Our girls

This is Bianca The Beautiful helping to sort out the contents of a chest of drawers. You can see her blue eye, the other one is green - but unlike many odd-eyed cats she is not deaf, in fact she has very acute hearing. She can hear a can of cat food being opened from three blocks away. She's now seven years old. She and her two white brothers were dumped as tiny kitties but fortunately they were rescued, and Bianca came to live with us.
And this is Binky The World's Friendliest Cat, doing what she does very well - resting. She is nigh on 13 years old now, but does very well for a Senior Cat. She has really taken our old computer chair as her own, we're on the point of throwing it out....but how can we do that to Binky? So we have let it stay in the corner, just for her. Binky is also a rescue cat, she came from the RSPCA.

The other day I won a giveaway, aren't I lucky? Tammy had a giveaway to celebrate her 100th post and I was fortunate enough to win. Poor Tammy has been having a rough time lately, an operation on her hand didn't go according to plan, but all seems to be well now which is good, I hope you continue to improve, Tammy!

Last weekend I cut out fabric to make a late Christmas gift, a set of placemats. My goodness.....cutting six layers at a time was a bit of strain on the hand, but we managed all right in the end. You can see what I am making here. The backs are made of two fabrics and I have sewn one upside down....does it matter? Probably. If I don't fix it now while it's easy to do so, it will bug me forever. Can't have nikau palms growing upside down. I decided against the applique although I like it, because I think the recipient will prefer them a little plainer.

The weather has been conspiring against me lately in my quest to be a little healthier and fitter. It's either been too hot to walk - when the humidity is so high that it feels like pushing through a swimming pool, then it's too unpleasant to be out in it - or else we have been having afternoon and evening storms. I may be silly sometimes, but I'm not silly enough to be out in an electrical storm. I don't sew during electrical storms as My Lovely New Bernina is a computer machine, so I turn it off and pull out the plug........don't want my machine to get fried. Or me either.

The other night we went with friends to see Sharon Shannon in concert, Sharon is an Irish musician and is an absolute whizz on the accordian. She had very good musicians with her - a guitarist (I'd give my right arm to be able to play that well but then I wouldn't be able to play at all with only one arm would I), a banjo player and a fiddle player. The sound man joined them on stage at the end, he played mandolin very well and sang well too. I only wish the sound man we had for our gig on Australia Day had been that good..........we were there 45 minutes before we were due to perform, all on stage waiting for our sound check......he still hadn't got it right by the time we finished performing. Perhaps by the end of the day he might have picked up a clue as to what he should have been doing. We don't know how much he was paid but he didn't give us the impression that he had earned his wage that day.

"A Good Listener.
To be a good listener is almost as great an art as to be a good talker; but it is not enough only to listen, you must endeavor to seem interested in the conversation of those who are talking. Only the low-bred allow their impatience to be manifest."

Now I am off to the sewing room to unpick that seam so I can turn the fabric round and sew it the right way. Don't want to be bugged forever.

Jennifer