Dah dah!

Dah dah!!!!

Woohoo, we have electricity in the workshop.  It took considerably longer than we expected and, I think, longer than sparky expected too (it was him that said it'd take one day!).  It actually took three days in the end.  This wasn't really helped by the fact that he had his NAPIT inspection on Thursday.  NAPIT is the regulatory body he's part of which allows him to inspect and certify electrical jobs.  They do an audit of their members once a year which involves checking their paperwork, certificates, etc, a short exam and then a look around a recent job.  Dave asked if we minded if he brought the inspector to look at the workshop which, of course in our innocence, we didn't.  I think he was actually really nervous about it which meant that he took ages setting out all the conduit and trunking - even Bob said he was being a bit over-picky about some bits and that is rare from Bob-the-perfectionist!  I was also expecting that we would do a lot more of the non-technical stuff - screwing trunking to the wall, etc but he didn't want any help (we might mess it up) and so it all took longer than it really should have.  Anyway, it's done now (just the bill to pay - gulp!).  Oh, he passed his NAPIT inspection with flying colours by the way.

Yeah, so we have electricity in the workshop but we have cleared it and painted the floor so we can't go in there for a bit while that dries.  Bob did the second coat this afternoon so it should be dry by tomorrow afternoon.  In between coats this morning Bob also made his 'hearth' - some paving stones for the woodburner to sit on.  It could just sit on the floor as it is non-flammable, but we thought if there was a slightly raised area you would know you were close if you were carrying a piece of wood or furniture and not concentrating.  Next job, once the floor's dry, will be to put the woodburner in and then start moving everything else in.  I think it will actually be quite warm in there.  We had a heater in there while the electrician was here, but he switched it off after an hour or so.  Bob's going to be roasted with underfloor heat and the woodburner!

As usual at times like this, there wasn't much for me to do except supply endless cups of tea, cake and cookies.  So, I did a bit of gardening and finally pulled the sweet peas up.  I picked a small bunch for the kitchen window sill first which is just really weird at the end of November.  With the sweet peas gone, I could tidy up the roses and tie them back.  I had to nip off losts of buds from them as well - they should really be concentrating on their roots a bit more in their first year I guess.  I also made the blind for the utility room.  I have had the material for ages and ages, but I forbid myself to make that one until I did that horibble triangle blind for the oak bedroom.  I enjoyed the making this one so much more than that.

M&S have finally given us our hours for the Christmas period and mine are pretty rubbish really - working until closing time on Christmas Eve and then back in earlier than usual on the day after Boxing Day.  So, our trip over to Peterborough to see family is going to be fairly pushed to say the least.  I'm also supposed to work on the Sunday before Christmas which is my Sunday off, so I'm not really too happy to be honest.  Don't work in retail I suppose is the answer.

On Wednesday evening we went to the Smallholder's talk.  It was about silk - from breeding silk worms to spinning the silk and then weaving, knitting, felting, crocheting it into things.  The bit about breeding silk worms was really interesting.  So, here's some interesting facts for you . . . they shed their skin five times before they turn into silk moths and this includes their face skin so you find little caterpillar faces in the bottom of their tray - aaahh!  The moths are really big (about your handspan), but don't ever fly, they just sit around fluttering.  If you let the moth emerge from the cocoon it bites through the silk thread it's made of to get out and then the silk is of a lower quality because the thread has been broken and the resulting silk doesn't have the same lustre as if you laser/boil/steam the cocoon (with silk wormy-mothy thing inside) and then carefully find the end of the silk thread and unwind it in one go - this is called reel silk (I didn't realise that that doesn't mean it is real silk, but that it is reeled off the cocoon).  Silk has more tensile strength than steel, so if you made thick cables out of it you could build a silken suspension bridge!  Tights and stockings are catergorised by their denier rating and this relates to the number of threads of silk (so the number of cocoons) used - so 10 denier means that you would combine the threads of 10 cocoons to weave into the stockings. . . .  or do you knit stockings, knit I think?  Anyway, it was all very interesting and you now know what I learned.