And Then I Read: THE BLUE SWORD by Robin McKinley – A review by Todd Klein of one of my favourite books from middle school. I actually prefer the book’s “prequel” though – The Hero and the Crown. I remember getting inspired to write my own fantasy novel in high school and spending hours coming up with the characters, only to later realise they were all just copies of Aerin, Tor, Galanna, and the others from Damar.

Here we go again on another renovation adventure! It’s time to turn our old and busted ensuite bathroom into something more modern and less gross. As with the kitchen, we’re going with Harvey Norman Renovations to manage the whole project. We spent last night clearing out the bathroom and moving our bed into the guest room. Here are the before photos:

The big change is that we’re swapping the toilet and the shower. That way the shower can run parallel to the window and can be a little bigger. Then we’ll have a smaller vanity beside it (where the towel rack used to be). The walls will be tiled up to the ceiling with white rectangles, and the floor will be white hexagons with black grout.

The first task, of course, was to demolish the old bathroom. In three hours, five guys and a jackhammer took it down to the bare bricks. Now it looks like a prison cell! Here’s hoping the rest of the build goes smoothly…

(Yeah, they chipped the damn window. They’re already arranging to get it fixed…)

FROCKTOBER IS OVAH! (Well, not quite.) 31 days, 31 different dresses. Here’s the breakdown:

12 self-made
4 Heart of Haute
4 Sportscraft
4 Op Shop
2 Target
1 Gap
1 Old Navy
1 Myer
1 Wild Seed
1 Hawaii

I just hit my Frocktober fundraising goal! My total is currently sitting at $1055.60. So far 20 people have donated towards ovarian cancer research: Zena, Svet, Kara, Bernie, Dave, Nigel, Sam, Varun, M-H & Sandra, Donna & David, Sue, Fiona, Eileen, Damana, Jess, Gem, Sera, and Tiny. Thank you all so much! Ten more days to go…

For the curious, I’ve just counted and so far 11 of my 21 #frocktober dresses this month have been sewn by me! So my wardrobe isn’t quite as insane as you might think. I mean, it is, but I can excuse some of it on the grounds that I MADE IT MAHSELF.

Tonight I went along with a dozen of my co-workers to PaniqRoom, an escape room here in Sydney. I’d heard of them before but never done one. The idea is that you’re locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to escape before a clock runs down (sort of like a real life video game). My team tackled the “Abandoned Military Bunker” challenge. We had to find a secret file, disable a bomb, and unlock the door in under 60 minutes. Apparently it only has a 40% success rate, and the record is held by a couple who finished it with only two hints. (There’s a phone you can use if you get stuck and need some help.) Obviously we were all gung-ho and quite sure we’d solve it easily. After some instructions from our host (basically telling us what not to touch and that we didn’t need to smash anything), we entered and the game began!

I didn’t know what to expect at first, but I ended up loving it. The first 5 minutes reminded me of Finders Keepers. We all ran around like crazy investigating the room and digging into things. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but there were lots of puzzles, codes, and keys. At one point, we opened a box and were confronted by a game that I’ve played thousands of times, and THIS WAS ME. We made fantastic progress for about 40 minutes before getting stumped and having to resort to a hint. Then we got one more hint 10 minutes later that pointed us towards the final stage. We ended up escaping with about six minutes to spare.

I highly recommend PaniqRoom. The staff were great, and the puzzles were interesting without being too hard or random. Well worth a visit!

The answer, of course, is always YES!

Sew Tessuti Blog – Sewing Tips & Tutorials – New Fabrics, Pattern Reviews: Our NEW pattern – The Colette Tunic Top – Ooh, a new pattern from Tessuti! I really like this. It’s reminiscent of the Tova Top, but I suspect this one might fit me better than Tova did. I might have to get it…

AWS in Plain English – This is pretty genius.

Moomin Winter Mug 2015 – Hibernation – The Official Moomin Shop – It’s lovely ceramics, but frankly I don’t want to be reminded of that story. It was too melancholy and sad and weird for me.