I just should get over it...

... and rename this blog "the lovely lizzies". They are lovely though.




Speaking of lovely, isn't this cat pretty?

Unfortunately, he's also very SAD (possibly because he's called Lulu, which doesn't sound like a very macho name to me).
So he spends all day and half the frrrrrigging night crying and meauwling and generally expressing his profound sorrow. I don't know where it's come from. For the last two years, I've known him for his remarkable climbing abilities and pretty little monkey face but for the last couple of months it's been the CRYING and the YOWLING and the DEEP SIGHS. Pretty much every single day. And almost every single night. Gah. At last it's given me and one of the Mr. Rupert Bears an opportunity to do some bonding of a "is that goddamn cat keeping you awake as well?" variety.

Lovely lizzies

They were in a fairly poor state when I bought them, but my busy lizzies are recovering their forces and are well on their way for the summer. My kitchen window faces south-west, but it looks directly onto the windowless side of a high apartment building. Fortunately, the apartment block is built slightly back from the street, so there's a gap that lets a slice of direct sunshine come through late in the morning and lights up my kitchen. It also brings out the colours and glitter of my little lizzies. I've already taken dozens of photos and the whole of the summer has yet to come...



My sitting room and bedroom face north-west and only get direct sunlight in the summer. After several years in flats that faced due south, I miss having the sun in my flat in the winter (although it's a relief to have a nice, cool flat in the height of summer). That said, it makes it all the more special when the sun works its way round and shines in during the summer months.

Where do I start?

That was a long, long break, but I needed it. Work's been crazy and not-work has been crazy too but things are finally settling down (I hope). I also had a week away at the sea, taking sailing lessons, at the start of this month. I'm really glad I did it - definitely A.Good.Thing. and it blew away lots of lingering winter cobwebs.


In the last few months, there's been a LOT of knitting. My first ever lace, my first ever hat (a black mistake stitch beanie to match the black mistake stitch scarf - one of my favourite people has a birthday coming up), my first ever bag (in progress), and more to come. I love the colours in the last picture!:



Some new furniture. Slightly rubbish photo but I'm pleased as punch with my little sideboard and the fact that it allows me to free up the mantlepiece and move the radio to a better position in the room:


And new plants a-go-go:
After all that waiting, the tulips came and went in a flash.

And I couldn't get the heat/light/water balance right for this little thing. Beautiful while it lasted, but it didn't last long.


The new geraniums (to replace my trusty old bright pinks, that were zapped by the week of ten-below in January) are doing well and seem happy.


I don't seem to have killed off my first ever orchid yet. I love the white-pink-yellow against my blue bedroom walls.


And this afternoon I spent a happy couple of hours grubbing around on my bedroom floor, planting up petunias for my other windowbox and setting this season's kitchen busy lizzies on their way. Those busy lizzies were one of the best things about my house last summer and autumn - it's almost embarrassing about how much I'm looking forward to watching them grow.

Spring.

Might be time for me to come out of hibernation soon.

Happy new year.

Remember this? Hideous, wasn't it? And, from a very long time ago, this? Well, I'm pleased to say that after many hours of working and thinking and planning it's all come together and my kitchen now looks like this:

Yay! I'm totally thrilled. Still a few little things to iron out, like the shelf at the end of the top cabinets and the splashback, but it's worked out better than I could ever have hoped and I really enjoy spending time in there. I'm doing loads more cooking than I used to (not surprising really, but still) and having a washing machine after five and a half years of schlepping up and down endless flights of stairs is BEYOND exciting. Really. I spent a year on the fifth floor with no lift and three years on the sixth with no lift so even though moving to this flat, which is on the first floor, made it much less painful, not having to go to the laundrette is just the best thing.

I found two lovely little stools at an on-street antiques fair just before Christmas. I'd been looking for ones like that for a while and even though I knew I could buy them new at one of the big art shops at Nation, I quite fancied getting old ones like we have at the engraving workshop. They're working out perfectly and are perfect for perching on to read a magazine while I wait for things to cook or to make a change from eating on the couch. They spin down to the right height for my dining table and spin up to the right height for my wooden worktop so they're nice and multi-purpose and exactly what I'd hoped for. Very reasonably priced too, which is lucky because I'm rather skint after all this work. The little one could do with a bit of waxing to bring up the colour of the wood but that's small beans. Very pleased. :)

Here are some random tulips to finish. I was very surprised but quite pleased with how the second photo turned out.


Happy new year to anyone who stumbles by. Hope it's full of good things.

Exciting times

I've accepted a quote for all my travaux: looks like the dust and destruction could start as early as next week and, even more excitingly, that it could all be clean and beautiful and new a mere four weeks after that! I don't know what I'd do with a proper, functional, hole-free flat but it's a terribly enticing prospect.

I'm going to be spending this weekend finalising decisions about taps (so difficult!) and kitchen floors (so know what I want, so don't know exactly where to find it or what kind of material to choose) and windows and tiles and I'll probably find time to second-guess my thoughts about baths and sinks too.

Just in case there's anyone out there, here's a picture of three ways I might end up doing the high window I'm going to create between the kitchen and my dark, underwater bathroom.

Any thoughts? I know which picture I like best, but I have a feeling that might not be the best real-life choice. The proportions aren't anything like the same, but this is the kind of effect I'm looking for:

Picture: Apartment Therapy

Also, does anyone know about Kludi taps, specifically the Bozz? I've never heard of them but I saw them in BHV, which is a pretty reliable sort of shop, and I like the look of them, but I'm slight concerned that the url ends "...bad-bozz" and that I received a note from my neighbour today telling me off for keeping him awake by running my washing machine at 1am (yeah, I don't have a washing machine... yet) and he is called... Mr Bozza! Subliminal messages or mere coincidences?

Anyway, all of these things to ponder AND I need to drum up the enthusiasm to drag myself out to spend yet more time in the 6-and-a-1/2th circle of hell that is the IKEA kitchen department.

On that note, here's a flower for some cheerfulness. It's one of my long-suffering gardenias, flowering. Those poor babies have been sunburnt and overfed and burnt again and dried out (and, of course, appreciated for their hardiness and sheer stubborn ability to return from the precipice every time). Even after all that, the big one, which had clearly been pumped up on plant food by the garden shop and looked like a goner for a couple of months after I got it home, has managed to produce TWO flowers this year. Here's the most recent:

Smells lovely too.

Catch-up.

No posting for a couple of weeks due to a mix of good times and bad.

Good times: S&R arrived back from Spain (with dulce de leche :) ) and stayed for a few days before heading back to Canada. As always, I really enjoyed having them around and it was a great excuse to hold my first proper dinner at the flat. We managed to get eight round the table and managed to feed them all too, thanks to S taking care of pudding and an inspired decision to plug in the oven in the bedroom and leave the kitchen free for plates and other gubbins. Not the best picture ever, and I've no idea what exciting story was being told, but I think it kind of captures the atmosphere:

More good times last weekend, down in Cannes with another friend and her cute-as-all-heck 10-month old. Three days lazing on the beach and spending the evenings sipping rosé on the balcony was just what the doctor ordered... yep, work is hideous at the moment. Resignations a-go-go and one of the new recruits is giving me real headaches by behaving like a jerk with clients and then getting aggro when I try to coax/steer him back on to the right track. Very unhappy state of affairs which isn't leaving me with much energy for anything else.

In the circumstances, not much has moved with the flat. I finally sorted out my bedroom curtains yesterday, and I'm going to do more paint-stripping in the kitchen tomorrow night. At least my flowers are still looking nice. :)

Damn. Leaky bath... again.

Yesterday, I steeled myself and went ahead one of my least favourite tasks in the world: cleaning out the bath plughole. I can't stand it - it really brings me to the point of vomiting. My reward? A bath that drains... directly into the floor underneath. Soaking concrete, welcome back, we've missed you. :( Clearly my manoeuvres had dislodged the precarious plastic pipework that links the bath to the rest of my plumbing. Just what I needed. Back to buckets... I haven't done anything on the flat this weekend apart from cleaning. Last night I went for ciné/dîné with J. We saw Tabarly, a terrific documentary that I'd highly recommend. I found it quite moving, in part because he and J could be father and son. The likeness - from their faces, to their physiques, to the way they walk - is remarkable. In the trailer, it could be J in the little black & white interview (and in the shot that comes just before, where he's in the red shorts climbing the sail ;) ). It was like seeing everything that's good about him up on screen, the shyness and kindness and toughness and sense of humour, but without being confronted by the stubborn, headstrong, uncommunicative aspects of his personality. I've been feeling quite melancholy all day, mainly because Eric Tabarly seemed like a genuinely decent human being, but also perhaps because I know that it will never work with J, however fond of each other we are.

Anyway, all that's as may be. Even if I did nothing this weekend, I did at least work pretty hard last weekend, zapping woodworm and stripping paint on Saturday night until 2:30 am. It's so painfully slow. I started here:

And five hours later, I was here:

I've worked hard for about fifteen hours and I reckon I've got another twelve hours to go.

In the background, you can see the plant pot hanging system I've rigged up. I'm very pleased with it. Here's a close up:

Very pleased with my plants in general. My passion fruit plant is like slow-motion fireworks at the moment. Almost every day there's a new, glorious flower somewhere. They're so beautiful and delicate and bold.