After two years, eight months, and way too many fits and starts and frustrations to count, at last I have the Kittykatmandoo studio in order…Just in time to have no time to use it!

No, not true. It’s all about time management, they tell me. Any one of my myriad pretty colour-coded timetable apps can tell you I have pockets of ‘flex’ time galore.

Here’s the chestnut worktable Marco’s uncle made:

Buying the gas bottle with all the right fittings here in Tuscany was interesting…

Obviously it isn’t often that a woman comes in asking for a gas bottle and fittings conversion, because the shop owner kept directing all the questions to Marco who has zero knowledge on the matter and told him exactly that. Notwithstanding, the exchange continued to be a ventriloquist’s pantomime; I answered the guy’s questions through Marco, while watching the the lit cigarette bobbing up and down on the dude’s lip and calmly wondering – and I confess not for the first time since living in Italy – how death by sudden explosive combustion might feel: would I experience it as painful, or just a bright floaty sensation?

We ordered the safety valve mechanism and the pressure gage, and after the allocated three weeks that anything takes to arrive in Italy, from within Italy, the unit is now installed in my studio, which is now in the house – not ideal, but a whole other story that makes me so bored and tired I can’t…even…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch and keen to get on with making jewellery at last, I opened the tap on the bottle and immediately heard gas hissing out of the places it shouldn’t. The tube for the gun I’d supplied the gas guys with hadn’t been attached properly (maybe he couldn’t tighten it very well while he was holding his cigarette?) so I fixed that and turned it on again – same thing. We called in a friend who worked out that the pressure tap on the safety gage was closed and needed to be opened fully, something they’d cleanly forgotten to mention to Marco when he picked it up…

Anyway, the Kittykatmandoo studio is complete and I’m so happy I could explode…ahem… I mean,squeee. I’m so happy I could squeeee!!