Roman blinds

Roman blinds, ladies and gentlemen. Am I up to the task of creating a more effective cold and draught block on the front door than the current venetian blind which only covers the glass panes on the door, not the whole door?

Myself? Using instructions like these? I'll need to get something out of the library to stare at for a fortnight at least. We do want an insulation improvement and paying for them to be made is absolutely out of the question financially. Something like the picture below would be very gorgeous except obviously we wouldn't put the couch in front of the door. The wolf ain't knocking that hard yet (I'm not the only one who grew up with a Dad making comments about the wolf being at the door when referring to hard economic times am I?).

I'm planning on having a good look through the remnants bin at our local curtain shop (yes we still have one and by crikey I'll be supporting it rather than go online or mail order). I doubt I'd be able to get a remnant large enough and I need to learn lots more before I'd know whether I could sew several remnants together and still get the blind to hang properly. Our home is not beautifully decorated and nothing has to match particularly. If I see something totally gorgeous in a small piece perhaps I could just use that with plain stuff above and below it. A splash of gorgeous is something I like a great deal. Just doesn't have to align with everything else in my world.

I'm not sure I should even be having such adventurous thoughts. But it does sort of look like if I measure things properly, the actual sewing might be straightforward. I'll ask my tutor at the sewing class on Thursday night. Assuming I remember to sign up for it and pay tomorrow. At least everyone appears to have had chickenpox.

library day.

Today was library day and bokashi day. I'm focused on librariness at the moment. I got two books on making garden buildings like chicken houses and greenhouses. They are for Favourite Handyman though I am interested in giving some guidance on which structures I want most. For inspiration, look no further than the beauty which Tania's husband has built.

I also got the Murupara (no.89) issue of New Zealand Geographic. Cos it's often interesting and yet also costs $15.00.

I decided to have a (reading about) art day simply because it is a long time since I have done and the art shelves looked good. Very quickly I spotted a book on an artist whose work I have liked for squillions of my minutes on this earth: Gretchen Albrecht. So I shall have something more to think about than the aesthetic pleasure I experience when looking at her paintings once I've read the book. It's called Illuminations.

Then I found a book called Thrift to Fantasy: Home Textile Crafts of the 1930s - 1950s. (The link is to a review from The Listener 2005 archives.) It is by Rosemary McLeod, a person who has written many nasty pieces of journalism in her time in my opinion. I have less knowledge of her more recent journalism because years ago I decided not to read her columns any more. Apparently this book has nothing to do with her loathing of the welfare system and I'm looking forward to reading it.

All this will be after I've finished The Omnivore's Dilemma. OD just gets better as I read further. I'm persuaded more powerfully than before of the merits of valuing local food over organic food. The phrase "drenched in fossil fuel" is one which will likely stay with me a while. Michael Pollan has a blog which I've found interesting.

While on the topic, the arguments about carbon zero and food miles which I observe bandied about in relation to NZ exporting food to the UK are ridiculous in my view. It doesn't matter to me if NZ food growing techniques use less fossil fuel than UK practices with the same product, sensible food chains don't involve importing food you can grow locally. End of story to me, even if the economic ramifications for NZ are unpleasant.