When the dust settles

I have been waiting for quite some time now to finish the sanding of my timber floors.  The job was started about 14 years ago with the first bit of carpet coming up.  The majority being the stairs, hallway, lounge and dining rooms were done almost 10 years ago.  The 40 year old carpet finally came up in the three bedrooms about 8 months ago.

Today, the sanding has started.  #1 son has been working at it all day long along with a young friend of mine from church.  A has just gone home after 7 hours working with #1 son.  He's coming back tomorrow to help some more.  He is such a blessing, as is #1 son.

It would seem that one room is almost completely done.  That is the room that will be my craft room.  I had a look in there this morning  before the dust started flying and thought, "I should cover those."  That is as long as the thought stayed in my head too.  Until I went in there later to start sweeping the dust off the floor and walls and windows and..... turning around I remembered my thought as I saw this.......

 and this......

 

and this.......

I think I'll be spending quite some time in that room in the next day or so.  *Sigh*

In a state of flux

I am feeling a huge pull to start doing something with all the stock from my shop that I've got sitting in boxes under my house.  I want to start getting it out so that I can sell it or use it.

Along that line is the thought of actually trying to sell stock from home on a more permanent type basis.  How could that look?  Maybe a blog page show casing goods?  Maybe E-bay or Oztion?  Maybe Etsy for pre-made goods/kits?

It comes back to having to wait though.  For someone who doesn't know the background this is going to sound bizzarre to say the least...but I have to wait for the floors to be sanded and polished.  Once that is done I can then use the three mostly empty bedrooms in my house.  One as MY bedroom...it will be so nice to be back in my room, the second as a guest room and the third as my craft/play room.  Then the rooms downstairs can be used for displaying and storing my stock.

Just to throw a cat among the pigeons or a spanner in the works or to just annoy me there is a strong possiblity of baby boy returning home to live.  In which case I don't have the rooms downstairs.  So I then need to come up with some other plan.  *sigh*

I'm also trying to come up with a name for this little 'business' venture.  Any suggestions?

Internal interrogation

I've had a particularly stressful week.  Some fundamental mistakes have been made...by me over the last 6 weeks of my new job.  I have noticed some and have corrected my proceedures to stop these mistakes being made again only to find yet another mistake etc.  I am hoping and praying that I have found all the cracks that things can slip through now but I don't know how many more of these mistakes are going to be found.

Now while I have been finding and correcting I've felt bad but still reasonably confident in my ability, however, others are also finding the mistakes and little things have changed as well as a dressing down in the office by the boss in front of everyone else. (He's like that!)

I'm now struggling with my confidence.  I am any good at this?  Have I ever been any good at this?  Was I too proud and now having to fall?  Where is the line between being confident in your abilities and being proud and boastful?  Where is the line between being humble and self deflating or even worse appearing like you are fishing for compliments.

I'm noticing that my stress levels at work are increasing daily with the whole stomach acid, chest tightening thing happening.  It is time for some serious prayer I think.

Week end away

Last week end I headed to Gympie about an hour and a half north of me.  There lives my very good friend L and B.  I haven't had much of a chance to get away to L and B's for eons...not since I bought the business.  I was open every Saturday.   Now that I'm working Monday to Friday again I intend to spend more time with them.  L loves to card make and scrap book.  B loves to cook and he cooks a fantastic steak.  I'm still drooling over the perfectly cooked 1in steak that was my dinner on Friday night when I arrived.

We had a lovely evening enjoying the food and a couple of drinks.  Was a wonderful way to relax.

The next morning however, was when the fun stuff began.  We spent the entire day in the air conditioned craft room crafting.  L was working on some scrapbook pages.

And I did some crochet and cross stitch.  I finished the scarf that I was doing for my sister.  I think it looks great.

The cross stitch is a long way from finished but I did get B's help with something.  Several months ago before the shop closed I commissioned a young friend to make me some frame stands.  These are just a V shaped arm with a bolt and wing nut to hold a tapestry frame.  I needed holes in my tapestry frame to attach the frames stands.  This is where B helped.


It is such a great little device... allows you to set it up at a table or on the arms of a chair and just stitch away.  I will say that ending off is a little more annoying as you have to turn it over and around to be able to get the right direction for the sew under.  But this annoyance is so minor compared to the freedom it allows.  Working two handed is great.

I just have to come up with a way of being able to easily see my patterns.  An A4 stand isn't big enough as I blow up the patterns onto A3 sheets for easier seeing and marking off.  I'll have to think about this problem a little longer....unless someone else can think of something.

It is so nice to just be with a good friend and do something we enjoy.