Best wishes to my Canadian family and friends for Thanksgiving!

I hope you all have a great day, and enjoy the time you spend with your loved ones.

Just looking at the photos taken nearly a year ago in Canada is making me feel cooler......our summer is early this year.  Bayfield is a lovely little town and the fall colours were beautiful.

 Our visit to Inglis Falls was on a showery grey day, much nicer than the heat and wind we have been getting lately.

It's been a quiet week at La Chateau des Wombats.  The skirt is cut out and I am plucking up courage to insert an invisible zip into the lining; the skirt fabric is too fine for the weight so I will just leave an opening to reach the zip.  I started making my own clothes at the age of 18 umpty-um years ago, but would you believe have never put in an invisible zip?  It is said, though, that we are never too old to learn something......let's hope we can do it properly.  In all those years I haven't sewn many fabrics as sheer as this either, so fingers crossed I don't make a mess of it.

It's pathetic, I know, but as we get older we seem to lose a certain amount of confidence.  When I was young and silly I would have just charged ahead, inserted that zip and blundered along with delicate fabric, and not worried if it was a mess.  Now I know I have the skills and experience to do it well, but self-doubt is setting in and it's not good......and this from a woman who was game enough to sing a slightly bawdy song in a crowded pub at a folk festival not so many years ago.

On Friday night the Thursday night choir put on a concert for a local charity and to our surprise and delight we had a packed house - we were sending out for more chairs!  Some members of the uke group played too; four of us belong to both that choir and the ukes, one was away but the other three of us had quite a busy evening.  Nice things were said to and about us by audience members, and we think we raised quite a lot of money.  And no, I didn't sing a solo - but I copped the job of introducing the uke group and of counting them in for each song, 1-2-3-4, because neither of our tutors were there and no one else would do it.

So why am I bothered about that zip?

The date for the operation is looming, but first we are going to a folk festival and having a holiday at the coast.  I am checking out op shops to find tops and shirts which button down the front; my wardrobe has a few but they will be useful after the operation when I can't raise my left arm for a while.  It's not a style I wear often so I am not going to pay huge prices for new clothes, and I don't have the time to make several tops.  So far a few new shirts have entered my wardrobe including a green linen sleeveless top with buttons down the front, which should be cool for the coming summer.  If I don't love the tops enough to keep them after the need is passed, they will be donated back to the worthy cause from which they came but will serve the purpose in the meantime.  My summer wardrobe is mostly tee shirts, casual and dressy, but they may be a little difficult to wear for a while.

"But a love of dress has its peril for weak minds.  Uncontrolled by good sense and stimulated by personal vanity, it becomes a temptation at first, and then a curse.  When it is indulged in to the detriment of better employments, and beyond the compass of means, it cannot be too severely condemned.  It then becomes criminal."

To commit a crime because of one's love of dress would not be good.  However, you and I have seen people who commit crimes by their choice of clothing, haven't we?

Enjoy your days!