The scissor fob is on the same mystery linen as the coverlet, rather than 1 over 1 on 18 count as called for in the pattern, but I think it works out more or less the same size. I was not going out to try and match an 18 count to what I already had, especially for such a small piece.

The trip itself was quite rewarding, as I have not seen my brother and his family for a long time, and did not know the two youngest children at all. My mother and my sister have both visited more recently and come back shaking their heads with disapproval of practically everything in the household, but I didn't find it as bad as they said. Besides, I tend to work on the principle that it's their house and if they have weird ideas about interior decorating, so be it. Everyone was fairly well-behaved, with the possible exception of my brother, who practically inhaled vodka all weekend, and my mother - who was not there, but we called her and she asked me, knowing full well that she was on speaker phone, what I thought of the mess!!!

The children are sweet, and the three year old and the five year old have terrific vocab for their ages. My five year old niece wants to be an astronaut, and my three year old nephew was entranced by the Qantas Socceroos blow-up plane I brought. "Aeroplane balloon", he said, gazing at it.

It was exhausting, though, about two hours from Hobart to Sydney, and then more than five hours from Sydney to Perth. Fortunately the trip back was quicker, only about four hours from Perth to Sydney, it's the winds apparently that account for this quite large difference between the two directions. I went on Virgin airline, as their timetable got me into Perth a lot earlier on Friday than the alternatives, and I took a premium ticket, given that it was a whole day each way, so it was not too bad.

It was strange on the flight from Sydney to Hobart, though, where I was the only premium passenger, although I did not know this until we took off, because there were people in rows 2 and 3, which are also normally premium seats. It was very funny, the man in the row behind and across the aisle was very large - just how large I did not notice until he stood up as soon as the seatbelt sign went off, in order to take a large bag down from the locker. It proved to have an enormous quantity of food in it, including chinese takeaway, still hot, that he gulped down at great speed. The flight attendant came to offer me free food from the menu, but didn't offer to anyone else, which is how I knew I was the only premium passenger - and this man looked absolutely furious when she asked him if he would like to buy anything from the menu, and glared at me for the rest of the flight. I'm pretty sure he was in the seat he was because it was a fairly full plane, and he couldn't have sat beside anyone else, he nearly took up two seats as it was. Normally I am not sizeist (apart from intermittently hating people with slim thighs), but it the glaring was a bit much!

So I was fairly tired this week and glad that it was a four day week. I seem to have worked on problems continuously all week, and lots of them have turned out not to be problems at all, just rather tedious explanations of why things happen like that. Next week will be much of the same, in fact the next five weeks will be............. then I can escape from Hobart. I'm really finding it very hard to be away from home at present, quite depressing, especially given the winter conditions here.

Yesterday I went shopping, to the Needlewoman and Dymock's (bookshop), then came home and went to bed again, only getting up to watch the Swedish Royal Wedding on my laptop. Thank goodness for SVT making it available world-wide, because it wasn't even on SBS here, which is constant football at present. It was a wonderful wedding, very simple and not at all ostentatious, despite the people involved. Victoria's dress was superbly elegant, just simple lines, and the children who attended her were in plain white dresses and sailor suits. I'm quite impressed by both the bride and the groom as people, too. Victoria has overcome anorexia, while Daniel recently had a kidney transplant.

Now I'm preparing for another week of fun, I'm going to spend the evening on another LHN piece, "Travelling Stitcher", which I have had for over a year and hardly started.