a day for contemplation

I was lucky enough to watch Sir Ed's funeral while i was at work today. I'm glad i did, except that it got me thinking way too much.

How much can one person do? It is quite simply incredible what Sir Ed achieved - the number of people whose lives are worth living just because he saw there was a need and had the means to assist. 

How much can one person do? there are so many things i want to be and achieve - not least of which are the following: create beautiful things, live sustainably, be a good girlfriend/sister/friend/daughter, exercise, be great at my job, find ways to get ahead, give my time to others...but i can't seem to fit it all in. One inevitably must be sacrificed in order to achieve another - i'd really like to do voluntary work but what with all our craft bizzo and the hours that i work, i don't see how i could do it all without burning myself out. Which means i end up feeling kind of selfish because i'd rathe develop my business ideas than help others who need it more than i need the extra cash (much as i hate to admit it).

I'm still getting over my cold. In fact, i think my cough has got worse. Tim's mum (a nurse) said yesterday that if i'm not better today i should really go to the doctor as i'll prolly need antibiotics. Woohoo. 

And we have our third open home tomorrow, so i have to clean yet again while the boy is out at the wedding rehearsal. At least, again, it's pretty easy, but still driving me mad. 

Rightyo, almost news time. Better get the knitting out. :)

All grown up

the boy and i just purchased two major items of whiteware. I'm officially an adult. So now we are the proud owner of a fridge/freezer and a washing machine. Brand new. We are also the proud owners of some new knowledge:

1. Hire purchase is the devil. No matter what a salesperson says, HP interest rates mean you will never get a good deal (unless you get an interest free term). My credit card rate is only 13%, so there it went. And there is a contingency plan to get it paid off asap. 

2. If in doubt, call your parents. 

3. I honestly believe that paying for an extra 5 year warranty is a big fat load of bollocks. 

Only bummer is that we won't get to actually use our new whiteware for three weeks - it's getting delivered the day we move into the new flat. ooooh shiny things. 

So more on the WIPs - Am in the midst of cutting a gazillion cards. And about halfway through the stole.

It's not the most beautifully consistent knitting as i'm making it out of hand spun air cell yarn. Think it's merino. Possibly not. Better yet, it was spun by Tim's late Gran. His mum was lovely enough to dip into her stash awhile ago and pass some on to me. This cream air cell and some lovely chocolate brown stuff. Apparently farmers used to give her the wool off the sheep's back to spin for free. So even if my stole is a bit bobbly and imperfect, at least my making and wearing it to Tim's brother's wedding will be very appropriate. Not that anyone is going to be paying the least attention to what i'm wearing anyway.

Haven't even started the clutch. I'm going to try and cut all this card before i do that, so hopefully will get onto it in the afternoon. 

I finally got to take a photo of this wee gem that Tim and I picked up at the Miramar Salvation Army a couple weekends ago - a photo tinting kit. Some of the paint tubes have hardened, but others are ok - just a bit hard to squeeze out. i love the design though - one of those things that are great to look at but will probably never use. Oh well. For $3, does it matter? :)

absent WIPs

I had every intention of posting photos today, but now that i've got around to it i've lost all the good light. Hold on, i'm going to do a quick scoutaround to see if anywhere in my mini flat has some decent sunshine. 

OK, got some, in the lame-ass kitchen light. Woop woop. 

Surprisingly, i had a brilliant working day. I finally cleared 95% of my backlog of 

work, and boy, is that a good feeling. I still have loads of administrative stuff to get done, but i have a plan of attack for that. It's called telling my boss on Tuesday that i can't do either job justice whilst i'm doing two, so could she please get someone in to help me? or at least tell the other naughty children in the office to give me a hand with yes, the mundane jobs that noone ever wants to do. And this week has revealed to me that i am confident enough to say that i can do the more senior job, but whether it is offered to me or not is a total dark area to me. I have no idea of the intentions there. So, like most things, it's wait and see. The story of my life.

In the meantime, I have this damned cold to get over - and going from how long tim has been suffering for, i could be stuck with it for awhile yet. Fingers crossed i'm not coughing and blowing for the wedding this time next week. 

I also picked up 330 photos that i had printed for cards for the fair today. Thank goodness it's a long weekend and i'm too broke to do anything! And i added another work in progress to my pile - i decided i'd make myself a clutch rather than buy a bag that really isn't in my budget or quite what i'm looking for, so, use your imagination:

Basically what i'm heading towards is a simple rectangular bag, zip along the top, and a loop coming out the side that i can put my hand through to make it easy to hold. The coral colour is a bit darker than the secondary colour of my dress, so that is going to be the lining - i'm loving how it warms the colour of the silk so it's pinker. All for a grand total of $10.30. Brilliant.

and going full-tilt with my stole - it's not going to be quite what i wanted, but as with everything, i don't have time. Especially not the approx 4 weeks it would take me to knit a lace pattern in it. Photo of progress tomorrow, perhaps?

Lastly, we have another open home tomorrow. which means more cleaning. fun-ho. At least the place is pretty much under control - a bit of removing the clothes from one wardrobe (the floor) to another (the real one) and a swipe at the dust that collects with abandon in the bathroom. That should do it. 

and um, actually lastly - another WIP - one that takes virtually no work at all. I can't wait to eat all my lovely home grown relatively organic baby tomatoes, that have been feed with worm wees which started off as our food scraps. Ahh, the circle of life.

not of the happiest frame of mind

I am extremely pissed at my tenancy agency right now. Heck, why don't  i just name them - Full House. Our really fantastic (gee, is that sarcasm) agent decided that she would tell me, mid afternoon today, that she has just put in all the advertising for tomorrow, and the viewing of our flat will be at 2.15. And i assumed, oh she must mean saturday, because giving us less than 24hours notice is kind of illegal... but no, she meant tomorrow. Oh and the only reason she emailed me was because i emailed her at the end of my tether being told by her voice mail not to leave a message as she's too busy. 

Which lead to a call to Tenancy Services to see if i had any rights there...and he said, well, you can't unreasonably withhold consent for them to come on to the property...so basically if i say no and they take me to disputes  i could be told that i was being unreasonable. I think the least the agent could have done is ask me if it was ok BEFORE she put all the advertising in. Now in one night i have to make sure my house looks presentable enough that people aren't going to think i'm a total slob who doesn't know how to clean. Along with nursing tim through his cold, working on craft stuff, and playing indoor netball. How, in fact, would she have known that I was back from holiday if i hadn't emailed her in the first place? what rights would i have had if they had just bowled through the house while we were away? Probably a small amount, and really, what would we get from going through disputes? Probably nothing. I feel as if i've been intruded upon and they haven't even got to our front door yet.

So after that, I could not concentrate on work at all. But i did everything through email so i have a written record...just in case. I am so, so happy our new place has great landlords who are just a ma and pa couple who really are lovely. So that's my rant. Oh except i had an irate lady who has absolutely no idea who i am, tell me off for answering the phone with the shortened version of my name. Well, lady, just so happens that practically noone calls me by my full name, and who on earth are you to tell me how to conduct myself?! 

off to clean the freaking bathroom, i s'pose.

home and hosed

just got the call...we got it! the wonderful, wonderful house! party! (well, or not. very sensible behaviour haha!)

goodbye, Sir Ed

Silly me, i did know when i posted yesterday that the wonderful Sir Ed had died. Not quite sure where that information went when i was writing. I hadn't previously known that much about him, but when we were on holliday, the Mt Egmont/Taranaki information centre (the one up the mountain) told me that he used to climb that mountain all the time. And i've learnt more about him over the past 36 hours, obviously, with all the obits flying around. What an amazing, humble person. How fantastic would it be to achieve either just the mountain climbing or just the humanitarian work that he managed, in one lifetime. Goodness.

I really wanted to try and post a photo with every entry, but i went to take today's and realised that i had just insisted tim take my camera with him to the stock cars. Gutted.

Today was great fun. Not. Oh my god the amount of mess we saw. How is it that some people managed to live in total and utter tips? I saw two bedrooms where the floor was not known to exist. I saw a kitchen that had piles of breakfast and dinner remnants plus the dirty dishes used to make them(it was 3.30pm). I saw socks lying in hallways, didn't even go close to looking at one bathroom that i doubt would have been cleaned in the past year. The most incredible thing was that the worst flats were ones being shown by tenancy agencies. I felt embarrassed for them, some of the places were so disgusting. 

Out of the six or so places we trooped round to today, we filled in one application form. And oh, how i want that flat. It is perfect. Well, i lie. the bathroom could be a little nicer, but everything else about it is wonderful. It felt so nice and homey. Unfortunately the old flat hunt game is starting to resemble more and more what it was like for us in Melbourne - competing with a mass of other people for the few good and reasonably priced flats. So you have to be chatty for as long as possible with the decision maker so that they remember your face when it comes to the crunch. How on earth would a person decide who is going to look after a house the best from the questions asked on an application form, really? There is essentially nothing to differentiate, except for maybe handwriting. 

My fingers and toes are crossed. But we do still have a couple of weeks to find somewhere and we are lucky enough to have a back up in case we lose out on all fronts. The bonus of the back up is that we can be fussy...but the longer we wait to find somewhere, the harder it will be to find flatties.

Crap how did it get to be twenty past 8? Time for more work of the crafty kind while the boy is out being a bogan. Woop woop.

the latest obsession

well, other than flat hunting anyway. But how about i fill in the flat hunt progress to start?

I had a great big stress last night. It had been two straights of very below average too expensive flat listings on trademe and i was irritable. Disputes ensued. Then relatively solved. Just before i headed off to bed i checked one more time...and found another place, in Kilbirnie, with great potential. So i've jacked up to see that place tomorrow. Am feeling quietly confident...

And we went to see the previously mentioned excitement creating looked really amazing flat this afternoon. Hmm. Well, it was nice. But not amazing. I had to force myself to envision it without all its studenty overcrowding furniture and see it as i would have it...but it was still nowhere near as big as the photos lead me to believe. I think a wide angle lens was at play there. So we chatted and got on well with one of the current tenants who was showing people around, and the person who decides who gets the place, and we completed our application first. In a very hilarious few minutes, a girl was stressing completely next to me, trying to get hers filled out before i did. Her tension was ebbing out all over the place, it was very hard not to smile. Apparently decision is on tuesday. If this other place tomorrow arvo is better, i'm going to push the guy to let it to us. Wait and see for now though.

The other obsession is more creative and has been curing for a while now. In fact, it began when the boy and i were living in Methven, and i found the coolest girls' annual. They have simply the sweetest and naivest (is that a word??) illustrations. And no ten year old girl in our time would take any of the stories remotely seriously. But they're great fun ... I managed to pick up 3 for $2 on our way up to Taranaki, and Tim's dad had some lying around that ended up in one of the many boxes that got passed our way. Which all means - another project! Hopefully i'll have it ready enough for Martinborough, but if not, it can wait til the March fairs. 

Meantime i have been doing plenty of sewing and embroidery for ipod covers. And mooching around earlier trying to come up with a grocery list i came up with yet another thing i'd like to do this year -try and cook as many different dinners as i can, and actually make proper use of all the Healthy Food Guides and other random cookbooks i have. Gee, how bout i over commit myself yet again? Plus i've come up with yet another small business idea..well, actually, three, but only one is actionable with not a whole lot of capital. Possibly more on that later.