And we're off!

Oregon, here we come :-)

Boxes, boxes, boxes all around me

I have:

3 bankers boxes of yarn
1 bankers box of knitting needles and notions
1 bankers box of knitting patterns and books
3 bankers boxes of craft supplies
4 bankes boxes of cookbooks
1 bankers box of sewing supplies
10 Sterilite under-bed storage boxes of fabric



and one bankers box of shoes.

Insert your own joke here

I was just checking out maps, and finally looked at the names of the streets surrounding our new house.

We're going to live on 69th and Hemlock.

I swear, I'm going to giggle every time I drive up to our house!

Happy Birthday, wee lil blog

OK, I'm a few days late. Been just a little bit busy around here with all the packing.

I'm amazed every day that I type on a keyboard, plug in my camera, arrange things a little, and end up with something that people I have never met actually read voluntarily. Not a lot of people (at least I don't think so), but then that doesn't bother me in the least since I started this for entirely selfish reasons. This blog is my own happy place, somewhere that I can fill with good things and projects and recipes that I'm proud of, things that make me smile. One less place to bore my non crafty or foodie friends with endless discussions of baking temperatures, sewing machines, and yarn guage.

Thanks for hanging around with me in my happy place for the last year. I hope I've managed to spread some happy around from time to time, or at least coax a smile or two :-)

Finished Socks

Done! I sent these off yesterday but wanted to get a picture or two in. They came out really well, I think. Hoping my pal likes them.
Pattern: Aran Sandal Socks from Socks, Socks, Socks
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull in Red
Needles: size 2 dpns that my Grandpa made
Modifications: I made these longer than the pattern specifies, since my pal likes a longer sock. The yarn guage was much smaller, so I added in patterning on the sides and throughout the cables so they would be wide enough. I drew out a chart for the entire pattern, which was much easier for me to follow than the mix of charts and printed instructions in the original pattern. I will definitely make these again for myself! Might even use the same red - it's a really vibrant, fun color.

Sock central

I got my Sockapaloooza socks! The pattern is Wyvern - a sybtle and really interesting stitch pattern - from Marnie McLean (I love her patterns!) in a delicious muted lavenger/purple KOIGU!!! I've never actually touched the stuff in person, so I just sit, fondling them lovingly. My pal, Jennifer (sadly, blogless), also sent me some chocolate "to give you strength for your move" and the cutest fluffy lamb ornament ever. I love these socks. The chocolate is all gone (see? needed strength, I did), and Arden wants to take the lamb to bed with him :-).

In related news, I finally finished the socks for my pal as well. They are almost done drying and will be sent out later today. I'm hanging my head low that it took so very long, but at least they came out really well. Hopefully my pal will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!

Update: found a camera cord!

House pictures

Want to see our new house? I knew you did! Here's the front, looking from in front of the driveway.


Second, the all important kitchen. Yes, you see granite on top of the counters and yes, the yellow is going away just about as soon as we get there. The electric stove will also leave almost instantly, to be replaced with a shiny new gas range.Then there's the dining area, which opens out onto the back yard. There is plenty of room for a really, really big table if needed for parties or holidays.Next up - the living room - wide, open, full of light, and much larger than it seems here. It also opens out onto the back yard. The lovely blonde on the left is our agent. Next comes the upstairs loft, which the current owners are using as a master bedroom. Lots of skylights. I think this will become a play area or bonus room for the boys to run around in. That border will be coming down as soon as I get my hands on it, the floral curtain as well. Finally, my favorite part - the back yard. It's HUGE! A little over a quarter acre, but the footprint of the house is pretty small, so it just goes on and on. The fenced area to the right is a dog run, and the yard wraps around the other side of the house far enough for a good sized garden. The first picture is what you see from the dining area and kitchen. I think we'll be spending a lot of time there. Can't wait until we move in on June 5th!

Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, baked beans and stress

That pretty much sums things up around here. Escrow is so fun!

We got the house!!!

I've been waiting all morning by the phone, hoping to hear something, nervous as could be. I kept my cell phone on as long as I possibly could once I got on the plane, hoping for *the* call. Then 2:15 came around, time to take off, so I sadly shut the phone off. When the plane landed, I turned it on right away and quickly checked to see if there were any voice mails. None. Oh, well. So I called Dan to tell him I had landed. "Oh, good! By the way, we got the house." The call came through at 2:30, right after I'd gotten off the ground.

Escrow closes on June 2nd. We'll be in our new house by June 5th at the very latest :-D. I'm beyond happy right now.

The picture up above? That's the view from the front door :-)

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!

Must be the Sharpie fumes

So we're clearing out all the boxes, papers, and general stuff other than furniture. Piles and piles of random paperwork have been purged from the bookcase and computer area, awaiting their proper place in the filing cabinet. Why aren't they in there already?

(clears throat, looks down)

I suck at filing. It's not really Dan's strong point, either. If anyone ever has a notion that I'm some kind of super homemaker, please get that idea out of your head. I hate cleaning and am pretty lousy at keeping paperwork in any kind of order. There, I said it.

This doesn't mean I have given up all hope. As I went through the drifts of old medical records and paid bills, I realized that this move is a great time to start over and get it all together. I'm attacking the filing cabinet with folders, tabs, and an honest to goodness home filing system.

I'm having a blast doing this.

Must be the fumes.

I've come out of the closet

Literally! All the boxes are now downstairs in the garage and the closet is essentially clear. Dan is going to take the sewing machine and serger down once I've finished a couple last minute sewing jobs (baby carriers and a doggy coat for friends). Next comes the second hardest task this week: clearing out the computer area with it's wall of books and piles of CDs, paperwork, and both computers. Should be quite a bit easier, though - most things just need to be boxed up directly with no sorting of any kind really needed, unlike my huge project pile. I did manage to get rid of many bags of clothes, cloth, and miscellaneous drek while cleaning and this will only make moving that much simpler. All boxes are numbered and labeled, and I've started an Excel spreadsheet with descriptions and where each box should go in the new house (which we are still hunting for). I'm all about the organization, at least outside of a previously messy closet.

In other news, we have a contest winner! Thanks to this handy random number generator, Tammie of Knitammie wins a copy of Wrap Style or hand made soap if she prefers. Thanks to everyone for all the comments and suggestions - I think it will all really help. For anyone who missed it, B'Gina shared this in the comments:

"The shop is The Twisted Ewe in Port Townsend, Washington. My friends, Suzanne and Brien, bought it from it's creator, a nice lady name Jennifer who raises sheep and spins her own yarn! They will still be selling her custom yarns, so that's going to be great.

I'm making note of everyone's wish lists and will pass them along to Suzanne. Kathy also gave me several good idea, like a knitting night, which I'm happy to say has been going on for a while, already. We're going to be selling online, too, and hope to have a fairly sizable range of things available there.

We'll be having custom designed patterns (my job), and, if the legalities work out, we'll have a "library" of old knitting books that customers can copy patterns from, free of charge. That's got possible copyright ramifications, so we're not absolutely sure if we'll be able to do it, though.

I'm going to start a blog for the store, which will not just be a sales tool. I'll be blogging about the perils of trying to create patterns and about other arty things I do for the shop. Suzanne and Brien will be blogging about what it's like getting into the retail yarn biz (if I have to get them in a hammerlock to get them there, I will ;+), and we'd love knitters and needleworkers from all over to join in.

We always want to know what we're doing right, or wrong, and what we may be omitting that we could do. We may at some point start a bulletin board, if it looks like the blog is engendering enough discussion to warrant it, so please keep us in mind.

I'm building the site and have to get busy on that. The URL will be: http://www.thetwistedewe.com. I'll let Kathy know when it's up.
Also, if anyone wants to be personally notified (or has any other comments or suggestions), please email me: bginab at gmail dot com.

Thanks for all your comments. We're just doing inventory this weekend to see where we are as the shop changes hands. So, it will take us a while to make any changes, and, who knows, the shop may already have most of what you want. That would be nice. ;+)"
B'gina

I'm off to fill up boxes again. Ahhhhh....by this time next week we'll have brand new, soft soft carpet instead of the stained "plush" there right now. It'll take about a week to finish up retouching the paint everywhere and get the final cleaning and tidying done, and then the house will go on the market. I'll most likely fly out to Portland a couple of weeks later to do some house searching, and then after that, moving. It's all really coming together quickly now. We'll be in Oregon very soon!

May the Force be with me

Full disclosure here. The disturbing images below are of my closet...A.K.A. the craft and computer area or Where Things Go To Die. Here lies my beautiful Pfaff sewing machine that I love dearly. The poor thing is almost buried by the project pile next to it, and my lovely serger hasn't seen the light of day in quite a long time.
Here you can see my yarn stash - the two blue topped Tupperware-ish containers in the front there. Oh, sure, I have a few skeins in the beige canvas knitting bag right behind them, and there are several live projects downstairs by the couch, but that's it. The rest of the boxes are all fabric and patterns and batting and foam. Oh, and our suitcases live by the foam for some odd reason as well - have to fix that. Everything on the right is Dan's computer graveyard (oh, wait, he calls those boxes "parts"...though nothing in them has been used since I can remember. I don't disabuse him of this notion but I do reserve the right to mock privately).

We're getting new carpet next Saturday. All boxes, piles, everything but the furniture must be moved out by then.

I'm going in.

Wish me luck.