Random Thoughts from the Glog Barrel and Draw Something Sweet Challenge

Today my sewing machine worked. And there was much rejoicing.

To know why something as simple as this causes leaping and dancing upon the high hills, you have to understand that nothing about sewing machines comes easily to me. Nothing. I'm a self-taught seamstress, and everything I know about a sewing machine and its innards come from two days of lessons from a dear, dear friend in Florida whom I've lost touch with (drat it, Joy, I miss you, wherever you are). That, and an entire week better left nameless during Easter this year, when I was holed up with the machine infernal (where it jammed, stuck, tangled, broke needles, and otherwise turned my week of costume-sewing into a nightmare which rivals Fuseli in creepy eldritch horror. Or is that Cthulhu?)

So to have it work without a hitch, even sewing a straight seam, gladdens my heart and makes me smile. Especially when I used it to hem my first ever satin fabric. Satin fabric! That slippery evil I've dreaded working with for years! And it's tamed!

Yes, happy-making here, folks.

***

Saturday 9th December was International Sketch Crawl day. In a fit of rash foolhardiness, yours truly took the plunge and went barrelling off into the wilds of Kuala Lumpur city to shoot a drawing. I mean, SKETCH. These sketches, properly harnessed and muzzled, will be put up sometime soon after my scanner comes back, because my digital camera ain't going to take a nice enough picture of them, that's for sure. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful artist's posts and photos of said event, because man, she ROCKED (and sketches both fast and well, believe me. I was there...uh, if there's photographic evidence ignore! ignore!):

http://sandorasan.blogspot.com/2006/12/sketchcrawl-12.html

***

Some days, being professional, calm, collected and quietly cheerful at work is exhausting, and leads to an abstracted fit of the blues and almost-crying-but-not-quite. I have a legendary bad temper; the effort of smiling politely when I want to brain a nincompoop who's yelling at me over the phone takes a lot out of me and usually leaves me brain-dead.

This would be today in a nutshell.

So, a 45 minute walk home, a looooong phonecall to my mother and an equally long venting rant later, I go for dinner at the mall to try and cheer myself up. Which suffered a rather small setback when I ordered iced tea and got Pepsi instead. I did ask for a change of drink since I can't stand the latter, but I did remember to ask nicely instead of taking someone's head off (it was a temptation but I was just too tired, and I'm sure those poor waitresses were overworked anyways because it was late.)

Some people are of the opinion that iced lemon tea is for drinking. I'm sure somewhere along the line I agreed with that in a nebulous fashion once. This time, I not only didn't drink more than a quarter of it, I left the rest in the glass so I could draw the pretty, pretty light-and-dark contrasts between the ice and the tea. And since it was sweet iced tea, I figured it qualified for the EDM group's 'Draw Something Sweet' challenge, since I...haven't really done any of those in donkey's YEARS. Centuries. Yeah, it's been a while.

Hot fudge brownies are meant for eating too, but I totally ignored it in favour of getting this down. Apologies for the lousy picture, digital cameras at night don't make for the best shots:



Vaguely out of the corner of my eye I noticed one of the waiter/waitresses standing there watching me while I was sketching, but I didn't pay attention, not until I went to pay for my food and my waitress said brightly, "You're an artist? I like watching you sketch!" Turns out she was a graphic artist in college and she loves seeing people draw; when I left she and the girl who got my order wrong waved happily and called, "So nice to meet you!"

It was a sheer waste of a hot fudge brownie, which had turned to lukewarm and amazingly jaw-sticking by the time I got around to it.

But it was worth it all, just to see those two girls smile.