Busy doing nothing

Time is rapidly running out on my holidays, but I’m kind of looking forward to going back to work – this year is going to be full of all sorts of interesting challenges which I want to get stuck into.  I could very easily get used to this leisurely lifestyle though 🙂
Not that the last few days have been that leisurely – we decided it was finally time to face down the monster that is cleaning the garage.  As you may know, we don’t own a car.  Our garage then, not needing a vehicular space to be kept clear, has become the all purpose storage space for things that might come in handy one day, broken stuff that might be repairable so it seems silly to throw it out, useful boxes, leftover building material from various projects, furniture I’ve been meaning to Freecycle, stuff the previous owners left behind… you get the idea.  Plus it doubles as a wood shed, and houses the usual tools and stuff of any garage.  Yeah, basically a room-sized junk drawer.
It was getting to the stage where we couldn’t actually find any of the tools, and getting to the woodpile in winter was work for a skilled mountaineer (ok, so maybe not that bad, but it was a bit tricky squeezing past the lawnmower).  So all year I’ve been saying that when we had a few free days we should clean it out.
So having quite a few free days, with no excuses left, we finally tackled the job.  We hired a skip and filled it with everything of the “might come in handy some day”, “don’t even know what this is” and “outright rubbish” categories, restacked the wood pile to limit its gradual spread across the floor, sorted out the Freecyclables ready to post offers, cleaned and organised everything that was left, and we now have a perfectly usable garage.
Yeah, I give it about a month before it’s back to chaos again, but in the meantime I can feel proud of our efforts 🙂


Progress hasn’t been as steady on craft projects, but that’s because it’s been so hot – it’s hovered around 30o most days this month, accompanied by Christchurch’s famous hot and dusty nor’wester.  And hot and sweaty really doesn’t go well with keeping crafty things clean.
But yesterday the weather finally broke and it rained and was nice and cool.  Which coincided nicely with Jenny having a free day, so she came round and we had a sewing circle – or sewing line, really – it’s hard to have a circle of two… and actually it was more of a knitting and embroidery line – she was finishing off a jersey she’s knitting, and I was working on my cross-stitch. But we called it a sewing circle anyway 😉 and it accomplished the same goal: company and conversation while working on crafty things.
So I did make a small amount of progress:
160113embr
And I have added a bit more to my knitting experiment.  I’ve just been playing with different patterns and using up some of the random odds and ends of wool Jenny gave me, and just picking up stitches off the sides of existing squares to start each new one, so it’s developing very organically*.
.
*Translation: messily


In bookcrossing news, I got a catch which was definitely a record for me, and may even (according to Gorydetails) be a site-wide record, for longest time between release and catch.  I released Ossian’s Ride in April 2003, and it’s finally been caught almost 10 years later.  Just goes to show you should never give up on a book!
Other, less notable, recent catches:


Currently reading:

  • Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson
  • Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel B Smith (audiobook)

Similar Posts

4 Comments

  1. What a clever little crafter you are. Can I adopt you? AND coincidence – I ‘did’ my garage yesterday (Wednesday)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.