Harris Tweed sewing needle case and assorted chaos!

I'm not liking December, although touchwood, I'm back to as normal as I can be after the colds and catching up with shopping, christmas cards and chores.
Unfortunately I missed the best time of year for making festive things for my shop, I've lots of works in progress which will have to wait until next Christmas now.

One recent make was this Harris Tweed needle case for Folksy. I have started buying my tweed direct from a lady weaver on Harris. She produces lots of commission tweed orders and then sells some surplus metres through her Facebook page. Very reasonably priced at around £15 per metre, if anyone would like her FB details let me know in a comment.

The inner lining of the case is a fabric from the Downton Abbey range which Makower have produced.

We've been eating microwave food for a few days (yuk!) as I was waiting for the aga man to do a service and he's been today, phew. In 24 hours it should be warm again and ready for some nice cooking over the festive period.

It was quite an eye opener talking to the man about aga's and one as old and inefficient as this one. Maybe like a lot of people I had this romantic image of an aga in an old cottage, part of what drew me to rent this place but over 6 years later the sooner I get away from this costly thing the better.
Rather frighteningly he told me that this one uses 40 litres of oil a week, that means nothing unless you put a cost to it, somewhere between £20 - £30 a week just to run it to cook on. That's over £1000 a year for a crapped out aga, an aga we have to run pretty much all year because there is no 'normal' oven here. There's a lot in the news at the moment about oil prices being cheap, it doesn't make much difference to us as we spend so much on the aga and then the central heating on top.

Anyway there's currently no getting around it as we need to eat and we need to keep warm and I shall try to make the most of it whilst it is newly serviced and at it's peak.

The joys of living here, it's a bit worse than usual at the moment as I feel like i'm living in the middle of a building site.
I really don't like being surrounded by builders, noise and mess, compromising my privacy but that's the current state of play. 
This house is surrounded by old outbuildings in bad states of repair, almost like this house! I informed the powers that be that a roof had collapsed on a shed in summer and they said they would have that building taken down as it was unsafe. They didn't say when or give any details. Weeks, months passed and then 2 weeks ago a team of builders and scaffolding appeared. No one has had the decency to inform us what is going on, the fate of the buildings, whether we loose our coal shed / garage etc. Oh no, as is the way of the landlords, no communication just stuff going on around you as if you don't exist or have any feelings.

I've got banging and drilling going on when I'm trying to work, I'm having to keep curtains shut in the room I call my office or I'll have builders looking in on me. That in itself is difficult as it stops the ever important light for me, the bit of sun that will warm the room and it is making life gloomy. I have a builders van outside my front kitchen window which is also where the sink is so I'm reluctant to spend much time in there. It's pretty much a pain in the butt at this time of year. Oh and you should see the mud that the digger has churned up! Of course I have no idea how many weeks this will go on for, the only let up will be when they pack up for Christmas hols.

Here's a quick look at the mess and chaos and state of some of the buildings.

I think I said this last year, I do hope this is my last winter here.

Ok, rant over. I hope everyone else is having a pleasant run up to the festivities and hopefully the snow will stay away as it would add to the chaos!