a round up of goodness

{one} these gorgeous patterns have landed in my mailbox from the very lovely Katherine over at ZipZapKap vintage pattern etsy store:

These are some of the patterns I won from the Sew Retro contest, so not only did they cost me nada, Katherine threw in free postage and also included a beautiful card and a quirky photo taken in the Bahamas in 1959. Such great customer service!

And this is going to sound bizarre, but these patterns smell so nice! Usually vintage patterns at best have no smell, or at worst have a musty old paper smell, but I can only imagine how lovely Katherine's house/office/storage area must smell. So if you're in need of some vintage patterns, head on over to ZipZapKap and start squealing very loud ooohs and aaaahs. She also has a great blog too.

In fact I've already cut the pink top on the left of this pattern out, and will finish it once my overlocker comes home again:

{two} a recipe for these very cool looking shortbread biscuits over at forty-sixth at grace (via Craftzine):
{three} finding a funny and seemingly knowledgeable person who is going to repair my overlocker in a week and for only $80 plus parts. Kim - I haven't had my sewing machine or overlocker serviced before (in more than 8 years, how shameful!) so I picked randomly from the Yellow Pages. Well, I picked the Dulwich Hill Sewing Centre sort of randomly from the yellow pages, there was an op shop in Dulwich Hill I wanted to visit and there was also a sewing repair shop there so it seemed like a good omen and it is much much closer to my house than the place in Liverpool that Toyota recommended (Sewing Machine Services if you're out that way). The service guy noticed straight away that I had broken some little prong off the presser plate that separates the two needle threads, so I'm pretty confident he'll do a good job but I'll report back in a week.

{four} Reading this gorgeous book received as a christmas present from my husband:

The illustrations are simply beautiful, I only wish there was detailed photography or line drawings so I could make a copy or two!

{five} Anna is sleeping through the night again, and most importantly is going to sleep without any tears or screaming, yipee! And I don't know if this is coincidence or not, but the last few days since she was at childcare she has been much better behaved, eating her dinner properly and not throwing her food around and is much less whingy too. Jean - Anna's childcare centre is quite large because it caters for 0-6 year olds, and in her section there are maybe about 10 or so one year olds. When I picked her up on Wednesday afternoon she was happily sitting on a mat with some other children, although I don't know if I'd call snatching toys off each other and pushing and poking each other playing!

{six} it's almost a long weekend (Tuesday being Australia Day) and my husband has decided not to play golf on Saturday because it's going to be extremely hot. I'll have to find some household chore for him to do LOL