Art & asparagus

I've had a very chilled weekend with a focus on me. As in treats. For breakfast, I went to the boulangerie for a demi-baguette yesterday (not very glam but oh-so-good with raspberry jam) and for a delicious chausson pomme today, and I also went all-out on dinner. I bought a roast chicken from the butcher last night and ate it with asparagus and mustard, then tonight I had it cold with more asparagus and scrumptious sweet-potato mash and loads of sea salt and black pepper. Still more left for tomorrow night, probably in a risotto with the stock that's simmering away on the stove at the moment.

Apart from a looong walk with S today (a weekend ritual), I've not seen anyone. Instead, I spent last night making this gem:

Too cool, no? I've been eyeing it up for weeks and decided to just BUY the kit yesterday and sod the "oh, but it's a bit silly to spend money on something like that" anxieties. I primed it because I wanted it white and I already had the primer out to do a third shelf for my bedroom and then spent a merry couple of hours trying to put the damn thing together. Not easy. But very engaging.

I spent this afternoon playing with a linocut. Not sure how it'll turn out - I don't have ink at home so I'll have to wait until my next class to print - but it was fun. Off to do some more now.

Oh, and my flowers are growing madly and looking mighty fine. :)

Busy having fun

It's been a busy few weeks. Lots of work (no surprise there), but also lots of socialising and even a few days away.

Flat-wise, the stripping continues:

Flower-wise, the impatiens in my kitchen window are (I know this sounds uber-cheesy but I'll say it anyway).... delightful. Really:

Friend-wise, I had one of my favourite former colleagues and her equally lovely husband staying for a few days on a quick stopover in Paris between travelling in Asia and hiking across Spain. I so enjoyed hanging out with them, especially as the friend is none other than the Casual Baker and she decided to whip up some delicious strawberry yoghurt muffins one sunny afternoon:

Holiday-wise, I and another friend set off with S&R to join them for the first few days hiking through the Pyrennes. Damn but it was GOOD. The weather was phenomenal, the jinks were high, and the walking was just right:

Wisteria in the alley

Another flower-centric weekend. The wisteria in the alley has bloomed:

And I came home on Friday night to find the vacant shop across from my flat has turned into a florist! Super-pleased. I bought some flowers to celebrate.

Although it's been beautifully sunny, I've spent most of the weekend inside, stripping paint from the kitchen window. I worked from 10pm to 1:30am last night and from 11am to 4pm today and only have the central strip to show for my efforts (although it is the most fiddly part, because of the metal). It's not even perfectly finished, as this photo shows. Such hard work - I was already grateful for my parents' work on my bedroom but I now really understand how much my Dad had to do to get such a good finish on the bedroom window.
Oh, and it seems I'm doomed with shelving. I screwed the shelves to the brackets, did some polyfilla-ing and painting to cover the screwheads, and loaded them up with books... to find that I'd forgotten to take account of the added height of the books when working out where to position the shelves on the wall so they look a bit too high now. :(

Shamefree shelving

I managed to borrow an extension lead from work so I put up my shelves this afternoon. I had a day off (my old school friend was over for the weekend and left this afternoon) - holy smoke but it felt good to have a three-day weekend, especially because I had a few sleepless nights last week, finding myself hopping out of bed in the middle of the night to check that my wall wasn't collapsing... hem.
I need to buy some little wood screws to attach the shelves to the brackets before I load them up, and I also want to cover and paint the screws, but the hard bit's out of the way. They're nothing special but I'm pleased.

The hole in the wall...

...just got bigger.
Back in September, I excavated a chunk of my bathroom-kitchen wall. Other than pointing out the hole in the wall to interested visitors, I haven't really thought about it much since then. For some reason, however, the words "dry rot" lodged themselves in my brain last weekend and ended up keeping me awake half the night on Sunday and Monday. I know dry rot smells, and that the absence of a smell meant I was probably in the clear, but I couldn't get past the niggling thought that something dark and dangerous and possibly very expensive was going on behind my bathroom tiles. So I decided to reduce my chances of something rotten by removing at least one potential culprit, namely the rest of the wooden supports.

It was all so rotten I was able to do all this while I was waiting for my washing to go round in the laundrette. The big panel was so flimsily held in place that it just lifted out. All that remains is to get rid of the evidence. It's almost dark enough now for a trip down to the bins...

Fantastic flowers: part II

Just looked up from my computer and found this lovely surprise sitting across the room from me:

It must just have opened in the last ten minutes or so.

I bought this passion flower yesterday but the earth in the flower pot I want to use is so water-logged I can't plant it out yet. Certainly didn't expect to be seeing any flowers on a chilly April evening among the paint pots. :)

Fantastic flowers

I spent the weekend catching up with friends so I didn't get anything done in the flat. Thought I'd share the remarkable shelf-life of these flowers though. I bought them for 4 euros the Saturday after my parents left, as in on the 1st of March. And they're still going strong! Five weeks later!! (Well, strongish - they're no longer on top form but until about a week ago they were still good enough that I would probably have bought them in a flower shop).

Don't know what variety they are, but I'm certainly impressed. Oh, and in all that time I've topped up the water once. I think they must break some kind of record for low maintenance...

Baby steps

I had a friend staying last weekend as well, but I managed to get a pair of shelves primed and painted only to come up against my lack of an extension cord. I only have three proper sockets in the flat. I can plug in lamps and chargers and the like in all of the sockets, but to plug in "large" items like computer, radiator, hairdryer, iron or drill, I need to rely on the biggies, of which two are in the kitchen. So really, I have to rely on the single proper socket in the hall, which permanently has a little multi-socket extension cord in it for computer, radiator, etc. And damn but that little extension cord is MILES away from being able to reach my bedroom windows. A couple of friends brought round four metres of cord to allow me to put up my curtain rod, but I'm now stuck for cord to put up my shelves. Not urgent, but a little frustrating. Vivement new electricity!

So, shelves almost done. Other priming news concerned this little chair, which I found beside the rubbish bins a couple of nights after I moved in here (it doesn't really show in the picture but it was a pretty nasty yellowish colour):
- which now looks like this, ready for a coat of proper paint:

- and I primed the new bits of my DIY'd bathroom door.
I've also finished oiling my bedroom windows and have sorted out curtain rings for one side of the window - I miscalculated so I need to buy more rings for the other side. I think that's all for this weekend. Baby steps indeed. :)

Lots done, loads to do.

Since my parents left it's been a succession of busy weekends and twelve-hour days at work so not much time for posting. Here's what's changed:
- my sitting room has gone from this:
- to this: Still lots to do, especially with regards to paint, art, curtains and lighting, but I'm loving my lovely fuzzy flokati, my new comfy sofa from Ikea, and being able to see the floor.

Bedroom-wise, we've gone from this: - via this (thanks for my beautiful wooden window Dad!): - to this: I'm super super happy with the colour. The ceiling colour isn't right given the wall colour (not that I think it's desperately wrong either, and it does have the advantage of really bringing out my über-posh cornice) but I think it's going to look poifect on the walls of my sitting room. Yay. Here's another look: In less photogenic developments, I put up a mirror in my loo and spent a merry evening brushing bleach on to the ceiling to kill the black mold. :)

Feeling a bit guilty

My parents are over. They arrived on Tuesday evening to find the flat in a bit of a state - I'd done the washing up on Monday night when I got in from work at about half-midnight (yeah, it's going from bad to worse) and a very quick tidy up but I hadn't cleaned properly and everything was still piled in the front room. Which makes me feel particularly bad that when I've dragged my sorry self home from work the last two nights it's been to find dinner on the table and increasing amounts of paint off my bedroom woodwork. My dad's just about finished the window and boy but it's been a huge job. He's got it looking so good I'll feel almost guilty (that word again) about painting it again. Wonder what it'd look like with a wooden window frame against painted wood trim everywhere else. Quite good perhaps...
Anyway, to bed. Work again tomorrow, engraving in the evening, then the WEEKEND!!!!