The rendering is going on at the moment, so the entire house – outside and, regrettably, inside, to a rather large extent – is covered in spatterings of lime. It’s not very lovely stuff – corrosive and burny – but it’s lovely in terms of covering up cob, and with autumn coming on apace, we’re really squeaking in at the last minute. Today we have been aided and abetted in our lime doings by the lovely Mr. Valley, who has lime plans of his own in the near future (we hope); three people makes such a difference, you know, and so much so that we hope to seduce him back to us at some point with promises of such esoteric goodies as, er, beer, and, well, chocolate biscuits.

In other news, I’ve lost my whatsit. My writingy crafty whatsit, that is. I’m not really in a writing place, it seems, despite my best intentions to write more regularly here, and I’m not really managing the crafty bits that I want to start, what with the work on the house and the teething-related tiredness. But I am reasonably happy nonetheless – wine is being made, cooking has been achieved, the house isn’t quite the utter bedlam I’d thought it might be at this stage, and I have plans afoot for various knitting projects which I will begin once this round of teeth – and lime-rendering! –  is out of the way, I think. (That said, I’ve just cast on a new hat for the tiny daughter; it’s called ‘Tubey‘, and is knitted in the round, which I love, and, in my case, using a skein of Noro’s ‘Silk Garden’ which is just gorgeous – it looks like blackberry crumble, with apples and ice-cream thrown in for added loveliness.)

In other, other news, um, well, nothing, really. Perhaps that’s partly why I’m not very writingish at the moment; beyond the house stuff, which is of limited interest to those not living with/in it, there’s not a lot on chez Earthenhouse, and that makes for a dull, but busy, Earthenwitch. Also, I’m doing silly quantities of copy-editing, and, despite giving a stupidly high quote to the latest person to approach me, I appear to have landed myself with a further thirteen thousand words-worth of work to do by the middle of September. The stupid quote was pitched at a height vertiginous enough – or so I thought – to put off all but the most determined, and my intention was to claw back some time to do crafty things when the tiny daughter has her snooze; that one didn’t go quite to plan, really, but at least I will be getting a comfortably ridiculous hourly rate with which to console myself, even if the closest I come to craftiness is staring absently at the wool as I read my way through lots, and lots, and lots of stuff on marketing…

Despite all this, though, and despite my generally brain-dead state, I am thinking of joining Mon‘s reading thing. I mean, an extra excuse to read – as if one were ever needed – is no bad thing, right? And the opportunity to discuss books in a way which doesn’t involve marking or being marked? Well, there’s nothing there to dislike, really, from my point of view. Of course, the downside is that it involves buying more books, and, as someone who lives in a tiny house with limited surfaces available for shelving, that’s not entirely a good thing. Wait. What am I saying? That was the practical part trying to assert itself, but worry not: that doesn’t happen often… and I have got the excuse of having sold quite a few of the more boring books associated with my PhD (note: the more boring books – most of them are boring, but some of them are especially boring, so boring that only a very, very, bored person would even think of opening them, never mind actually reading them).

So, that’s life here at the moment. And you?