Of Mice and Snakes

You may have noticed by now that I’m not the world’s fastest crafter. A post will appear extolling the virtues of the latest project under construction, and then it goes completely off-radar for weeks, nay months. Take, for example, the bag I made for Mummykins at Christmas – that spread over a quarter of the year! To be fair, most things do get finished in the end (one notable exception being that dang Henry scarf, which peed me off no end and got ripped after a week). Indeed, only these past few days has another project finally reached completion, and has been firmly crossed off my ‘to-do’ list (and by virtue of it being a leap year, has been contained within two calendar months). So without further ado, let me introduce Marvin Mouse and Archie Anaconda!

Aren’t they wonderful? They’re made out of a fabulous pattern designed by Anna of Mochimochiland. Her patterns are fab, fun and (apparently) quick! She’s also got a lovely free pattern on Knitty that’s definitely worth consideration. Now, despite the traditional predator-prey relationship between snakes and mice, Marvin and Archie have sought to bridge the divide by being the best of friends; look, they even have matching toupees! Each night they sleep together. Sometimes Marvin likes to nestle in the warmth of Archie’s mouth.

At other times, Archie likes to suck his tail with Marvin snuggled up in the crook of his body.

I only made one modification to this pattern, and that was to place a little bell in the end of his tail. He’s a rattlesnake, d’uh! Actually, he must have mixed parentage, as surely he can’t be both and anaconda and a rattle snake?*

Apart from the snake, I have also found the time to make my Mum a Mother’s Day Pressie. Now this is not an ambitious project, but I am in the invidious position of late of being both cash-poor and time-poor. What’s a girl to do? Well, in this instance, use the nicest wool in their stash (Rowan Felted Tweed) and set to making a really pretty flower brooch, embellished with iridescent sequins and beads. There is also a practical reason for this project’s bijou dimensions. For the past 10 years I have had to mail presents to all my family, having never been close enough for a ‘pop over’ visit. Honestly, there are only so many things that travel through the post easily, and there are only so many books, CDs, DVDs etc you can send before you feel like ripping up your Amazon account and poking your eyes out. Anyway, I do hope she’ll like it

Now, onto a more pressing subject – the weather (deary me, you can tell I’m English).

First of all, I slept through the earthquake (is this ‘weather’? I apologist to a certain scientist who might berate me for my sloppy conceptualisations). This is no real surprise as I also slept through this as a child (proof indeed that capacity to sleep bears no relationship to wine consumed). Second of all, last Wednesday cast the most magical frost over where I live that I really do need to share some photos with you. Fortunately I had the day off for John’s birthday (29th!!!), so I was able to take some cracking pics before it melted away just an hour or so later.

It sure was wonderful!

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*Two reasons why he’s an anaconda. Firstly, I like alliteration. Secondly, when on holiday in Prague once I got caught in the rain with no umbrella. A kindly street seller saw my predicament and sold me one of his wares, pressing a snakeskin print design into my soggy hands. Speaking no Czech myself, and he little English, the seller just simply winked at me and said ‘A-na-con-daaaa!!!!!’ with a great big smirk on his face. God, I loved that umbrella.

All quiet on the DIY front

Yes, for the past couple of weeks we’ve eased off things completely, which has given me ample time to reengage with my neglected hobbies such as knitting, crochet and Blythe and to commence Christmas preparations. Yeah right, who am I kidding?!?!?!? As usual it’s been non-stop here, but finally we’ve turned a corner (to use a cliche), seen the light at the end of the tunnel (and another) and are on the home straight (things do come in threes, or is that now four?!?). Both bathrooms are finished and looking mighty swell. Poor lighting conditions preclude satisfactory photos so you will have have to sit tight for those. This weekend was devoted to sorting out our bedroom. I hadn’t looked forward to this at all, as the bedroom is one area where John and I clash, aesthetically-speaking He wants it to look like an 80s batchelor pad, with lots of harsh lines, white bedding and stainless steel ’stuff’, whereas I’d like to lift most of the prettier stuff out of Habitat with some girly goodness from Monsoon thrown in. Finding a compromise was going to be tough, but after a few weeks of obstinance, this was the course taken:

However John did manage to sneak something in without me looking:

Normally I wouldn’t use my blog to share my political leanings. But as a paid up member of the Labour party who’s stood for council twice, I take umbridge at the fact that John has put an SDP (LibDem predecessors from the 1980s) electioneering poster on display in the bedroom. However, revenge is sweet. See that black round thing under my toys? It’s actually a super-expensive Bang and Olufsen sub-woofer. But given that Turtle has been with me since 1981, he takes priority and now it’s a super-expensive Bang and Olufsen Turtle bed. Here he is again!

As you can see this was quite a big bedroom, but fortunately John actually agreed to help me paint (why that decision couldn’t have been taken several rooms ago is beyond me), so we did get the main part done on Saturday. Good job really, as I was out of action on Sunday after a fashion/wine-based injury. Here’s what I wore, and as you can see there’s several garment-led opportunities for mishaps. Can you guess what one it was?

It was the shoes! My lovely olive green leather shoes with wooden wedge heels! Throw a bottle of wine and a load of leaf mulch in an unseen gutter into the mix and you can see where this is going… yup, I went for a Burton on the mean streets of Pudsey. I put my hands out to break my fall and ended up with small but fairly deep gouges in them, a shredded knee and some nasty spraining on my right wrist. Couldn’t pick up a roller at all yesterday and have actually ended up with quite a nasty infection (red lines have coursed up my arm). They’ve now been cleaned up with germoline and I’m in the middle of preparing myself to go to the Doc’s for a course of tetanus (oh why did I skive off injection days at school? I’ve missed polio, tetanus, small pox and probably a couple of others).

They actually look worse in real life, but you’ve gotta love my wartime spirit with the Disney plasters and panda pjs I must add that this is my second injury of the week. I went to a knitting group in Leeds for the first time in order to make some friends of my own. Whilst there I managed to stab my palm with my needle, and left a bit of a hole that flooded with blood. I felt so stupid around people I didn’t know, and I just sat there smiling away with the offending hand hidden whilst weeping with pain on the inside. For a whole 90 minutes!

In non-me/house news, I’ve delighted to report that the mog is all healed up and getting back to normal. He’s not been too licky on his wound, which is a relief, although I wish he’s stop jumping up and down from the dining table… More good news was had following the biopsy on the tumour – it wasn’t cancer after all! Apparently it’s difficult to tell the difference from the type of tumour he had and cancer from cells alone – they need to be in situ. It’s a good job it was removed, though, as even though it was benign, it was fast growing and would eventually embed itself into his fat, and spread all over. Phew! So glad we caught that in time!

Plumbing Pandemonium

As ever, the never-ending DIY train is hurtling on at full speed, stopping this week at Bathroom Central. Yes, I’ve had the plumbers in all week and no, that’s not a euphemism for that time of the month (you know, ‘I’ve got the painters in’, as your Nan might say). Nowadays John and I are posh, fancy types, and have two bathrooms (main and en-suite) so that’s double the effort and double the expense, oh yay. You’ve heard of John ‘Two Jags’ Prescott? Well I’m Flissy ‘Two Bogs’ 666! There was nothing wrong with the old bathrooms – they were white, clean and quite new. But there was nothing right about them either – just complete B&Q cheapy nonsense. Oh, and they were painted blue. Yeuch – I hate that colour on walls sooooo much. If I were the PM, I’d make blue bathrooms illegal. Sorry – I realise that the majority of the world adores blue bathrooms but I DON’T. So there Oh, and there would be a series of by-laws which banned the sale of the attendant nautical-themed accessories. Punishable by death. I have a half-demolished photo to show you, but avert your gaze quickly if your aesthetic sensibilities are easily offended. BTW – those wavy lines on the wall are where some hideously naff wavy Ikea mirrors had been stuck up with no-nails. I told you it was bad.Progress has been okay this week. In the en-suite, the shower cubicle has been fitted and tiled out and the new lav is in. In the main bathroom it is all fitted, and the chrome towel rail has been installed. There have been a few problems – the shower cubicle needed to be re-built because the walls were out, the en-suite sink had been cast poorly so needs replacing and the pipework to the heated towel rails had to be re-routed. Oh, and the house flooded. I kid ye not. It’s Friday night and I’m plonked in the new bath, and suddenly I notice a ‘tap, tap, tap’ sound. Then I realised it was a ‘drip, drip, drip’ sound. John runs down the stairs and water is rushing out of the ceiling into my lovely new kitchen! He shot outside to turn of the water; and I jumped straight out of the bath to start bailing out the water using the bathroom bin into the basin, as I knew that didn’t leak. Fortunately the plumber came back in 5 minutes and the problem was easily fixed (dodgy plug seal). Nonetheless, it was a scarring experience. It could have been a lot worse though and at least I remembered to put my clothes back on admist the chaos!In non-house related news, I’m still plugging away at Mum’s Christmas present. I can’t understand why it’s taking me so long! Curse those 3mm needles! Is there some secret knitting skill that no-one’s told me about? I look at the sites of such talented people as Julie and Jenny and wonder how the hell they do it! Perhaps they have special prosthetic limbs that they wear for knitting to speed the whole process up. Anyhow, I’m so slow that the Christmas WIP list is going to have to be reviewed.Also had a little spend on some fabric. I’m getting a sewing machine for Christmas, so am gathering supplies akin to a squirrel gathers nuts. The spotty cord is going to be used to line Mum’s bag.Right – off to crack on with that bag. We’ve an extra hour today because the clocks went back, so I may get at least an extra centimetre done. If anyone would like to share the knitting secret, please do!

I really have finished my kitchen!

I’m just still feeling too rough to take piccies. But here’s an ‘in action’ shot from last weekend to prove that I have done it!

Gah – I hope to be blogging more interesting and less grumpy things (see yesterday’s moan, for example) in the next couple of days. I’ve been double-whammied with illness this week. A long-standing stomach complaint flared up over the weekend, which led to my arm being treated as a pin cushion whilst tests are carried out to find the cause. Then I managed to catch the mini-cold that John had, only much worse, whilst still feeling cruddy with stomach. I do feel much better now though – and all your kind messages have certainly helped – so just need to shake off those final few cobwebs. Thanks so much guys

DIY and I

I don’t know if I have ever told you, but John and I are pretty good at the old DIY. We moved into our last house in Sheffield three years ago and within 12 weeks had done the following (with help from tradespeople where necessary):

Knocked down and rebuilt internal wall
Stripped all plumbing/gas and boiler out
Rerouted/replaced plumbing/gas and boiler
Replaced all electrics
Exposed two chimney breasts
Had chimney sewpt (off a real chimney sweep – I as very disappointed as they don’t actually climb up it!)
Repaired the roof
Replaced internal door with reclaimed doors, which I stripped and waxed
Removed the mini mountain of woodchip wallpaper on every surface
Replastered all walls and ceilings
Installed kitchen
Hung new skirting board
Added spotlights and pendant lights
Installed new bathroom
Carpeted house
Laid reclaimed parquet floor in kitchen
Painted all the house

We finished at 3pm on Christmas Eve 2004, and had John’s folks over for Christmas the next day! I even managed to cook the whole dinner by myself too! As you can see, not only had we done so much, but in record speed too! We don’t have many pics of the progress we made (didn’t really have the time!) but here’s a ‘before’ one of John in manky old kitchen

John’s in the middle of renovating the chimney breast with an angle grinder. It was covered in plaster and tiles so that all needed removing. It was so dusty that he ended up in hospital with an asthma attack that evening

But the hard work was worth it!

Thankfully, the new house is soooo much easier to tackle. Nonetheless, I think all this hard work has given me the DIY fear. This weekend as been set aside for the final push on the kictchen, which has involved a fair bit of work, but nowhere near as much as our last one (the pics say it all). So all weekend is going to be spent painting, unpacking, putting shelves and pictures up, and I am dreading it. Perhaps I am a lot more tired this time round – last time I was at the start of my PhD, and now I’m so close to the end that it’s tantalising. Perhaps seeing some of the flaws on our last house when we moved out has made me question my DIY abilities, as I am a total perfectionist. Or perhaps I just now really hate DIY. Whatever it is, I am not looking forward to this weekend, and am going to be demanding cups of tea and biccies all day long to get me through it. Think of me up those stepladders – drill in one hand, paint roller in the other – when you’re having fun this weekend