You Get The Picture?

Well, a picture paints a thousand words.....
Yes, it is raining and I didn't care that I got soaked having the photo taken!  Hip hip hooray :-)  10 ml in the last 24 hours and more forecast over the next five days.  It is quite amazing the impact it has had on us, we are cheerful and carefree tra la la.

I've been freezing more potatoes.  Remember a while back I parfried gazillions of chips and froze them?  They are pretty good but a bit greasy though, although I've been refrying them when we eat them, next time I shall oven cook them when we are having them with dinner, which should be better I think.  This time I did wedges.  I cut up about 4 kilos of potatoes, parfried them for four minutes (as opposed to the ten minutes I did the chips for), drained them, sprinkled them with salt and spices, then froze them.  I oven cooked a batch yesterday and they are pretty good.  Next try I will parboil rather than parfry and freeze - it will be interesting to see how the texture is.

I've been mucking around in the sewing room a bit.  Another set of curtains is in progress, ho hum, but on a more fun note I've been making a few more Kansashi flowers.

Most of the flowers went into a box but I used six in the making of two little girl bags as a present for two special little granddaughters, Stevie and Riley, who I'll be seeing in a few weeks.  :-)

 I've started a new embroidery project,  blackwork sampler.  I have a big file of patterns so I'm poking through that, choosing bits and pieces that appeal to me and putting them together.  Enjoyable.

Lord Neo has declared us acceptable as his slaves and is right at home.

He has his own app and works hard at trying to beat his high score.  :-)
This may have been a bad idea however, as he now thinks he can help with anything that is being done on the iPad......

He's growing fast!  Currently 3.5 kilos, and is off to the vet on Tuesday for his little operation.  Here he is, with silent but obvious instruction to me - "Slave, get on your knees and remove my ping pong ball from under the oven!"

Steve, alias Mr Construction, has been having lots of fun.  It started with his friend Mel bringing down a couple of old machines.  I hope I get this right, this one is a thickener, planer and saw, and wasn't working.  Steve expected to need a new motor for it, but as fortune would have it, he had a look at the plug, and found it was wired wrongly.  A few brief and minor repairs and hey presto, it works!

Mel also brought him this, a Triton saw.  Don't ask me what it does, cuts things I expect. :-) Steve is in raptures over these things and has all sorts of things planned.  Thanks Mel!

Mel also brought Steve some pieces of pine to work with, wonderful!  And Steve's friend Andy gave him some beautiful old jarrah too.  It's like Christmas in the shed!  Thanks Mel and Andy!

Steve started cutting the jarrah into planks with one of those machines, the colour has come up beautifully.  His plan is to make a table for under the verandah.

He made himself a very useful sectioned tray from the pine, to store his screws and nails and associated bits and pieces in.

 Now he has the fun task of sorting trillions of bits of crap into order and symmetry.

 He also got busy with more pine and made something for the house.

Isn't this cool, a storage box for potatoes and onions, on handy 360 degree castors.  Perfect for the pantry and it's nice and big, stores heaps and heaps of potatoes.

 Here it is with the lid open.  Clever boy :-)

Steve is also awaiting yet another new toy!  He has stashed away all his birthday money and ordered one of these, let me get this right, it's a metal cutting band saw.  He is very excited, apparently it will make his life a lot easier, no more hacksawing futilely at metal bars.

Well, the wind is howling, it's grey and dismal outside, with bursts of rain, and I am so freaking happy! :-)