Baching

It's just Brighid and I for a few days, while FH and Fionn are away camping and kayaking (Fionn's birthday present). They've got the car and so that's the biggest change to the way we are living. Yesterday we hung out here most of the day. I sewed her a skirt made of sequinned material and after that she literally glittered around the back garden. I made a start on cleaning up the abomination of clutter and dust and detritus which had come to pass for our home. It feels much easier to clean with fewer people in the house.

Later on we went swimming. She biked and I walked. An hour later, we had stopped and started a million times, bought a gingerbread man for energy along the way and finally arrived at the swimming pool. Lots of swimming and then we set off home, via the local pub, where I had promised her we could have dinner (the fish and chip shop is too far to walk to). As we sat in the sunshine at the pub, she with her juice and me with my wine, I remembered hanging out with Fionn like this a lot (not always in pubs, but always us sitting up together instead of driving places with the child behind me) when we lived in London. It's not very practical in Wetville in the long term, being carless, as there are no suburban buses or trains and it's a much longer walk from our place to get to 'town' itself. The supermarket online ordering and delivery we used in London is not available here either. I miss the carless life sometimes.

I am coveting a new dress. I bought one in Auckland which I love and which has served to make me want another one. Only this time I will need to sew it. I have ordered this Vogue 8379 which looks so completely fabulous that I have read almost all 84 reviews of it on the Pattern Review website. In the meantime I am washing and drying my red and denim fabric scraps to turn them into another version of this skirt.

Now, meantimes have abounded since I started this post at 9am and now, writing at 10.30pm. I have done no less a good thing than started to wash the curtains.

Washed the curtains.

Yes. We won't talk about the lack of vacuuming or dish washing or bed making (huh! No one makes beds here unless it is sheet changing time which of course you don't make until bed time) because curtain washing is pretty damn good. I carefully eased apart the wet thermal drapes and they only left little holes in the thermal lining but that was all worth it because really they were very dirty before. That's what burning coal does. Not just the entire environment, Wellington people (they've been recycling for decades in Wellington, I'm sure they are so eco-friendly there that no one has seen a coal fire since they stayed at their Gran's in 1974), but the lounge to boot.

I have also harvested the garlic and done some weeding and the girl and I walked to the shop and had an icecream, just like a poster for a New Zealand summer.

I have cut out the red and white spotty material and the swirly red and white pattened material but the denim is just too wrong. The spotty fabric was a remainder piece for half price and the swirly fabric comes from a $2 dress at the Sallies so quite frugal and recyclish because whatever the brownie points or lack thereof, I am going to the brand new fabric shop sometime soon to find some more red and white wonderfulness as I have cut five pieces and need five more.

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