Things have been rather beige round here of late.

There have been many bread-related experiments - I've produced a passable loaf by hand once or twice and my bread-machine bread is pretty reliable these days. 

Last week's beige experiments were with plaster. 

We are fortunate to have a centre here which encourages women into traditionally male careers in construction and the like, and they run one day courses in all manner of skills. Last year I spent two days learning about car maintenance, and this year there are courses in plumbing, basic electrics, joinery, wallpapering and all kinds of other things. 

But I wanted to learn to plaster. I may have mentioned that our bathroom needs a teensy bit of plastering.  (And the hallway. And the spare bedroom. And the bedroom ceiling. And probably every other room once we've stripped the wallpaper). I did have a go myself, reading instructions and watching videos and, well, you could tell it hadn't been done by a professional... 

So off I went to spend a day learning how to do it properly. 

My first layer wasn't brilliant (but then I'm told they rarely are).

After lunch and a second layer, things were starting to look a little better. 

And after a tea break and a good smoothing down, my wall looked positively professional!

Not perfect, perhaps, but if I'd paid someone to do that I wouldn't be demanding my money back. I'm hooked. 

Ok, so this 6 foot x 4 foot board took me almost 6 hours in total. And I had a tutor watching over my shoulder the whole time. And the walls in my house definitely are NOT as flat as plasterboard (although I'm now contemplating entirely covering the lot with plasterboard and starting again). 

But really? For a first proper attempt at plastering I reckon that's pretty good. I'm contemplating a career change - there's got to be a market for reliable, cheery plasterers out there... 

This week has been filled with berries. Peter came home from a friend's house with a gift of home grown strawberries, my mum picked our crop of gooseberries and redcurrants, and another friend turned up with a tiny percentage of her giant raspberry haul (swapped for some of our gooseberries). Not bad at all. 

The strawberries were easy to deal with - they went in porridge for two breakfasts in a row. The gooseberries and redcurrants sat glaring at me from the windowsill for two days, threatening to rot where they sat and be completely wasted. Eventually I forced myself to sit down in front of two episodes of The Waltons (well, it's nice to have a bit of homely inspiration) and separated the redcurrants from their stalks, which was most satisfying. 

I'm afraid I couldn't face doing anything with them after that, so they've gone straight in the freezer, along with the gooseberries. 

Today brought even more berries - fortunately of the low-input-required variety. 

A couple of years ago I'd planted some raspberries and tayberries in a corner of our little garden, and had been rewarded with... not very much at all. This year we've been a little bit more fortunate. 

Yep, that's our entire raspberry and tayberry crops, combined. 

It didn't take me long to process them, or pile on a dollop of yogurt and porridge, and very tasty they were too. 

It bet by next year there'll be a grand crop - but I'm hoping we'll have moved on by then. Still, it'll be a nice surprise for the new folk. 

Sometimes it feels like we're not getting anywhere at all, and then all of a sudden things leap forwards and I don't know where anything is any more. 

This afternoon I came downstairs to see decimated bookshelves, and a kitchen full of boxes. And, it turns out, yet another wall to be painted. 

It helps to document the chaos. It makes it feel like it won't last forever.

But other things won't last forever either. These little corners of rooms, so carefully crafted over years, will soon be in dismantled, and while we might put the same objects in another room in the new house, they'll never be exactly the same again. 

So in the coming weeks I'm going to share corners of our home, how they are now, and as they change. There's no perfection here. I'm not tidying up for these photographs. You'll see dust and broken walls, piles of things that have no home and probably more stuff than any sane person should have. 

But it'll give you a glimpse of how we live, and what it's like to pack this crazy world into tiny boxes (and maybe show why I'm sometimes a little overwhelmed). 

I'm hoping it'll give me a new appreciation for what we have, and excitement for what's to come. 

Eventually.

I'm not very good at sitting still. Not even when I should know better. 

This week was one of those times. A small twinge, then a few more, then finding it hard to get out of a chair. But did I take the day off work? Nope. I loaded up my rucksack and spent nearly two and a half hours taking two buses and a train to the office, where I endured many concerned comments about my lack of mobility and eventually parcelled myself to the NHS walk in centre. 

Apparently my back, loyal lugger of all things inappropriately heavy, had decided to go into spasm. 

Ah well, life has to carry on, and I had a dinner party to get to, so dosed up with extra strength painkillers and muscle relaxants I hopped (slowly) onto another bus, laughed my way through dinner, then promptly became rather poorly. Eventually I felt well enough to go home, so my legs gave way in the train station, and despite much giggling as my 70 year old colleague commandeered a wheelchair and we raced through the station, I sadly missed the train and ended up staying overnight at a friend's house. 

Still, I'm home now, and the drugs are doing their work, and I'm slowly and not-very-patiently learning to be patient. 

My mum visited yesterday, and joined Peter in telling me off and giving me sensible lists of Things Not To Do. I confess I'm not a good patient, and get very frustrated when all around me are things to be done that I'm not capable of doing myself, so I'm afraid my mum was given a bowl and ordered to pick the rather abundant gooseberries and redcurrants that have been overtaking the garden. 

I haven't yet found the enthusiasm for doing anything with them, mind you, but at least they aren't being eaten by the birds. 

It's been glorious weather round here lately, and I've been doing some gentle pottering amidst bouts of lying down feeling sorry for myself. 

Today we've been to a cafe for lunch, and yesterday to a small local carnival. My friend came for tea last week bringing flowers from her own garden, which is in much better shape than mine. 

My poor garden is neglected, and currently much trampled by the roofers, who have finally (hopefully!) fixed the leak in our roof. This feels like a HUGE leap forwards in our house-fixing escapades (which are going far too slowly for my liking), and means that we can now get a plasterer to cover the bedroom ceiling. Most exciting. 

In the meantime I'm thinking longingly of the bike ride we went on last weekend and wondering how long it's going to take before I can move around freely again. 

A few weeks ago I started a mini ripple blanket for a friend's baby. You might remember I had a few false starts, but once I got going, it rippled along most speedily and enjoyably. 

I've got plenty of wool, so I didn't buy any new for this project, which meant the size of my blanket was dictated by the amount of wool I had. Fortunately it got to a reasonable size before I ran out. 

I followed these instructions to make the edge, and I so very much wanted to use all three colours to edge it. I bravely set off with a row of red... 

... and it did look rather fabulous, but sadly there just wasn't enough to go all the way round. How vexing! Still, three rows of purple (for some reason I had FAR more purple than anything else) and it was all finished. 

TaDa! 

I confess I'm not usually that diligent about blocking, but as I still haven't heard whether this baby has arrived (and it's not really the done thing to pester the parents-to-be too much), I reckoned I probably had time. 

So now it's all nicely flat with non-wavy edges, folded neatly and awaiting the little one's arrival. 

I had ever such fun making this. Such a small, manageable project, not too much to think about, no complicated stitches, not too much to think about. It wasn't really a carry-on-the-train project (too much swapping of wool colours) but it was nice for sitting with for an hour of an evening, winding down. 

I'm wondering what else I can start now (all the timing reminding myself I'm meant to be sorting the house so we can move...).

Have you had anything cheery on your crochet needles lately?

This was just a few short hours ago, sat on a stripy deckchair on the pier at Skegness. 

We weren't even there for 24 hours, but goodness me I feel well rested and rejuvenated, just from that sort time away from the chaos at home. 

We took a hotel room looking towards the sea, and spent the evening drinking gin and tonic and watching the local festival in the park from the comfort of our easy chairs. 

This morning, we pottered around the charity shops, lounged in our deckchairs, ambled around the fair, and then came home. 

I do love a traditional British seaside resort. You can call them tacky if you like, I don't care. Ice cream and doughnuts and chips, seagulls and brightly coloured buckets and spades, and novelty glasses and just-too-much sand in your sandwiches, gaudy music, fairground hot dogs and amusement arcades. 

I confess we did have a small go on the 2p machines in the arcade, and I'm sorry to say we didn't win back any the eight pence we spent between us. It seems gambling rarely pays after all. 

I don't know how going away for just one night can feel like a week sometimes, but this time it did, and it's reminded me to do it more often. Not necessarily the seaside, not necessarily a hotel - sometimes an overnight visit to a friend is all it takes, or camping in the car somewhere new. Just getting away from the day to day, from the towering piles of Things To Sort Out that are threatening to take over our house. Once a month getaway from now on I think!