Thursday, December 18, 2008

Christmas has come early at Chez Fishwife....




Yup it's a large and rather lumpy piece of furniture. (Though fortunately not quite as day-glo red as in this picture.)

It does this though....




Yup it's a sewing machine cabinet. (I already had the sewing machine.)

And it does this ...(no Wurlitzer muzak though.)



...all the way up. By hydraulics. Cool, no?



Lifty-up lid with handy compartment for all your bits. Mirror needs restuck of course




And more storage in the door.



And lots of drawers for still more stuff. You can never have too much storage room for stuff, can you?



Now the sewing addicts amongst you will have realised from the second picture why I'm so pleased about this. This is not just any old sewing cabinet you see, it's a Horn sewing cabinet. I have wanted one for most of my sewing and crafting life but as you need to have a second mortgage to afford one I had rather resigned myself to the fact it just wasn't going to happen. Even on Ebay they cost too much, especially if you factor in postage.

Anyway, you can tell by the colours that this is a somewhat vintage model. Late '70s or early '80s, going by that green. It belonged to the manageress of one of the local charity shop and she donated it to raise funds for the shop. I was on my way to the bank, saw it in the window and was in there like a rat down a hole, belive me. It was £50, which is about a quarter of what they cost on Ebay let alone anywhere else, so Hubby agreed that yup, I could have it for my Christmas present, even though we had really agreed just to give each other small things this year.

Yessssss......

Ohhh, I am pleased with it. Can you tell? I am dead chuffed, as we used to say back at school. Sod the perfume and diamond jewelry (not that I would have got them anyway, lol) for Christmas. I'm happy!

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Oliver's Big Day.-Update.

Update. Yes, he's back, half an ounce or so lighter but really doesn't seem to care that his chances of fatherhood are now gone forever. He's running around like a mad thing chasing a feather I got for him, and stuffing his face with any food he can find.

And Paws is happy to have him back. He's sniffed and licked Oliver all over and let Oliver eat from his dish, which is practically unheard of!

Oliver's Big Day.


Oliver is six and a half months old this week and That Day has arrived. He's down at the v-e-t's getting his little gingerbits removed.

The other one (whose bits were gone before he arrived) is wandering around the house like a lost soul looking for Oliver everywhere, and coming up onto my desk to meep at me anxiously. Oliver is gone, he keeps telling me. Lost. Paws has never been alone in this house before. He's always had at least Oliver to keep him company. The big hairy one is not as brave as he looks...he wants his pal back. Please?

Monday, December 08, 2008

Literary Blog Fodder.

Lifted from Liz's blog....

This meme is originally from the Big Read. Apparently they reckon most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. (I think this is pretty appalling, meself. Even my twelve year old has read more than that...and he's got a PC, Wii and a PS2!)

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read (I'm going to asterisk these - Blogger doesn't like underlining)
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Post your list so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.



1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
First three only. Got bored.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
Well, some of it.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare. Some of them anyway.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker*
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Most of them anyway.
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Take my advice and don't bother.
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Flat Battery Day.

I'm having a flat battery day. I always get like this when I've overdone things. I had a very long day at Ingliston on Saturday and though it was all sitting down, it was tiring in it's own way. On Sunday we had two lots of visitors (BIL and my sister) and I had shopping and all the weekend chores to catch up on. Which I didn't so spent Monday doing that. Actually I don't remember a lot of what I did on Monday which is always a bit of a bad sign for me. On Tuesday I was spinning at Haddington, which involves giving lifts to a carless spinner who lives near me...not normally a problem but it does add an hour onto my day. So I was barely back for a 10 minute lunch when I had to go out for Princess's Open Day at school, then had her little friend back for the rest of the day and Brownies, plus grocery shopping in the evening. Then this morning is the early start one for everyone when we all have to go out early to take The Albatross (otherwise known as Lad's trombone) into school.

So I'm sitting here at 10am having been up for three hours, done school run, shopping, second load of laundry in, been to the Post Office for Hubby and...I'm knackered. Flat battery day. What I really feel like doing is going back to bed for a couple of hours but that's not an option as I'm waiting for a parcel delivery. They've tried to deliver once already and if I miss this try then they take it back to the depot and I have to collect it. That's 45 minutes drive each way, urgh. Not doing that!

This afternoon I have a double school pick up (Albatross again) then a fairly brisk turn around to take Lad to rugby practice after an early teatime. Somewhere in between I need to make dinner, make the beds, deal with several loads of laundry and have a shower. (Shower after the parcel has arrived!) That's all I really have to do today. But if I was feeling well, I would also either be at the allotment or I would hoover the house, clean the stairs, tidy up a bit and start doing a few things on the Christmas list, like write a menu plan/shopping list or go up the attic and wrap some pressies and bring the table and tree and boxes of decorations down. I feel stressed at the amount of things I should be doing! Now I know darn well that if I really force myself I could get some of this done but I'll still feel as rough tomorrow. Whereas if I give myself an easy day I'll hopefully feel more up to things tomorrow.

It's a no brainer, isn't it? So why do I feel so pressurised to do it, rather than make myself a nice brunch and go and sit with some knitting and my feet up for a couple of hours? Why are women so hard on themselves?????????????

Oh, I remember what I did on Monday. (Between chores.) I made Princess her Viking outfit. She was very pleased with it and, though I say it myself, it was the most authentic looking outfit there on the day, if you ignore the fact that the "spun yarn" on the spindle cop is 100% acrylic, lol!