7 Random Things about me meme

Kirsty tagged me for this one and after some thought...I'm not sure if my answers will be any better than if they'd been done with no thought... (Apparently I'm mysterious).


1. Apropos of Rupert Brooke: he was the favourite poet of my teenage years. I can still (and have been known to startle children with this remarkable talent) recite The Soldier (If I should die, think only this of me, that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England...). I can also recite Yeats' When You Are Old (both learned electively) and, because of school, I must go down to the sea again.. (Sea Fever by John Masefield). It's an odd, slightly melancholy collection, now I think of it.


2. Apparently I'm mysterious. First time for everything! (But you can tell so much about me from the blog! Colour! Pattern! Obsession with well-lit fruit and veg shops!)

3. I have enough books to startle removalists. Most people apparently have one bookcase, with three 3' long shelves. There are nine 6' tall bookcases in this house. Not much space in any of them. I've been a reader all my life (read to as a baby, learned to read young). Currently in play: March, The Tenderness of Wolves, Marlena di Blasi's latest Italian memoir and the two most recent issue of Romantic Homes.

4. I'm working on some patterns to self-publish: still weighing up the book of patterns vs. individual patterns. Shops apparently like the individual ones because they lend themselves more readily to kitting. I like the idea of a book. I've had a bunch of patterns published in magazines, but I'd like to self-publish too.

5. I still haven't filled my little iPod shuffle, and have had it how long? Maybe because I'm only putting songs I really like on it, not every album I own (it can only hold 120 songs anyway). Recent additions include Vienna/Billy Joel, You know my name/Chris Cornell, There is a redeemer/Keith Green, BSUR/James Taylor, The book of love/Magnetic Fields (I wanted Peter Gabriel, but it's not on iTunes), Close as a whisper/Lee Kernaghan, One of us/Joan Osborne, Affirmation/Savage Garden, Forever young/Youth Group. No idea what sort of sense you can make of that eclectic lot, apart from the fact that I'm a cherrypicker.

6. My mobile phone (cell phone) is more likely to have a flat battery than not. Just don't use it much, or remember to keep it charged...

7. The blog that makes me laugh the most right now is this one. And the discussions in the comments can be fascinating and insightful. True. Doesn't matter whether or not you read that genre. Love the way the internet lets niches like this have a meeting place.

8. At a Thai restaurant, I'm most likely to order Mussaman beef and Sweet and sour pork, Thai style (this isn't a vicious pink dish).

9. I write a column for an Australian monthly craft magazine, transforming op-shop finds...and have enough possible projects for oh, another year or two already...

10. Quilt commissions are something I find very challenging - my design/construction process is not especially amenable to the direction of others. Patterns/pattern commissions are fine, but not so easy is someone saying, these fabrics, this pattern, arranged this way, big enough to be a bedspread...something inside shrivels under such constraints.

11. I don't always keep within the specified parameters (eg. writing only 7 random things).

There you go, Kirsty!