When I can't sleep . . .

Although I'm stepping down off the steroids now (6 today), I still found myself wide awake at 1.45 this morning and came down to "do things".  I put tv on and watched Alaska's Last Frontier - about a Swiss family who came to Alaska after WWII I think, and began homesteading.  Now their extended family live off the land and their resources, and I love the way nothing is wasted and everything gets repurposed.  Although they all self-sufficient and hunt and fish as well as growing vegetables, beekeeping, raising beef etc, they have stockpiles of "dead" vehicles and mechanical things, huge piles of firewood, trees for building as of course they have built their homes from scratch too.  OK, some of the cheesy set-up scenarios demanded by the Director make you grate you teefs but on the whole I really enjoy it.  

Whilst I was watching the Christmas episode - and of course all gifts are home-made too - I was also polishing up a pair of lovely old brass hinges which have been in one of Keith's piles of useful stuff in the barn.  They were black with dirt but have polished up beautifully and are a lovely design too.  They are destined to hold a new-old door to change what was once a solid oak wardrobe (£1 from an auction over 30 years ago) converted to a bookcase ever since, into a storage cupboard (or bookcase with door).  The door in question cost £10 from Ledbury car boot sale last year and has been sat waiting for a purpose . . .  The handle for it has also just come from Keith's stash . . .  One slight problem has arisen - the whole carcase of the bookcase has twisted from the weight of the books and being on an uneven floor - so problems for Keith's reconfiguring.

This will be a harder bookcase to cull as really I want to keep most of these . . .

A work in progress . . .   Sorry, the flash didn't work on the bigger photo.  It's an antique hand-sewn wholecloth Welsh quilt, stuffed with wool, and being rebound by me and mended with the trimmings from the most badly-damaged edge where it has been clutched and held for a century of nights and worn quite through in parts.  As my stitches echo that of the woman who made it, I feel such an affinity.