Meltdown

G'day all!

What busy days here at the Modest Manor!

Friday night Nathan had invited a friend around to dinner. This is the chap that will be house sitting for us. I spent all of Friday skeining yarn, and tidying and cleaning the house. I had the public rooms sparkling by the time I was done, and I was dead knackered. We keep having horridly humid weather at the moment. We've had two days off over the weekend and now we will be back into it. We don't do humidity in Melbourne. We do honest dry heat or coolth. None of this humid crap. It is pretty horrid when you work up a sweat skeining yarn on a skein holder - all you need to do is stand up and wiggle one hand whilst holding the yarn in the right place for the skein holder to take it up. Things like scrubbing the shower and doing the dishes had me in a dripping lather!

So we set up the BBQ with our meat on one side and his glutenous muck (vegetarian fake meat is all wheaten - like most of the ingredients are wheat and gluten) on the other, and chat to him and one of his current housemates. This is where a problem arose. He wants to share our place with this housemate. They are not going out together and need separate rooms and also want a room for a study.

Umm, we only have three rooms, and they are full of all our stuff. Y'see we want a house sitter, not to lease our house out to someone. There is a, ahem, subtle distinction - a house sitter uses your stuff and looks after the cats whilst you are away, a lease holder expects to move into an empty house. For us to meet our friend's conditions, we'd need to put most of our stuff into storage. We have a lot of stuff. Plus they need us out by the end of next month, and that is when we'll just be getting back from a whirlwind trip to Fort Collins. We won't even know when we'll be going or if we will be going until after the end of next month. It is entirely possible that Nathan will be going without me whilst visa stuff for me is worked out. Yes I/we could stay with his parents mebbe for a while but we don't really want to. (Update - they don't really need the place until May, which is more do-able.)

So I had a hissy fit on Saturday cos the timelines are just too short and I don't wnat ot have to store a whole heap of our stuff outside the house. Nathan had one too - at first he thought I was unreasonable but then realised I wasn't - so we all had one big meltdown.

Things are better now :-)

One of my sisters reminded me she has a nearly 24 year old son who could house sit - he needs a boot up the backside cos he has it so good at home. Nathan's brother could house sit too. Both of them know cats and know how to deal with them.

During all of this I did a bit of yarn dyeing. I figured that I might as well start dyeing up whatever stock I have left to get it online and hopefully sell it to someone. I also worked on some more fleece stuff. You wouldn't think that dyeing up half a box of yarn could take up so much time, but it does. I've just spent two hours getting the yarn ready for its photoshoot, which does not include the pics themselves. Then I'll need to skein it all up, which will take another hour or so. And do labels.

I've done a bit of spinning too. Unfortunately I cannot get accurate colours of the stuff I've spun - one is reds shading through to browns, the other has plums and violets and taupe (!!). They are pretty and I wish I could show you them.

I discovered that one of the lots of fleece I wanted to sell is actually the very type that I want to try making sock yarn from, so it's no longer for sale...at least whilst I work out how much I want to keep of it anyway.

There's knitting too - a pair of not-really Fetchings and also a scarf that I've designed all by myself.

You would think I am only 6 years old on occasion but I get unreasonably proud of creating something without using someone else's pattern, especially when I have to modify say a Barbara Walker chart to make a new pattern that works on my design.

I tried experimenting with public transport. I rode my bike to Monash with Nathan, then decided to catch the bus up to some shops that have special Lynne food. They are 10 minutes drive away. I was too stuffed to ride my bike especially since there is a humdinger of a hill on the way.

It took TWO HOURS to get there and back and buy a bag of gf porridge, a bag of gf biscuits and a satchel for posting yarn in. The buses only run every half hour and I missed the first bus up there and I missed the first bus back, mainly cos I had to wait for 15 minutes in the post office. And I had NO KNITTING! All this queueing and waiting and NO KNITTING! I'm surprised I survived. The string grabs on my backpack got a good workout - they were the only yarn like things I had.

All of this because I got distracted and forgot to get my favourite foods on Saturday. Dang! If I was using the train it would be fine - they run every 20 minutes during the day but every 30 minutes is just Too Long between services. It wasn't even as if the bus was empty - there were always people getting on and off and there were only about 4 seats left on a 45 seat bus by the time it got back to uni. Lord knows how people cope with busses that run once an hour!

Now for some link-mania.

Star Wars fans will die - fancy all that work for this outcome!

If there are such things as sad genes are there also happy genes?

Japanese scientists have made an amazing discovery - using airconditioners actually makes things hotter! Whoda thunk that using electrickery, which generates heat, to cool air inside buildings would make the outside air temperatures hotter! Take hot out of a building, add more hot and it gets hotter!

I want one of these parrots. How cool is that bird?

Some info about using greywater

Breeds of sheep in the UK.

Sensational Knitted Socks TWO is on the way! Woo hoo!

jms has put the new B5 logo on his photoblog. Pretty!

Enough ranting and raving - I've been doing this entry for a day now. LOL

anon!