Lots of pictures, and why my loom gets to be dismantled again.

On the 13th of June, my nice new craft room went from looking like it did in this post, to looking like this:




(Okay, the photos aren't fabulous, but it's been tidied up somewhat now. It was kind of tricky to find an accessible place to get a decent shot from).

Our house is currently a little chilly:


All the broken windows except the bulging leadlight have been boarded up now, but we still have some nice cracks through the walls too:

(the edge of the carpet is where the window frame used to sit, and that really is a gap through to the outside world that you can see at the edge of the floor)

And this old chimney is of some concern safety-wise:

The wood panelling is split and bulging where the bricks have moved. That's not an entirely comfortable room to be in at the moment...

The end result is that we'll be moving in just over a week (and we're hoping that we're not going to be told we have to move out before then!). Still got lots of packing to do before then. I'm not sure how long it's going to take to get the loom set up again this time though. (I have at least been managing to get some knitting done - it's portable and good for relaxation)

Here we go again

My craft room no longer looks nice and neat like it did in the previous post, courtesy of the magnitude 5.5 and 6 aftershocks we got today. The stick shuttle through the wardrobe door handles snapped, and the boxes are now strewn all over the floor. My loom backed itself over to the wall, and my (cast iron, weighs a ton) sewing machine fell off the desk.

Pretty much everything else in there seems to have fallen over too, and there is more plaster (chunks and dust) all over everything.

The rest of the house isn't really that much better either, so now the clean up starts all over again.

(Ridiculously, the picture we have in the lounge that has slowly been migrating along the wall since September has nearly reached the window now, and is still perfectly straight!)

I'm sure there will be some photos eventually, just not quite yet. One day at a time...

Loom!

And it's (approximately) set up!



Next step is working out what's going on it first, and getting everything nicely aligned...

Nearly a loom!

There really has been progress on the craft room front now. Still plenty more to do, but it has started to be functional.


The loom will be going in the nice open space next to where it's currently leaning against the wall.

And next to that is this:

The sewing desk, which actually got used today (albeit briefly), and the fabric wardrobe. (The ridiculously long stick shuttle is just to decrease the risk of boxes of fabric escaping if we get another decent sized aftershock. In normal circumstances the doors do actually stay closed by themselves.)

I'm not sure how long it's going to be before it all needs rearranging - the windows in the photos need work, and the room underneath needs some walls rebuilt. But until then I can at least pretend that I've nearly got a functional loom.

Belated shawl post

I just realised that with the lead up to Christmas madness, I completely forgot to post this!


My first (complete) attempt at creating a knitting pattern.


This photos shows a bit more detail of the actual lace pattern, it also has a wonderful shot of our scruffy lawn at the time.

I used a 3.75mm needle, and the yarn is Baby 2 ply from The Wool Company at Utiku that I dyed. I had 6 grams left over from the 100g ball, which means it took about 560m. The pattern can be made in any size yarn, and the number of repeats can be modified to suit the yarn and desired shawl size. The pattern has both written instructions and charts.

And the link to download the pattern is here: download now (pdf, 716KB)

And the loom starts to make a comeback

My loom now has somewhere to be set up, and all the bits are leaning against the wall waiting for me to do something with them. I also have the sewing desk in the same room, which is awfully convenient.

Next step is sorting through all the yarn and fabric and working out what the best storage method is going to be. I think that in the long term it would be nice to have shelves for yarn, but that will probably wait until after any repairs etc have happened. There are two wardrobes that will probably just get filled with stash boxes in the shorter term.

Photos to come eventually...

And there are pictures

It's now time for a quick photo tour around our house.

We still have some lawn:


But not as much as we'd like:


More broken windows:


Exposed brickwork:


Less wine:


A larger house:
\


A now unjammed back door:


A new floor storage system:


And some bonus daylight:


We also have power and a road that hasn't been closed (yet). (This is the main road near our place, it's a bit worse further along). No water or sewers yet, don't know if we've managed to acquire any portaloos either. (Currently not home, heading back again tomorrow to see how things are).

We do still have jobs to go to, it's just a matter of getting there. The cat has been sighted and fed multiple times since Tuesday, but he's spending a lot of time in hiding. Really, we could be a lot worse off (but would have been quite happy without all this).

Oh dear.

It's been a while since I last updated, hasn't it. Unfortunately, not much weaving has happened since then, and it's looking even more unlikely now.

I just moved the loom bits upstairs into the spare bedroom because I didn't expect to be able to put it back together where it was. And then we had another blow.

Tuesday 22nd of February, just before 1pm we had another big quake. Only a 6.3 this time, but very close to town and 5km deep. I won't go into too much detail, but here's a link to an article about it. The short version is that the damage here is much, much worse than back in September, and they're still trying to rescue people from rubble. Thankfully we're okay, but our area has been hit quite hard. (Photos to come eventually). Our garden is full of silt, up to a foot deep, and our house now has much worse cracking. (The previous broken wall now has a small gap that we can see daylight through). We managed to get our phone and power back last night, which was earlier than we were expecting, but there is still no water (and probably won't be for a while yet). The worst damage we've seen in our immediate area is down by the river where the road is now multi-level, with at least a metre in variation, and huge cracks. (And it's all dropped below the level it started at).

Much more excitement than I would like to have had, and I don't think I'm the only one. We're all hoping for the rest of the search and rescue operations to be as successful as possible.