My mind is on two things this morning. One is the situation in Cronulla, which has bloggers around Australia (a) wringing their pinko small-L liberal hands or (b) ignore the mobs in Sydney glassing and texting each other (to encourage more glassing) and continue writing about, like, that guy who, like, totally messaged them on MySpace, LOL ROFLMAO.

The other is my sewing machine. After my second coffee rouses me sufficiently I'm going downstairs to fix the problem I created by attempting to sew a corduroy ear onto a corduroy creature. My mum bought me this piece of textile sex as an early X-mass present so I could hopefully craft X-mass presents for others, and I must say I've found it very hard to leave my room since then.

After learning (kind of) to sew (after a fashion) on a 30 year old Singer the as-yet unnamed Janome (Janis seems like, as does Jezebel) is a revelation, a whole new world of one step buttonholes, overcasting feet and computerised stitch widths. So far I've screwed it up twice, once by sucking a goodly amount of soft wool suiting into the feed dogs (fixed) and twice by letting it inhale a wad of needle thread (erm...unfixed). Fortunately, it was bought from a local sewing store, which y'all should support because Lincraft only stocks decorative hat scarves and knurbled acrylic wool, and Spotlight is full of shrieking harpies and their young, so a sewing store seemingly staffed by other people's nannas is refreshing.

And it is, it is staffed with nannas. After fucking up Janis or Jezebel the first time I bundled her in the car in a blind panic and raced back to the store. A lady took myself and my new beloved aside and looked at me sternly through her bifocals. 'Did you think of taking off the throat plate?'

'I was scared. It's so new and shiny an-'

'You've got to do it if you're going to clean it. You need to clean it so it'll keep working. You do want it to work, don't you?'

I sat meekly by her side as she disassembled the guts of the machine with all the practised precision of a Michigan Militiaman pulling apart his rifle and contemptuously flicked out the offending fabric. I really should go back there, but I don't want them to think I'm (too much) of a moron.

I'm going to go play with my Stitch in the Ditch foot now. I don't know what it does, but it looks rather like a spade pierced Stelarc-style and suspended from a small steel pillar.