ate McDonald's twice this week. We also got chicken takeaway for tea another night, and I was out for dinner Tuesday. I'm planning to snatch the crown of Queen of Not Cooking from my sister. 

Mr. P came back with the last instalment of Harry Potter on DVD and my maccas and I subsequently discovered that the Hamburgler had stolen one of my three meat patties again. Either that or Ronald McDonald has decided four bits of pickle  (which I don't eat ) = 1 meat patty. Seriously you can count to three using your fingers. You don't have to have a maths degree. How hard can it be to get it right?

Saturday morning I woke at sparrow fart (that's Aussie for before dawn)  and full of good intentions. By the time my Mum called  at 2.30 pm I was still in my pyjamas and I hadn't achieved a damn thing for the day besides commenting on 30 blog posts,  harassing Indy and Lola , and  laying in bed playing with my I pad. I kidded myself that I was productive by putting on two loads of washing while I listened to Mr. P scrub the bathroom and deciding my help would hinder his progress. 

By 3.30 I was sick of myself and dragged myself out shopping. I saw these cute glass birds in the window of this shop  when I was out for dinner on Tuesday and had to go back and get them. The lady looked quite taken aback when I said I'd take every single one they had. For a moment I thought she was going to refuse but she must have seen the murderous glint in my eye because she went and wrapped them up in tissue paper without further comment. FYI - I bought 7.

And while I was there I spied this felted handmade chicken basket from Nepal and had to buy that too. 

I did some Christmas shopping for Little P. Every little boy wants a pirate puppet and who doesn't love Shaun the Sheep?

Then I came home with the brilliant idea of making a quilt cover for our bed which meant I had to drag my fabric out and throw it all over the floor to see what it might look like if I ever find the time (and motivation) to work on something for longer than 10 minutes again.  I'm still thinking about it. And the fabric is still on the floor. 

Last night  Mr. P and I went to see a movie (In Time with Justin Timberlake - very good actually!) and then when we got home I started some pyjamas for Miss P . I lost interest after one leg. I think pressing in those pleats took it out of me.  So she's either going to have to wait until I feel like doing the other leg or walk round with half her bits hanging out. 

We had some of the family round for Sunday breakfast this morning so that meant running round for 30 frenzied minutes from 8.10 - 8.40am  trying to make our house look habitable before everyone arrived. It's amazing what you can achieve in a short time span and how you can make a filthy floor look good with a chux wipe. While everyone was here I sewed some more on my hexie flowers, promised my sister in law a pair of pyjama bottoms and waxed lyrical about how fabulous my I pad is. 

After everyone left we went and did some more Christmas shopping...which I cant show you because Miss P and my sister and other nameless people do sneak in  here every so often to see if they're being mentioned.  So I'll just show you what I bought for myself. 

I had three spare inches of hanging space in my wardrobe that is now filled and I feel complete.

I spent the afternoon wrestling with socks while watching a DVD but since this post is already way too long and I have visions of everyone falling asleep while reading , I'm going to thrill you with that  story in my Tuesday post. I do hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend. Did you know it's only 35 sleeps until Christmas?  Time to panic! 

Adventures in Shopping and Amazing Events

It's been raining here. This has been the view from the front of my house for most of the day. Dreary, rainy and cool. Autumn has hit with a vengeance.

I met up with Sara yesterday morning for our shopping expedition to Spotlight. Sara and I have a lot in common. Since I don't have the maturity a woman my age should and Sara has the maturity of someone older than she is - it worked out about even.  Meeting people from the Internet can be fraught with danger. For example Sara was hoping I wasn't a 50 year old guy called Irving who owned a trench coat and I was hoping she wasn't a serial killer. Neither of us were what the other was hoping we weren't and we got down to the business of gossiping and drooling over the fabric bolts at Spotlight pretty quickly.

 

When I walked into  the quilting section it seemed there was a lot less full of fabric on the shelves than usual. That's because Sara had already chosen about 324 bolts  to take to the counter to purchase. I thrust a diagram at Sara and blurted out something like "Ooga Booga" and some other stuff that sounded like Norwegian Arabic and she understood perfectly and broke out that cool maths brain of hers. Who knew she was multi lingual? It normally takes years for people to learn Shay-ese. Anyway once Sara had worked out how much fabric I needed I started to look at fabrics.  I was being quite indecisive because if it isn't in a fabric range people - I am a complete ditherer.  Eventually after about an hour I made my choices.

As we staggered up to the counter (It took two trips -I am not joking) the sea of waiting people parted and looked at us in horror. There was a general melee while people dashed to the numbers you have to take to get served , obviously realising if they got stuck behind us they would have no hope of getting home before dark. Sara rugby tackled an 80 year old lady to the ground to get poll position and we took great pleasure in holding up that line for about 45 minutes.

OK - the rugby tackle was a bit of poetic licence but seriously - she had so much fabric people were staring and one lady couldn't help coming to ask what Sara was actually making. I guess when you look like you're about to collapse under the weight of that much fabric people are curious about what you're up to. My 6 bolts looked pissy by comparison.  Yes I bought some fabrics. Yes I blamed Sara when I got home. And yes,  I blamed Becks as well since this was for her quiltalong.  

Then we  hit Lincraft so I could get some more fabrics. More hilarity ensued, more fabrics were bought along with books I don't need except for the pretty pictures  and then we went for lunch. I had chicken breast fillets and chips in case you're interested.  It was a lovely way to spend a Saturday. Thank you Sara. You are everything I thought you'd be but even better.

So this was the damage for the day...

Fabrics from Lincraft and Spotlight for the Paper Piecing Quiltalong

Books from Lincraft (Crazy Bargains!)

I finally splurged and bought  a new cutting mat ...and some new backing for the long dormant Christmas quilt because I don't like the idea of  spots anymore.

Sara also brought me these gorgeous fabrics  from her personal stash.  I've already started making something with them. I can't resist repro fabrics.  In honour of Sara, who can make a quilt out of just enough fabric so that there is only about a quarter of an inch left over after cutting ...I am making something out of this fabric and am vowing to have a minimum of fabric left over instead of my usual 3 metres. I'm going to try and use every possible scrap. And also in honour of Sara I'm going to make this quilt as fast as I can.

In other amazing news, Miss P came for a sleepover so we've had the pleasure of her company for much of the weekend.  Yesterday she asked me how I make the carrots I'm doing for Easter and decided without begging , cajoling or interference from me to give one a go herself. MY DAUGHTER DID CRAFT! Today, I walked into the lounge room to see her doing another one. Here's the proof! 

It is with huge pride I show you this finished collaborative project made by Miss P and Mrs. P -Easter Carrots 

Honestly , seeing her with a needle in her hand almost gave me a heart attack. (but made me very proud of her at the same time ) There may be hope for her after all.

May the craft be with you.

P.S. I know you're wondering what I did this weekend aside from shopping. I did a lot of sewing but honestly this post is wayyyyyyyy too long already. I'll be back Tuesday to share.

Mrs. P Goes Grocery Shopping

I often grizzle when people post recipes because some of the ingredients aren't available in Australia. Never heard of Crisco before the internet exploded.   I have to rely on the generosity of people who take pity on my practically Oreo-less state since we have two kinds of them here , one of which I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.  Butterscotch chips - forget it. No such thing.

Shopping in other countries seems so exotic to me. You can get cheese in a pressure can, milk duds , and apple jacks.  You can buy Walkers crisps and Twiglets which are unheard of in Australia.

Mrs. Seams Inspired and I were emailing back and forth a couple of weeks ago when we got the brilliant idea to compare a weekly grocery shop. And then we got the even brilliant-er idea to share it with all of you. 

So today you're all invited to an international grocery shop. One post here about my shopping trip and another at Seams Inspired about shopping in her corner of the world. 

By the way,  I looked like some weirdo stalker walking round furtively taking pictures of my shopping trip. These are the lengths I will go to  in order to bring you hard hitting grocery information. Other random facts about Australian shopping include our 10% goods and services tax. With groceries this is built into the price of items. It doesn't apply to fresh foods or basics like eggs, sugar, flour, or coffee. It does apply to things like soft drink , personal care items, and cleaning goods.

Welcome to my local grocery store. This is where I drag myself when the Pyjamas household is in serious danger of starving. I worked out for this post that approximately $120,000 of my hard earned dollars has ended up in their coffers over the last 10 years.

First stop toilet paper. I paid $4.99 on special for a dozen rolls. That was a middle of the road brand.

Shampoo and Conditioner. I usually buy mine somewhere other than the supermarket . I think it's well documented in my blog that I am a shampoo snob.

Toothpaste - In the olden days before toothpaste was invented people used to rub their teeth with sticks. Toothpaste costs anywhere from a dollar on special for the generic  up to about 4.00 for a 170 gram tube of Colgate. You can get Colgate at the discount grocery stores here for about half that price but it has foreign writing on it. Is it the same toothpaste? Probably not but it's hard to make an informed opinion when you don't read Vietnamese.

Aussies love tomato sauce. That's about half the selection we have available.

This is the pitiful selection of Oreo's. The wafer sticks are dis-gus-ting. Thank you to everyone who has taken pity on me and sent me Oreo's. Now you know why this is necessary. By the way Tee Vee snacks are awesome and if you don't get them - you're really missing out. Ditto Tim Tams.   A box of Oreo's is about $3.11 I think. (I never look - I just buy them )

The meat section. I think I've mentioned we aren't that big on turkey here and to completely make me look like a liar they have a whole section of it . I'd just like to point out this shopping trip was less than two weeks after Christmas which is one of the few times turkey even gets a look in.

This is what Americans call ground meat . In Australia it's known as mince, and it costs anywhere from $7.00 a kilo to $13.00 a kilo for beef mince.($3.20 to $5.90 a pound) Pork, lamb and chicken mince start at around 10.00 a kilo.   

Cereal anyone? I am rather partial to the occasional bowl of coco pops. A 17 oz box of cereal here will cost between 5 and 8 dollars. Weetbix is a lot cheaper than the sugar laden variety. I bought a kilo box a couple of weeks ago for about $4.00.

In my part of  Australia this stuff is called bung fritz. Everyone else calls it Devon. I'm led to believe this is similar to baloney . It costs $10.99 a kilo. (for manufactured meat ) Only God knows what's in it.

Australia has awesome cheeses. This is the mass manufactured stuff.  The better the cheese the higher you pay. You're looking at around $10.99 for a kilo (2.2 pound) block of middle of the road type/popular brand cheese. A 16 oz block of Kraft Cheese ( Australian Velveeta) is about $6.50.

Fruits and Vegies. Loose apples were $5.99 a kilo. Our prices fluctuate from week to week. 5 kilos (11 pounds ) of spuds cost me $5.99 which is about average.

Sometimes you'll get strawberries for $1.99 for a 250 gram punnet .Other weeks you'll pay $3.99. Mangoes were $2.99 each this day.

My fruit and vegie bill included watermelon at $3.59 , truss tomatoes at 5.99 bananas at 2.89  and peaches at $5.99. All prices per kilo.

 That's an aussie trolley. Nothing exciting there.

That's my shopping bill being rung up. It ended up being $267.00. I'll probably spend another 50 bucks or so until my next big shop. I'm trying fortnightly shops at the moment since it's just the two of us.

See how green and ecologically aware I am? I bring my own reusable bags to the shops because if you don't,  they make you pay for biodegradable bags because regular plastic bags are illegal in this state.  If you don't bring your own bags people look at you like you're an environmental murderer. That's some serious peer pressure.

So here is some of my personal damage. Gyspy ham and silverside for sandwiches $13.99 and $7.99 a kilo respectively.

There is enough meat here for 9-10 meals (27 loin chops, 6  chicken boobies, a kilo of mince and a chicken rolled roast ) and it cost me $55.00. The lamb chops were about 7.99 a kilo and the chicken breasts were 10.99 a kilo. I noticed lamb roasts were on special today for about $9.59 a kilo. You can buy a 2 kilo fresh chicken here for around $11.00-$12.00, or $9.99 on special.

  

Milk - the biggest container you can get here is 3 litres which is 780 mls short of a US gallon. As far as I'm concerned milk is milk. It's not like some farmer is out there milking a snake to sell you the cheap stuff. It's all from cows.  Butter 2.99 for 500 grams, milk 3.74 for three litres, philly cream cheese  3.77 for 250 grams. The yoghurt was $5.02 for a kilo tub.

Eggs vary hugely in price here . Free range. cage eggs, grain fed, different sizes. You can pay anywhere from about $1.99 to almost $5.00 a dozen. These were on special for $1.99. I usually won't pay more than about $3.50 a dozen.

Washing powder- 500grams 1.84 (huge special )

Panadol 24 capsules $3.48

Spray and Wipe- $2.99

The cheapest bread is about $2.29 for 680 grams ( a normal sized loaf ) up to $4.50 for a high end loaf that has actual seeds and taste.  I pretty much go the cheaper version for toast and the good stuff if I'm making sandwiches. Bakery breads are a better option most of the time in my opinion.

I cant believe I didn't take tea and coffee pictures! 100 tea bags will cost around $4.00. 200 grams of decent instant coffee (Moccona or Nescafe Gold ) is around $14.00. I got Nescafe for just under 10.00 on special with this trip.

I have shopping down to a fine art. Shopping with me is a bit like ram raiding without smashed glass and all the illegal behaviour. I know what I want. I know where everything is. I get in, get what I want  and I'm outta there. I can do my fortnightly grocery shop and be home unloading the car in about 45 minutes flat.

However when I take Miss P this little junket extends to a two hour shop-fest.  Because she still has to touch and play with everything....

Don't forget to pay Larri a visit to see what she got up to with her groceries. I bet she didn't have to wrangle an unruly 20 year old.