WINTER'S coming and I have my eye on a new clothes drier.
The sort that, adorned with wet washing, you hoist to the ceiling with some rope and a couple of pulleys, then leave to nature and rising warm air from the fireplace to dry.
Some people wouldn't tolerate this unsightly laundry look in their houses and prefer electricity-chewing driers, hidden away in an industrial section of their home.
But if it's too wet for outside drying, the ceiling-hoist version is next best in my book.
You can make them with the side railings of disused children's cots.
I plan to approach the blokes at our new local men's shed group to knock me one up.
I spotted a home-made version at Hugh and Katie Finlay's Harcourt home recently.
Hugh made it.
He's an inventive chap.
Romantic too.
For Katie's most recent birthday, he presented her with a tip-sourced bicycle which he hammered and welded in the secrecy of his shed to modify into a dual-purpose, pedal-powered grain-grinding flour-making exercise bike.
Hugh ripped the wheels off the old bike, replaced them with a home-welded stand to make the bike stationary, adapted the shaft, added a cog and then added a modified, hand-cranked flour mill.
This wonderful masterpiece of ingenuity sits in the corner of the living room of their home in the Harcourt Valley, where Katie's family have produced fruit for decades.
"It's quite a talking point in our lives," says Katie.
"It takes about 20 minutes of peddling to grind half a kilogram of wheat, enough to make a loaf of bread.
"When visitors come they hop on and pedal. It's a real novelty for them and we get our flour made for us."
Grain is poured into the mini auger in the mill which, when turned by pedal power, directs the grain into the space between two small turning stones where it's ground and then fed into a small holding container.
The Finlays prefer to grind the grain for flour just as they're about to use it.
Katie says it makes better bread.
"One of the advantages of a hand grinding - or in this case, pedal powered - mill is that it doesn't get hot," says Hugh.
"Because the electric ones go faster, they get hot and there is some suggestion that heat could affect the flour.
"This one is low key. Katie sits on it reading a book and the kids will sit on it and pedal while watching telly."
The idea for the DIY home flour production evolved after Katie completed a course on permaculture. Think chooks, vegie patches close to the house and herbs in pots within water-pitching distance from the back door and you've got the picture.
It's folksy and nice and generally recommends low-energy use, which is where ceiling-hoisted clothes dryers and pedal-powered flour making come in.
Katie reckons her pedal-powered tip bicycle was the best present Hugh could have made.
How's that for simplicity.
