First pics of the sewing room

First a marathon unpacking of a certain kind of flat pack furniture, with my darling Husband and Dear Daughter hard at work.

Then, once everything was in-and it fitted! (WHEW) it was my turn to move all my stuff in, and begin the arranging. Of course not everything is as it should be yet!

This is a height adjustable desk for my computer and household management.

I fell in love with these lamps -and ended up with two!

This is my sewing desk.

The curtains are being hung and measured so that they fit exactly. I wanted to hang them for a few days before cutting anything! Do you like them?

I have a set of shelves, so I have room for all my craft books and patterns as well as the household files, and of course some friends!

This is another shot of my desk. The wardrobe has been fitted with shelving and baskets. The doors are not fitted as yet -they need to be painted.

Dinky little table top ironing board for those block seams.

How do you like it so far?

What to do on a very wet weekend

Over 75mls in the rain gauge since Friday morning makes this a very wet weekend. June left us with only one quarter of our normal rainfall, for what is traditionally the wettest month of the year, so this rain is most welcome. I have not emptied the gauge yet -after so many days of dry weather I am really enjoying seeing the column of water.

It hasn't made much of an improvement to the temperature however. Perhaps it is slightly warmer overnight, so we have not had the ice on the cars, but the days are quite chilly.

Our DS has been learning about living in his rental accommodation. It seems quite a chilly house, even with the wood stove. It is a great pity that the idea that the Federal government had, to subsidise the placement of ceiling insulation in rental accommodation, turned out to be spoiled by tricksters and conmen, who did such a bad job that there were lots of house fires and the whole scheme was abandoned. It is also a pity that the programme of legislating for each house rented or sold from July 1 2010 to have an energy efficiency rating, has now been put on hold for two years. It is the renters who struggle trying to keep warm in houses without ceiling insulation.

My lovely DH has painted the ceiling, and started on the first coat of the sewing room. As you can see, we are going to be much lighter and brighter than before. My DS chose this lovely honey colour because it was close to the colour of his lovely old violin, but I want a neutral canvas so that my quilting colour choices can be seen without competition, on my design board. I will also need good bright light to work in here.
Our lovely ancient Lady (next month she will be 20) has spent the weekend seeking out the warmest places in the house. Without the winter sun streaming in, this turned out to be the best option for her old bones.

I have been reading Penguin classics. They had a three for the price of two sale recently, so I have enjoyed George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" and am now into Isabelle Allende's "Eva Luna".
I have made a bottle of preserved cumquats in a very heavy syrup, which I am told will be nice on a cheese board, or served with icecream. We have been on the look out for more uses for cumquats as the yummy marmalade that DH makes is rather fiddly and you can only eat so much marmalade in a year.

The other jar is fresh ginger, which I have pickled in a brine/vinegar/sugar solution. I also have some grated and frozen -will compare the two methods to see how I like the result. Both methods were recommended by my friends on the Aussies Living Simply website -if you click on the button on the right you will be taken to a wonderful repository of wisdom.

Tonight's dinner for DH and I is a mushroom braise -winter fare! I got these from the Midland grower's market this morning, along with the ginger.

I guess this weekend has been just one of those quiet, productive, happy kind of winter weekends. Hoping you, dear readers, have had a lovely quiet weekend too.

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf said a woman needed 500 pounds a year and a room of her own -with a lock on the door -in order to write.

Rick Rutherford in his classic magazine "Australian Country Collections" once had several feature articles on the creative spaces some lucky women had -and got me thinking then how wonderful it would be.

This weekend my DS moved into his first ever rental home -in preparation for the Wedding to his beautiful girl in September.

AND ...."TAA DAA" -I am now in possession of a Room of My Own. A Sewing Room, no less.

My DH is planning to paint it for me just as soon as he can -thank you darling. We are painting it Antique White USA. I will put up some curtains and furnish it with a desk for my computer and household files, a sewing table with cutting board, small iron, and permanent place for my sewing table with its lovely Bernina on it.

I have already put my craft supplies on shelves in the wardrobe, as you can see. These things used to be stashed under my bed, on the top of my wardrobe and anywhere else I could possibly fit them.

I plan to take up the carpet and replace it with bamboo flooring, which will be just right for the messy business of sewing -threads and wadding can make quite a lot of stuff on any floor, and the bamboo will be easy to sweep.

This is a lovely room, facing north, towards my glorious front garden.

Am I excited ? What do you think?

PS you might be wondering where the pictures of my new carport are -well, apparently the workshop has prefabricated it, but it won't be delivered until the construction gang are ready. So we are all still waiting.

Fire and Ice

Fiery colours of nasturtiums in a tiny crystal vase. This one survived the 'great vase de-cluttering" of last week. It is so handy for tiny flowers and they always look wonderful in it.

I like this thought from the ALS website thread on de-cluttering:
"There is clutter and storage. Storage is stuff with a known and expected use, placed sensibly in such a way to make it readily available when its time comes. Makes you happy to look at.
Clutter is disorganised, unknown or unlikely use, and makes you feel slightly queasy to look at. In severe depression there is no part of the house which makes you happy to look at. Clear it back to bare boards if necessary, you will be surprised how much of it you will never miss, and even feel good about the loss of."


And this is the ice! On my car, this week. We people in Perth are not used to such cold mornings. It should be raining -if it was raining, it would be warmer. As it is, there have been two mornings we have had to deal with ice on the cars in the driveway this week.

The exciting thing is our new free-standing carport is due to be constructed next week. Watch out for pictures!!


I like the colours of cumquats as they ripen. I have several new recipes to try out on this year's crop, including preserved cumquats and cumquat biscuits! We plucked up the courage to try my preserved apples (faithful readers will remember this is my first attempt at preserving things using the water bath method) and I am pleased to say they tasted great.


This is a view of my front garden in the winter sunshine. In the middle of all of this profusion of winter growth my DH found space to plant a Quince tree.


We are looking forward to summer shade, winter sun from the quince, and lots of ruby red quince preserves in due course.


DH grubbed around in the potato bed to check them -and found some tiny taters. I think they need a bit longer yet.

And finally, I have been sitting near the heater sewing the binding on my Dark Nightz quilt. Soon it will be on the wall.

Hope you are all keeping well and warm during this southern winter time.

SHHH!

I have been on a silent retreat, at the wonderful Nathaniel's rest.

No talking for 40 hours.

BLISS!

As my DH said, it is a great relief not to talk for a while.

Time to rest.

Time to read.

Time to think.


Time to walk.

Time to notice how lovely our winter bushland can be.

We saw 4 kangaroos on the hop -bounding through the bush.
Didn't get a picture, but how glad it made me!

These horses were still enough to photograph, however.

Now that I am back home, we are thinking about how we can include at least some quietness in our lives.
We could drive without the radio or music playing.
We could spend one of our morning walks together in silence.

Silence helps us to notice what is otherwise hidden.

One of my readings this weekend said:
"Why should creation play to an empty house?"
At least some times, I intend to be in the audience, quietly watching the show.

Three visit rule!

It was like this, you see. I had this lovely mug given to me some years ago, by a friend who knew the potter. She had him add my name to this mug. I have an unusual name and so I have never been able to buy anything with my name on it -and I was delighted to have this mug.

Then I saw this tray with more of exactly the same mugs as my name mug, in an op shop near where I work. They were in excellent condition and for just $25 or less than $2.50 per piece -including sugar bowl and milk jug-a real bargain. The only problem was that I really didn't need any more mugs. Have lots of them in the house.

So I left them for other lucky shoppers. And a couple of weeks later they were still there.

And then a month later they were still there!

That is when my DD's 'three visit rule' came into play. If it is still in the op shop after three visits, you get to buy it! Well, obviously I was the only customer for these mugs -the only one who would really appreciate them -and the op shop needs to sell its stock doesn't it!

So they came home and we are all delighted with them. We had coffee on Saturday with home made peanut butter and chocolate biscuits -and we all said what a nice set it was. Unlike some pottery mugs these have a nice feel to them.

The way that I make room for such purchases is to take back to the op shop some things I don't need. I now have a boot full of things such as glass vases, which I don't use very often. I have included some china too. I don't want to clutter my house (some people would say it is already full!) so this is the way I manage this kind of thing. I love op shops and the thrill of finding something special or unique, or just loving something no-one else wants.

I Like My Small House!

We bought our first home when we had been married for 20 years. I was tired of living in other people's houses and I wanted to have a home of my own. For many years this seemed an impossible dream. My DH and I had shared one full time job when our children were little, and as a result we had a great relationship with our two children, but no savings. As they grew we took on more days of work and started to save.

Eventually we had a moment -throwing every resource we had, including converting our long service leave to cash, we bought the best house we could afford - a 25 year old three bedroom, two bathroom home. It is not large by Australian standards, but palatial by the standards most of the third world experiences. It has a 'family room' -a new feature when the house was built-that is about the size of a bedroom. It does not have the standard four bedrooms. It does not have a games room or a theatre room or any of the rooms Australian families have been told that they need to have a good life these days.

Over the years we added a patio out the back, and with clear plastic blinds and a patio gas heater it is a comfortable space for a lot of the year. My DS invited his friends over last night and there were ten of them enjoying each other's company in the patio whilst the rest of us were happy in the family room.

This article sums up what I like about small houses. What is suggested is that if we can not be sucked in by the consumerist culture of our society, which tries to convince us that we need more and bigger and newer things all the time, then we can enjoy what we have rather than what others tell us we should want.

Yesterday evening my DH and I were sitting in our lounge room at about 5pm. We both had good books to read, and a glass of wine. We were warm and comfortable, there was jazz on the radio, and the rain was softly falling. We were both well aware of what a luxury a comfortable home can be, and are grateful for it.

Sorry that I have had to add another level of moderation to the comments section of this blog. Please feel free to leave a comment anyway!