I love that the simpliest things can make you so happy.
Today has been full of simple pleasures.

We have hot water and heating again. The man came round at lunchtime and repaired the boiler, the second bonus was the price he told me the other day was for everything not just the part, which made giving him £200 just that bit easier.

My parents came up today which means the Spring/Summer season has officially begun. My brother lives near my parents, so he gets their help during Autumn/Winter when the weather is bad. When the longer days arrive, and the drive over the hill isn't likely to be bad they come over here. If they want to do anything to their own house it has to be planned weeks in advance.

We got lots of little jobs done today which will make life much better.
Dad drilled a hole through the wall for the tumble dryer. I can now dry clothes without having to have the patio door open. The luxury of warmth. We may also save a fortune on cat food as the neighbouring cats won't be able to get in and have a feast.
We also put shelves up in the hut. It feels like a proper little hut now. I might start spending more time up there. I'm pondering putting some curtains up, getting a comfy chair... and taking up pipe smoking.
Mum did a great job clearing rubbish out of the back of the garden in the bit of land the council have given us. So many bricks and pieces of metal (and the Thompson Twins single "Hold Me Now".) Our old fence has gone to the tip, and the land is all dug over ready for me put plants in... when I get some.

Now to browse the Ikea catalogue and decide what I might buy tomorrow.

A picturey post, because I've been uploading things to Flickr, but not mentioning them here.

First we have pictures of what I got in my first ever Craftster swap, which was a US<->UK swap.

My partner was Raindrops and she sent me some great stuff. I can't remember everything I asked for because I forgot to save the email, but I can't think of anything that she missed. Roughly clockwise from the left we have:
- Local college newpapers
- Darth Vader Chupa Chup thing who raises his sword in vengence
- Beeeeads
- A box with a metal butterfly in the top... she asked if I collected anything :)
- Stripey fabric with flowers
- Stripey fabric that everything is stood on
- A ball of orange yarn
- Peeps (I finally know what they are, marshmallows coated in sugar, but I daren't eat them)
- Mod Podge (It is just watered down PVA)
- A grow your own farm sponge kit
- Hershey Kisses
- 12 packets of Kool-Aid (I'm going to have a dyeing frenzy and make the house smell sickly sweet)
- Knitting Notelets
- A Light up American Flag
- Sharpies I deinitely asked for these, they're great, I've used them loads already, and I'm hiding them from Porl.
- A Crafty Girl tin of mints (which is so cool)

Here's some close up's of the fabric, and the "Crafty Girl" Tin.

Hopefully Raindrops should receive her parcel in the next couple of days, and I can post pictures of what I sent. I had great fun buying all the stuff, I think it might actually be more fun shopping for someone else than for me.

The grow your own farm kit seems to have grown me a Gonzo. Either that, or he's decided he wants to join in this swapping lark. I'll try to explain to him about planes, quarentine and customs, and I suspect he might change his mind.

Next pictures of my entry for round 3 of Craft Idol. I decided that as I'd done 2 different crafts for the first 2 rounds I'd try to do a different craft for each round. The theme was "Party Time" and you had to tie it in to a decade in the last century. I chose 1920's and did a lino cutting of Noel Coward.

I was quite please with the lino cut (even though it confuses the scanner and indents the raised areas), but I ended up rushing to do the finished card and I'm not happy with it. It's not 1920's in the slightest. I wanted to do a nice Art Nouveau border, and I should have done it in black and white, far more 1920's than blue.
Oh well, serves me right for leaving everything till the last minute.

We haven't heard from our little man today, he said he'd call as soon as he had the part for the boiler, but I'll be phoning him tomorrow to check he is coming back.
I'm so cold! The house is so exposed, and gets very little sunlight, so this morning when it was raining and I was shivering under my blanket I decided that the gas fire had to be lit.
Even during winter it has to be an exceptionally cold day before I resort to lighting the gas fire, but 4 days with no heating meant I needed to take the chill off the house.
Now I'm going to bed. It's warm there.

Still cold, but at least I have managed to get a lovely man to come out and look at our not so lovely boiler.

Not good news. The circuit board has gone, not the fan, so I'm currently looking for a nice surgeon to cut off my arm and leg. We haven't got a definite price yet, but we have been warned. *edit - a circuit board costs about £190. Gulp*

I was desperate for a shower this morning after having a particularly "shitty" shift. So at least something good has come out of this (I'm an eternal optimist.) I have finally got around to going swimming. Now I just have to keep going on all my days off. The pool is only open for 1.5 hours during the day, but there were only about 5 people in so it was quite nice. Tomorrow I could be really good and go to Aquaerobics if I get up early enough.... hmm we'll see.

In other news, we have another friend in Stalybridge. Daymaker may yet reform, as our drummer Danny has finally moved into his flat.
I think it's about a year since he first agreed to buy it, but it's taken forever. We went down there for a few drinks on Saturday, gave him a housewarming gift of shelves, and admired the echo. I might have to make him some cushions or curtains. Unfortunatly it was too dark to see the view, he can see our hill too, but he has other town centre type things to look at too, and in the opposite direction a wonderful scene of Cosmo Bingo's roof.

I now have 3 wonderful days off. Hopefully tomorrow the boiler will be fixed. I think Wednesday will be a gardening day as Mum & Dad are offering to come up. Then Thursday (payday) I might take a trip up to IKEA for some wooden drawers. I'm getting ready for the kitchen revamp Dad and I have planned, so I want to get my craft things organised in preparation.

We're spending this weekend reliving our student days in Chapel Street.

Our boiler has died, leaving us with no heating and no hot water, in fact it's worse than our student days because at least we could have hot showers then. At the moment the soonest it looks like we'll get it fixed is Tuesday, and that was off someone who charges £52 an hour! I'm in the wrong job. Tomorrow I'm on a sleep-in, so at least I'll be warm. I'll not be able to have my usual shower when I get in from work on Monday mornng though, it's essential to wash away the feelings and odours of work. I might have to go to Ashton baths on the way home.

Several of the people I've phoned have told me to phone the gas supplies shop in town to see if they can find someone with a couple of spare hours to help me. So far no luck, but I'll try again Monday.

At least the day has warmed up, it's relatively spring-like outside. I'm going to keep myself busy and warm cleaning up the mess I've created over the past few days.

Had a busy day.

I got a fantastic swap package from America... so much cool stuff! I'll post pictures when my camera batteries have charged up.

I finally went to Manchester shopping. (Armed with a very handy map.)

I went to Primark, could get out of there quick enough... so many people! But I bought a pair of jeans (£6) and a t-shirt (£2). Saw some nice t-towels and bedding too. I'll have to go back when I'm in a better frame of mind. Or the kids are back in school.

Then I went to Fred Aldous. My jaw did literally drop. I was very restrained, bought some googley eyes which were on sale, a tatting bobbin because Mum won't lend me hers, and something for my swap partner (not saying what just incase she reads this.) Then asked the lady who served me if I could come and live in the shop.

After that I went to Abakhans. I have been there before but didn't realize, I didn't realize there was an upstairs to it either. I stuck to the bargain bins, I love the idea of buying fabric by weight. I've bought some lovely stuff, and I now just have to decide what I'm keeping and what I can bear to part with.

I then got completely lost trying to find the Tourist Information (you'd think of all places that would be easy to find.) I couldn't find Afflecks either. Hunger and annoyance at people/traffic/cities (especially Manchester) eventually got the better of me so I made a hasty retreat.

All in all it was quite an adventure though, and one I will make again. I'll go earlier next time though and give myself more time to wander, or de-stress in a cafe. I'll definitely keep my map for next time too it was great, even if I did look a complete tourist.

Tomorrow I'm going to do some easier shopping in Ashton, I might even go to Hyde too.

So much for spring.
The last few days we've had almost constant showers, hail and thunder storms. This photo was taken at about 7pm tonight. The thunder was rumbling in the distance, Porl was trying to decide whether to unplug the PC's or whether the storm would miss us.

We did manage to get out into the garden for an hour yesterday and tried to dismantle the fence at the back. We've cleared a lot of rubbish, thankfully it's mostly garden rubbish, we did find a rotten carpet there and I was expecting limbs to fall out of it as I put it in the bin bag. Behind the neighbours garden there's a metal bed base, and a scary doll, I daren't look any further the limbs may have been dumped there. The fence is half down, but it's base is buried and the hail drove us back inside before we could finish digging it up.
My poor little daffodils are trying to flower, but keep getting beaten into submission by the weather.
Maybe tomorrow the weather will hold off for long enough to plant up my seeds... or at least long enough for me to take everything up to the shed and I'll plant them up in there.

It's been so long since I posted that I'd best update on what I've been up to.
The Euro Disney holiday is pretty much sorted, and hopefully be this time next week I'll be able to relax knowing that everything is also sorted for the other client holiday I'm organizing. We should be having a lovely week in Cornwall. If we can get all the flights, car etc sorted. I'm the only driver, and I've flat out refused to drive all that way myself. I'm hoping that the extra pay will cover a proper relaxing holiday for Porl and I, rather than a working holiday.

I've also been busy crafting.

This is my Easter Bilby for round 2 of the CrAftermath Craft Idol competition. I'm through to round 3. I'd never heard of a bilby before, but I was stuck for ideas and googled the theme "Easter Creatures" and he came up. He's an endangered Australian creature, about the size of a rabbit, but rabbits are bad in Australia, so the Easter Bilby delivers the eggs instead. My nickname on all the forums I haunt is "bilblio" so I couldn't resist making him. He's my first amigurumi creature too, I'm quite chuffed with him.
In this house the Easter Bilby leaves beads not eggs.

I've spent today crocheting myself a string bag. The space beside the fridge is getting full of plastic bags, we don't even use them to line the bin anymore, so I just store them until I get fed up, then they all go in the recycling bin. It's wasteful, environmentally bad, and it annoys me, so I'm going to try to change our habits... but first I've got to finish crocheting a load of bags.
I tried knitting a bag at first, but the pattern expected me to use crochet thread with 13mm needles. Not easy. So I gave up and went back to trusty crochet and winging it without a pattern.
Maybe if I come up with the perfect design (and stop ripping out what I've already done) I'll write it up as my contribution to saving the planet.