Moving closer

Sometimes, even though you're rushing towards an exciting and stressful and life-changing deadline (like moving into your little handmade HOUSE!!!) you need to take a bit of time to go to a fireside fair. Ours was at Quaama Hall this weekend, and is one of 4 seasonal fairs held each year. The last one, the Harvest Fair, was held the day after our building workshop. Needless to say, we were a bit distracted, though I did manage to drop in for a few minutes. The Fireside Fair this weekend was a beautiful, wintery woollen fair with a fire pit and storytelling, a sewing and knitting circle, a spot of door-snake-stuffing, home-made winter soups and stews, singing and dancing and crafts and local foodstuffs and general happiness. We loved it! Olive and I took part in the yarn-bombing of one of the deciduous trees in the yard, making a god's eye (Olive's current favourite colour is orange), 

and a cute little crocheted rose. I learned to make these on the day, and am now super excited to have a new crafty skill under my belt.  

And then it was time to return to working on our little house, which moves ever-closer to move-in-able-ness. People have been warning us NOT to move into a n unfinished house. apparently, if you move into an unfinished house, it never gets finished. I believe that this happens, but I can't see it happening to us. Time will tell, I suppose. For now, we have no choice, really. Whatever state our place is in in 2 weeks time, there'll be a bed perched somewhere in the house, with a family of 4 sleeping (hopefully) soundly. For now, on working days, our leftover bales are still acting as very rustic improvised tables and chairs for our equally rustic lunches of sourdough bread, chunks of cheese and homemade (and Cornersmith-made!) relishes.

Tasks include closing the eaves with mini-orb (the one on the right in the following picture has been done). The mini-orb was left over from the stuff we'd set aside for lining our loft, which we ended up lining with normal-size corry. Turns out sometimes you think something is going to look really great, and then you do it an realise that something else looks even better. Good to be flexible in these times...

Then Peps arrived, and we decided to start working on the cubby house. The upright front legs are some telegraph poles from Eden tip. REALLY heavy and hard, but good legs for a cubby. It's not finished, but was a fun distraction from the 'serious must-do' work of the house.

We continued working on our 'bath garden' landscaping, including these stairs (photo courtesy of Olive), and planting out some more lemongrass, geraniums, tansy, tree marigold and golden raspberries (from freecycle!) to treat ourselves with smells and tastes while we're bathing under the stars.

And gazed at our beautiful winter skies. This photo, like the first in this post, was taken by our little Olive. Perfect.