In which our heroine has worked herself to the bone and is in danger of expiring, until a mysterious package arrives and lifts her spirits greatly

By 11pm last night I knew I wasn't going to meet the deadline of handing over this catalogue to the printers at 9.30am today. There were at least 200 images to scale and crop, and somewhere in there I had to sleep.

I chose to sleep for 5 hours, going to bed at 1am and setting my alarm for 6am, but then my dratted bladder woke me up at 5am and it took me another 15 minutes to calm my brain down to sleep again, so I guess I had 4 3/4 hours. The last couple of nights I've been getting to bed after midnight too, so the lack of sleep is beginning to show in the doona-sized bags under my eyes.

So there I was this morning, flat out at the computer, dressed in fluffy dressing-gown*, sheepy slippers and pilled and laddered jersey-type things that roughly pass for pyjamas, with hair like a chook's dirty bum, sucking back a strong cup of tea and urging my son to get his school gear together in preparation for a quick dash to school, when the doorbell rang. I'd just got off the phone to the artist to push the meeting back to 12pm (yes, bought more time, but gosh I'd need it), when Bumblebee came in with a large postage box from the US.



After wondering what I'd put on my credit card in a sugar rush this time, I opened the box carefully to find...



IT'S MY BACKTACK BOX! Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! What great timing!

To recap: ages ago I took part in the Back Tack 3 project, and managed to create an odd little bunny and sent it off to Floating World Views in Japan with a few other treats in the parcel.

All good and well, except... I didn't get anything myself. My backtack buddy in the chain sort of faded into the ether, and I'm not the sort of person to write nagging emails (I typed 'emauls', which works really well, don't you think) asking that classic Aussie question WHAT ABOUT ME?

So I waited, and watched said blogger move higher on the naughty list, until finally she was on the blacklist. Oh well, I thought, I had fun, anyway.

But! All hail the Backtack organizers! Such good women. They organized Backtack Angels to make contributions to those who missed out. I had the good luck to score Jennifer from the most excellent caffe crafty blog. I was expecting a simple consolation bunny when they told me it was happening... I didn't expect THIS!

What you can see above in the picture:

-- 3 rolls of very pretty paper, which shall probably be used as endpapers when I get a spare moment

-- a very potentially useful (and yummy) tin of lemonhead lollies (suitcase tin! Yay!)



-- cafe craft card sets! 2 of them! This one, and the one you can see in the box (and on Jennifer's blog banner).



-- art chocolate! I'm dying to see what the reproduction is (and eat the chocolate), but I don't want to wreck the packaging! Quandry!



-- fabric! orange! spotty! floral! perky! jaunty! Makes me want to revive my plans for making my own bookcloth. Watch this space.

And I haven't even got to the main event yet. Working down through the layers, exclaiming (and trying to stop Bumblebee from ripping open the sweeties), I discover:



THE BACKTACK BUNNY

Oh. oh. and again, oh. I can't begin to describe how lovely this softie is. Orange felt, removable dress, the most gorgous red shoes.



Oh. I'm so pathetically grateful. I've gone from mild disappointment to mild resignation to mild hope to wildly happy. Or is that the effect of chronic fatigue? NO, this is a thing of beauty, and will be treasured in this household. It's going in my Blogging Bounty Collection along with the knitted cats and the vintage posters.

Just to give you an idea of scale, here's the Bunny Beauty as modelled by my barely-awake, bed-headed son:



He looks better than I did behind the camera. We're both suffering from the lack of Best Beloved, who is in Launceston for the week, attending a conference on something to do with regional affairs. He gets back tomorrow night, and then it's back to normal, including getting the hairy eyeball and heavy sighs when I stay up later than 10.30pm. But maybe, she thinks, rubbing her eyes for the fiftieth time today, that's not a bad thing.

Thanks, Jennifer, you're an angel.

And yes, the catalogue design is now at the printers, and I can relax for a couple days until the next huge urgent batch of work arrives, which is a scholarly edition of Mary Gilmore's poetry (vol 2). Sigh.



* I finally gave up on my lovely old customized dressing gown; it now belongs to BB. I went to Target and bought myself the biggest softest wurtiest gown I could find in a nice pale browny-pink and it is now my bestest friend.