Monday 22 February 2010

My New Workspace

After going rather off-tangent with the blog posting recently, due to not having the facilities to make stuff, let’s get back to the point, shall we?

After some frustrating experiences and terrible customer service involving trying to purchase a small piece of vinyl flooring from B&Q, I finally admitted defeat. Shortly after which, the nice finance people on BBC news in the morning said that B&Q’s profits were down this year. Perhaps if they made it slightly less difficult for you to actually buy something, they might make a bit more money, no?

Anyway, I pottered off to Carpet Right in Stamford Hill instead, where they happily cut me a piece of flooring there and then and I ambled off home with it clutched under my arm.

Finally having acquired this all important bit of floor to place under my workbenches (so as not to damage the landlord’s floor, I could finally unpack all my tools, yay!

And this is my new workspace:

It’s almost like the space was made for me. The workbench, shelves of chemicals and tool cabinet fit along the wall under the mezzanine perfectly, and there is already a handy spotlight positioned above. Now that the tool cabinet no longer has to live under the jeweller’s bench, I can actually sit at the thing properly, without spending hours with my knees twisted to the side. I think my spine will be happy about this...

I also got a magnetic strip thingy from Ikea, which I have now screwed to the bench so I can stick all my pliers/tweezers/files to it, rather than them ending up all over the place. Sticking everything to it was a surprising amount of fun :)

So, now I have no more excuses, expect something shiny coming this way soon...

X

Tropical Cupcakes...

Hi again,

Still no shiny things, I’m afraid, but I thought I’d share with you some rather fun cupcakes I made for the last London Rollergirls bout. I am unleashing my frustrated creativity via the medium of cake :)

The event was called Club Tropicarnage (my favourite name for a bout so far) so I went all tropical and made some pina colada flavour cupcakes, with rum and pineapple and a coconut frosting, and some margarita flavour ones, with lime, margarita mix and tequila. Then I added frosting and decorations till they looked bonkers enough...

Here you go:

I also made some slightly more sensible victoria sponge cupcakes for a visit from the boy’s sister. They were really yummy :)


I think I would like to be one of those people whose house always contains cake when people come to visit...

Wednesday 10 February 2010

...And I'm Back!

Hiya *waves* It's me again!

Yes, it's been a while. I've had no internet for a couple of weeks, so no blogging for me :(

But... guess what?

The boy and I are all moved into our new flat now, woohooooo! We discovered that between us we owned three coffee tables but only one fork. Eating salad with a spoon can be quite challenging...

The actual move itself was pretty stress-free, thanks to the muscle power and organisational skills of the boy's awesome friends and the tetris-packing skills of John the van man, who managed to fit my not insignificant amount of junk all into the van in one load.

We've just about unpacked, finally, although we need a bookcase, so some boxes will have to remain for a while till we can afford something nice.

So all in all, everything is good. I have never properly lived with a boy before, and I rather like it, although I have discovered that living with someone means I can no longer come home from work and eat cheese sandwiches for dinner though. Apparently that's not proper food or some such nonsense... Consequently, I am putting on some much-needed weight, hurrah! Derby thighs shall be mine once more :)

No shiny things yet, sadly, as I need to purchase a strip of lino to put under my workbench and cabinets to make absolutely sure I don't damage the floor that does not belong to me. It's weird, living in a house that belongs to someone else...

In the world of my old house, the bathroom did finally get finished.

Almost done here....

And tada!!! This is it pretty much finished, apart from the bright pink waterproof roller blind (thanks for the idea mum) that will cover the window and match the bath mat nicely.

And a little closeup of my nice sink, which turned out to be somewhat bigger than it looked in the picture. Turns out you're supposed to check the measurements, not just look at a picture and say "oh, that looks about right". Pah! What do they know? It looked fine in the end :)

So, onwards and upwards now. First task is to sort out workshop floor, then finish rollerskate. There will also be more new-flat related stuff I suspect. Do yell if you get bored...

Bye for now X