Serging ahead

Sew Mama Sew has a timely and informative blog post about sergers (also known as overlockers). I have quite a bit of experience with my mom's overlocker (which arrived the other day) but I must admit to using it vanilla - always scared of messing with any settings. Hopefully I am more adventurous now, and this article gave me a taste of what is possible.

Commemorative Cloths

I first saw this fabric in a shop off Green market square (Cape Town) even before Obama was elected President of the USA (that's how excited us Africans were). This piece from Shine Shine, mixes African tradition (cloth featuring political and religious figures) and high fashion and I love the bright colours.

Source: Elle Decoration SA

Where are the quality 2nd hand stores in cape town?

The crafting a green world blog had a blog today chocked full with ideas on what to do with second hand goodies. Get it here - thrift store crafting: what to buy, what to make.
On that note - where are the 2nd hand clothing stores in cape town (not vintage or carefully selected)?

Kiradesignn

My friend Kiradesignn has started her etsy shop selling bags. She makes cute handbags from interesting fabrics, fabric combinations, and cute applications. This bag is made from some awesome south african fabric which has a ginko flower print.

T-shirt wedding

Sounds crazy, a wedding dress made out of a tshirt, but it looks pretty amazing. Old t-shirts are cool! Get the tutorial by Donna and Lauren Kroiz on Craftzine - as always, inspiring.

African fashion

I’ve been living in a box and missed the African fashion week until now. Take a look at these pictures on the BBC site - Aren’t the prints fantastic? I really think the designers have made some incredible creations - let's get exporting...

Interview

It's all coming together for me - a new couch, and now an interview with an NGO (on thursday). Imagine, making a difference. The company use cellphones (mobiles) to strengthen the HIV sector - from sending out educational messages to helping monitoring patients on ARV. I see a great need and use in the community. Yay. wish me luck. It's a part time position.

Your name here (a tech post)

,I don't have my own vanity URL, but my husband (and his siblings do). After the missions of getting his set up, I thought I would post about it to hopefully save someone else the hassles of endless support emails (which is a pity - had they read my question they could have helped me quite easily).

The domain in question was first registered at verio. Great service (with free hosting and free email forwarding) but I wouldn't recommend it for the only reason they don't connect well with blogger (you have to hard-code IP addresses for the CNames instead of ghs.google.com - which meant that his site often took long to load especially in South Africa)

So, I had the domain transferred to godaddy. Once it was transferred, I tried to follow the blogger instructions and that is where it all fell apart. In the domain manager
I expected to find a link for "Total DNS control" under "Total DNS". Instead I got a message "(Not hosted here)". Confusing because the site is hosted at blogger. The solution I found was to

• Click on "Change" under "Nameservers".
• Then select "I want to park or forward my domains" and click "Ok".

Once you have done that, wait for an hour (or more) and then log into your blogger account.

• Click on "Settings" for the blog in question.
• Click on "Publish" and "Custom domain".
• If you haven't already bought your domain, enter the domain you want in the box and click "Check availability".
• If you have, click on "Advanced settings" and enter your domain. Enter the stupid capitca and click "Save settings".

Good luck.

New couch

So finally, the new couch. It's big and super comfy and requires some pillows (yay, a great craft project!!). I'm sitting on it right now.

Best news of all, I found new fabric shops, in the store underneath the place I got the couch. The couch, I found on gumtree. Score.
I really wanted this art deco leather couch, but it was a lot more money but most of all I didn't know how Mittens (the cat) would treat it. She is having a huge transition in her life - like other cats that try come into the house - eek (I first for her poor thing). The garden is fabulous though (thanks Bridget for finding it xxx).

To advertise, blog frequently (every day)

My personal online marketing guru has been proved right once again. Since I haven't been posting frequently, google robots do not search and rank my blog as often as before. So, previously I would make a post and it would almost instantly be searchable, my last blog post took 8 days to index.

I know the #1 blogging rule is never to make excuses about not posting, but perhaps my friends would be interested to know. I am desperately seeking a couch (on gumtree), looking for a job (3 days a week in the city bowl), looking after a sick baby (B has gone back to work).

My experiences on gumtree have made me chuckle a few times. South Africans, in general, are not very internet savy - some of the adverts are real gems. A good few people put their own name where you should put the product description (does no one preview their work?) - Mrs Wendy Smith is on offer for a mere R450. Then you have the classic all capital letters, no photos (with a request to send via mms) or photos taken on a mobile phone so very blurry up close.

old biscuits in cape town

Whoohoo. I'm back online in Cape Town, South Africa - the internet cafe was really a drag. Last Saturday we were at the Old Biscuit Mill, in Woodstock, stuffing ourselves with foodie goodies (unfortunately no oysters this time around, but I had some delicious macadamia nut and chocolate biscuits). I love this market because of the unique stuff for sale - no cheap plastic stuff here. My friend Silvia has a fun range of babies clothes called Petite pois and next to her in the kids section, was ScrapsKissKiss (I blogged about before).