from Lothlorien to the 21st century in a day.....

I do realise it has been an unforgivably long time since I have blogged. My excuses abound. And I'm not quite sure where to start. Maybe I'll just start with today. Today I had a day at home with Arlo, where I finished off two projects. It strikes me as very funny that one of these projects was to recreate something from Middle Earth (whenever that was) and the other was for an object that is the height of modernity. From quivers to kindles. Voila.

A quiver (you know, slung over the back to carry arrows right? When fighting orcs and such) for my nephew's birthday. It is a Lord of the Rings party and he is, most appropriately, dressing as Legolas.

The quiver is made of leather-look vinyl and leather thong criss crossing up the seam. It is a rough job, but I think it'll do. This photo makes it look like the detail on an s&m costume. It really doesn't in real life (I hope).

I found this glass pendant in Spotlight and it looked appropriately Elvish to me. The sortof thing that Legolas would have had tucked away in case of Evil or to conjure up some of lembas. It is tied into the s&m-ish leather string.

And then I finished off two kindle covers for my twin niece's birthdays a few weeks ago.

They individually chose their favourite fabrics from my stash, and both ended up with orange birds. So twins.

I do love the inners they chose:

And now I feel able to move backwards from today, and try and cover the last 4 weeks. So many things have happened. All absolutely lovely things really. I went to Bali for a week, with my brother, sister, and bestie. Those of you who have been to Bali know what bliss it is. Here is  bit of  taste. (And I do literally mean taste. I Could Not Stop Eating the entire time I was there. This seems to be a bit of  theme for me on holidays. It confirms my suspicion that I do not actually have a small appetite, I am just lazy and will gladly pig out if someone else is doing the cooking....)

Oh masakan padang, how I miss thee.

Then straight after Bali I went to Timor Leste with my little family. The first few days were for a conference and the launch of the new Working Women's Centre Timor Leste. Extremely inspiring. The next few days were just pure family holiday on Atauro Island. Bliss.

We visited a doll factory,  a women worker's sewing co-op where the women work on pedal-powered vintage Singers, as electricity is so unreliable there. I met a woman who raises money to buy these machines and start off women's sewing co-ops with them - more on that in  later post.

Then we returned and it was back to normal life, which included unpacking, washing, new work days for me, new childcare for Arlo, visitors, a goofy wobbly tooth for Jarrah, losing the 'a' on our laptop keyboard (trgedy), and somewhere in there trying my hardest to find my sewing mojo.

And in the midst of all that I turned (ahem) 40 (I know. 40! Weird. I keep forgetting it is true. Even though every day Arlo wears the "I am 40!" badge my mother-in-law kindly sent me....). But I was quite overwhelmed with the love and presents I received from so many incredible people I am lucky to have in my life.