It was raining this morning when I awoke - and rained on and off all day. A good day to light the fire and stay at home, but unfortunately I was transporting a patient this morning and had to gird up my loins and head out. I was supposed to have a phone interview with my Job Service Provider at 2:30 so had plenty of time to get home and be ready for that, but as it turns out they called me while I was sitting in the carpark waiting for my patient to get back. It was a fairly unsatisfactory call as I had had a message from Centrelink telling me they won't be paying me tomorrow and he knew nothing about it. A couple of attempts to call Centrelink resulted in them ending the conversation due to too many calls. So tomorrow I have to head down to Bridgewater and find out what their problem is. Very annoying. Lucky I get paid from the cleaning job so have sufficient funds for fuel to make the trip.

The last of the four drawers has been fitted. It has more holes than are entirely acceptable, but at least it runs properly and looks OK from normal head height (it's the bottom drawer).

Tomorrow I will have a think about what comes next - I suspect that will be the fitting of the fixed panel to attach the door of the corner cupboard which will involve me getting the table saw into action. So I might just think about it a  bit longer, haha. The trip to Bridgewater will certainly limit my options.

But now I have a belly full of roast pork with gravy, spuds and veges, the fire is lit, I have chocolate and I get to choose between listening to Malcolm Turnbull or Doc Martin.

The instructions will only become more user friendly when I use them to light the fire, haha.

Today was another quiet day at home, barring the trip to the tip necessitated by some food that had gone off. That sorted it was back to cabinet making. Not wishing to get a reputation for speed and efficiency I have raised the cabinet beside the stove to the same level as the cabinets along the outside wall, added a door and shelf and cleaned it out before returning some elements of its previous contents. And a third drawer has been added to the set beside the dishwasher. The fourth drawer has been pulled apart, marked up and the holes that are in just the wrong place have been filled with gluey matchsticks which will permit yet another attempt at getting the holes in the right place. I think that one, being near floor level, will hold small frypans of various purposes as well as the smaller wok that is loitering in the spare bedroom at present. I have to say the whole drawer situation looks ever so much more professional now they are all lined up with each other and have level fronts which clear the drawer above.

Tomorrow I have a patient to cart about so nothing will happen then. And apparently my JSP thinks I should be reminded about the appointment for a phone interview they have not informed me about. Fortunately it's mid-afternoon so I should be back in town by the time they call.

And then, of course, I have the bank to clean tomorrow also.

The weather was once again overcast alternating with sunshine, so the fire was lit once my nose started to report being cold.

Today was a bit grey and overcast for the morning, but that provided an opportunity for a tip run and a go at cleaning the bank. Then a quick call into the Roxy for yoghurt and bread and home once more.

Today's job was installing the new kitchen cabinet's innards - a metal frame which slides and magically produces baskets of contents when you pull it the right way. It took considerably longer to install than was feasible as the instructions and the illustrations were at odds with each other. But logic and patience won out eventually and I now have the innards to the corner cupboard operational. I have decided that the corner cupboard and one of the overhead cupboards in that corner will be the key pantry area and the two tall pantry cupboards will be reassigned as a broom cupboard and a pots and bowls space. And a grid on the wall near the freezer for saucepans and fry pans. Should work, but I will see how things pan out. The delight of this exercise is that I don''t have a time limit to force me into finishing things and thus making errors of judgement.

It should also be easier to keep organised as it will be logical rather than doing what the cupboards say I should. I do still need to resolve the kick plate issue but I expect I will be fine.

The splash back, which is the one barrier to me finally getting my certificate of occupancy will be stick on tiles - apparently Bunnings has a large selection. I will use real tiles around the oven as that will be heat sensitive, but the rest of the countertop really just needs a wipe down surface on the walls, and the stick on ones will be fine for that. A bit of beading along the top to finish them off should do the trick.

Meanwhile another chilly (if less windy) night here and it will be early to bed for me. More trips to the tip for me tomorrow and finding a piece of the cupboard I pulled apart that has holes in it for a door fitting (long story).

Yesterday I met the son of a former class mate who has borrowed my incubator in the hope of raising some chickens. I offered a rooster disposal service but apparently he works at Bonorong so any roosters will be food for the birds of prey. Bother. A couple of carcasses would be a useful addition to the kitchen.

The kitchen is slowly making progress - the corner cupboard is in its final position as I found the 200mm filler following a major search of the house. It was hiding in plain sight, naturally. Today I pulled out the door and searched for some undercoat. It seems I don't have any, or if I do it is not in anything resembling an accessible location, so I used the clear varnish I bought for the countertops to cover the door. It looks rather interesting as they have used two different colours of MDF to make the door, but I think that now it is sealed, I will cover it with some gloss paint that's a closer approximation of the rest of the kitchen. Besides natural timber tones would make the floor and cabinets run together.

I was sitting in the kitchen trying to decipher the instructions on the tin when a local knocked at the door. After much gesticulation I managed to persuade him to back away from the door to a safe distance before I emerged. He had been to the tip and ran into a man who was throwing out a bag of fleece. He thought I might like it.

Now anyone who spins knows that the results of this sort of offer can be highly variable! So I fixed a look of polite interest on my face and went to have a look. He's a good spotter - it is a rather nice merino with 7-8cm staples so eminently spinnable.

So that was set to one side in the kitchen after profuse thanks to encourage similar offers and I returned to the varnish tin. This being able to cook meals in your own kitchen is a rather novel experience after the last few years, but it is definitely encouraging. A second drawer now holds my kitchen knives and the larger of the two cutting boards is a temporary bench top so it's all making very encouraging progress. I anticipate installing a third drawer tomorrow in between tip runs and bank cleaning.

Meanwhile I am enjoying the warmth of the fire as a rather chilly wind whistles around the house - snow on the Mountain, but just the odd drop of rain here.

It is sort of a major revamp as I found the earlier layout not that useful and so have taken advantage to rearrange stuff instead of just putting things back where I found them. Today it was the brand new blind corner cupboard that I bought several years back which comes complete with a fancy metal pullout basket arrangement. It is marked up for me to start that tomorrow, but in the mean time it is constructed and loosely in position. I say loosely because there is supposed to be a 200mm filler somewhere around the place, but I have not found that yet. I expect I will if I have not pulled it apart in a fit of impatience.

It became necessary to clear off the work table (a folding laminex table showing serious signs of having been painted upon many times), so I can now bring in the door which will ultimately be fitted on the cupboard and paint that prior to installation. While I am about it I will probably paint the spice rack I have never installed, and the dish rack which I will be relocating once I have a benchtop I can lower it to as I rearrange the cupboards in that corner. So yes, a bit of a remake to ensure greater functionality and better flow as well.

So Hall materials have been dropped off at the Hall, a cheque posted for a bill and the letter box cleared. And I then took advantage of the greater accessibility of the kitchen to shred a red cabbage to boil to death to make a blue dye. I know, sounds weird, and sadly was unsuccessful. Having read widely I discovered that the blue relies on an alkaline base. But my copper mordant is made using vinegar. So I added some baking powder, and some more, and some more to achieve a pale mauve. After leaving it to cook for a while it was still a pale mauve, so I threw in quantities of washing soda and now I have green yarn. Oh well. I'm sure I can find a use for it.

Another happy productive day in Fortress Tasmania. Some wood was brought up to the house for evening fires, and a cupboard was returned to the kitchen. It even has stuff in it - like the long-lost slow-cooker and electric fry pan. Still looking for the toaster, but I dare say it will emerge eventually. And a counter top will have to wait a little longer as I pluck up the courage to start cutting the benchtops I have, and then have to varnish them before use.

Then the one drawer that I have been using has been supplemented with another. Not terribly successful as at least one of them doesn't belong in that cabinet. So the contents of the drawer that was in use have been transferred in a rather more orderly manner into the new clean drawer and the remains will have to wait till tomorrow when I find another drawer that fits that cabinet.

By the end of tomorrow I hope to have all the drawers in that cabinet returned to their place and filled with their proper contents. I may even unpack the parts for the corner cabinet and start putting that together so it can be positioned before I install the second set of drawers. But then again I may  not. Who knows?

Dismantling the drawers in the loungeroom means I will have to find somewhere else to mount my ball winder and skein winder, but I gave up before I reached that point because we don't want to rush things do we!

In the process I discovered my stash of teatowels - I was beginning to wonder whether I had thrown them all out! So they went into the washing machine and are now on the line on the off-chance of a frost overnight (unlikely).

The fridge is moved to its ultimate destination and I am beginning to get some elbow room to move around in. I can even open the chest freezer with minimal aggravation. And I sewed a peg bag too. I know! I had one, but it rotted out, then I bought a plastic one but that perished and so I took the frame of the original bag, sewed a calico bag to sort of fit it, and it is now on the line and in use (though the opening probably should have been larger).

Lovely sunny day too.

Happy Easter all

I have been having a fairly relaxed time if you count moving furniture around as relaxation. The rediscovery of the kitchen continues as does the rediscovery of the bottom of the Le Creuset I irretrievably burnt some months ago. It is now devoid of charred bits but I suspect the enamel is also not quite what it once was. I will find out tomorrow when I cook Easter Lunch - a rolled pork roast slow cooked with sage, apples and cider.
The Freezer is in its final resting place which is grounds for great excitement, and I will be doing more tomorrow. It is strange, but moving the freezer to the proper place should have made the kitchen seem bigger, and instead all it did was make me aware of how little space there is between the uninstalled dishwasher and the temporary folding table which will be used to prop the various bench tops as they are coated in varnish.

It is good to see the progress made though.

I have had one drive to Hobart with a patient. To save time they decided that I should also drop off the vehicle to be serviced. This left me in the rather tricky position of having to fill in time without spending time in the waiting room at the car servicing place while avoiding arrest for breaching shut down, haha. So I took a walk to Collins Street and explored Cracked and Spineless, bought a book, bought a slab of Coal River Farm Chocolate and headed back to collect the car - great timing as it was ready before I had time to find myself a seat. A trip up to the domain and I found myself chatting to a rosella through the window, before collecting the patient and taking her back to her home.

Apart from the lad up the road playing at being a rally driver, it has been remarkably quiet and restful. And I am really enjoying my solitude.