The Donated House

Unsurprisingly, now that I have a room to do crafty things in, my time is mostly spent doing crafty things. However, the weather is starting to look a little more spring-like, so outdoor tasks are back on the menu, including processing what I hope is ALL THE WOOD for next winter.

There’s been a firewood shortage of sorts; I guess lockdown plus winter equalled more cheery fires in people’s living rooms. So I had to buy some seriously fresh-cut wood, which is fine, really, because a) it’s very easy to split when it’s wet and b) it’ll dry better in my kiln than it will in most shed situations.

My kiln is fffuuuuuullllllllll. Like, I hope it doesn’t sink into the mud. But I’m optimistic that this is enough for next winter, since the house is performing so much better this year, being actually pretty well sealed. Today, for example, I have added no heating at all and it’s been 22 in here. Sunshine and longer days!

Anyway, with any luck I will be reporting on a new shed, a giant greenhouse being turned into an outdoor shower and a new solar hot water system in the next few months. With luck and motivation…

Well, if you want to call it progress. Kind of felt like backwards progress when I went from having a bare, newly-varnished floor to this:

But the above chaos represents ALL of my craft/sewing/making things materials being brought down into this room, categorised and put away! Which makes the room look pretty damn full, a little bit cluttered, but basically functional. It’s been a very, very long job. But I now have a usable craft room.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures because this has been SO BORING, but here are some pictures of the recent snow, which has been more fun.

And a picture of my birthday cheeseboard, which was the most fun of all.

Yeah, it’s not that I haven’t been working, it’s just that working is boring and food is much more exciting. Ben made pizza again, and we finally used the pizza shovel, which worked splendidly.

I only managed to get a blurry picture of his pizza though.

Meanwhile, Julian has been on a Japanese cooking kick, so there have been anpan:

Anpan are a sort of brioche bun filled with sweetened mashed beans (I know, yum, right?)

Actually, they were amazing. Julian nailed the brioche dough and the filling technique.

Julian also made some kind of soup bowl thing with dumplings, I forget the names:

And then they made sushi, which turned out amazing. We had to get some fancy stuff online but it actually wasn’t that hard.

Julian assembled them like a pro.

Some of the early attempts were a bit wonky, but the skill progression was clear.

And I made gyoza, which was a bit outside my comfort zone, but turned out to be pretty easy.

I made the wrappers and the filling from JustOneCookbook.com, which Julian has been using to all their recipes.

They turned out almost reasonable in appearance, and delicious, which is the point.

I am totally doing that again. Om nom nom.

If only we could have friends round, it really felt like the sort of thing you do for guests.

Aaaaannnnd in the world of actual work, I’ve been walling in my sewing and craft room.

The last wall to be framed! Except the other two. But they hardly count, they are more like partitions. This is the LAST WALL.

Here’s a before picture:

And an after picture (with totally different lighting.

Here’s a slightly better before from inside the room, looking out over the piazza:

And the after shot, with a window so you can still look down on the piazza.

It’s a long way from done, but I do actually do a bit each day, which is pretty good going for me.

Sigh, so that last post, the next one down the pastwardfacing timeline, that was supposed to go up ages ago. It was missing one picture, so I saved a draft to go take that picture and… well… we’ve all been there.

So here is the actually up to date-ish news/ramblings.

The mosaic:

Took what seemed like centuries. Seriously, I was about ready to just sell the whole house just to avoid having to finish it.

But I finally place the last tile and grouted the lot.

Sadly, I grouted it entirely the wrong colour. Because I’m just so overconfident (still!) that I assume all my blind judgements will be right, or at least fine, and about 90% of the time I’m right.

So it turns out you can dye grout, luckily. Above is the colour it was all supposed to be. Below is the colour it all ended up so that it at least matched. It’s fine. It’s fine.

I actually prefer the darker colour, and the dye worked well, but it is more of a surface treatment than a true dye and it wiped off some of the high points a bit, so I may need to go over it later if it ever pisses me off that much.

Above left is the dyed bit and right is the whole panel I did in charcoal because it turns out mixing charcoal half and half with white equals charcoal.

Anyway, it’s done now and I love it. Mostly I love that I never have to do it again.

In other news, Julian got a bit of a wind up them and scalped a large area of the garden.

And filled it with a couple of inches of gravel.

And laid a bunch of paving slabs ready for the shed that will be the repository of things like horse shit and bark chippings and compost and whatnot. Wheel that wheelbarrow right up to it. How convenient!

And we went on a masked, socially distanced day trip including a walk in the Nidderdale AONB and another walk into York from the nearest free parking. We expected York to be quiet without all those American and Japanese tourists, but actually, it was thronging rather alarmingly. So we stayed in the outer neighbourhoods and visited a quiet cafe.

It was still really, really nice to get out and have something that felt like a holiday. I like being at home, but even I am finding I’ve had enough of it. Look at all the homey stuff we’ve got done, though:

Planted ALL THE BULBS for cheerful joy next spring. If the goddamn badgers don’t strew them across the patio again.

And I made chutney for the first time in my life, with the green tomatoes that were absolutely refusing to ripen no matter how many sustainable living life hacks I threw at them. Well, never mind, they made lovely chutney.

We got so sick of the bluetits stealing the insulation from above the big windows, we finally got around to lining the gable with what used to be Alex-up-the-hill’s kitchen walls.

I’d had this wood stacked in the house for years waiting for this job to make it to the top of the pile. And for Ben to be around and willing. So much easier if he’s willing to be the one up the ladder. I’m such a wus these days regarding heights.

Not that I shirked! I addition to preparing all the pieces, I did my stint up the ladder, albeit the shorter one.

Unfortunately it doesn’t photograph well, what with the light/shadow extremes, but it looks amazing and finished and professional.

And it will keep the birds out.

Lastly, it was Ben’s birthday the other day, and I need no further excuse to spend a whole day baking. I love my life, really.

From this delicious pile of stones,

This tempting, desireable heap of extremely heavy slabs…

We are managing to extract, with much huffing and puffing, a paved dooryard.

In other paving news, we will shortly be excavating, filling and paving an area of 8′ x 12′ for this shiny, lovely new greenhouse, which has been donated by the ever-giving Anthony Up-The-Hill.

We had to go take it to pieces small enough to bring in the car or in the case of the wall sections, his van, and it wasn’t a tenth as clean as it looks in the picture, so we did spend two days cleaning all the glass and will spend another two cleaning the metal bits, but it’s a fabulous thing and will make an amazing outdoor shower/winter picnic area when filled with beautiful plants.

Aaaaannnndddd…. I’m still working on the mosaic.

Tom came round and helped with above mentioned stone shifting and then with clearing a load of undergrowth from the woods, a huge and thankless task we’ve been meaning to do for years, since we last saw any sign of the forest floor. There is much more to do, but between that and the rescue plants Alex helped us plant at the foot of the drive, we have some hope of making the approach to the place look less of a tangled wilderness.

Julian found these very promising looking mushrooms while clearing some land today. We thought they must be puffballs, many of which are edible varieties.

But alas, opening them up proved them to be the very inedible earthball variety.

So they are now compost.