An open letter to every charity op shop! Stop wrecking things!!

Dear Salvos, St Vincent De Paul, Samaritans, Red Cross, Life Line and others. 

Stop wrecking stuff!!

Stop putting tags through delicate garments and making holes. 

Stop slapping sticky price stickers onto beautiful pictures: book covers, dress patterns, etc.

Stop writing in texta on beautiful items: as above. 

Stop wrapping velvet and cord fabrics up with masking tape. 

And Stop bundling toys together - kids HATE IT!!! Look after your future customers!!

I'm so sick of beautiful things being ruined and I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

Kids hate op shopping because 'there are no toys' do you think they will have a positive 

view of opshops.

What are you doing???

These goods have been donated in good faith 

that you will take care of them. 

And often you are not! 

Life is one long search!

Today I spent 30 minutes looking for these:

Then I spent 30 minutes looking for this:

It wasn't till I passed a mirror that I found it. 

Yes it's 'one of those weeks'.

Please excuse the grubby mirror, too busy looking for things to get to the house work. 

Hope you are finding what you are looking for.

A big decision.

Today I started to think about making a big decision. 

And that is to stop reading the news headlines that I have come in via my iGoogle page.

I am daily sickened and revolted by things I read.

Especially when it relates to children. 

The world seems to be becoming a very sick place and I'm not sure I want to know.

But what if I don't know what's going on in the world? 

Will it matter? 

I'm torn over making this decision even though it's a simple flick of a button and it's gone. 

What happens to you if you don't read the news?

 

Dear Op Shop Volunteers

Why do you insist on putting price tags on the faces of beautiful woman, covers of vintage/antique books and wrapping masking tape around fabric?

They don't come off without tearing off a layer of paper. Ever.

Why not put them on the back?

What stole my week?

I feel like I've had a week stolen!

Horrid weather with humidity of between 

50 - 70% is not funny.

And when you're not a hot weather person it's unworkable. 

Then at night electrical storms that meant the computer had to go off. Oh no! Talk about being at a loose end.(yes that's tongue in cheek).

Lastly just as I thought it was all over....It strikes!

The head cold,  there is not usually much that can put me in bed for a few days but this cold was probably one of the worst ever! 

 

However, I survived! and today I've made almost a full recovery. I put a few new pieces of fabric on the website with lots more coming.

I hope you like them! x e

I've got one word...

I have one word for tinkerers like me. 

Don't

My tinkering began when I was little, I loved to pull things apart, watches were my specialty. Radios, and good working battery-operated toys, loved them.

Of course I had no idea how they went back together. 

I'm still a tinkerer and last week I gave BossyGirl an old transistor radio to pull open, kept her busy for a full hour.Great stuff!

But websites should not be tinkered with,  

ever.

Wish I'd really understood the gravity of that statement earlier. 

What I've done is lost, thank goodness, not all the writing, but all the sizes in my fabric listings. 

Every single inch has to be re measured, that means pulling literally hundreds of pieces of fabric off the shelves and unfolding, entering the missing info, waiting for pages to load and going on to the next. Re fold and re shelve.

It is an absolute nightmare if you let yourself think about it.

But hey!!

I was wanting to tidy up and so now I can, one piece at a time. 

So if you head over there for a look, please don't mind if it's not quite right. 

When it all returns it will be better than ever!

promise.

I'm sold on microfibres - Almost!

I'm a pretty lazy cleaner, I want the fastest easiest way to stay on top of the daily grime. I've had a cheap microfibre cleaning glove for a while now and thought they were a great idea, elbow grease and nothing else. But it was hard work, all that scrubbing. I thought 'oh well maybe the more expensive ones do a better job', so I headed on over to the Enjo website. There I found not only the products but the instructions on how to use these new products. 

It seems I was doing it all wrong!!  

Elbow grease is NOT required. It said on the site, to use the cloth wet and DO NOT use pressure. So I gave it a go with my cheapie!! WOW is about all I could say, it was totally amazing! the bath and basin glistened! they not only looked clean but they felt clean. I was sold!  thinking I'm chemical free! and saving the planet.

Or am I??? What does it cost the environment to produce these fabrics?? Quite a lot is my guess. A quick search on the internet and you will find out that -  Polyester leaves an environmental footprint with every process it travels through to become the finished article be it cleaning cloths, clothing, carpets, bottles or computers parts.

'The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil and releasing emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory disease. Volatile monomers, solvents, and other by-products of polyester production are emitted in the waste water from polyester manufacturing plants. The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators.' (Read this very interesting article hereWaste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry

)

Which leaves me with the conclusion, that polyester really is only good for one thing. 

Cleaning bathrooms, not wearing!

Goodbye to the trees:

We'll the day has come for the now dead trees to be cut down in our suburb. It's a very sad day and we couldn't even watch, but I can hear the chain saw now, it's been going since 8am this morning. The wood chipper is there turning these beauties into garden mulch and there are a whole bunch of workers, trucks and signs down there. Occasionally I hear them laughing and I'm wondering why. Ok so I now have a view, I could care less. I'd rather be looking at cool green leaves. The place feels hotter already.

 

just look at that shade!

 

That's the house belonging to the guy who initiated the killing of the trees.

 

And here they are a few weeks later.

 

  

  

  

Hard to believe isn't it. Harder to see in real life.

Today

Hello are they there yet?

Well if there end up being photos here you'll know I'm back if not then you'll understand where I've been. Feels like it's been weeks I've been trying to get photos up here. I get all the writing done all the photos collected and 'attached' but will they load, no. The whole blogger network just jams. What's going on! why me? .....who knows and who cares really, it's computers and I'll be damned if I can work them out. It will come back, always does, meanwhile I'm getting on with other things hopefully the sort I can write about later. (so nope no photos!! hopefully I can get this thing sorted and be back with more vintage fabric and some shots of my new studio real soon). Ciao!

AH! THE RAIN.........Studio update

Don't talk to me about the rain!!! It's been raining for what feels like three weeks now on and off and the building is at a standstill. Yesterday there was a blow up between the manager, the carpenter and the lumber yard about why nothing had been started and they all (men) went off in a huff. I was not there so I can't say who was in the right or the wrong, I fought my urge to be the peace maker and sooth everyone's egos, I just couldn't be bothered what I really wanted was to give them all a good slap!. I spent the night worrying. So this morning the carpenter quit, the manager has gone off for a sulk and I have doors ready for delivery and a huge pile of lumber, lumbering about in the timber yard. I'm glad in a way to clear the air and move on with a new carpenter/builder, nothing worse than trying to work with people when they are harboring a grudge or an issue. I have no preference for who does the job I JUST WANT MY BLOODY ROOM!!

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Sink Sculpture

Do you have someone who does this? Does it bother you or do you let it 'wash' over you in a Buddhist sort of way. I feel like I let it go but wonder, how do you know if you've 'let it go'. How do you know if you are not just bottling it up?? Yes it does bug me....please also note the distance from the sink to the diswasher. Luckily this person is not here all the time or I might implode!