unpacking!

Ok, I was going to put more pictures in here, but I can't find my camera amid the mess (that I took pictures of!!) so you'll have to do with out-of-date shots or this post will never go up. I will put up a shot of the finished needle case I made before I left. I was thinking of putting up a tutorial on how I made it, but am not sure if anyone would be interested - let me know.

My life is mimicking my house at the moment - in a bit of disarray, but I think I know where everything is... it's just a matter of it falling into place or my finding a place for it to be.

Mike and I flew to Chicago, packed up and drove back to Charleston. When we got to Chicago, we brought the warm weather with us and all the snow melted, which made packing the truck much easier. We had everything in the truck by Friday around 3pm. My MIL kept calling to check on us, and I couldn't really figure out why. She was concerned about the weather, but Chicago had blue skies and mild weather and we were headed south, so we weren't concerned. Plus, we really couldn't leave until the house was empty and the truck packed. Small unimportant detail.

We realized her concerns when we reached the north side or Indy and the snow started. By half way through the city, we were following the tracks of the car/truck in front of us, as the large snowflakes had rendered the windshield wipers pretty useless. There were blizzard warnings for those headed east of Indy, and we saw 3 snowplows in the 6+ hr drive from Chicago to Louisville. By the time we reached the 'ville around midnight, we were pretty exhausted, and fell into bed without even unpacking our bags due to the heavily falling snow.
We awoke early the next morning to a white wonderland - of which I'll show pic's when I find my camera...and we watched the snow fall for a few hours until the snow plows came through the neighborhood. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, and I managed to almost finish a Calorimetry in the meantime. Here's a picture of the finished product:

I'm also working on another pair of fetchings out of some cherry tree possum paints and am almost done with the Quant headband I was working on before I left. Ok, I'm actually almost done with the icord that finishes it, but you get the point....

I was very happy to have Mike's parents to help us unload, they were a great help and we ended up only having a few causalities from the move. We had a small desk loose some front feet because of too much weight on top, and my old Victrola lost a leg. We did figure out that the leg had been repaired once before and just couldn't take it's own weight, but I'm not sure if it'll be worth it to fix it. It's a pretty common model, and the cost of repairs might be more than the price of the piece itself. Right now it's not a priority to fix, but something to keep in mind.

Now it's a matter of unpacking and deciding where everything needs to go. If I can find a good solid place for things, I will be more likely to put them back in their place. It's when I don't know exactly where something fits that it ends up on a counter or tabletop or sitting out instead of being put away - because I can't figure out where it goes, it goes nowhere. So my goal is to get it all put away - properly - by the end of March, and hopefully everything will pull together for April.

Because there are still a few things that need to be settled this month. The house didn't close like it was supposed to the Friday we left. The buyer's buyer was out of town and didn't have their side settled, so we moved up a week. The week has passed and now it's been pushed to the end of the month. We have faith that it will go through, it's just when.

I'm also hoping for my job to pull through by then as well. All signs point to yes, but it's like the house - I'll believe it when the papers are signed and the deal is done. So the goal is, by April 1st to have everything settled - the house, the job and our place - taken care of and 'in it's place'.
So keep your fingers crossed and we'll see where you find me next.

playing with Carlo and html

Over the weekend my brother came into town for a wedding, and stayed with us for the few days he was in town. On valentines day I helped out the daughter of the groom by babysitting while they were at the reception. The little girl was a cutie, although she was sick and kept waking herself up because she had a cold. I managed to get a bit of my newest project done:



It's the beginning of the Quant headband - a lot of people say it's a bit fiddly, but I think once I really get going on it, it'll go pretty quickly. It was nice to have the mostly quite time watching the baby to focus and work on it.

I did not get the ugg booties done in time. I tried to get them the right size but they were just too big. Here's one next to a pen to give it perspective:



Too big for a 6mo. old. I may end up frogging them - we'll see. But I did finish my cabled baby hat - it turned out pretty cute! I wasn't sure what size it would be, but I'm thinking it'll go into the mail for Gabriella in place of the booties. I'm thinking I can also enlarge it, and maybe make soem hats fro my other nieces and nephews since they're still getting some major snow.



I also managed to figure out how to put progress bars from the things I'm working on on Ravelry up on my blog. Next time I have some time to play with it, I'm hoping to figure out how to get the pictures to show as well. But that will have to wait until later. I get sucked in to fiddling with everything and it ends up taking waay longer than I plan. So it goes. :)

doing a little jig because....

WE SOLD THE HOUSE!!!!

YEAH! This is the first step to really feeling like I am moving here. We have the date planned for the closing, I'm booking my flight tonight, Mike's getting the truck... all that'll be left is - the packing and the driving back - OK those are the things I'm really not looking forward to. I HATE packing. The only small consolation I have is knowing most of the house was packed up when we left the first time. Although, as I say that, the mental list in my head of things that aren't packed keep getting longer and longer. I'll have to see when I get there what matches my imagination, and what matches reality. I'm going to go down for a full week, and Mike's going to join me mid-way to finish up, sign all the papers and drive back - lucky fellow has mid-terms, so he can't go for as long. Every now and again, I do a little dance and spontaneously yell " we sold our house!!" to Mike. Luckily he's used to my craziness. (I know those of you who know me can soo see me doing this - no laughing allowed!)

In other news, the job seems to be going well - or at least I think so. I feel like I'm getting better each week, but I'm not quite sure how to gage things. I guess a good gage is they haven't gotten rid of me yet. The company is moving office space, and I get my own office - so that's a step up in the world of business right? I only wish it had a window to the outside, but I'm not complaining.

Since today is Ash Wednesday I've been reflecting on what to give up for Lent, and I think I've got it. I'm going to keep it personal, but it's something I keep meaning to do and I think this is the thing to kick me into gear about it. I'm really satisfied with my choice.

Do you ever make a choice, and then just know it was the right one to make? I can get really wish-washy about making a decision, and spend a lot of time looking at both sides of a situation that isn't really that important. Don't even get me started with ones that are. I worry about making the wrong choice, and not being able to go back, or fix it. Then I have what someone on Ravelry called the FOMO disorder - that's Fear Of Missing Out disorder where I worry about making one decision will cause me to miss out on another opportunity. It's a wonder I ever get anything done! Or then I go to the other extreme where I say to myself, "it'll all work out, so just choose something!" and end up making a rash decision by just striking out and grabbing whatever. I definitely need to find some middle ground.

But this time isn't those. This time, there is no doubt or double guessing. I feel really...solid about my resolution/decision. This is what I'm going to do and I'm proud of it. It just feels right. I guess what I'm trying to say is that feeling doesn't come along very often, and it's really nice when it does.

On the knitting front, I'm working on getting some progress bars from ravelry on the side, but I need to do some more reading on how to first. Perhaps tonight I'll get that done - I've been meaning to do it since the beginning of Jan. but keep your eyes peeled!

Currently, I've got three things on the needles; one is a secret gift that I'm hoping to get done in the next week. The recipient doesn't read my blog - but other family members might... so I want to make sure I can finish it in time before I spill the beans.

It's a fairly easy project, I'm just having some gage issues - I've knit it 3 times, and I still think it's going to be too big. Better too big than too small right? I've heard the patter knits up a bit big, but I'm also thinking it might be my choice of yarn. I'm debating buying exactly what the pattern calls for, but I was really trying to work with what I had in my stash. Hmm. does this seem similar to anyone? Gift knitting, deadline, trying to work with what I have... Maybe I'm not learning from my mistakes.

The other project is Quant from knitty, which I'm working up in a beautiful skein of Noro. If this one goes well, I may try in again some Patons SWS. I'm not very far because the pattern is done in entrelac, which I've never done before and I need to concentrate on the pattern until I get a couple of rows under my belt, and then I think I'll be able to multi-task with it. I've already figured out how to knit backwards, which makes things go quicker, but the pattern isn't written that way, so I have to get familiar with it first, and then I think I'll be able to utilize the backwards knitting.

The last project I cast on because I wanted some non-thinking knitting that I could do while I watched the Superbowl, which went pretty well until I got off by one stitch on my 1x1 ribbing for a row or two. Not a big deal though, it's a cabled baby hat pattern from my pattern-a-day calendar that will probably turn out a bigger than the preemie/newborn size intended - but I'm ok with that. If for no one else - I need a hat! I'm enjoying the calendar - it's got some cute patterns in it, but I think the 3 I'm working on are quite enough. I've got a pretty long que in Ravelry as it is, and now I've got a stack of patterns - mostly hats and socks from the calendar too. I just need to learn to knit faster. I think that's the other reason I like instant gratification knitting, it allows me to start something else. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow to go with the projects.