May days

Gotta try to make sure I do at least one blog a month! So here it is...

Birthday golf

It was my birthday in April, so we decided to try out the local mini golf course to celebrate the occasion. The theme was gold mining on the outside course, and then... dinosaurs, neon, pirates and medieval themed on the inside?! Honestly the dinosaur animatronics were pretty impressive for a kinda crappy roadside attraction.

What I've been making

I finally finished a present I promised Henry for his birthday last year (whoops). I made him a shirt/jacket (shacket!), out of a lovely soft flannelette from Japan. Check out that pattern matching!!

I have also started an online course to try to make my own sloper. A sloper is a very close fitting sewing pattern, kind of like a second skin. You make it fit you as well as possible, and then all other patterns can be created from this basic pattern, and are (most likely) going to fit you right away rather than having to fit each pattern individually.

I have done a sloper/basic block course before run through TAFE in the city, but it was a very short course that sped through the basics of making a block using your own measurements, but that's only the beginning of the journey to having a pattern that fits you well.

Most of the instructions for drafting are based on standardised body sizes and proportions (in some cases from surveys that were conducted in the 40s with very limited body types).

It's the same for mass-produced clothes you buy, they are usually made from those same standardised proportions (and that is what is used in fashion school), though some clothing lines would use their own fit models and proportions that they prefer (either for the look or style they want to achieve, or for the demographics they cater to).

The course I'm doing is supposed to offer extra help with fitting advice, which I think will help me a lot. However I'm currently at the stage of testing my second iteration of my sloper and the whole process feels very demoralising, as the sloper you make is the most unflattering shape and in the most unflattering fabric, and I'm having to take 360 degree photos of myself in it at all angles, so I notice EVERYTHING wrong haha. But the course acknowledges that everyone feels this way, and that once you get the fit right and make it out of fashion fabric it'll all be okay. (I shan't be sharing a full photo of it because it's so bad!)

Because it was Easter I dyed some hard boiled eggs. Apparently this isn't a thing everyone does at Easter, I found out 😂. I got to teach Henry how to do it, with the dregs of our food dye in the pantry, which was fun.

Potato festival

The Trentham Annual Potato Festival rolled around again so we headed off there for a day of too many carbs and hanging out with friends. It's a cute little local festival, with mostly potato-themed food, drinks and activities. The food highlight was the potato-dough jam doughnuts. There's also stalls selling uncooked potatoes of lots of fancy varieties, so we came away with several types of unique potatoes and ate potato-based meals for the rest of the week.

They also have the most horrifying potato mascot wandering around.

The act of attending the potato festival that day seemed to stop another potato from gaining power...

Garden news

We kindly received some goldfish from a friend, so now have some fish to keep the local mosquito population in our pond in check.

I've dug out all the summer crops from the 2 raised garden beds and refreshed the soil by digging in some more compost and autumn leaves for mulch. There were so many worms in one bed and none in the other, so I did a little bit of relocation (picture me flinging worms from one bed to the other "Have fun in your new home!!"). I've planted out my lettuce and some choy sum, bok choy, mustard greens - all of which got munched on by cabbage moths. I've sprayed them with Dipel but need to redo it every time it rains to try to give them a fighting chance at getting bigger!

Arts and Cultcha

There was a one-night-only arty walking tour in town (Hidden) the other weekend, with artworks being projected onto buildings throughout the town. It was really interesting, both the art and getting taken down little alleyways by the tour guides in the dark!

Eurovision 2025

I held another Eurovision party this year! Thank you to all my friends who joined me in person to celebrate the most holiest of nights.

We had a feast of European treats, except Henry forgot to subject everyone to Toast Hawaii, a German delicacy. Maybe next year!

I also prepared a number of Eurovision activities, such as Bingo, Emoji Guessing Games, and our own in-house voting. The crowd in the room did NOT align with the real results. RIP Malta.

The highlight of the show was my dreams coming true with a Kaarija and Baby Lasagna mashup.

Hey, I'm a big girl now

I am finally on my open license, no more P plates for me!

📺 What I've been watching

We went to see Nic Cage's new movie set in Australia, The Surfer. Had one good Cagey moment, but overall felt pretty long and repetitive. A great anti-Australian tourism movie.

We also went to see the original 28 Days Later in the cinema. It feels really interesting to see older movies in the theatre - it felt so very of it's time with the 90s yellow tone and the dutch angles. Also it's crazy how bad digital film looks blown up that big! Still, it's a pretty good movie, interested to see what the new one is like later this year.

I am a certified Star Wars hater (don't at me), but Henry wore me down and got me to watch Andor and I actually quite liked it. Maybe because it felt a lot more character driven and less tropey than the movies, and I really enjoyed the villain characters a lot.

Also the COSTUMES in that show. So good!!! I think I paid more attention to Mon Mothma's outfits than most of the plot tbh. All the costumes worked so well as part of each storyline (e.g. the prison garb looking like it was made out of disposable paper), and they were all so rich texturally. Each costume, even for minor characters, had a lot of great tiny details. There's some great detail shots of the costumes here.

I had the complete opposite reaction to the costumes in Rings of Power (So bad! So cheap! So ugly! So SHIEN!). The costumes in that show (and the writing to a lesser extent) made me not watch it beyond episode 2, because they put so little care into it.

🎮 What I've been playing

Nothin' much, I've been too busy doing other things and nothing has caught my eye lately.

🎵 What I've been listening to

• Kaarija - Kovis, Eurovision made me dive back into Kaarija's catalogue. Not too many of the songs this year have made it into my playlist unfortunately.
• I do have Espresso Macchiato and Tutta L'Italia stuck in my head though, despite not really liking the latter, it's still an earworm.