I have been dashing around since I finished work today trying to do some tidying up in the house. Partly because I am at the end of my tether with junk piled up everywhere and partly because I’m trying to find an envelope with a copy of Windows XP, bought from Ebay a couple of weeks ago for Jo’s PC. David and Jo both think I’ve put it in the bin accidentally when having a paddy about junk mail piled up in the hall. I really hope I’ve not done it or I’ll have to stump up the cash for another copy and I REALLY don’t want to do that. They think I swept all the junk mail into a pile with the disk in the middle and have put it all out for recycling. It’s sods law that the recycling men came the day after I did this and took it all away.

Since David’s house was emptied last October we have never been ‘straight’ and I’m beginning to lose patience. So I’ve been stropping! I’m determined that by the time we go off on our holiday we will have a pristine house here. Hmm, fat chance I suspect.

For some reason my dressmaking tape measure had found its way downstairs and when I returned it to my sewing box I spotted my little pin-cushion peeping out at me. I’ve always loved this little thing. It’s so useful but better than that, it’s colourful too and I really love bright colour all around me.

Getting it out to photograph has made me sad though. I used to make all my own clothes years ago and loved to be seen out in stuff a bit different from the things for sale in the shops. My ideas about fashion are already reasonably well-documented in these pages so I won’t go down that route again save to say I still hate 99% of the clothes for sale in the shops but these days I’m so time-poor that I barely have enough time to make a meal and do my PBASE posting each day. I certainly don’t have any time to make clothes.

I used to amuse my Mum by laying a bit of fabric on the floor and asking her to stick pins in it by my neck, ankle, wrist, elbow, whatever and then just cut my pieces of fabric by eye in whatever shape I wanted my outfit to be. It never really mattered if I went wrong because my fabrics were all bought on market stalls and at rock bottom prices. Not that it ever did go wrong to the best of my recollection. Mostly the only reason to stop wearing something I’d made was if I decided I didn’t like it any more.

Oh how I wish I could find the time to re-start my clothes making. Perhaps then I’d be able to wear things I like and fit me properly.

Alas it is unlikely that I will be able to do this in the foreseeable future and so my sewing machine will only come out, get dusted down and used for making curtains or cushion covers – shame!

Now, back to looking for that damned CD!!