Friday 4 June 2010

I Cannot Sleep Tonight

















Do you remember the feeling of excitedness for Christmas when you were little? You know the absolute hearty-skippiness and being totally incapable of sleep. I am like that today. Elf Husband was laughing when I refused a second cup of coffee today middayish as I was afraid of not being asleep anyway...don't need any chemical help for that.
The kitchen has now been painted and all the boring jobs finished. I will show pictures when I have done some of the nice stuff. Doing that won't be any hardship. I have my head buzzing with ideas for several projects and can hardly wait. I will though take it easy and SLOWLY and enjoy the fun.
My excitement knows no limits because a couple of days ago my husband bought me this:
















I hadn't been able to really try to work with it before today when I did a little job with it and what a joy! It's greatest secret is here:
















Can you see the black arm behins the presser foot? This is an integral walking foot and makes precision sewing absolutely a doddle. It feels lovely to work with and I am in sewing heaven. My first sewing machine was bought for me by my Dad when I was 13. It was a second hand machine from 70s and I had it until five years ago. We were then moving between continents and I decided to sell it as it was not in the best shape any more. I then replaced it with a very basic model as at that point I was only doing an odd repair job and sewing some cushion covers and alike. I was not doing any creative stuff, nor sewing clothes.

Now that my machine is in use constantly I have noticed its limitations. I was quite hankering for an overlocker, but actually I needed a good regular machine much more. And this is in my mind the ultimate Limousine of the working horse machines. I love it. It's sort of my next Christmas and birthday present - we are not fussy about the real dates, we do the presents when we need them and not necessarily at Christmas time.

Not enough with a new kitchen and a Limousine of a sewing machine, there was a present dropped in our front yard this morning. A local builder J, who also is my client, dropped off some iron stakes, timber and pipes for us to build a polytunnel. I am slowly building up our garden and this has been on my wish list for a while.  In general the biggest cost is the soil, because I have to buy all the soil save the stuff we get from our compost. The soil in our garden is dire; clay and building rubble under a 5cm layer of topsoil, which is bound to grass roots anyway.
J was offering to come and build it with us, but Elf Husband did it with me as his assistant. Look at its frame, it's HUGE.
















Its measurements are just shy of 5m X 3m. We are not finished with building it, but not far to go. Then I have to think the best way of putting beds and shelves in it, so I can optimise the space.













I am absolutely hopping of excitement thinking of all the veggies I can now grow! I have a good amount of "outside" bed space as I added a couple more this spring to my existing ones. The polytunnel enables me to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and stretch my season longer for other veggies like broccoli and spinach.
All this wonderfulness means I don't know how I am going to sleep. Maybe copious amounts of wine?

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