Buttons up!

A powerful stroke of the upper arm, a strong kick of the leg and I crawl forward another few feet. I am swimming. All around me is a myriad of rainbow colours undulating like the air heavy with sound waves broadcast from a giant speaker. Except that this isn't water. It's buttons. Big and small, bright and dull, round and square, flat and raised, two-holed and hole-less, stitch-on and stick-on... a sea of buttons of all shapes and sizes. My limbs cleave the surface like cracks ripping through fragile china and create a yawning chasm with buttons falling all around me. The scene reminds me of loose...

Read the full article in the September 2009 issue of The Gift Of Stitching


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2100 words
Humour
Australia publication

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Words from the Wise

"This is a great story and I enjoyed reading it"

Kirsten Edwards

Editor

The Gift Of Stitching

"Reading it was really a treat for me"

Cathy Jakicic

Editor

BeadStyle

It ain't half cold, Mum

I’m looking for the pool but I can’t see much, jammed as my view is with auto-rickshaws, cycles and the obligatory bullock-cart or two. The cow squatting on the footpath is placidly chewing. Honking cars scurry around urgently like buzzing bees. Buses clatter by, weighed down and bursting at the seams with swarms of passengers hanging on for dear life to doors, window frames and whatever else they can wedge their fingernails into. Massive trucks lumber across the narrow road, billowing clouds of smoke akin to atomic explosion mushrooms. Not to be outdone in cacophony, motorbikes whiz through...
Read the full article in the April 2009 issue of Swimming Times


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2000 words
Humour
UK publication

Moving in sharp circles

Against a pale yellow background, the six red flowers with five petals and two leaves each rise majestically from the open centre of the tea cosy and stretch across the width of the cloth to rest at the peak of the cosy’s arc. The effect is simple, yet striking and I can’t help but feel a dollop of pride and satisfaction at my progress at needlework.

With time hanging heavy on my hands and nothing much to do but dole out long-winded stoutly-opinionated advice in my husband’s legal cases much too often, I had soon tired of the charms of daytime television and had begun to hunt in earnest for a proper little...

Read the full article in the March 2009 issue of The Gift Of Stitching


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2375 words
Humour
Australia publication

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Words from the Wise

"It really made me smile!"

Kathy Troup

Editor

Stitch

"That's a great short story, really enjoyed reading it"

Kirsten Edwards

Editor

The Gift Of Stitching

A misguided perspective

Bodies lay everywhere... bloodied, writhing, still. Adults and young ones alike. Dismembered joints, heads minus trunks, torsos missing limbs. Life snuffed out in its prime, nary a thought spared to the outcome. The carnage was spread out in all its gruesome, gory, ghastly glory. Who could’ve thought, looking at this dance of death, that these had not so long before been living beings, going about their daily business, without a care! Such was the absoluteness, such the finality. Alas, such is always the stamp of death!
Do the killers know not what they do? Is it for mere passing joy that they...

Read the full article in the December 2008 issue of Horizon Magazine

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975 words
Humour
Canada publication

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Words from the Wise

"It's cear you have talent!"

Pamela Tyree Griffin

Publisher

Joyful

Perspiration and perspicacity

When I was seven, my mum's needle-work box held great fascination for me. Since it contained many sharp objects, mum lived in mortal terror of me playing with it and stabbing myself all over. So she always tried to keep it out of my reach. But having been born with an insatiable curiosity about everything that was inaccessible to me and being twice blessed with an amazing agility that used to come in handy for dragging and climbing about things, I more often than not managed to lay my small hands on that enchanting box of wood. Many a sleepy afternoon found mum having her siesta and me spending several...
Read the full article in the July 2008 issue of The Gift Of Stitching

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1025 words
Humour
Australia publication

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Words from the Wise

"I did enjoy reading it"

Wendy Gardiner

Editor

Sewing World

"Thank you for your wonderful article"

Andrew Edwards

Publisher

The Gift Of Stitching

"I had a good read over your story... and really enjoyed it....The issue needs a lift and this will be something different for readers to enjoy"

Kirsten Edwards

Editor

The Gift Of Stitching

Of wet feet and mug's luck

Only a pincushion has it worse.

It must not be much fun being a dartboard. All those sharp missiles getting thrown at one, with enough force to power a small rocket. Granted that the red, green, black and white colours are very becoming, especially when set in an orderly concentric fashion; still, it must puncture one’s ego to be the target of so many piercing barbs of the steel kind.

Darts zoom into my life quite suddenly one day when I espy a notice at the office claiming that the staff common room has undergone some refurnishing and a dartboard is the latest addition towards employees’ pursuit...
Read the full article in the May/June 2008 issue of Bull's-Eye News

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1400 words
Humour
US publication

The ties that bind

I am around eight years old and totally flummoxed. My mother has just posed the following conundrum to me:
“Two pairs of mothers and daughters went to the market and bought three lemons. They each got a whole lemon. How is that possible?”

Resisting the urge to just stare at her and blurt out that she is joking, I carefully go over the riddle word by word. After five minutes of straining the grey cells, I am nowhere near the answer. Five more frustrating minutes with numerous fractions worked out infront of me, and I utterly give up. Mum smiles and explains, “The two pairs were: a Grandmother, a Mother...

Read the full article in the June 2008 issue of Family Tree Magazine

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1215 words
Humour
UK publication

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Words from the Wise

"Wonderful article"

Jeanie Croasmun

Editor

Ancestry Magazine

"I like it"

Simon Fowler

Editor

Ancestors Magazine

"You have a good writing style which flows well. I was intrigued and wanted to read on"

Henry Saley

Publisher

Horizon Magazine

"We like your article"

Ed Zapletal

Publisher

Family Chronicle