Tabi or not tabi

Steady on, forward....

The studio is really coming on now, last week saw us lining the ceiling with ply board, insulation and its big silver blanket to keep us warm.

This week was the serious task of putting the iron up on the roof, so much for my humor Bill got out his Tabi shoes that we got in Japan. In Japan this is their normal workwear for building sites, or so we were told, I'm a bit dubious, maybe a hundred years ago, but maybe not.

They are perfect for the roofing as they are flexible on the ladders and roof and the big toe has a large advantage of clinging on like a monkey. So instead of using them as a fashion statement as Bill usually does he has put them into action in their right place.

Anyway so far they have been a big success and Bill is thrilled to be using them for what they were designed for. Building sites in Japan used bamboo poles as scaffolding, these shoes made men's feet sprightly spring around from one pole to the next.  Nothing like looking cool on a building site.

You must remember to buy the socks when you purchase a pair.

inky spinky spatty day

 

All the grapes are coming on now, there's plenty for the parrots and us.

Studio raising

Nothing like raising the roof and seeing your vision.

Well our temple to art and printmaking is up, (or the cult we thought we may start) well the framework anyway, after a week of Bill welding the pieces of steel and friends coming in and helping with the final parts, then it went up. .
It went up a lot quicker than we thought and a few beers with a plate of pickled onions, goats cheese and biscuits spurred it on.

We are both absolutely exhausted today, after yesterday of getting at a very reasonable price, 15 bales of insulation, a new fridge given to us by Bill's son, ours is ok, if you can live with collapsing shelves and a freezer that hasn't heard about climate change, it looks like Antartica. So that was exciting.
 I want to spray it a hip colour now. Olive Green maybe.

Plus onboard we had 30 sheets of ply on the roof of the car and in between hiking up to Wyong, an hour and a bit drive from Sydney we collected all the items we needed for the next building stage.

I bought Tango a dog harness on the way, this was my confidence level of getting every hardware item back to Hill End in our 350 thousand on the clock kms car and trailor.

The worse part is the semi trailors hurtling down the express way and we could only do 60 - 70 kms with every rear view mirror being spoilt for lookouts of flying insulation.

Thank goodness for grey ducktape.

So we had to drive up there and then come back down into Sydney afternoon traffic and head out again across the ranges.

But we made it I am happy to say, starting off at 9.00am in the morning from Sydney and getting home by 10.oo pm  such a long day with anxiety levels  creeping in and crappy take away food, I'm so organic now with my eating I reel back at anything else, well not exactly but it concerns me.

Bill is up the back at the building site preparing work benches for when we climb the roof to put all the hardware on, I've put flowers in the Hill End pub this morning and this afternoon I was going to get into my art.

 
The best thing is that we are so thrilled with the pitch of the roof, we were a bit hesitant at first with this as it was quite a bit of extra work for Bill to get this as the other option would be to buy a shed kit  and it wouldn't have had what this has which is very special with the wow factor.

So its always that thing of determination and trusting your gut instinct, which was Bill. I was concerned with the time and cost, but actually going this way has been cheaper and we are on target with our budget, so you can't complain about that. 

So tomorrow, back to printing at Holtermanns and yoga in the morning, because very soon I will be scaling that roof.