When I was little, I was in the Girls Brigade (one of my Great Aunts was involved in running the local troops), and at one of the annual show thingys they sang a song which went,
"Riding along on the crest of a wave and the sun is in the sky!
All of our eyes on the distant horizon, look out for passers by!"
(which, of course, I misheard as "Christopher wave")
And that's how this weekend is feeling - on the crest of a wave - on a high, zooming along, with the slightly stomach-churning possibility of the wave breaking and crashing around us at any point.
The studio is here! In many very heavy and unwieldy bits! There are also a fair amount of bits of playhouse which, having been bought from a third party by the shed-building business, need a thorough soaking in wood preservative before we figure out how to put them together, and so I have been preservative-ing this afternoon when really I ought to be clearing windowsills and shifting furniture away from them because on Monday morning, the new windows are coming too!
The weather forecasters are saying that Monday will be wet and windy and cold . . .
Hubby has taken a holiday day on Monday, and our lovely gardening guy will be here too, hopefully getting the studio mostly up (I've been lobbying for Hubby to work from home on Tuesday just in case he needs to take 5 minutes to help with any heavy lifting to get it finished off), and I've bought one pack of polystyrene insulating boards and one pack of lovely-smelling sheeps' wool eco-friendly insulation stuff so I can start figuring out what the next steps will be.
So by this time next week, the house will look different, the rooms will be brighter (and hopefully warmer), and sitting quietly in the garden there will be a space just waiting for me to fill it up with creativity. The thought of it makes my heart sing, and if we get the words wrong, my heart and I don't give a stuff!
Saturday, 4 October 2014
Friday, 19 September 2014
Radio silence!
Apologies for the delay in service!
As has been the running theme for this year, I've had another breakdown - this time my laptop, hence the blogging hiatus. A replacement doesn't appear to be on the cards just yet as internet searches have led Hubby to believe that it can be fixed by means of some disassembly and application of a heat gun. I am not convinced. In the meantime we have bought Madam a Kindle Fire (they were on offer), so a mild addiction to a free Boggle app has also been causing distraction.
Things Have Been Moving on the Studio front! The foundations are gently curing in the late summer heatwave, and the shed will be delivered next Friday, with a view to putting it up the following week (or possibly the week after, as we're hoping to scam some advice from the double-glazing fitters who will be there then). I'm beginning to wonder whether I ought to paint the outside of the shed before we put it together, if I get the weather for it . . .
Here's a shot of the foundations and the tyre-terracing on the slope behind which has been obligingly swallowing up topsoil as we dug it out.
I sourced the tyres from a local auto-repair place, which was more than happy to have them taken away. I found that the lower-profile tyres (the ones with a shallower side wall) are much sturdier for building with and climbing across. We've been drilling holes through the treads and bolting them together horizontally, and my gardener, Gary, has been packing the topsoil in and keeping them level across the slope, which is trickier than it looks because the sizes of tyres vary so much that finding similar sized ones to keep the rows even is nigh on impossible. If you're doing landscaping work or mixing concrete (or removing about a cubic meter of compressed bamboo rootball that's been growing through gravel), I can thoroughly recommend getting yourself a Gary. He's been awfully handy . . .
Oh, and I've found that cleaning the tyres, and spray painting them in situ is easier and more economical than painting them first then assembling them.
I tried to find a picture of what it looked like before we started, but the only one I could find was taken so long ago that the full horror of the overgrown bamboo and trellising collapsing under the weight of honeysuckle and brambles had not yet occured.
Perhaps the wide view might help -
Where the tyres start is where the garden virtually ended before - we own up to the center of the old railway track at the top of the slope, but over the years it has become so overgrown, and the slope is so steep, that with kids and pregnancies I just couldn't get it back under control. There were trellises making a fence at the bottom of the slope, stopping me from being able to access even the lower edges . . . so we're hoping that now we'll be able to safely climb across the tyres and we've got at least a chance to keep the brambles down. There are four apple trees and a pear in there too, which I'm hoping will start to produce more edibles once I can reach to prune and harvest the poor things!
Well, that's all I've got time to say just now - Little B is watching Cebeebies from the baby-cage (which is what we've been calling the playpen) downstairs, and I've got to go fetch Madam from after school football in a bit . . . and I haven't even mentioned the shed design, and the cheap windows I sourced, or even the fun I had at the Bristol Wool Fair . . . and I can't tell you about my current crafting because I'm doing a SWAP BOX (excitement)! I'll fill you in soon.
As has been the running theme for this year, I've had another breakdown - this time my laptop, hence the blogging hiatus. A replacement doesn't appear to be on the cards just yet as internet searches have led Hubby to believe that it can be fixed by means of some disassembly and application of a heat gun. I am not convinced. In the meantime we have bought Madam a Kindle Fire (they were on offer), so a mild addiction to a free Boggle app has also been causing distraction.
Things Have Been Moving on the Studio front! The foundations are gently curing in the late summer heatwave, and the shed will be delivered next Friday, with a view to putting it up the following week (or possibly the week after, as we're hoping to scam some advice from the double-glazing fitters who will be there then). I'm beginning to wonder whether I ought to paint the outside of the shed before we put it together, if I get the weather for it . . .
Here's a shot of the foundations and the tyre-terracing on the slope behind which has been obligingly swallowing up topsoil as we dug it out.
I sourced the tyres from a local auto-repair place, which was more than happy to have them taken away. I found that the lower-profile tyres (the ones with a shallower side wall) are much sturdier for building with and climbing across. We've been drilling holes through the treads and bolting them together horizontally, and my gardener, Gary, has been packing the topsoil in and keeping them level across the slope, which is trickier than it looks because the sizes of tyres vary so much that finding similar sized ones to keep the rows even is nigh on impossible. If you're doing landscaping work or mixing concrete (or removing about a cubic meter of compressed bamboo rootball that's been growing through gravel), I can thoroughly recommend getting yourself a Gary. He's been awfully handy . . .
Oh, and I've found that cleaning the tyres, and spray painting them in situ is easier and more economical than painting them first then assembling them.
I tried to find a picture of what it looked like before we started, but the only one I could find was taken so long ago that the full horror of the overgrown bamboo and trellising collapsing under the weight of honeysuckle and brambles had not yet occured.
Perhaps the wide view might help -
Where the tyres start is where the garden virtually ended before - we own up to the center of the old railway track at the top of the slope, but over the years it has become so overgrown, and the slope is so steep, that with kids and pregnancies I just couldn't get it back under control. There were trellises making a fence at the bottom of the slope, stopping me from being able to access even the lower edges . . . so we're hoping that now we'll be able to safely climb across the tyres and we've got at least a chance to keep the brambles down. There are four apple trees and a pear in there too, which I'm hoping will start to produce more edibles once I can reach to prune and harvest the poor things!
Well, that's all I've got time to say just now - Little B is watching Cebeebies from the baby-cage (which is what we've been calling the playpen) downstairs, and I've got to go fetch Madam from after school football in a bit . . . and I haven't even mentioned the shed design, and the cheap windows I sourced, or even the fun I had at the Bristol Wool Fair . . . and I can't tell you about my current crafting because I'm doing a SWAP BOX (excitement)! I'll fill you in soon.
Thursday, 14 August 2014
So tyred!
In order to get my studio built, the next stage in the process is going to be digging out a section of the back garden to lay a concrete slab. Hopefully by this time next week I'll have a big old pile of lawn-ish and slightly weedy topsoil . . . and I have a plan for that!
Actually this plan has been bubbling under for a year or so, you see I have a section of old railway embankment at the back of my garden. It's steep and originally it must have been a stone construction, and it's covered with a shallow layer of topsoil and a thick layer of scrubby weeds and brambles. Aside from some narrow steps, it's nigh on impossible to navigate the slope, and keeping on top of the weeds and brambles has been beyond us for a while.
Then last year I saw a picture of a recycled tyre climbing thingy in a kids playground on Pinterest. The tyres were painted and piled up, and filled (I think) with bark chippings, and I thought, "I could do that up the side of my slope!". So the plan is to clear the weeds down to the ground along the bottom edge of the slope, lay down some old cardboard to kill off any remaining roots, and start with a row of spray-painted tyres, bolted together for extra security. They'll then mostly be filled with the topsoil as it gets dug out, and I'll plant into those tyres. I've got a big bag of slate chippings from a previous garden re-jig, so some of the tyres will just be filled completely with chippings to make pathways to climb across the slope as the layers of tyres build up, and on dry days they'll be nice spots to sit too.
So . . . on Saturday I picked up my first stack of old tyres from the local garage. I've been washing them down in a paddling pool, with a trug full of soapy water and an old dustpan brush whose pan got stepped on. Madam's been enjoying de-gravelling the treads with a screwdriver for me, and once the first lot were dry, they got sprayed pistachio and daffodil. I can tell already, this is going to look good.
I'll take some pictures soon!
Actually this plan has been bubbling under for a year or so, you see I have a section of old railway embankment at the back of my garden. It's steep and originally it must have been a stone construction, and it's covered with a shallow layer of topsoil and a thick layer of scrubby weeds and brambles. Aside from some narrow steps, it's nigh on impossible to navigate the slope, and keeping on top of the weeds and brambles has been beyond us for a while.
Then last year I saw a picture of a recycled tyre climbing thingy in a kids playground on Pinterest. The tyres were painted and piled up, and filled (I think) with bark chippings, and I thought, "I could do that up the side of my slope!". So the plan is to clear the weeds down to the ground along the bottom edge of the slope, lay down some old cardboard to kill off any remaining roots, and start with a row of spray-painted tyres, bolted together for extra security. They'll then mostly be filled with the topsoil as it gets dug out, and I'll plant into those tyres. I've got a big bag of slate chippings from a previous garden re-jig, so some of the tyres will just be filled completely with chippings to make pathways to climb across the slope as the layers of tyres build up, and on dry days they'll be nice spots to sit too.
So . . . on Saturday I picked up my first stack of old tyres from the local garage. I've been washing them down in a paddling pool, with a trug full of soapy water and an old dustpan brush whose pan got stepped on. Madam's been enjoying de-gravelling the treads with a screwdriver for me, and once the first lot were dry, they got sprayed pistachio and daffodil. I can tell already, this is going to look good.
I'll take some pictures soon!
Saturday, 2 August 2014
Dominoes.
Since I set out my mission statement (however many months ago) to get myself a studio, life has been a series of hurdles. Quotes, then more quotes. Things dependent on other things. Could we afford this if we also needed that?
We've had unexpected expenses, like needing a new car and dishwasher, and expenses we knew about, but which grew on closer examination, like the mending of the roof. We've had altogether too many tradespeople come and look at jobs, who then couldn't manage to provide us a price - I thought this was a recession, aren't people supposed to be looking for work?!
But this week we've managed to set one of our lines of dominoes up, and give it a little push! It starts with one of our "would like to achieve" goals - new windows. Our windows in the house are currently old, narrow gauge, wooden framed double glazed units. They have pillars and arches and fiddly gubbins, and a dark wood-stained finish which diminishes the amount of light coming into our rooms. A couple of them have also lost their integrity and fill up with condensation in the wintertime, and there are draughts from the edges, and cold air rolls off them onto the back of your neck. They're a job that has never been urgent, but getting them replaced will make the whole house look and feel nicer, especially when it comes time to put the central heating on again.
When the old windows and doors come out however, there will be a reasonably good large window from the kitchen which will work on the side of my studio-shed, and a nice solid lockable door and window combination which will fit on the front. I'll be able to paint them to match, and they'll be secure and provide a decent amount of insulation for a working environment . . . so my name is down with the shed-building company, and when I have a date confirmed for the windows (4-6 weeks according to the sales guy), the shed company will swing into action and as the windows come out of the house the studio can go up.
In the meantime we have been getting some help in the garden already, and the space for the studio, plus a little extra patio, have been marked out and are starting to get cleared. Some black bamboo has been causing problems, and we may have to attempt a slow burn to break up the mass at the center of the rootball which is maybe half a square meter of solid bamboo which has grown through a bit of weed-supressing membrane and incorporated some rather attractive blue slate chips too at some point in it's history. Helpful Tip - if you are planting that stuff, don't put membrane and gravel around it, and Be Sure you won't want to move it. If anyone needs canes, or wants a bit of more co-operative rooty stuff, please come get some!
So this is it! The studio is on its way! It may be a while before I manage to get it all insulated and into a useable state, but the wheels are in motion, and the dominoes are starting to fall!
We've had unexpected expenses, like needing a new car and dishwasher, and expenses we knew about, but which grew on closer examination, like the mending of the roof. We've had altogether too many tradespeople come and look at jobs, who then couldn't manage to provide us a price - I thought this was a recession, aren't people supposed to be looking for work?!
But this week we've managed to set one of our lines of dominoes up, and give it a little push! It starts with one of our "would like to achieve" goals - new windows. Our windows in the house are currently old, narrow gauge, wooden framed double glazed units. They have pillars and arches and fiddly gubbins, and a dark wood-stained finish which diminishes the amount of light coming into our rooms. A couple of them have also lost their integrity and fill up with condensation in the wintertime, and there are draughts from the edges, and cold air rolls off them onto the back of your neck. They're a job that has never been urgent, but getting them replaced will make the whole house look and feel nicer, especially when it comes time to put the central heating on again.
When the old windows and doors come out however, there will be a reasonably good large window from the kitchen which will work on the side of my studio-shed, and a nice solid lockable door and window combination which will fit on the front. I'll be able to paint them to match, and they'll be secure and provide a decent amount of insulation for a working environment . . . so my name is down with the shed-building company, and when I have a date confirmed for the windows (4-6 weeks according to the sales guy), the shed company will swing into action and as the windows come out of the house the studio can go up.
In the meantime we have been getting some help in the garden already, and the space for the studio, plus a little extra patio, have been marked out and are starting to get cleared. Some black bamboo has been causing problems, and we may have to attempt a slow burn to break up the mass at the center of the rootball which is maybe half a square meter of solid bamboo which has grown through a bit of weed-supressing membrane and incorporated some rather attractive blue slate chips too at some point in it's history. Helpful Tip - if you are planting that stuff, don't put membrane and gravel around it, and Be Sure you won't want to move it. If anyone needs canes, or wants a bit of more co-operative rooty stuff, please come get some!
So this is it! The studio is on its way! It may be a while before I manage to get it all insulated and into a useable state, but the wheels are in motion, and the dominoes are starting to fall!
Saturday, 19 July 2014
In praise of things.
In our current quest to Sort Out All The Things, we discovered a week or so ago that the reason the drain outside the kitchen was chronically overflowing was not a break in the pipe, or any kind of strange system whereby rocks were being pulled into the tubes, but a very hard to shift blockage. We had some help in this realisation - the father-in-law of a friend who does general garden odd-jobbing had a look at it for us, and perservered past the point where several times in the past we thought it had been sorted.
Rods went up and down, the hose was shoved in from several directions, and maybe an hour and a half after it had first appeared to run clear, a semi-solid plug the diameter of the pipe edged its way out. I would never have guessed that undissolved dishwasher tablets were the problem, but it seems that the powdery mass plugging the pipe was just that. Huh.
So, you know where this is going, right? Yep. Today was dishwasher shopping day. To be fair, the old one had lasted maybe 8 years, and it was some random non-brand machine which the kitchen company installed for us. It had recently stopped washing well, and spares weren't going to be a straightforward purchase, so knowing it was causing this problem as well pushed us over the edge.
I never realised there would be such a range of decisions to be made though! We needed a built-in model, which narrowed our selection to begin with, and we didn't want to spend in excess of £700 which took a couple of the flashier models out of the picture (though the one which projected little icons on the floor when it was washing was pretty cool) but I did want to find one with a cutlery tray rather than a big basket that takes up a wodge of space on the bottom rack . . . not slimline . . . not too concerned about running a half-load . . . auto-dirt-detector (really? Who puts clean dishes in the dishwasher?) . . . fancy extra jets, foldable racks, adjustable-whilst-filled top basket, blue interior lights, silent-running nighttime mode, teacup shelves . . . you can imagine my spinning eyes, and the little tweeting birds circling my head. But we managed a decision! We've gone for a Maytag which isn't a company we were particularly aware of, but it's owned by Whirlpool, and whilst I quite liked the Whirlpool model next to it in the shop, the Maytag is virtually the same but with a cutlery tray.
So I'm just waiting for a phone call from the installation guy in Monday, and in a week or so I'll have my new machine.
Which is all great, but as with the new car and the roof repairs, more money is going out for things which won't bring me closer to getting my studio. There are things in the pipeline though (no, not the blocked one) and I'm hoping to have better news in time for the next blog post. Fingers crossed!
Rods went up and down, the hose was shoved in from several directions, and maybe an hour and a half after it had first appeared to run clear, a semi-solid plug the diameter of the pipe edged its way out. I would never have guessed that undissolved dishwasher tablets were the problem, but it seems that the powdery mass plugging the pipe was just that. Huh.
So, you know where this is going, right? Yep. Today was dishwasher shopping day. To be fair, the old one had lasted maybe 8 years, and it was some random non-brand machine which the kitchen company installed for us. It had recently stopped washing well, and spares weren't going to be a straightforward purchase, so knowing it was causing this problem as well pushed us over the edge.
I never realised there would be such a range of decisions to be made though! We needed a built-in model, which narrowed our selection to begin with, and we didn't want to spend in excess of £700 which took a couple of the flashier models out of the picture (though the one which projected little icons on the floor when it was washing was pretty cool) but I did want to find one with a cutlery tray rather than a big basket that takes up a wodge of space on the bottom rack . . . not slimline . . . not too concerned about running a half-load . . . auto-dirt-detector (really? Who puts clean dishes in the dishwasher?) . . . fancy extra jets, foldable racks, adjustable-whilst-filled top basket, blue interior lights, silent-running nighttime mode, teacup shelves . . . you can imagine my spinning eyes, and the little tweeting birds circling my head. But we managed a decision! We've gone for a Maytag which isn't a company we were particularly aware of, but it's owned by Whirlpool, and whilst I quite liked the Whirlpool model next to it in the shop, the Maytag is virtually the same but with a cutlery tray.
So I'm just waiting for a phone call from the installation guy in Monday, and in a week or so I'll have my new machine.
Which is all great, but as with the new car and the roof repairs, more money is going out for things which won't bring me closer to getting my studio. There are things in the pipeline though (no, not the blocked one) and I'm hoping to have better news in time for the next blog post. Fingers crossed!
Sunday, 6 July 2014
Fallllink in lof again, never vanted tooo . . .
We met 2 summers ago, and you know, he wasn't what I expected. Strong but slow, big, dependable. Steady. I felt like he lifted me up, and kept me safe. I thought we would be together for the long haul, but it wasn't to be.
A month or so ago the grumbling started, and when I tried to put the brakes on a little it only got worse. If I could have ignored the grumbling, perhaps we would have had a little longer together, but I had to find out what was wrong - he just wasn't making me feel safe anymore, so I checked . . . and things were worse than I thought. The grumbling was just the tip of the iceberg, and underneath things had corroded beyond repair. I guess I could have tried harder, but sometimes you've got to know when it's time to cut your losses.
I was devastated.
And then I met Holly, and she's everything The Beast was not - smaller, faster, definitely prettier, a little younger, and she just smells good, you know? She makes me feel safe again - and I feel like I can trust her around my kids, which is always a good sign, isn't it? We just fit, and it's easy and fun, and she's not going to cost me so much in the long run . . . and I hope it really is a long run this time, because I've fallen in love again. What can I say? I can't help it.
Farewell Mazda Tribute, it was good while it lasted. Hello Citroen C3 Picasso, I can't wait to have fun with you.
A month or so ago the grumbling started, and when I tried to put the brakes on a little it only got worse. If I could have ignored the grumbling, perhaps we would have had a little longer together, but I had to find out what was wrong - he just wasn't making me feel safe anymore, so I checked . . . and things were worse than I thought. The grumbling was just the tip of the iceberg, and underneath things had corroded beyond repair. I guess I could have tried harder, but sometimes you've got to know when it's time to cut your losses.
I was devastated.
And then I met Holly, and she's everything The Beast was not - smaller, faster, definitely prettier, a little younger, and she just smells good, you know? She makes me feel safe again - and I feel like I can trust her around my kids, which is always a good sign, isn't it? We just fit, and it's easy and fun, and she's not going to cost me so much in the long run . . . and I hope it really is a long run this time, because I've fallen in love again. What can I say? I can't help it.
Farewell Mazda Tribute, it was good while it lasted. Hello Citroen C3 Picasso, I can't wait to have fun with you.
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
Not a dress!
I wrote this blog post maybe 2 weeks ago, today is the first day I've had time to upload photos to the computer. Apologies for the delay!
We visited with some good friends in Cornwall back at Easter of this year, and whilst there I found some Sirdar Smiley Stripes yarn in a sale bag at Cornish Market World. There were 6 balls in a purple/pink/blue/red colourway and I decided that this was meant to be something for me to wear. A proper garment! Not just a scarf, mind!
After a little searching, I found Splash, a lacy swimsuit-cover-up dress. It's designed to be knit from a slightly finer and more drapey yarn than the Smiley Stripes, and I suspected I didn't have the yardage for a full dress, but I fell for the off-the-shouldereyness and the rippley feather and fan stitch, so I thought it had to be worth a try.
It was.
As I suspected, 6 balls wasn't enough to get it past my butt, and having made the mistake often in the past, I decided to knit the large rather than the small-medium size (even though I am medium. Definitely medium. No sniggering!).
It's knit from the top down, and after the bulk of the yoke shaping, the yarn started to pool a little, so I added a second ball of yarn and knit alternate rows from each ball. As you can see, it's pooled at the bottom too, but by then I was on my last ball and couldn't do anything to avoid it. I don't think it looks too bad . . . certainly not bad enough that I'm about to rip anything out to try to fix it!
The armholes are a little gapey for my liking, probably just because of my body-shape, and the extra depth of the yoke (for the larger size) makes it feel a little restrictive around the upper arms when it falls off the shoulders, but I will forgive it these small faults! I'm so pleased with my slinky new top!
We visited with some good friends in Cornwall back at Easter of this year, and whilst there I found some Sirdar Smiley Stripes yarn in a sale bag at Cornish Market World. There were 6 balls in a purple/pink/blue/red colourway and I decided that this was meant to be something for me to wear. A proper garment! Not just a scarf, mind!
After a little searching, I found Splash, a lacy swimsuit-cover-up dress. It's designed to be knit from a slightly finer and more drapey yarn than the Smiley Stripes, and I suspected I didn't have the yardage for a full dress, but I fell for the off-the-shouldereyness and the rippley feather and fan stitch, so I thought it had to be worth a try.
It was.
As I suspected, 6 balls wasn't enough to get it past my butt, and having made the mistake often in the past, I decided to knit the large rather than the small-medium size (even though I am medium. Definitely medium. No sniggering!).
It's knit from the top down, and after the bulk of the yoke shaping, the yarn started to pool a little, so I added a second ball of yarn and knit alternate rows from each ball. As you can see, it's pooled at the bottom too, but by then I was on my last ball and couldn't do anything to avoid it. I don't think it looks too bad . . . certainly not bad enough that I'm about to rip anything out to try to fix it!
The armholes are a little gapey for my liking, probably just because of my body-shape, and the extra depth of the yoke (for the larger size) makes it feel a little restrictive around the upper arms when it falls off the shoulders, but I will forgive it these small faults! I'm so pleased with my slinky new top!
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