What a week!

It's been a big week - a bit of fun, lots of reading, not much stitching, a whole lot of thinking and a few big sighs of relief.
First up was my new very bad cold on top of my former very bad cold, accompanied by a cough that sounded like a cross between a goose honking and a dog barking. Nearly all gone, thank goodness; didn't fancy sitting on a plane for hours on end making that sort of noise...
The fun part has been mainly conversations - with the kids in the school library last week, and with new and old bloggy friends at the get-together Jodie organised yesterday in a swish new Ballarat cafe. Lots of chat, lots of laughs and some fabric shopping after - just what a recovering wuss needed! And I actually went home and made something - a cute little needlecase that was little freebie pattern from www.erinrussek.typepad.com. No pics of the fabric I bought yesterday, but above (because I couldn't get blogger to put them where I wanted them) are the fabrics I received for my birthday recently, from a fat quarter swap and from my Friends in Stitching group.
The reading - always my favourite thing. I once worked in a bookshop and now work in two libraries (school and public) and if I had a dollar for everyone who has said at some point over the years "It must be lovely being able to read all day" I'd be super-rich. Working in a library just makes your feet hurt (although as I do all the ordering for the school library, it would be irresponsible not to read at least some of the picture books - wouldn't it??) All my general reading (think who-dunnits and biographies, with a bit of chick-lit thrown in) comes from libraries but since I have discovered Book Depository, I have a whole new library of lovely craft books.
The thinking - Peter (my lovely husband) and I are off overseas tomorrow week for 5 weeks (Asia and Europe, including a week in Paris and 5 days in Singapore with our daughter Rosy, who lives in China). I've done most of the arrangements and am just wondering how and when to tell him just how many of the museums in Paris I want to visit. He knows by now that I'll be ducking into any fabric shop that looks even slightly interesting (all in the interests of research, of course!)
The sighs of relief were for the redhead who got the guernsey as our new PM and for the fact that as of 5.30 pm last Friday I am now officially on holiday for six weeks.
Just have to get through the next week, which will be a mix of now-I'm-on-holiday-I've-got-time-to-enjoy-myself stuff (including the Daylesford Craft Experience on Saturday) and packing and repacking and discovering I haven't got enough summer clothes that I actually like and packing and....you get the picture.