What a weekend

Ouf, what a weekend!
I'm still feeling a bit dizzy from everything that happened since Thursday. You know about my Friday afternoon now, shopping pillows and driving them around for fun! ^^

I spent the morning of that day preparing seedbombs for my guerilla gardening mission that was set up for the evening.

seedbomb bags

all the bags filled, instructions added: ready for war!

It was a nice little mission, smooth and easygoing enough to soothe my spirits a bit and distract me from the work to come on the next day. Look out for pretty flowers all around Paradeplatz this year!

On Saturday we prepared for a last day of work at the yurt place. As I've told you before we had to leave the place at the end of March. Last weekend we cleaned up the biggest part and brought most of the stuff to some friends who are generous enough to let us use their cellar or attic for a while.

Thank you, guys, we wouldn't have known what to do without you!!

But we also had to deal with the biggest fallback of the building so far. When we wanted to take the floor apart we realised, that it had become wet under its plastic sheet. Somehow, humidity had come in, and the planks had soaked up the water and expanded - the glue was off and most of the screws broken out.
It didn't take us long to see that what we had there was damage beyond repairing. We had lost our floor.

What a mess!

It's hard to think of all the money, time, tears and sweat spent on this piece of work. But the hardest part for me was always to think about all the countless people who invested their time and energy to help us. Who helped making it possible. Everything else I could see some positive side in, but having to admit that all their work had been in vain really made me feel very desperate.

RIP floor :o(

Well, there was nothing to be done. We burned what was completely rotten or full of screws and cut the rest into pieces so that Regula could use it to heat her house next winter. That's the sad work that we had to finish this Saturday.
At least we didn't have to transport and store it all. It was a nice day and work wasn't as time-pressured as last week.

On Sunday we slept really long and quietly for the first time in a long time and then went out for a big brunch to enjoy the sunny day.

our car with a crown

lightring...

In the afternoon we had a last little intermezzo finding a place for the last big piece (the lightring) and cleaning out the last of the tools, then cleaning and washing my parent's car.
We've now decided to wait with further work on the yurt a bit. Trev is doing his best to finish his Phd this summer and I am working on other projects. We both hope very much that by the end of this year we will be living somewhere else.
So we both agreed that it doesn't make sense to burden ourselves with another thing to push forward even more. The yurt will have a little sleep until the stars shine friendly on it again.

So, after working one week and then being sick and then busy as a bee I really intended to get a good go again with my actual work this week. What a bummer when I woke up this morning because of period pain. Now, thanks to some painkillers (Tali, it's called Dismenol, and it works!), I am fine for the moment, but just feel really blah in my head, tired and hazy, so I don't know how well I will do with the mountains of necessities today. But the good thing about this condition is that I don't care so much, so at least for the moment I don't feel too bad if I don't move a finger.

Well, hope you are having a lovely day! ;o)

A fresh start

This weekend we started building again. We didn't have too much time since a lot of other stuff was happening too, but we managed to squeeze in a few hours of painting and glueing.

The lightring is now basically finished, and with it the last piece of the yurt - only theoretically speaking of course. Because now there are still a million minor things to do that we didn't count as work in our plans because it would just have been too depressing to list them all.

Some sad news on top of that success is that we don't know if we will be able to set up the yurt at the place that we got at the moment. The proprietors are getting divorced atm and everything is very complicated, so they told us we can still work there and leave all the stuff at least until end of march (that's how long our contract goes). But they don't want us to put it up until they know what's gonna happen with the place. We're almost sure it will get rented out, so we'll be looking around for a new place I guess.
If you know anything, please do tell us!

We're not overwhelmingly sad though, we really feel like we'll just go with the flow and we are just grateful we found a place to do all the work so easily. It feels like after starting, all the rest will be ok somehow. :o)

The pledge

I will not set deadlines anymore.
I will do what I can.
I will be happy about what I achieved.
I will take it easy.

(I will construct a doorframe.)



(I will fool around with little creatures.)




And I will thank Wicher for his great help. Thank you!!

Lightring assembling: impressions

Yurt update

Here's some impressions from last week's building, taken with my new camera.
Saturday and Sunday was freezing cold, but I spent them mostly inside because I had my exams then. It went quite well I think.
On Monday it got a bit warmer thankfully, but it was still not a great feeling to be out and without a place to warm up all day.
Well, at least we had some hot soup for lunch.





In other news, I lost one of my mittens (my favourite pair), because I slipped off with the drill and it caught in the fabric and ripped it to pieces.
We're working hard on the lightring now, the last piece... there's still a few additional things to be done, but this is the last big job.

Early morning post

Well hello there... ugh, seems like it has been the better part of a month since I last posted.
It's not like there weren't any updates on the building - the only thing I seem to be able to write about at the moment - but somehow I felt like I had nothing to show.
And that is true - because there are no pictures. And why didn't I take any? I kind of forgot... you know, my (still quite shiny new) green camera parted into the nirvana a few weeks (a couple of months?) ago. I can still switch it on, the screen still works - it just won't take any pictures. It's not really worth mending it, as much as I hate that, but I don't have a warranty.
So I am without a camera. Well, there is Trev's old one, but to be honest, I really don't like using it because it does not do good shots. (I'm a point-and-shooter, the camera has to do the work, really)
So I keep procrastinating about pictures, or just plain forget to take the camera out.
And blogging without pictures is like a presentation without ppp...

Well, so be it. I am working on getting a new picture-making-gadget for Xmas the latest and I hope it will make me a happy girl again.
Atm though what will make me happy is a far simpler thing and that is friday night to come because that is when Trev returns from a one-week stay over in England and I miss him so much. We just kind of settled in here in my flat together, having all his stuff over and everything organised so that it feels like two people are living here, in contrast of a person being the permanent guest of the other... you know what I mean (don't you?).
Well, him being away also has good sides, I get to work on his Xmas surprises for example, I hang around the internet reading inspiring blogs (hence my effort here), and I am working on my English like crazy, because hell, I'm signed up for that Profisciency test in two weeks! I don't really know how December came close so fast, it must have put stilts on!

I had just settled with the idea of a dark and cozy November, but now I have to kickstart myself into Christmas mood!

Not that I need the energy for whipping out presents, apart from Trev's all of them are ready and wrapped since a week. I am an early bird this year. I just have so much fun making the presents and the cards and wrapping them nicely when I have no pressure.
But of course there is still the decorating, planning xmassy stuff for school and thinking about events like santa clause or christmas dinner.

Well, I would wish for it to be at the yurt - the finished one I mean - but since the weeks fly by so quickly I think it would take more than a lucky charm for us to be able to finish it in time... although I did finish almost all of the roofpoles AND the tarp last weekend.
So all left to construct is the lightring and 77 short poles, then we can start building... I've been thinking about this moment so often that now that it has come so close I don't feel anything about it anymore. I guess that really is a sign that we should finish that whole project soon. The sooner the better... *sigh*

OK, I admit, I got all emotional about not blogging, I felt bad, and I got babbling, but now Ill stop, and I'll give you a link to run to so you have something, if not any pictures:
Two cheese please is a really inspiring crafty blog of an australian girl, and if you lack ideas for xmas presents or decorations, this is the post for you: A selfmade stamps tutorial!

I givez u helpz...

... u givez me cheezburgerz?



It must be said: You are not really helpful, little cat. Rather the contrary...


But at least you're warm and furry.

New progress

We are really on the last stretch now.
We bought some truck tarp and started putting together our roof.


Started working on the roofpoles:




And on the lightring: The round window in the middle of the roof that will also hold the whole construction together.



It's about time we got somewhere. I have to add a layer of clothes every day we spend out there and soon I am gonna look like the Michelin man and who could build a yurt dressed like that? ;o)

Toasty warm!

Well, it didn't really heat up our open air workspace yesterday, but at least we had a possibility to warm up our fingers and butts from time to time. :o)

And or course we hope that it will keep our yurt toasty warm.

Our baby

So close!

We are so close now, our noses were itchy all weekend! :o)
The second trellis is halfway done:



And with the greatest help ever we started working on this:


It's the lightring, the key element of the yurt. It will sit at the top of the roof and serve as a window, whilst holding everything together at the same time.


Aaaand: On Monday we got sooo close to finishing the floor! Everything is set up and doublechecked now, and it really looks like it is working. We just couldn't put all the pieces together because it got too dark.


So now we are hoping for a few more dry days next weekend and then if the Gods allowe we'll have only parts to work on that are not so dependent on the weather. I also have holidays for two weeks from next week on, time to really work continuously again.
Sooo excited!!

Pics II: Other stuff

We are actually sometimes having fun on the site... ;o)



The glorious day when we finished the first trellis!

Pics I:The story of the floor

Pictures!!! :o)
Looking through them I realised how much work we've actually already done, and that feels pretty good.
So here are some photos of the first attempt to put up the floor, how we put bitumen paper on all the parts, and our new solution to make it easier. It's a ring that sits on top of the inner posts so it doesn't matter where those posts are positioned. It seems to work pretty well and we've got half of them done in half an afternoon already.