more heat

short sleeve Tyrelle in rayon

3/4 sleeve Tyrelle in stonewash denim

back of 3/4 sleeve Tyrelle

Tyrelle cover page for pattern

The "Tyrelle  Dress" my new PDF pattern has been published and is for sale in my Etsy and Shopify shops.


From my diary today:

4.45am, and I've been up since 2am because the heat is so oppressive I can't sleep. It’s 23 degrees celsius.

The remnants of my dessicated garden are also dry baking in the dark outside the walls of this house. I don't typically suffer from insomnia but disjointed and anxious thoughts keep swirling around my old grey noggin so with the heat adding physical discomfort it hasn't been possible to drift into relaxed sleep. While insomnia is unusual, anxiety is a familiar life long companion. I know theres something I want to say - other than tahdah, heres my latest clothes pattern publication - but the thoughts are roiling around oleaginously and refuse to be captured.

So at 5.30 am I went back to bed and fell into a disturbed slumber. Hubby and I turn the bedside radio on the early morning hours (drowns out the rooster…) and snatches of very scary stuff from news bulletins kept getting blended into my dreams….

At 8am I have to get out of bed…I need to expel pee and imbibe caffeine (god help me the day is coming soon when I’ll get that order mixed up…) It’s 28 degrees Celsius.

Because our town has run out of dam water the water tanker trucks are already lumbering up and down our street. No point in railing about this, Murrurundi is only one of 100s of small rural towns (and some cities) in Australia whose creeks and rivers stopped running a couple of years ago and the free precipitation from the skies has become as rare as an honest politician.

The caffeine (yes, it’s the right colour and smell) is helping collect the discombobulated buzzing in my head. The dread is sinking downwards from the head to settle as a shivery fizzing frothing pain in my belly. Its not a panic attack, but I know I’m afraid.  For half a day I’ve been locked into a deep sense of foreboding, an ululating silent brain scream is resounding around the brainium…there is an environmental collapse happening in my back yard, in my town, in my valley, in this country.  I’m looking into a cataclysm and there’s no way back.

The trigger happened last night as I followed up on a garment that appeared in my Pinterest stream. It took me to a very successful Etsy shop (over 28,000 sales since 2016!) run by some peeps in Byron Bay. I hate BB for its population of would be if they could be hippie/alternative lifestyle pretenders. This shop featured “pixie” style clothing for those young ladies with firm slender bods who want to cultivate their will-o-the wisp boho image. It was a bit depressing realising I’m old enough to have lived through an earlier iteration of this “look” around in the 1980s….the lace up backs and side seams, overlaid layers with shredded edges, etc, etc (the pain is fizzing in my gut, I’m feeling too sick to be bothered hashing up all the particular features of this ”look”)…Read the usual drivel blurb about the business owners living an ethical and environmentally sustainable lifestyle. These ones don’t bother claiming a percentage of their profits goes to supporting the orphans of India/Guatemala/Somalia/insert currently trendy 3^rd world needy nation….Its apparent they cannot be sewing all this poxie pixie garb themselves…oh yeah, there it is….we’re in a caring ”partnership” with a family of “artisan sewers” in India and pay them a real living wage. My gut is churning. In the last 5 years I’ve come across quite a few of these shining examples of hogshit at markets and selling on the internet. Their story is a load of virtue signalling claptrap of course. I hate that it makes me feel bitter and angry. To ground myself and remind me that I’m no glowing (heh, glowering?...yes) saint I have to trot out a list of all my own shortcomings, batshit and pretensions. I have no right to judge and criticise others….but that shriek that has been banging on my skull is trying to escape by levering my jaws open…so, filled with disgust at what I experience as a “poor me” sob story I’m letting that silent scream activate my tongue to say what I think shouldn’t be said aloud.

The poxy, pixie pretenders of Byron Bay and their ilk aren’t any more caring and sustainable with the product they are putting into the world than Kmart. Nor is that lady at the market just down from me who was selling beautiful handwoven rugs from Guatemala and had the same 3^rd world artisan story. A few marquees further away was a bloke with handmade leather shoes from Mexico, same story, next to him a lady with fabulously hand embroidered blouses from the Phillipines was also virtuously propping up the 3^rd world….

Phew…

Nobody wants to be their own sweatshop slave.

Hear THIS….if they’re not making every item themselves with materials sourced locally then their “ethical, sustainable, fair wage, blahhedy blah….” is a fabrication covering a stinking crock of shit.

10am, its 33 degrees Celsius. My computer desk overlooks the yard where an 18 year old Mountain Ash tree about 6 metres away from the back steps is dying from the drought.

This is the second rant I’ve had on my blog in the last couple of months. More and more days I feel like I’m sliding down the edge of a cataclysm. My outrage at the lying pretenders seems to be so diffuse that on the many days when its over 40 degrees I wonder if its my own inchoate rage that is burning up all existence.

This is dedicated to local lady Lucy. Lucy doesn’t have air conditioning in her house so late last year she half filled a childs paddling pool in her back yard with water so her and her little dog could soak themselves from time to time during the day to keep cool. A neighbour observed this and because the town is on severe water restrictions (3 minute showers, 2 loads of washing a week, no car washing, etc) they reported her to the shire council and an inspector duly turned up at her door to reprimand her. Suggested there could be a $$$ fine if there was another infringement (water tanker thundering down the street as I write this) Obviously she needs to be a whole lot more furtive and do this in the bathtub, in the house, like us more cunning ones do.

As our town dries out the crazy is expanding exponentially.

Finish writing this at 10.15am. Its 33 degrees. Shall I turn on the air con (do you get the irony that this will be powered from the electricity produced from the coal burning power stations about 100km away at Muswellbrook) or shall I have a 3 minute cold shower with the plug in the bath so I can return to splash in the water later on when it gets over 40?