Audrey with Holes

Finally finished my cashmere Audrey cardigan (this is my second Audrey, I love the pattern)!

I changed her a bit with an all over pattern and a much smaller gauge which was at times tough going but the light, soft and warm result was worth it.

I also finally committed to a colour for the dining room! I actually woke up yesterday morning (D Day) with a knot in my stomach because I knew I had to make a final choice! It's beyond ridiculous the emotional contortions that this has had me in (very unlike me).

The Historian has been building a "wine robe" (basically a wine cellar in a custom-built corner cupboard in the dining room) . . . we're calling it NARNIA. Anyway, because of the way it is built we had to paint the wall above it before going any further, hence my D(ecision) Day. I chose a pale grey blue (it's called Grey Cloud). I think I made the right choice . . .

It's none of these, ha ha!

The Aarvark Cottage Beautification Project # 2

KITCHEN

I think I've mentioned that before we bought our house it had suffered a long, long time as a rental property. This area is inner city and has a bit of a seedy past before getting all gentrified (in fact we used to rent around here in our earlier and seedier years).

The kitchen was DISGUSTING and had to be the first thing to tackle (I wouldn't use the oven for fear of  hairy beasts may have been living and toileting there).

I've just discovered that most of my "before" shots are really pretty crappy as I took them on the day we were moving in. Perhaps it was a subconscious act on my part to make the "befores" look even more awful.  Of course the view onto the neighbour's brick-clad monstrosity is still there (sigh...) So . . .

                                                                                                  

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

and AFTER

Elbow Grease

See this door? It's the new bathroom door, or it will be when I've managed to strip off the dirty old varnish and got it back to the lovely Tasmanian Oak. This renovating nonsense is all about elbow grease. Things are constantly rubbed and scraped and rubbed some more with a lot of huffing and puffing and barely audible swearing.

We're all about words (and not always the profane ones) and labour at Aardvark Cottage, so I while I was cursing and scrubbing I got thinking about the etymology of the expression "elbow grease". Sounds like it might have a colourful story, doesn't it? I imagined the phrase being some "Olde English" reference to putting some poultice made of pig fat on your poor aching elbows after a long day vigorously rubbing the family silver (you'll note I didn't say "jewels").

Before moving house our 2 volume Oxford English Dictionary went to live at the Pale Historian's office (wouldn't want anything untoward happening to the OED, would we?) and it hasn't come home yet. The Pale Historian dreams of one day owning the whole 20 volume OED. Mind you, to keep him happy we will need to build a hermetically sealed library to house it and it could only be viewed wearing cotton gloves!

Without the OED to refer to I took to the internets and to my disappointment I couldn't find anything interesting about "elbow grease", save a reference to it being mentioned in 1670 meaning "hard rubbing". But as often happens when you're wandering throughout the internets you can find (well, fall into and I'll be here a while) wonderful things like this site...look up "rule of thumb"...times have changed!

The Aardvark Cottage Beautification Project # 1

We're renovating our 1920 built house. It has over the course of its life spent time in the hands of concrete-loving elderly Italians and a long string of renters. So there's lots to do! I'm going to post before and after shots...I love before and after photos!

The first one is our shed. It was asbestos (walls AND roof) with a broken old louvre window...a horrid eye-sore but it's huge and useful. We had a team of (actually, quite frightening...ex criminals?) burly blokes come and get rid of the nasty stuff and then we re-clad it in timber and painted it. It makes me so happy now!

BEFORE


AFTER


Of course the garden has also changed quite a bit...but that's for another post!