EMW, thanks for liking our page! I am actually sending invitations to non-page followers if they like a photo or post, so hopefully will be able to build numbers further.

We had the draw for our raffle today and inevitably it was a local who won, so I drove her up to the History Room to make her selection and have brought the rest of the beanies home to avoid others selling them off for half price! haha.

We also received confirmation from Council that our grant for the front windows has been approved - so that's laminated UV resistant windows for us! It will be rather longer before we find out about the larger grant for the roof - I believe they let you know in December.

I have not been sleeping well (I think I need to remove the light blanket again) so have been rather weary, so I hope tonight I get a good night's sleep. Since they are forecasting snow to 300 metres tomorrow a day at home sounds like a good idea. And since it is daylight savings on Saturday night I will need to get some extra zzzzzs in I think.

I stopped en route to the History Room and took a photo of the Mill to be our profile picture on the FB page - the one we had was pixilated low resolution and not terribly well composed. The one we have now has spring blossoms, blue skies and morning sun on sandstone.

The activity on the page has stirred Steph into life and she responded promptly to a post this afternoon - just after I did in fact! So that is good. Perhaps with a better idea of how to interact she will be a good support. Before her posts were inclined to be 'we need this' followed by lots of helpful posts from others and no response from us.

So I seem to have started something there. I also sorted one of our admin drawers today. We have four filing cabinets, three contain some admin files, some history files. I figure we should be able to reduce our admin files to two drawers and free up at least three more for use for our actual history stuff. Today I went through the drawer called Grants and found tourism, financial records, presidents reports, internal consultation, external consultation, visiting curator reports, information about another local museum, proposed display options and floor layouts, oh, and grants information! The grants information largely consisted of multiple copies of 'how to fill in your application' and letters of recommendation in various stages of drafting. So now the grant files are in order of current, acquitted, unsuccessful but we will have another go, and a general background information folder for people filling in grant applications. The old grants are archived. The tourism information is filed or archived if it belongs to a now defunct tourism organisation, and so forth. I have left the survivors in the same drawer pending finding space for them as I go through other admin drawers, and left a note to Steph so she does not panic when she sees what I have done.

Council's heritage officer also called in but was called away before we had a chance to chat - he wants us to hold spare keys to various buildings open to the public but not staffed - it will involve a bit of admin on our part (take and return deposits when the key is returned) but if we don't help Council we can't complain if they don't help us.

And speaking of Council, a councillor has threatened to resign (he needs to think it through) over the Mayor's shenanigans and failure to resign himself. So that will mean a casual vacancy which will be filled by a recount. Not that I will get in, fortunately I am not really ready to take on another full time job until I get the History Room sorted.

And now I am feeling more than a little knackered once more - hopefully I will get a decent sleep tonight.

The application was lodged with three hours to spare - thanks to the sterling efforts of my treasurer who provided three years of figures, and the roving curator who managed to get the letter through to me in time. I had to go into town to collect the figures because apparently email is a mystery to the treasurer, and was about to head out the door when I received a panic-stricken call from today's volunteer because someone wanted to buy a beanie but she didn't know how much they were. I panicked too as the winner of the raffle to be drawn on Friday might choose the same beanie the prospective buyer might want. So I told her to stall them for ten minutes till I got there.

Turns out it was a local expecting a bargain so no sale was made, but in the mean time I photographed them all in case someone accidentally sells one between now and Friday (unlikely as I will be on tomorrow) and I have to knit another to please the raffle winner (tricky if they choose one that I designed myself or which requires wool to be dyed).

My Facebook exploits have gleaned a number of new followers, so we are now over 400. And at least 150 people have seen the new photo, so that's all good - and I have also be liaising with Tasmanian Light Horse to see if they will do a parade in Oatlands. Turns out 11 November is a Saturday this year so that would be good if we can organise it. I have promised them a spinning exhibition, and two local groups have already indicated additional support - woohoo if that one comes off!

Typically, when I am about to release the second last bundle of funds from the house sale, I have woken to spit out a bit of tooth. So a trip to the dentist is being added to the list - I have forgotten to chase one up today, so will have to do it tomorrow. At least it is not tender, and I can track down some dental wax to fill in the gap to avoid sharp edges.

And the 'late showers' arrived at two this afternoon, and became a continual downpour, so I have great hopes of the rain gauge in the morning. Fortunately I had already brought in the one load of washing I had put out earlier on the principle it was so windy it would be mostly dry (and it was!).

And the fire is once again lit - chilly for the second half of today and more chilliness forecast for tomorrow.

Still waiting for the letter of support which was due this afternoon, but it may have been sent to Steph instead of me, and if not, I at least have the phone number to call. Turns out she was ill last week so was unable to do it.

A frosty morning was a good start for our Garden Tour, which happened today. I didn't go as I was on duty at the History Room, but as it started there, I got to meet all the participants. I headed in  at 8:00 am to ensure I had the fire lit, the slices I had taken cut up and on a plate and so forth before people arrived to distract me. They worked well as a team and the feed was  enormous! And that was only morning tea. I have some bits for snacks at home as well.

There were over 30 people milling around the place and Steph kept telling me to talk to them. So I circulated wildly and chatted endlessly and returned to the heater only to be told to talk to them again. This happened three times (and anyone who knows me will know how exhausting all that social chitchat was) when it was drawn to my attention that as President I was expected to make a welcoming speech! OH! So Steph gave me some headings to talk to, and I stood and did my bit which was apparently well received.

I had donated a choice of one beanie as a raffle prize and tickets sold like hot-cakes - in fact we have sold so many we have more than covered the price it would be sold for! And bookings for the tour brought in over $600.00 (which included morning tea and lunches for participants). In all we raised over $700.00, which included sales of leftover food (a stroke of genius at the end of the day).

Once they had been herded out the door, Steph and I did the washing up and removed the tables to their accustomed places then I took control of her phone, logged into her FB page and made myself an admin - so now I have control of the FB page. Pity I am exhausted and have not the energy to do anything other than send requests to all my friends to like the page. Have had a good response on this too, as some of my friends are advisers to politicians and so if they are following the page there is a good chance we can get all manner of perks!

We also talked about building relationships with other community groups and perhaps inviting their members to wine and cheese evenings - I like Steph - she is a hard worker and has good ideas as well as connections into parts of the community from which I am excluded simply because of differing interests.

We also talked through what to do with the rear of the building, and have agreed an extension is a good idea, so we can move the workshop, storage etc out the back and open up the multi-function space for gallery space. So a good day.

Now I am so knackered going to bed at 6 is a very attractive idea, but instead I will force myself to stay awake till nine so I get to sleep through.

well the grant application is all but done. It does not help that our key Letter of Support is to be written by someone who is part time and not available in the remaining days - despite my email to her a couple of weeks ago. Sigh. But fortunately a colleague will be on duty so hopefully I can persuade her to write one for us. She is to ring me tomorrow after 11 but I will be frantically dealing with a crowd of visitors at that time, so here's hoping I get the call.

I dropped down to the rec shed today to check on conditions and found  one sticky table, a sticky countertop and no dishcloths to deal with it. So I appropriated the urn and drove out to Patti's with it, and picked up some cloths on my way back so I could deal with the stickiness.

Then into town to clean the bank between showers, and now I am home in front of the fire.

I had to call Centrelink today as my phone app would not let me do my reporting, but was only on hold for 20 minutes and had a very helpful person on line. How helpful will remain to be seen when I check my bank balance tomorrow, but hopefully she did what she said she would.

There was a party down at the Rec Shed last night that was a little louder than usual - what with fireworks and all. I was a bit worried how those would affect the stallion but he seems to have coped. Some slept over and this morning they were taking pot shots at the hares on the oval - life is never dull in the country. I decided to ignore and just walk the dog in the other direction.

Then into the History Room for a very long day as it turned out. Had a few visitors from Hobart then a bloke pulled up on a push bike and came in an announced he was in the process of buying our two pubs. As far as I am aware, only one of them is for sale, but I humoured him and he settled in for a long yarn. He's the sort of big-talking bush whacker type - currently digging spuds on one of the properties out of town, but (according to him) so loaded he is not only planning to buy half the town, but also a large property out of town that he plans to set up as a Hereford stud apparently. Though later in the conversation about its irrigation systems, the ideas turned to small cropping of root vegetables, garlic and so forth. By the end of the chat he had convinced himself I was deeply enamoured of him, so getting rid of him took some doing without laughing in his face.

You might remember also that I had a talking to from one of our members re the window display and she insisted I talk to the chap who was son of the original proprietor - something I have not bothered to follow up as the display will be going down in a couple of weeks. Anyway, at around 3:15 I spotted him peering in the display window so called out to see what he thought. He came in and gave me a very interesting oral history of the place and I showed him the sources I had used for the bits he did not personally recall (which he accepted). Did you know that Oatlands once had a Nettlefolds outlet? Selling cars to the public! Neither did I.

Anyway, long story short, we then went on to his  career in Council, my own aspirations in the History Room (which he approves - at least to my face) and so forth and by 4:15 I was beginning to think I would never get rid of him. So I pointed out I needed to get the sign in and the flag down which he took as me shoving him out the door. I assured him this was not the case, just me taking precautions no-one else came in and wanted to start 3 hours of research, so he followed me around, still yacking till 4:30 when his wife (god bless her) who had been in the car all along, demanded his presence. Sigh.

Good thing the evenings are staying lighter now or the dog would have been in all sorts of strife. But as it is he has had his walks and I am now contemplating dinner.

I do love Fridays, for all that I don't have a job - time to catch up with myself and spend some time at home doing things I should have done but didn't. Today it was starting to fill in our application for grant funding for our new roof. So many questions - and so many with the same answer required. Again. And difficult ones like how many visitors do we get in a year? I dunno and I doubt anyone else could say either. Going by entry fees is not much help as we have 3 different prices for adults children and family groups. So I just divided the total by 5 (our fee for families) and multiplied by two (at least two family members) and hoped for the best. Since the income was derived over a period when we had entry by donation and frequently had visitors paying one gold coin for the ten visitors, that is pretty unreliable too. I will probably have to count up the numbers in the book on Sunday when I am sitting there with nothing better to do.

But. All my washing is done. I have had a happy day on FB chatting about the former PM getting headbutted outside a bar while we all continue to ignore the death threats made to a 14 year old yes campaigner and now I have lit the fire despite it actually still being relatively warm. Must be the rain in the air.

The stallion has moved in to the paddock nearest the lane, but is a transformed beast since he was taken off a high grain diet. We chat and he pretends to be frightened by the dog.

I will resume grant application filling in a little  later, but first the dog and I must go and re-acquaint ourselves with the stallion.

Yesterday's lazy day was spent sorting out paperwork and generally trying to get organised - so I chased  up some letters of support for our application for funding and drafted one such item for the lazy person who couldn't be bothered doing it for me, and sorted out of a few other things.

Today was the History Room and an early start as some researchers wanted to be in the road by the time we usually open, and wanted to spend a lot of money, so of course, I let them. Two other lots of visitors garnered less money, but did give me a chance to find out where some stuff was located. And the screens that the Community Centre is donating failed to arrive due to lack of spare carrying bodies.

I managed to spin a bobbin of green yarn which was good but the yellow yarn is still rather yellow (stale dye solution I suspect), so I will spin it up and then redye it as there is a limit to how many times you can dye tops before they become a felted mass that is unspinnable.

You can imagine how less than impressed I was when I received an invoice for the visit of the concreter from the shed company, along with an 'overdue' account for the wrong amount. So I have just sent off a response telling them to get their act together as the pads were indeed in the wrong location, and the fact I agreed to redesign to suit their current location is not grounds for billing me. I also reminded them that the amount of the final invoice has yet to be calculated as I will be returning the Extenda-brackets as discussed, at length, with two senior staff members. So they had best get their act together or I will be running complaints on two fronts which is not my idea of fun.

My hopes of getting any washing done tomorrow have been dashed after seeing the wind forecast - seems it would end up at Triabunna if I were to put it out. So I will satisfy myself with a little dyeing instead. I bought some yellow tops today but want to overdye them with some 'wheat' landscape dye at least in patches, to make them a little earthier. I will also have a go at dyeing some grey tops with some red dyes and see what happens to them. I feel the red I present have is a little too bright for what I want to do with it, and the grey over-dyed with green looks fabulous, so the red should work too (I hope).

The day in the History Room was rather slow as only two people arrived and that in the morning, so a long slow day getting a bit of progress on the second sleeve which I can't take too much further as the pattern is in a book that I loaned to someone local and am now chasing. As I am increasing I need to know when to stop - I think I still have a fair way to go, but get nervous if I am unable to refer back to the pattern (or at least the other sleeve which I left at home).

So a fairly relaxing day tomorrow, except for braving the gale when I walk the dog.

A day of sunshine, showers, snow, hail a bit of everything really - must be Spring, though it doesn't feel like it right now. The fire is chugging away and is barred from access by various bodies who object to being moved, even if it is to add wood.

A pot of curried sausages is in the oven and will be served in an hour or so, and there's nothing on telly. Sigh. So I did some spinning, bought some petrol and headed home.

Last night there was a visiting takeaway at the Footy Ground in Oatlands - smoked barbecue burger, and some chicken wings with a dill dipping sauce. The wings went in the fridge for today's lunch, and the burger and  wedges was consumed yesterday - rather tasty way to end the day I have to say.

Seb's registration went overdue due to the failure of council to remind me, so I headed in and obtained his new papers. They have decided to get rid of the plastic tags and go back to metal ones - allegedly 'lifetime' medallions. Since the inscription is embosssed ink I can well imagine they will be blank before too long, but much nicer than plastic. Seb was less than happy with this tinkly thing under his neck so spent a couple of days sitting looking sullen, but seems to have become used to it now. Good thing he's not a cat and needing a bell!

And another chilly blast from down south! Snow to 300m or so they say. I will be staying indoors at any rate.

The vest is officially sold and the cash will be in hand by Sunday (possibly tomorrow if I get impatient to spend it). I have decided to put it toward a set of carding combs so I can play with the new fluff that arrived in the mail yesterday. 

This was from a Seasonal Box offer that has been started up - lovely stuff it was too, albeit not quite enough to make anything useful. But the surprise inclusions (other than the chocolate which was eaten promptly) was a pack of rose fibre which is gloriously lustrous. The little multicoloured pack is English Leicester locks and I have yet to learn to have sufficient control to use them effectively - you let them pop and spring out of the yarn as you spin/ply it apparently.

And I finished the pair of socks I have been working on for some time. Though 'pair' might be optimistic as one is larger than the other. I have sufficient yarn for another pair, so may well do just that. That way I might get two actual pairs, haha.

The problem with being President is that it comes with a whole bunch of bells and whistles that make life difficult - for example actually having to chair a meeting make decisions, attend other meetings as representative for the History Room (which unfortunately is regularly held the evening of the day of our monthly meeting so any reporting back to my lot is a month behind the times and I have a whole day of meetings also (their meetings are not so well chaired and so go on for two hours and then I have to clean the bank).

The positive is that I get to call some of the shots around the place, so most of my proposals were supported by the Committee and (hopefully) I am therefore able to pursue some ideas. Obviously I still have to obtain quotes from two more roofers (I left my note book at home so had no idea what their names were), but I am also considering a layout to provide additional space for storage and conservation activities. Of course I suspect that would all go to custard as the remaining membership do not understand proper conservation approaches and resist all efforts to change (eg someone is still creating and working on documents on the old computer despite my note to please stop doing that). I have narrowed down the most likely suspect and will just drop in for a chat on her day and see if I can change things. I am afraid my approach will be 'the old computer is being put away at the end of the month so if you are haing difficulties I am happy to provide training', rather than, please don't do it.

The shed company, which you may distantly recall were going to replace my concrete pads in the correct position, called today and proposed arriving this afternoon to do the job. I pointed out I was not at home and they assured me they could go ahead without me. I assured them that no they couldn't, so we parted with assurances I would get a call from the bloke who was in the district. Shortly after the weather went to custard, but since that was the arrangement I was becoming concerned by 3:30 and so knocked off early (having fielded only two visitors all day) and shot home, only to find no-one there (which was a relief but annoying at the same time).

The weather has convinced me that wildly fluctuating is the new normal - lovely day yesterday while in meetings all day, today was so warm this morning that I almost forgot to take my jacket with me. Good thing I remembered though as it was jolly chilly by knockoff time and will get worse at the evening progresses.

I took a few measurements for the proposed extension to the building to house conservation area and storage and will transfer the to graph paper tomorrow to take with me when I go chat to Council's person. I am told our original proposal (built to the boundary) met with resistance from the neighbours. This one is the standard 2 metre offset, so while it will still be a discretionary application because of our zoning, will make that objection redundant. the fact we have a new neighbour now does not mean they too will not have problems with such an arrangement (though since its alongside their driveway and would be a vast improvement on the dilapidated industrial fencing I struggle to understand their problem, but will get no further with questioning the volunteers as they don't grasp these matters sadly. The two meter strip can be planted up with something hedgey to shelter the side of the extension (which would be windowless and opening into the interior of the current building).

Once i have something worked up I can take it to the next meeting for pre-approval as the subject of some future grant application (I have found that grants tend to have very short lead times so getting something like that sorted in the usual period would be unduly optimistic).

After yesterday's exertions I am hoping for a lazy day tomorrow but suspect I will either be going to Kempton to look at plans for the new pool, or heading to Oatlands to chat about conservation matters.

It was snowing when I woke up this morning - and snowed again this afternoon (well, it was mainly fine hail, but some of it was snow) and it snowed again a couple of nights ago - all very odd weather as in between the blizzards and freezes, it is mild and sunny. I guess it will sort itself out in due course, and better than the weather they are getting in America at any rate.

The TasNetworks guy called me and we had a fairly heated exchange with him trying (unsuccessfully) to talk over the top of me. Then he called around and we had a rather more civil exchange. He refused to accept responsibility for the damage to the path due to the pre-existing cracks, but finally settled on giving me a $50.00 Bunnings voucher which will come in very handy. Less success with the pump refund - apparently the warranty is voided as I fitted it myself. I will be disputing this in writing as I clearly stated my intention to do so (in fact that was the basis for choosing that particular pump) at the time of purchase and was not given any cautionary advice at the time (amazing the loopholes in consumer law - that makes it unfit for purpose).

And we have had a quote for the roof at the History Room, so am waiting for that to arrive (hopefully ahead of Monday's meeting).

The inclement weather has made a rather large hole in the seriously diminished wood heap, but the other night I saved a lot of wood as it took me four hours to get the blooming fire going. By the time it was burning freely it was bed time so I just went to bed. Fortunately that was one of the days when it had been temperate (though was freezing overnight) and so the house was not below 12 degrees by bedtime. Since the thermometer on the phone tells me I rarely get above 16 in the loungeroom (to my great surprise as it feels quite comfortable), this was not a great hardship.

Nearly time for QI so bye for now!!

Yesterday was sunny but rather windy - for all that i did several loads of washing, and despite having to regularly remove it from the ground and put it back on the line, it was all dry and still intact by bedtime. And after minus four on Thursday night, last night's two degrees was rather mild.

Today was spinning and we had a room full as we were invaded by various Guild members from Hobart. The President arrived with various boxes of tricks and gave us all one-on-one blending lessions, so I have now a large batt of blended fibre to spin, in addition to the six other methods we tried which are already spun. So it was using the cards, faux rolags, drum carder and so forth and all good fun. I am instructed I must use the yarn I produce to knit a mini-shawl (it will be very mini as there is only about 40 grams of yarn) to display on their stand at the Royal next month. I will also be lending them various knitted garments for the purpose.

After such a full day the idea of cleaning the bank did not appeal so I headed home and have lit the fire, for no apparent reason, but I expect I will appreciate it later.