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Welshamethyst (very closely followed by texaswren, madame urushiol, and KiwiKimi – easy to spot which of my friends list have an interest in antiques!), who spotted the distinctive swirls of an old Singer sewing machine:

Happy Boxing Day! (And Happy Christmas to those of you in the Western hemisphere still stuck in the past ;-)) We had a very quiet Christmas, as is our wont. After a hectic few weeks of work (a couple of big last minute projects, plus trying to catch up on all the work I hadn’t…

Back again. The quick trip into town to drop off DVDs expanded slightly to include stopping off at The Coffee Club to drop off a few more books, and in Riccarton to go to Nature’s Discoveries to finish off the Christmas shopping (what do you mean you’re supposed to finish your Christmas shopping before Christmas?…

(Note the cat stocking lytteltonwitch sent us from the UK, hanging in pride of place on the fireplace. I keep hinting to MrPloppy that stockings should always contain chocolates by Christmas morning…) New to the tree this year: I bought this one when I was supposed to be buying an ornament for the BC Ornament…

Apparently it’s some sort of obscure American holiday tomorrow 😉 so Jenny’s having a party. I promised to bring a cake, but when I got home I wasn’t feeling in a particularly cake-making mood. I really should have listened to that feeling, but I did promise cake, so I hit the kitchen. I need to…

don’t know when… actually, I do – I’ll be back on Tuesday night. I’m off to Wellington for a few days, ostensibly for work, but as usual instead of flying up on Monday morning for a couple of days of exciting meetings I managed to change my flights so I get the weekend to enjoy…

Sapphy discovered something important tonight: cats and curry shouldn’t mix. Every so often my ESOL student makes a bit extra of whatever they’re having for dinner and gives me some to take home for me and MrPloppy. Tonight’s dish was a rather spicy lamb curry. Really tasty, but with quite a bite. Sapphy could obviously…

Fuzzle solved at least part of the mystery of the спасибо-shouting woman. Apparently this is common in Russia – if a performance is particularly good, someone will start slow-clapping and shout out something about how good it was. Other members of the audience will then take up the clapping and add their own praises. It’s…

As predicted, a busy and social few days. On Thursday after work we had drinks for a union colleague who is getting married, which meant I missed my lace class after all (I could have just turned up late, but I hadn’t had any dinner, and I wasn’t feeling all that creative anyway, having been…