We are home.

But you probably already guessed that from my previous post.

Yes, we are finally in our partly completed abode. We are living in what would have been the original house when the villa was new. Apparently those little lean-to things (like our previous kitchen) were a later addition. On top of that you would have had to make your way out the back to some sort of long-drop toilet presumably. As for baths and showers, my guess is a giant metal tub in front of the fire was brought out once a month whether you wanted it or not.

We now have five rooms in various states of functionality.
Our bedroom, which has the bay windows, is now almost fully functional with just two cupboard doors yet to be installed.
The second bedroom is 100% functional.
The temporary living room is 100% functional. (It is now trying to convince us it should stay as a reserve lounge cum library once the real one is completed.)
The bathroom is 100% functional.
The temporary kitchen really is temporary and will be going once the new addition at the back is completed. At that point the builders will come in and remove plumbing and old kitchen benches, and restore it into the semblance of a single bedroom.

Now when I say 100% functional, what I really mean is, it can be used and is being used and I am not expecting to see a builder within it's bounds for any form of work until I need a new brain transplant. What it doesn't mean is curtained or decorated in any fashion.
That's not entirely accurate, our bedroom is curtained for privacy and the ability of Miss O to sleep during the day. The curtains are, however, tacked up black out curtains temporarily nicked from work's training room. Not quite the quintessential mode in decorating, dahlings, but apparently really nice curtains made for our windows out of nice fabric and done by a professional organisation can take anywhere up to 5 weeks. There is no way I will be parading around my bedroom for 5 weeks with every Thomas, Richard and Henry able to gawk in at me as though I were a goldfish on display. So nasty old black out curtains it is. Needs must.

Do I need to mention that the curtains that were here before we moved out were perfectly serviceable (not flash), but between then and now they appear to have disappeared? Builder told us while we were in Tauranga that he would try to "salvage" the remaining curtains. Now why would we believe him? I ask you! And why would we think that they would be careful around the curtains, as none of the windows were actually going to be involved in the renovation process?! Hmm. Naive, definitely naive. Another lesson learned - and passed on.

Okay, I have managed to locate our SanDisk and upload some old photos to the Flickr Album. I have chosen a selection to give you an idea of how it is coming along. I do really promise you that we don't normally live in quite such a mess (well, most of the time anyway ;) ).


The backyard after demolition.


The backyard in progress.


The front bedroom on the day we left. Now the temporary living room.



Then we have the rooms seen in my earlier entry.


Our Bedroom (front bedroom with bay window)


The hallway minus Benny but with added rubbish and things without a home to go to.


The old living room, now the new computer room / junk storage facility.

Are you getting the impression that we have crammed all of our belongings into a much smaller space than they originally took up? Yes? You think so?

Keep chanting... "Only two months to go...only two months to go..."

P.S. Builder now says that the roof of the new addition may be up by the end of the week. (Don't chuckle - you're starting to sound as cynical as I am.)

NaBloPoMo is blown

It is self-explanatory really.
I didn't manage it. I tried, really I did, but I just couldn't fight the forces of darkness. i.e. the Builders

Since my last entry I have had four different abodes, only one of which gave me easy access to the internet. One didn't even bother to offer it, for goodness sakes!

Can I have a good moan again? Please? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Okay, since the last renovation update and bleat combination things have been happening. Not happy things I must warn you. Things to do with paint. Things to do with fumes and a three month old baby. Things to do with people who are barely one step above Neanderthal with regards to using that large thing balanced precariously on top of their shoulders.

If I said to you...

Let me know when it will be okay to move in. I won't tell you when we want to move in again. I want you to tell me when it will be in a fit state for us to move in, so call me and let me know, okay?

Would your reply have been...

I'll check with the painters and get back to you.

Then later that day call and say...

Next Monday will be fine.

Then, should your painter be a simpleton and incompetent with time and work attendance, you wouldn't bother to telephone me back and say...

Actually the painter has stuffed up and won't be finished until the weekend before the day I said would be okay to move in. That means you really ought to stay out until the following week.

Meaning, of course, that we drive up from Tauranga expecting to be able to move in on the Tuesday. (We're not stupid you know. If they say Monday, they mean they'll be doing "last minute things" on Monday.)

So we drive up on Sunday intending to stay overnight in abode choice number one until Tuesday (Mr O needs to be in Auckland for work on Monday). So far, so good. Mr O arranges for assistance to move our things in on Tuesday and two friends offer assistance which is gratefully accepted. On Sunday night we take a sneak peek at the place and notice the overwhelming smell of paint fumes. Enamel, you know. For the doors and trims. Standard Operating Practice. The builder is still onsite, which is reassuring. Apparently the painter took until the Sunday (and as it turned out, the Monday) to complete the paint job. The builder says he has spoken with the painter, who tells him that the house will be fine after a couple of days airing.

Okay we say. We'll see what things are like on Tuesday and then decide what to do. In the meantime we retire to our temporary abode and reflect on the house and information provided. Tuesday rolls around, and we decide that perhaps we should check with the paint manufacturer as the scent of enamel has not really faded away to nothing in two days of airing. Mrs O phones, is put through to customer services who put her through to the Help Desk who puts her through to the company chemist. Who then says that you really want to leave it seven days "just to be safe", although it might be okay sooner. Right. Seven days. That would be next weekend, then. Options are take it day-by-day, or just up sticks and head back to Tauranga. Desperation sets in. This is our third attempt to move back into the house. There is no way we will head back to Tauranga (even if it kills us), we will play it day-by-day. Each day is more excruciating than the last. We are unable to extend our stay at the first accomodation of choice - they have no rooms. We head to second abode of choice, but they only have room for a night. Move just up the road with the real hope of moving in the next day. Hopes are dashed by the scent of paint. Give up the day-by-day fight and opt to stay in abode number 4 for the next two days and move in on the weekend - seven days after the supposed final coat of paint. (Touch-ups not included.)

Well done you've made it this far. Welcome to our past week experience.

Reflections

Today I was stumped. I didn't have anything to write about.
Novelty does not picture very big in my life at the moment, but as I thought about it some more it occured to me that I did have something to write about.

About a week ago I was contacted by someone I haven't seen or spoken with in nearly twenty years. Ouch, did I say twenty? Anyway, it was a very pleasant surprise because for some time now I have been thinking about a number of people I went to school with and wondering what they are doing with their lives. My surprise correspondent was one of them.

My interest in what my old school mates were doing with their lives stems back to almost exactly two years ago and was the subject of my third ever blog posting. It was called The oddness of dreams... and was originally posted on my old blog at Blogspot. It is nice to be slowly working my way through my mental list of folk I would like to catch up with. What was also nice about catching up with Dave is finding out that he is a great photographer and he kindly pointed me to his Flickr stream.

He has something in the order of 1500+ photographs online here, and to give you some idea of why I wanted to share this link I have chosen a sample of my favourites so far.

water on the beak...
buster
Oracle
black & white - take the time to look at the on black version of this, but not if you have an aversion to insects
070707- eyespy - I love the eye colour here, very striking.
attack of the mutant dragon flys...
how many people fit in those boats? - Ooo, ask me. I know this one. Ooo. Ooo. Ooo.

Okay, so that is enough shameless promotion of friends and associates for one day. Enjoy your browsing, as I'm sure you will end up doing.
See you all tomorrow.

Renovation - IV

Today we were going to move back into the body of our house.

The key word in that sentence is "were".
Upon arriving home after the two and a half hour car journey with Mr O's step-father and my father, Mr O is not amused to find that the body of the house is not in a fit state to move furniture in, let alone us and a baby.
The painting was not completed, the wardrobes had not been fitted out, the bathroom wasn't finished, one of the light fittings hadn't been moved, some of the workmanship left a bit to be desired and the place was generally a dusty great mess.

This was not the state of affairs we were expecting, and it turns out to have been a good decision not to have gone up with the baby today, but to have enlisted family assistance with furniture moving instead. Otherwise I would have been a very, very cranky client. As it was I was less than impressed with the huge waste of everyone's time today.

The builder was supposed to have everything ready for us to move in last weekend, but that turned out to be impossible due to the hardening time for the re-polished floors. Today is 6 days after the last coat was applied, with day 7 being the final curing day. We spoke with the builder about moving in today when we saw him in Auckland last Thursday and he didn't say a word about things being unlikely to be finished.

We agreed to move out for a couple of weeks, maybe three to allow the builders full and unfettered access to the interior of the house. In return for this we expected the interior part of the work to be shortened by a week or slightly more. It has now been six weeks. I want to return to my own home. I do not wish to continue to be a house guest with my parents. I think they have been extremely generous and understanding, and insist that we haven't worn out our welcome. However, six weeks is over my limit of friendly stays, and it is well past time that we were out of their hair.

For anyone out there who works in customer service please take heed of the following advice:

Don't just say "Yes" to every request the customer makes. It really p*sses us off when what you say doesn't match what you do. Only say "Yes" if you know that it is a 100% guarantee that it will be a "Yes". And, if you discover that it isn't going to be a "Yes", then for the sake of everyone's time and efforts, make a simple telephone call and say the "Yes" has turned into a "No" because of [insert reason]. Otherwise your "Yes" should remain a "Yes", even if you have to break your own back to ensure it is. That is the essence of good customer service.

That, unfortunately, is my bleat for today.

Oh, and the builder is suggesting that all these little bits and pieces will be completed by the end of the weekend, so we will be 100% able to move in on Monday.

Hah. I'll believe that when I see it with my own two eyes.

Miss O in photographs

I have just added a whole load more photographs of Miss O to her grandparent's computer, so I thought I would share a few with you. Thank goodness for digital cameras. If I had to process the number of photographs that we have taken over the last three months we would be bankrupt. It also helps when you can keep snapping away in an effort to get not only the elusive smile, but also the relative stillness required for your cute baby shots.

So, here are a few thumbnails for you to take a look through. As usual, just click on the photograph if you want to go to Flickr and see it in different sizes.

Photograph 1: 12 weeks old and a smile for the camera.

Photograph 2: Trees Need Thought

Outside the window is a small Kowhai tree. In the breeze its graceful movement attracts her attention whenever she is in the living room. It looks like it requires a lot of thought this watching a tree in the breeze.

Photograph 3: The Hat to end all Hats

This hat is something of a faux pas on my part. Mr O and I were in town on our own and spotted this hat. Upon closer inspection I insisted that the XXS would be too small for Miss O, whereas Mr O insisted that the XS would be too huge for her. It is now the running joke that I don't even know my own daughter's head size. Here we see Miss O wearing it in the turned-up style (in order to see and be seen). She'll grow into it...

...maybe by next summer. 8O

Knots & Crosses - Ian Rankin

Knots and Crosses is my latest attempt to find an author who can hold my attention for more than the few minutes I have to sit and read at the moment. It comes from my parents' mini-library collection. This shouldn't be a surprise, if you know that they are Scottish and lived for a part of their lives in Edinburgh.

This is the first of the Rebus novels.
I can see now why he has been able to write more and why the Wikipedia entry for Inspector Rebus mentions that the books account for 10% of all crime book sales in the UK.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, my memory and attention span seem to have become considerably shorter over the last few months and only now seems to be easing slightly. This means that an author who cannot write in a gripping and compelling manner gets, at best, the first few chapters read before I give up trying to remember who is who and what is going on.

No problem with Ian Rankin then. The chapters are short, pithy and easy reading. I like the author's style. People and events are described, but the author has left plenty of space for my own imagination and knowledge to filter into the whole reading process. It is not pretty reading. The characters are not always to be viewed in a positive light, but neither do they seem to be vilified for their weaknesses and foibles.

Knots and Crosses is centred around a police investigation into the disappearance and then murders of four young girls in Edinburgh. It lays a nice introduction into the character of John Rebus, weaving his past and present lives into the story of the murdered girls. Rebus is brought into the ongoing investigation along with other officers as the search for the killer intensifies and there the real story begins. It is clear where some of the plot is leading, but how it is to reach it's conclusion is the key to the later part of this novel.

I can give this a hearty recommendation. I found the book a compelling read. I didn't want to put it down as I drew closer to the ending. I was pulled into the book and the character, and just as swiftly the end came and it was over. I will be reading more Rebus novels. I hope they offer similar fare.



4 out of 5.

Renovation - III

I have trawled through the photographs that I have so far and have come up with some images of work in progress.

This is our old bedroom looking through where the fireplace used to be. On the other side is the Old Living room, where the ornamental fireplace used to be. All gone. New walls are now in their place.



Here is a photograph of Bedroom One. It's taken from the doorway, but if you look at the first Renovation entry you will see that the fireplace against this wall (and the ratty old cupboard/closet with louvre door) is missing from this photograph.



These are progress photographs of the old study/single bedroom that is transforming itself into our new bathroom. Currently the neighbours have a nice view in the window, but that will soon be rectified with a carport and a new discrete glass window.




And our final photograph for this entry is the backyard. Those of you who are familiar with our home will recognise the absence of large wooden deck, planters, etc. Oh, and also the rather large L-shaped lean-to that once housed our kitchen and dining room, as well as our bathroom and laundry.


Yes. We did embark on rather extensive renovations right around the time the baby was due. In fairness we thought the council would be somewhat quicker in allowing the building permit, but then we can be very naive and optimistic about some things. Lesson learned.

New reading material

Being away from home has meant not only access to SkyTV, but also to a mini-library of books too. It's a good place for me to visit. My parents have fairly distinctive taste in reading material which doesn't actually match my own, and they are forever buying new books. This is good. It means that I have the opportunity to try authors I would otherwise pass by on bookshelves elsewhere.

Here's the selection of books for my reading pile so far:

• Knots and Crosses - Ian Rankin


• Strip Jack - Ian Rankin


• The Last Temptation - Val McDermid


• Kick Back - Val McDermid


• Warriors of the Dragon Gold - Ray Bryant


• Vadim - Donald James


• Samurai William - Giles Milton


• The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber

All are new writers to me so I am looking forward to seeing if I can find another "must read all their books" author.

I have begun Knots and Crosses and am finding the reading easy going. This is a good thing as my time for reading has shrunk considerably, and my memory seems to have gone with it. Hopefully I will remember enough about each of these books to scribble out a short review once I am done.

Do you have an issue?

If you have an issue you would like to share with the world in general or your local MP, you might be interested in visiting mySociety and their sites:

• FixMyStreet


• HearFromYourMP


• PledgeBank


• NotApathetic


• WriteToThem


• TheyWorkForYou

Now, most of these sites are specifically for the United Kingdom, but you can set up or support pledges at PledgeBank for your own country of origin. Currently all of the pledges for New Zealand have been met, and I can't think of anything I'd like to start rolling. If you have any suggestions for a pledge, leave a comment, and I may have a go at this.

If you aren't feeling the need to bring issues to the attention of your local MP, or community, but perhaps need to keep yourself in line with regards to a promise you have made, then the mySociety folks have created a website you might like to look at. It is the HassleMe website, an online nagging service that you set up for yourself. It's true. You can become your own mother.
I am about to try it out this week so I'll let you know if the hassle did it's job, and how well it did it.

Happy nagging everyone!

Renovations - II

Unfortunately I don't have any photos to update you with today. When we arrived to take a brief look through the house this morning the floor sanders had just finished the last coat of polish, so there was no way to go into the house for snaps. I will take a look and see if we have any from Mr O's visits over the past couple of weeks that give you some idea of the changes.

At lunchtime today however, we met the builder and kitchen manufacturer to nail down the design and colours and materials, etc. We are being exceedingly boring and staying with the neutral theme as much as possible. We are having colours called espresso and oyster for the cabinets. And get this... we are having a feature wall in our kitchen! I didn't know there was such a thing, but a couple of Trends magazine issues later and we figured this would be a good way to break up the design a bit so it won't be too bland and boring.
But the thing that will be Mr O's pride and joy (and bane of his life I suspect) is the funky 2.5 metre wide, 750mm high, bright red glass splashback that will be going across the wall behind our stove. No doubt it will make for cleaning nightmares, but he was keen on it and it is primarily his domain so I wasn't about to argue too hard.

I can also tell you that we are planning to move into the body of the house next Wednesday, all being well. And that should mean a return to broadband access, and easier blogging for me too. In the meantime, see you all tomorrow.

Renovations - I

Finally I have a couple of before photographs to show you.

These rather bad photos were taken on the morning we moved out, so the rooms are partially bare, partially furnished with the last couple of items.



This is the fireplace and dodgy closet in the front bedroom with the bay windows. Both of which are no longer there now.



This is the old hallway with Benny in the foreground and all our junk waiting to travel with us in the living room. Looking through the door into the old kitchen and out into the back yard. The hallway doorway is no longer there and neither is the old kitchen and bad lino. In its place is a large, long, full height hallway; a newly enclosed room and the old kitchen is currently now a concrete pad and some framing.



This is the old living room looking from the kitchen door across the fireplace. The fireplace no longer exists, the french doors are gone and this area is enclosed with a new wall.

We are planning a short visit to home tomorrow, so hopefully I will be able to show you these rooms from about the same vantage point in tomorrow's blog entry.

Miss O’s nearly 3 months old

Today we travelled up from Tauranga to Auckland for Miss O’s latest Plunket check-up. We had thought that the initial stages of our home renovations would have been completed by now and that we would be firmly ensconced in the modified and newly decorated body of the house. Unfortunately that was not to be. And on talking to the floor sanding men today it looks like we may have to stretch our return date out another week to ensure our newly re-polished floors don’t have lovely dents from the feet of our furniture or the talons of our dogs. Give a builder two or three weeks and they take five or six!

Anyway, this morning at a respectable 7:30am we set out for Auckland. Our young Miss had a wonderful night of sleep, starting at 9:30pm and finishing at 6:15am.
Are her parents happy with her overnight sleeping patterns? Definitely.
Are we getting adept at tag-team mornings? Definitely.
Do we need to pack the kitchen sink for a couple of days away? Definitely.

After a quick stop for fuel and coffee (make mine decaf thanks) at Waihi, we made respectable time until Miss O demanded her morning tea half an hour early. If you think her demands can be put off for any length of time, I suggest taking a quick look at the photograph called “Why talk if you can shout” in my Flickr album. To accommodate this request we had a roadside snack at the little café just to the south of Maramarua. When I say “we”, I actually mean “she”, of course.

Finally after our enforced pit stops we actually made it to the Plunket clinic right on time for our appointment. Will miracles never cease?
This was our first visit with our regular Plunket nurse, and she turned out to be a cheery English lady who clearly likes her job. As for the young Miss, she was on her best behaviour. This time there was no peeing all over the examining table, unlike her visit to the Plunket bus that came around when she was 6 weeks old, and she even managed to give out that rare commodity – a smile for a stranger.

At eleven and a half weeks old Miss OhWaily is the proud owner of the following statistics:

Weight: 5.35 kg
Length: 57 cm
Head: 39.5 cm

She also warrants the following comments:

Good head control - holds head well, weight on forearms
Hips – slight uneven creases

Actually this last one is bum creases, which apparently indicate whether she is likely to have hip issues that need to be investigated further. Personally I’m glad that I don’t need to be subjected to this examination. I shudder to think where and what my creases, at my age, might be up to.

We were also given a little check list of what will be coming next at a baby near you.

Sight is nearly fully developed.
Judging by the way she nearly screws her head off to follow you around a room, I’d say she’s pretty well developed in the vision department. Not to mention the fact that either her vision is pretty near 100% or she has ESP and can tell when the bedroom door has been very gently and silently pushed an inch or two open so you can check if she’s asleep. This generally goes something like: “Hah. I caught you in the act of checking on me. Guess what? I’m awake and I seeee you!”

Longest period of sleep is at night.
We’ve been blessed in this department, even though we could have done with her body clock setting its wake-up signal to a little later than 4:00am most mornings.

Get noticeably stronger.
Yes, my little finger loses all sensation when she is gripping it in her absent-minded death lock.

Able to hold head up and sit up.
She’s been able to hold her head up since birth to a fair degree. But now she doesn’t suffer too badly from the speed wobbles and the noddy-dogs unless she is tired and needing a good sleep. Sitting up has become attractive since she discovered the Kowhai tree in my parents’ garden and (unfortunately) the TV.

Rolling around floor, enjoys kicking.
She has kicked consistently from pre-birth until now, so no change there then. Rolling around the floor is currently hampered by the size of her rather large, well padded nappies. We have a small semi-waterproof mat, but it is still a bit of a worry when it’s not your own carpet that could, and mostly likely will, be peed on. But even this has not stopped her from doing her best impression of a horizontal weeble.

Can become more vocal.
More vocal than what? At the rate this child is talking, it is surprising she hasn’t got a chronic hoarse throat. Apparently it’s a case of ‘like mother like daughter’ on this one. Speech will not be a problem I feel.

Babbling in word sounds of 2 syllables.
Just two? Are you sure about that? I could have sworn that in full flight she has managed to string together at least 6 or 7 sounds without taking a breath. I refer you to the comments just above.

In summary, Miss O is doing well, talking up a storm and generally altering her parents’ lives in untold good ways. Coming up to three months of parenthood is something of a minor milestone and looking back on all the things that she and we have learned in that short time completely amazes me.
Parenthood truly is an awesome journey. I’m glad we got on the ride, it’s fun, scary, exhilarating and completely rewarding.

Only a whole lifetime to go…

The Baby Chart: A Memory Aid for Mothers

I'm sure I have confessed elsewhere to being somewhat anal retentive about information, so this post should come as no surprise to those who know me or have read enough of the blog to have made an accurate assessment of my personality.

As a new mum I have found that a lack of memory seems to be one of the side effects. When asked by my midwife how many feeds Miss O had been having in her first week at home I happily stated the regulation numbers of 7 or 8. Unfortunately the scale did not match this and the little Miss did not show the weight gain one would expect from such a number of feeds. At that point, partly because I felt guilty at the low weight gain and partly because it occured to me that I really, really didn't know for sure how many times a day my little one was eating, I decided that my list-making mania would be allowed out into the light.

My first forays into this was just a pad and pen, noting down when she started to feed, when she stopped, and which side she fed on (because I kept forgetting this each time too). That worked just fine for a month or two, and then as her development progressed it became possible to have playtime. That meant things like tummy time became more important to her. And now the Plunket nurse asks questions about number of feeds, wet and poopy nappies, tummy time and other developmental issues.

So what was this poor, memory-challenged mother to do? Easy. Spend fifteen minutes on the computer and generate a memory aid to beat all memory aids. No more scruffy pen and paper notes, oh no. This had to have colours, dates, and separate sections for the important playtime items like tummy time.

Nevermind the idea that mothering should be all instinct. Rubbish.
Instinct, schminstinct. That only takes you so far. If you can't remember what that darned instinct did 3 hours ago, how can you possibly trust it! I mean to say!

Anyway, for those of you mothers out there who may be struggling to keep your sanity together and then have to answer authoritatively those questions from Plunket nurse, doctor or other support persons, feel free to download and use the Baby Chart.

It was created originally in MS Excel, but because I am happy here at Wordpress and they only allow certain file types, I have converted it to a doc file for you to download. Feel free to use it as inspiration should you prefer your own headers and important things to remember. If you are feeling generous, find it useful, and have a blog, then a link back here to its creator's blog would be appreciated. Otherwise, enjoy the freedom from random memory failure.

Skinny Bitches are Popular

While thinking about topics to write for the NaBloPoMo it occured to me that I should look to my own blog entries for a bit of inspiration. With that in mind it was easy to leap right to the skinny. Skinny Bitch, that is.

The Skinny Bitch book review is never far away from the top of my most visited and read posts. If you don't believe me, take a look at the sidebar section that tells you what my visitors are reading right now. What makes this of interest to me is the fact that the posts relating to this book are over a year old now. It seems Skinny Bitches are not only popular, but they don't go out of fashion either.

I wondered just how popular they were so I did a quick check of the site statistics and find that being a Skinny Bitch is over four times more likely to get you a visit than your next nearest rival in the world of Oh Waily's musings.

What does it say about our world that a book with a provocative title about eating as a vegan should get that many visits on an ongoing basis?  Hmm, it is food for thought.

I loved this book. I gave it a 4 out of 5 on my rating scale. I thought it was a catchy, must-read-this-book title. I thought it was a great way to drag people into a topic they would not necessarily approach if it had been called something mundane like... "Become a vegan and get skinny" or "Stop eating all that processed food and you won't get fat".

It wasn't always a pleasant read. The section on slaughterhouses should increase the number of vegetarians in this world by no small amount. It presented what is probably viewed in regular society as something of an alternative lifestyle in a savvy, cosmopolitan way. The tree-hugging, hair-shirt wearing imagery of vegetarians and vegans gets a bit of a battering courtesy of these two ladies. The ladies in question being Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman.

If you want to read more from Rory Freedman you can take a look at her articles at The G-Living Network. Otherwise if you are willing to wait for me to get the next available copy, I will be reading and reviewing the second installment in the Skinny Bitch series - "Skinny Bitch in the Kitch" when it is released this year. I'll let you know what I think of the recipes and ideas, and perhaps we can all be SBs together.

Noah’s Ark – October Progress

This is the progress to date on my Noah’s Ark cross stitch.


It is coming along fine, but the over-one stitching is a daytime only event as the count of this fabric is a little bit too fine for my eyes to cope with at night.
There is also one other problem with it. I am having a crisis of confidence.
Do I really want to finish it?

The over-one stitching is hard work and I’m now not 100% confident that the animals will look good when they are finished, even backstitched and all. I have even contemplated using the animal squares for Miss O’s name as her first and second names match the number of squares. That would leave the entire alphabet area for her birth details.
For those of you unfamiliar with this pattern, here is a link to the designer’s website and also to a photograph of the design itself.

Oh waily waily waily… I don’t know what to do. Continue on, or revise my decision to use this pattern as a birth announcement/sampler. But what would I stitch instead? Could I bring myself to stitch a prissy pink riot of clichés? I really don’t want to go down that track. If any of you have an alternative pattern idea, feel free to leave a comment with links to the design.

In the meantime I will continue on with the animals until I have either found an alternative design or have convinced myself that the end product justifies the blurred vision.
Oh, while I’m at it asking for suggestions, can anyone point me to a good source of alphabets and numbers that may fit in with the design, as I will need to sort out how I am going to fit all of Miss O’s names and dates into the available space should I keep going with this.

Check back next month for an update and/or the start of the new project.

~~~~~
A list of previous Noah's Ark progress entries can be found here.

The Blogathon begins…

This morning, while reading my regular feeds, I found out that November is NaBloPoMo. (Thanks Aphra)
For those, like me, who haven’t come across this before it is National Blog Post Month. The premise is that you blog every day during November.

Now I know that I can yak for New Zealand, but could I blog that consistently as well? This would be a bit of a trial I felt. Even at my bloggiest I think I have managed maybe two or three entries a week over a month. To put forth enough entries to cover 30 days seemed to be a stretch too far. But I thought I would rise to the challenge, belatedly by one day, and give it my best shot over the next four weeks. I have signed up here for the challenge.

My constraints are:

1. I usually compose and edit my entries online at home – broadband being the wonderful thing that it is. For the next week or so I will be restricted to dial-up so I have to alter my blogging behaviour with offline writing and editing. I’m sure it isn’t as scary as it sounds – especially since I am doing it as I write this. In truth my inner perfectionist will insist on one final edit (or dozen) once I copy this all to the blog, so perhaps it won’t be a cold turkey moment after all.


2. My life currently revolves around a baby and doing laundry. That does not make a huge scope for blogging. I’m sure that my regular readers will not want to know about how cute my baby’s smile is for four blog entries in a row, and neither will they want to know the status of her latest nappy or how many loads of laundry I am now putting through in a week. So while Miss O and life with her may make the odd appearance, I am hopeful of finding other things to write about too.


3. As Miss O is my time-keeper these days it means that I will not have the leisure to dither about in front of the computer as long as I would like or normally take. Perhaps I shouldn’t see this so much as a constraint, but rather a kick in the pants for my Inner Perfectionist to get a move on with her need to edit, re-edit and re-edit yet again. At some point a wailing child will put a halt to her need to fiddle endlessly. Yes, this could be a positive thing I feel.

Right. That’s me then. I will see you all here again tomorrow, with the first “real” instalment for the month. Oh my, now I need to go away and think about what I could possibly have to say…

Urrgle.