Squeak Like the Wind

Pannier Playfulness

I went in to Sydney yesterday for a pannier workshop with the Green Living Centre (was the Watershed) in Newtown.

Hugely useful and wonderful! I cannot believe they put this on for free.

Now, I just did a great big review of the whole damn thing, and accidentally hit "back" just as I was about to publish it, so if you're after lots more information, feel free to email me.

These are a tiny version of the green bag panniers - cheap and cheerful and very useful! You can also get some really sweet greenbags with cute pictures on them, so this would work out well if you want a splash of colour for very little cost. They're lined with corflute (unsure how to actually spell it) so that they stay nice and stiffened and don't get pulled into spokes or deraillers.

Despite their simplicity, the bucket panniers were my favourites! They used buckets from various places, they got them all for free, and apparently Boost throw away a huge number of square white buckets with lids that are perfect for this (and with the lids become rain proof!

You can see in this picture that the elastic stabiliser is a piece of recycled inner tube. Fantastic idea!

You wouldn't want to use these on a bike with an expensive or fancy rack, as you can see it's already scratched it up a bit. I don't mind - but I'm thinking it might be worth lining them with some rubber stuff to stop them rattling as well as scratching.

Wonderful stuff, and I think they'll work very well for tall awkward things when I have to carry them. Would be rather nice if I was the fresh food market type and had to carry celery and fresh flowers home. As it is, I think it'll suit a baguette or two just fine. :)

Newtown and not so new clothes

I went to Sydney for a pannier making workshop today... Rosie is still attached to the back of my car, so I'll take pics of them tomorrow.

Also while in Sydney I had half an hour to kill before the workshop started so I went into the local Vinnies (just across the road, what a shame haha) and found the key piece for my outfit for this year's Tweed Ride! Woohoo! No photos of the full item until the ride, but this is the label. It fits perfectly, and needless to say it looks pretty damn swish.

Now, I'm off to bed before I pass out. *yawn*

Day 4!

Well, I survived it. It's going to be a long, long month.

Who knew it'd be so hard? I don't consider myself materialistic, and I think of myelf as being "good with money", and proud of my frugal and groovy op shopping habits.  What this is doing is really pointing out to me two things:

(1) that I buy more new stuff than I realised and

(2) I do a LOT more impulse buying than I realised.

I drove out to Spotlight in my lunch break yesterday to suss out polar fleece, thinking it'd be fun to make some of these rug thingies that you can buy from Ikea. How cute would it be with your own sweet designs cut along the edge? Turns out polar fleece costs a bit more than I thought it would, though. These cost about $5 from Ikea, and polar fleece (even the cheap unprinted non-premium stuff) costs about $8 a metre.

I drove back to work, despondent and defeated. I'd hoped it'd be a fun thing for me and my niece to do rather than another night of vegging out in front of dvds. Poor little thing, so much for me being the fun aunty, I've crashed with fatigue most days. I think that having someone at home noticing what I'm doing has made me more aware of what I'm doing - which isn't much these days.

Anyways, in short, the 4th of October brought me:

- a near-miss with Buy Nothing New - I drove out there but I didn't buy anything! Hooray!

- the realisation that I'm doing almost nothing creative these days

- an awareness that my fatigue issues may need addressing on a more formal level. Soon.

Overall, a success, I'd say ;)

More op shop pics

I got D to take my photo this morning, and he surveyed me somewhat doubtfully, saying "I can't help feeling as though you're dressing like a little old lady." Ouch. LOL. I guess that honesty isn't always what we want to hear. I thought I looked vintagey and cute. Maybe there's a fine line between vintage and L.O.L.... perhaps it has to do with the shortness of the skirt and the funkiness of the stockings and other accessories. I have a funny little hipster scarf on with it, which I thought funked it up a bit, but it's hard to tell. In hindsight I wish I'd fished out some cooler stockings but I just felt as though the last thing I needed was another patterned fabric in the mix.

Nevermind, it's what I've got on today! I took a few arm's length pics, which give a different perspective, just for fun. And of course, the lovely Fluevog Tillies just top it right off, so I had to get a shot of those :)

New skirtlet!

The feeling that things are terrible and un-fixable passed, as it always does. I choofed off to the local op shop for a treasure hunt, and came back with a cute little skirtlet which turned out to be (despite its very convincing vintage styling) hand made, and a couple of cute coats, one wool and one tweed, and a little handbag. $25 total. I love op shops! Also, I took the pic from a delightfully flattering angle perched on my chair at work, and people said lots of nice things on my facebook page when I put it up. LOL, thanks for the compliments, I think I needed that today :)

The food/points counting was difficult. I'm trying to acknowledge my near-misses, as these don't get counted, just the "failures". If I list them it looks really weird, but suffice it to say today was like the food equivalent of guiding a ship through a coral reef.

...not that I've ever done that. ;)