I love op shops

Op Shops are the most amazing treasure troves. I have just had a lovely, full of laughs girl’s tennis weekend in Apollo Bay and visited the lovely op shop there. Very well organised and many sewing treasures. I bought a medicine jar of interesting sequins, a large button for covering and the following books. The sewing book has wonderfully clear diagrams for all types of embroidery stitches and I bought the Inspirations for the stumpwork.

I showed a friend and she went over and bought the other Inspirations!

The large King size actil sheet was a great find for $2 in the Geelong West Op Shop in Pakington St. I will use this as a base for machine embroidery. This is the cleanest op shop I have ever been into (a lady washes everything before it goes out for sale) and raises money for McKillop Family Services. Unfortunately the friendly lady behind the counter told me it is closing as they will get more income from selling the property and investing the money. It is a shame as it is my favourite in Geelong. I also bought this cute woollen hand crocheted scarf, looks like it is brand new, somebody didn’t like it once it was made!!

Cheers

Jo

 

I’m Back and the Mighty Geelong Cats march on

The Australian Rules footy finals have begun this weekend, and this year we naturally expect the Cats to go all the way again, so much so that my husband’s road trip with the boys has been planned so he returns in time for the Grand Final. There is a ballot for Grand Final tickets, which annoys many Geelong Footy club members who feel they should be guaranteed a ticket. We will put our two memberships in the draw and see how we go. Out of 30,000 members, the club is allocated about 12-13,000 tickets so there will be quite a few disappointed people around.

It is such a pleasure to type on the new imac, I’m loving it. I have set up the automatic backup, and it has heaps more oomph and memory than the laptop.

I will use this post to catch up on all the posts I’ve missed while having severe computer problems.

I’ve started knitting two scarves, one just an ordinary straight one, the other a cool pattern I found on Kitty, which has some fantastic free patterns. Although spring is sprung and today was a beautiful day, I am not fooled, we will still have some chilly weather ahead.

 

This post is going to take the format of Jackie French’s wonderful shortlisted Children’s Book Council Award book, The Shaggy Gully Times. Her book is based on a weekly country newspaper where the stories are written throughout the week until the published date. it contains some very funny word puns which the children I’m teaching find extremely amusing.

One week later and, the Cats have won their first final convincingly, they have a weekend off followed by the prelim next weekend. We have put our tickets in the ballot, so hopefully the cats will win and be into the Grand Final on ‘the last Saturday in September’.

A little bit later: have just been to the airport and waved daughter no. 1 off to Malaysia for her school trip (Year 12 Indonesian), her first trip overseas. I don’t know who was more excited, her or me, but I did put an order in for some batik fabric and perfume.

A final picture from the FME workshop with Mandy Ginsberg of the Victorian Embroiderer’s Guild. After some exercises and experimenting, we made little felt badges. This one is for Claudia to wear to Junior Embroidery Group.

Cheerio