Fiddle-dee-dee

Ooops, 11 days since my last post!  Life has been pretty busy but in a mundane, non-bloggable way.  I've been engrossed in converting my craft room into a permanent guest room, anticipating the arrival not only of my cousin and her beloved in December and my dear parents in January, but just general hospitality options - it's so much more fun to host people when you have a ready-made bed available!  We were blessed with the gift of a queen bed before we even started praying about it - along with a single bunk bed / couch / desk combination which has found a home in Nick's study/studio.  Time for some clearing out and sorting and organizing in my craft room - at the time of writing it looks a frightful mess as I've started wading through bits of hoarded paper and collected scraps, but it got to a point of usability before the heavy sorting began.  I've gone with a white/beige/apple/red combination and really had fun choosing the linen (yay for Briscoes and their endless sales, along with the Warehouse where everyone gets...).

Along with the room business I've been violin trading - I've switched now from 3/4 to 4/4 and found a cheapie on TradeMe which needed some work.  Actually I found two cheapies, as Grant has decided to take it up as well - back to TradeMe for a variety of accessories:  bow, fine turners, bridge, strings, shoulder rest...I've never known an instrument to be such a financial black hole with so many extra bits being necessary for a good sound!  Spent a lot of time polishing the wood, polishing and brasso-ing the beautiful antique (ie really old and somewhat shabby) black cases and so on, but in the end we have two good instruments for two beginners.