Tank, Tank, Here Comes The Tank

I've just checked the temperature in the shed, it's a chilly 11 degrees for 2 o'clock in the afternoon.  All night and all day it has rained and hailed, but that's okay because we have moved water out of our  full to the brim shed tank into the spanky new tank, so any rain we get is being collected again, instead of being wasted through the overflow pipe.  Look at the hail that has collected in the leaf filter on top of the water tank!

I am warm and cosy as I write this, because I have succumbed to sitting under the top quilt of my bed, with a hot wheat bag on my feet, gloves on my hands and two woollies on.  Luvly :-)  The other option would be to go outside and shovel gravel which warms up a body very quickly, but nah, I'll pass. 

The excitement of a few days ago was the arrival and installation of the new big water tank, to eventually connect to the house when it is built.  Our shed tank is a poly tank of 23000 litre capacity, and the new tank is a colorbond tank of 104000 litre capacity.  The poly tank was delivered and installed as a big plastic container basically, whereas the colorbond tank is built, firstly the walls, then a big liner is spread out inside and attached to the top of the walls, then the colorbond roof is built over it.  I find it amazing that the tank doesn't have a floor, all that water sits inside the plastic liner directly onto the tank bed, which is why it is necessary to make sure the tank bed is prepared well.

 The tank bed is on the left, below where the truck is parked.  The guys are unloading the tank bits.

 First level of the colorbond wall sheets being erected.

Top layer of colorbond wall sheets going up.

Roof struts being put in, just before they started unfurling the liner and attaching it within.  Not long before this the young bloke put his hand out to grab a colorbond sheet that the wind was about to pick up, with the inevitable result of slicing his fingers open.  Ouch!

Here is the ta-da moment.  The tank is finished, 13000 litres has been pumped into it from the shed tank (has to be done immediately to stop any chance of this tank blowing away in a storm!), and Steve has spread a huge heap of chunky blue metal around it to stabilise the tank pad.  A good job done.  :-)

Getting back to the cold, my nose is cold by the way, just sayin'.  I have been on a wee knitting binge in recent times.  I have always wanted to knit more but have never really enjoyed it, it makes my hand ache and I have never felt I've had control holding the needles or the wool.  Finally, after some research, I came upon a different way of knitting.  It's called Continental knitting and the only difference to that and English knitting is that you hold the wool in your left hand.  So my mission was to relearn to knit using this method.  I really like it, I feel like I have control of what I'm doing and it's comfortable for my hands.  So I've tread gently and carefully into beginner's alley and started by knitting myself a pair of fingerless gloves, which is basically a rectangle of knitting seamed with a hole for your thumb.  They are great, I wear them a lot round here.

Then I remembered that Michelle is always freezing at work, particularly her hands, so I continued my practicing by making her a pair too.  Mine are a bit short so I increased the length of the ribbing for hers and I think that works better.  The trickiest thing I found was to cast off loosely enough to allow the glove to be pulled on over your hand.  I can cast on loosely via the long tail cast-on, but have yet to find an equally stretchy cast-off.  I settled upon a method called suspended cast-off which is stretchier than what I used to do but will still keep my ears and eyes open for a better method.

 These are Michelle's fingerless gloves, hasn't she got lovely hands.

I am now trying to knit a beanie thing for a small person, have no idea if it's the right size though, will wait and see how it turns out!