The third thing !!!

It's been a long old time since I last blogged - time getting away from me again as I attempt to keep up with my OU design course and everything else that I am doing.

Kids are at the end of their second week of holidays and I do so wish it were September again, which is wishing my life away I know, but sometimes .....  Grit my teeth and bear it  :)  We are feeling the pinch so unfortunately we can't take them away so they are having to make do with short local visits.

So the third thing.  Well, the first thing; yesterday Ivan received a letter from his work telling him that they are going through a consultation phase because they need to reduce the wages bill and that at present, his job, as well as many others, is at risk of redundancy !!   Not something that we wanted to hear, although I am hopeful that he will be OK because he is the only Painting and Decorating technician they have, so making him redundant would mean getting rid of P&D courses altogether as the lecturers would not be able to cope without him.  Especially as he does all the ordering as well as all sorts of other things they can't do without :)

The second thing:  I noticed this morning that the car was making a very nasty noise so I trotted off to my brother's garage to get it looked at.  Turns out the clutch has gone and I had to leave the car there and borrow a car.  But its going to cost us at least £600 to get it mended.

So now I'm waiting, with trepidation, for the third thing to happen.

I've been knitting Alpaca finger puppets and lavender hearts for the Alpaca farm, for the majority of the past few months, but I've managed to finish a 30s inspired cushion cover after a year or so of hoping the UFO fairy would do it for me.  Actually I don't seem to have done much at all looking back at it.  I have been spending a lot of time on my OU course though - that's a good excuse.  I have also started spinning tops on a drop spindle.  There's an amazing woman at my knitting group who spins everyday and has done so for decades, and she makes it look so effortless.  She started to teach me how to spin properly and I'm working on it although my yarn is currently very lumpy and bumpy and not quite the fine smooth thread I was hoping for.

I have finally started one of the Noro Cash Island skeins that I have had ornamenting my desk for god knows how long.  I'm making a set of heart shaped coasters, that will be felted in the washing machine, and then I plan to make them a holder from thin plywood and decoupage it.  I am planning to make lots of little things like this and I am hoping to organise a craft sale in my town towards Christmas time.  There is a definite dearth of decent craft sales in my area and I haven't been able to get a table at any of the very few around as they are all booked up.

If the weather's decent tomorrow I might just dump the kids on the other half and go sit on the beach for an hour or two  :)  But then I just have to go back to it all sooner or later  :))