Yellow paint - aaaarggghh!

I have now done my three days at work and I'm not in again until a week tomorrow - yeah!!  I have used up my last two days holiday for Saturday and Monday and because of the way my shifts work it means nine days off which is good.

Lounge ceiling against the stone.  The long black line on
the stone wall is the tie-bar we put in from one side
of the house to the other to keep the walls in place
and the smaller piece is an old wall strap which was
presumably supposed to do the same thing!

I am having a bit of a nightmare with yellow paint just now - never before have I had such a dilemma over painting a wall!  We got the breathable claypaint for the stone walls and also got some ordinary emulsion mixed to match for the plasterboard ceilings.  The paint is mixed to match the colourchart and it is a very good match - trouble is the colour chart doesn't match the paint it is supposed to be illustrating!  I have always said the colour we chose is an earthy yellow and Lucy confirmed this by calling it mustard when she looked at the chart.  As soon as we got home I couldn't resist trying a bit on the wall . . . . it is really quite a bright yellow.  I love the colour, but I'm just not sure it's what I had in mind for the lounge.  Anyway, yesterday I got on and painted the high ceiling with the emulsion and that is exactly the colour I did have in mind for the lounge.  So, I got a scrap piece of wood and painted half with the clay paint and half with the emulsion . . . . it was the opposite way round and the claypaint looked earthy and the emulsion bright.  Once it dried though it swapped round - it was really messing with our heads I can tell you and we were totally confused! 

The cosy batloft - or crog loft as it will now be known.
That's what they call one of these sleeping platforms
in Wales.

Each time I look at it I think something different and I have been going to go back to our friend at the decorators merchants and ask him to squirt a bit of brown in the claypaint and mix it, then I'm thinking the ceiling's too dark and needs lighter walls, then I think the walls are too bright and the ceiling's fine and round and round I go.  Think Bob's a bit fed up with my dithering!  So, the ceiling's had two coats and the batloft walls have had a coat of claypaint, I've also done a corner downstairs with it and I haven't added any brown to it and we'll see what I think when it's dry tomorrow!  We bought the curtain material for lounge a couple of days ago - it's a sort of slightly marooney chestnut colour, not sure what it would be called.  What colour is mulberry?  It sounds as thought that should be it, but I think that may be more purple.  It's definitely not purple!

Bob has made the pelmet to hide the messy top of the blind I made for the triangular window and it looks really good.  Bob confessed to being surprised that it looked OK because when I first mentioned the idea he thought it'd look a bit naff!!!!  There's faith for you!  It is made from a wany edge of Elm and so has quite a nice grain close-up . . . . it also had woodworm!  But it has been treated a couple of times and the holes filled so it should be OK - you can't just waste nice bits of wood!

As you can see from the pelmet photo, we've had more snow.  We had a good covering when we got up on Monday and that has stayed and then it snowed most of today too.  By the look of the forecast, tomorrow and Friday should be nice though so we are planning a day off - probably gardening or log-chopping, but it'll be nice to be outside for a change.  Then the next house job is to lay the floorboards in the bat loft - oops, sorry, the crog loft - because it'd be better to do that before we skim the ceiling underneath.  That way we don't need to worry about the plaster when we're whacking the nails in!

So, yesterday was pancake day.  I usually make too much batter and we end up with too many, so I scaled it down this year.  We have several frying pans in varying states of non-stickiness (should really say 'varying states of stickiness' to be more accurate).  We've been meaning to buy a new one for a while, but haven't got round to it which is a shame because the chickens ended up with more pancakes than we did!  They had all the disasters until we finally found a pan that worked and by then there was only enough batter left for three pancakes between us - still we enjoyed our one and a half!