Stoves new and old

This morning I was up on a very rainy morning to cook my Christmas Cakes. The new stove had done them well and even though we had a storm to start the day, we did not lose power and the cakes cooked quickly in the fan forced section of the stove.

Yesterday Kim and I had our last day together before school goes back in February and we worked hard to get the BBQarea all sorted for play and entertainment. Mind you, I don't have a BBQ at the moment but that is beside the point.

Today the whole area and everything in it is well washed with all the rain we are having. My tanks should be full by now and my soil is well soaked I hope.

I have a new stove

My original stove is 72 years old and was leaking gas slightly so that I had to turn it off at the tap behind the stove when I had stopped cooking.

After much deliberation and mourning I found one I could cope with in my kitchen and yesterday the electrician came to create a new dedicated circuit because my old stove had no electricity. While they were doing the circuit under the floor I was able to clean all the grime out from behind and under the old stove. My new stove was delivered just as they finished the electrics but they could not do the gas.

They took my old stove out to my carport where it is going to be used as a serving bench.

It doesn't look too bad out there.

The electrician organised for a plumber to come today to fit the gas part and now it is fully installed and cooking a rice pudding because I know how rice pudding should work.

Unfortunately, the inside is nowhere near as big as my old stove. The top oven can be used as a griller or conventional oven, the bottom oven is a fanned oven or conventional oven. I just turned it on! I am now learning by my mistakes.

Having never had an electric oven before I am going to have to get some help and practice positioning shelves and working out where to cook things and what temperatures to use. It has always been just guesswork previously. It even has a timer and I can program it to turn on and off when I like but that is another experiment.

So wish me luck. If you'd like to come and experiment with me please do.

Keeping Busy

I've had a cold for the last week and have had to cancel all sorts of singing commitments but I am keeping busy with some tedious quilting and a job in my garage that has been hanging over my head for the last 40 years or so.

Surrey scrounged one of the museum cabinets when the old herbarium was demolished. Since then we have labelled the drawers 'temporarily'  with any sort of tape we could write on. A year or so ago Geoff found some lovely 'antique' label holders online so bought enough to do all the drawers.

This week I started the job. On the left is the first column of drawers done and on the right is the next column in its messy state.

It has now taken me a week but the drawers are all cleaned down of all the old labels and oiled. Then I attached the label holders using a template to mark the hole spaces. I created a table that produced labels of exactly the right size for the label holders and printed them on cream cardboard and voila..

It is a pity that the original handles are not all the same size and are not all aligned correctly but I am pleased with the job and they look so neat.

The timber is Sequoia (Californian Redwood) and when the drawers were made in about 1900 the trees used for the timber would have been possibly 100 years old.

If eventually they are used anywhere other than my garage they could do with a good re-strip and oiling but for now they are great.

Recovery Milestone

Today I was able to put both socks on without using my sock aid. This is the first time for almost a year. Since my hip replacement I have tried to put them on unaided each time before reaching for the sock aid and today (at 3.5 months) I have done it!