Sewing up the pirates

One of my little pleasures is sewing. At this point you might have visions of me whizzing up cocktail dresses and creating italian strung curtains.

Think again.

There are chaps who can't change car tyres or mow a lawn, and there are women who can't sew. I'm one of them.

I love to sew, and I love my 1930's Singer sewing machine (treddle). It lives at the shack, a place of calm and quiet. Despite hours of practice, however, I still sew wonky seams and struggle to create a perfect end product.

Last weekend, after purchasing some lovely (read SLIPPERY) red lining fabric and gold cord, I put together the treasure bags for Imogen's pirate party.

That sounds easy, doesn't it?

It took me two hours and I paid some fines to the Rude Words Jar.

Imogen and Hal are happy, however, and have filled them with the treasures for the Treasure Hunt next weekend.

Next task: designing the treasure hunt...

Seashore

We escape from Adelaide as often as possible and come to this place on the Yorke Peninsula, to relish the simplicity. Here, there are only shacks; holiday homes that are a skeleton of their original selves. Mostly higgledy piggledy, they are Frankenstein's cottages, scabbed together from remnants of other lives. Old post-war fibro walls, random doors and mismatching windows, they crouch too close to the sand and sea, punch drunk from the wind, peppered by salt.

The colours are delicious; chartreuse ground cover creeping towards duck egg succulents. Dirty whites scrub up next to faded maritime blues. Invincible but rusty-grey rain water tanks hug every single shack, sometimes bigger than the homes themselves. They are not full these days. Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

There are some new houses now, some of them two storey with roller garage doors to match. They gentrify the Shore Roads, but none of them are as quaint or as full of character as their stooped and aged predecessors.

The sunsets are magnificent. All the houses face west, making the summer evenings a paradoxical mixture of exquisite beauty and relentless fire.

It's this kind of wonder that plucks us from our fears and leaves them, insignificant, like shells on the shore. They are still there, those worries, but they don't seem so great next to the gilded sky or the unceasing undercurrents of the Bay.