Found a house and made a bid

Well, the offer won't be presented until tomorrow morning. So now I wait.

Looked at over 30 houses between yesterday and today, and what an experience it was. Wish I'd gotten a picture of the elaborate, muticolored crazy-quilt carpet covered wall in the first house we looked at. No, seriously. The agent, my friend Stacy, and I all burst into laughter at the same time when we saw it! Guessing someone, somewhere, thinks that just as carpet is perfect for the bathroom it is also just the thing as wall decor. Oh, my. Saw many, many shades and forms of linoleum, a house with no windows at all across the front very wide front (we're thinking grow lights inside, if you know what I mean), saw a "bathroom" that didn't have a sink or toilet, and a pink and white tiled kitchen.

Also saw this. Hoping I can call this my home very soon :-)

One down, one to go

I'm loving this sock. Bright, full of patterning, and oh so soft. I'm going to get a LOT of knitting time over the next three days, since I'll be flying to Portland and house hunting sans boys and Dan. Expecting to get at least halfway through sock number two, if not close to the end by the time I get home on Monday afternoon. Who knows - might actually make the Tuesday deadline after all! In the meantime, sock number one will accompany me while I look for just the right house.

Wish me luck. I'll be looking at over 30 houses this weekend, so hopefully one of them stands out as the right one for us and we are able to bid successfully. I'm trying to think good thoughts and project success here...in between being terrified that somehow we'll end up homeless on May 31st. No pressure, right?

Sold!

We got back two reponses to our counter-offers, and the sale went to the highest original bidder...who also happens to strike me as a really nice person. Makes me happy that the sale could go with someone we feel good about *and* still get a good price ($6,000 over asking price) in the bargain.

Portland, here we come!

Best foot forward

Finally, more of an update on my Sockapaloooza project....which is supposed to be finished and sent out next Tuesday. Um, I'm thinking I may be a little bit late on this one. All the cabling on the Aran Sandal Sock, plus such a small guage (smaller than the pattern, so I had to add in quite a bit of extra patterning to compensate) adds up to a knitting black hole. The good news is that since we're done with all the remodeling, all I really have to do in the next week is knit (oh, and find us a house. Small, unimportant detail, that.)

I am loving this pattern, and will be making up a pair for myself next. I love how the pattern goes all the way down the back of the heel so there's plenty to look at if you happen to wear clogs or Birkenstocks. The color is bright, but perfect for a wee flash of something different peeking out from the bottom of a pants leg.

My ankle is healing. Off the crutches now and I can drive, though it hurts to do very much driving or walking around. I'm trying to take it easy and wrapping my ankle to help protect it a bit while everything knits back together. Thanks to all for the good thoughts.

House news: we've gotten two three offers! Looks like we'll be out of here in 30 days. I leave for Portland this Friday night and will spend the weekend house hunting. Our Realtor there has sent us a bunch of houses to ponder in the meantime, and they all look wonderful. Now for narrowing things down and making an offer.

We should be in Oregon by the end of May. Can't tell you how happy this makes me!

At least I'll get a lot of knitting done

Just call me graceful. Yesterday I was all set to touch up the trim in the upstairs bathroom so the house would look just that much nicer. I had a gallon of paint in my hand, ready to roll. Unfortunatly, the lone step in the garage proved far too much for me, and I fell forward, twisting my ankle underneath me with an alarming crack as the can of white paint spilled all over the garage floor. As the boys were still at school, I let loose a loud expletive that won't be printed here (hint: it rhymes with luck, something I didn't have at the moment). Oh, and naturally there was someone coming to look at the house later on that day.

Looked around for somewhere to put the dripping can of paint, and thankfully found a drop cloth nearby. Then I grabbed the shoes (we're all barefoot in the house, trying to keep the carpet clean) that were now covered in paint and hobbled over to the kitchen sink to wash them off. Didn't even want to think about the spreading pool of paint right where buyers would open the door to the garage. Or the fact that I couldn't even touch my foot at this point without screaming. I called Dan and asked him to come home from work, since there was no way I could get to a doctor on my own at this point.

Got the shoes mostly clean, then grabbed a bag of frozen corn from the freezer only to have kernals fly all over the living room. Reminder to self: seal partially opened bags of frozen vegetables in the future. Rustling around, I found another bag, then hobbled over to the couch and put my ankle up.

After much fun trying calling my doctor (no appointments or walk-ins today), our insurance company (who instructed us to go to an Urgent Care that was covered by them), and several Urgent Care places (to see if they had X-ray), we found somewhere to take me. Looks like it isn't broken, but the sprain or whatever happened is really bad so they made me a splint and got me crutches. I'm under strict orders to put no weight at all on that foot until Sunday at the earliest, and that's only if the foot suddenly feels much, much better by then, and that would only to very gingerly put a wee little bit of weight on it. Got sent home with some Darvocet (lovely, lovely stuff that makes life blurry, but takes most of the pain away) and some Ibuprofen for the swelling.

The bright side is that I'll be getting LOTS of knitting done, since that's one of the few things I can do while stationary. The bad news is that buyers are going to have to wander through the house around me and my splint, at least unless I can manage to get outside and sit for a while when peopole come to look. Wonder if this will up the price due to pity?

Grand Central Station

My house has become a zoo.

We officially went on the market on Monday, and since then we've had people knocking on the door and calling constantly to come see it. At least one of the buyers is very interested, and our Realtor thinks we'll start getting offers by tomorrow. I'm just sitting back, amazed at the response. Especially since the house is listing for far more than we thought we'd get - and our Realtor says the listing price is low and will most likely go up in a bidding war!

The icing on the cake? Dan's company wants to keep him on as a full time contractor, telecommuting and flying out one day a week to work with customers and do hands-on stuff. So no worries about finding a job there in the immediate future, and we'll have money coming in from day one there.

Everything is really coming together to make this happen. It's like we were supposed to move . Now all that's left is finding a house in Portland that we love, which will hopefully happen when I fly out next weekend. Wish us luck all around!

Babies and knitting

Finally, a wee bit of knitting content. Saw my sister today and she passed on this picture. I made the sweater and hat a little over a year ago for the soon-to-be daughter of a dear friend of hers. Have to admit, it was kind of fun making something really frufru girly and pink, and the set served the purpose of keeping me somewhat sedentary for the week following a much needed breast reduction surgery. Well, the wee lil girl is finally big enough for everything to fit, and look how adorable she is! Looks like the spitting image of her mama. It's just bizarre to see something I made in such a gorgeous picture, but it makes me smile to know that the gift was well loved :-).

Another baby knit, this one started three days ago and worked on in between painting and scurrying around finishing up the house. Oops - realized I had a baby shower to go to a wee bit too late. Grabbed some CottonTots, cast on for a simple raglan sweater with seed stitch edging, and flew through it. I made it in the round, coming up with shaping as I went, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. Not bad for knitting on the fly.

In other news, my house went on the market today. Gulp.

Remodel update

Look - tile! Real, honest to goodness tile that we laid with our own bare hands, all by ourselves. This was a first for both of us, and we sure learned a lot in the process. I'm really happy with how the floor came out in the end, especially considering what it looked like before. Actually, I wish I had a picture of what it looked like when we moved in. The whole thing was painted in beige high gloss (the precise color of masking tape, I later found out when we painted), with a rusty stage light lamp above the sink, no hardware on the cabinets, no cabinet above the toilet, and that lovely beige shag rug wall to wall. It was a beigebeigebeige monstrosity. Now it's sunny, light, and inviting. Pretty darn proud of that.

While we had the adhesive and grout mixed up, we added a line of tile to the backsplash under the edge of the kitchen counter as well. You can't tell in the picture, but this strip runs all across the length of the kitchen. Thought a bit of tile would dress things up a little and help tie the countertop to the appliances and the floor. Definitely helps, and it was fun to do after the huge effort on the bathroom floor.

I just finished painting the inside of our closet, something that sounds like no big deal until you realize that it's the size of a bedroom! Seriously, you could easily fit a bed in there and have plenty of space to walk around, aside from the roof sloping down so low at the end. The closet has gone from (did you guess?) beige to a much cleaner looking white. Ah, the power of paint.

Haven't been doing any knitting or crafting at all, partially because there's so much to do as we get the house ready to sell, partially because the weather has been changing and my hands ache a lot. We should have the house on the market next week, which will give a little break from painting and fixing and packing, and hopefully I can finish up my Sockapaloooza socks and my Perfect Sweater then.

I leave for Portland on the 28th to go look for a house and hopefully put in an offer. Can't believe this is all happening so quickly. We'll be in Portland soon!