AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

my friends are the best

Yesterday was our Housewarming Party (no gifts please edition, because we never finished all the wine from the housewarming for our condo).  The day was perfect.  The afternoon rain showers failed to materialize, and we were mostly able to enjoy our back yard after the obligatory tours of the house.

I had the Summer Entertaining issue of Cook's Illustrated (or Entertaining magazine), and I put together the stuffed burgers which I made slider sized.  I should have made more of them, because people seemed to really enjoy them.  I scrubbed down the grill and made grilled corn.  We ordered jumbo pizza from Spukies (28" round pizza, which is huge!), and generally had fun during the day light hours.

Eventually we all moved inside to eat the little ice cream pies (s'mores) and try our hand at the Gelatinis.  They weren't as strong as they were supposed to be, because we didn't have enough gelato for the 8 or so people still around at that point.  I will have to try again with a double batch of gelato (or fewer people, though it was fun to hang out with everybody).

We really did mean no gifts, so when my friends brought a huge polka dotted box with a bow out I studiously ignored it.  I'm pretty good at that.  When they asked what they should do with it, I said put it back in the car.  Eventually they had the Blackbird egg me on to actually open it, and my friends got together and bought me a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer.  My eyes are still huge!  It was one of the things I never put on my wedding registry, because I was uncomfortable putting anything that expensive on there.  I hated the feeling that someone might feel obliged to buy something really expensive even if it would be something that I would use constantly.  Thank you guys!  It's just in time for me to try my hand at making little individual cakes all prettily plated like you would see at Tartelette or Cannelle et Vanille.  As soon as I finish all of the dishes and rearrange the kitchen counter to give the stand a permanent home!

still painting

Last night I started masking the walls and painting trim, and I will definitely need to do a second coat around the windows.  The rest of the trim looks surprisingly good, but I was nearing the end of my patience by the time I got to the windows and they are not as nice looking as I would like.  Per normal, I had a case of duh! after I was more than halfway through, and so I've been painting the hardware (the stuff for the curtain rods), because I wasn't smart enough to remove it first.  Around 5:30, I think I will try and do a second coat on the windows, so I am not painting tonight.  I have definitely reached the point in the project when I just want to be done (and technically I have other painting to do once the windows are done, but I'm OK with waiting on painting the shelves).

Our house is coming together nicely.  Last night, my hubby did a bang up job on the dining room area, so we even sat down and ate dinner on place mats.  Virtually unheard of.  We still have a couple of big things to bring to the curb for trash pickup, and then I will feel like our house is ready for guests.  Thank goodness!

.... it is raining right now.  My little mini garden will soak it right up, so I am happy that it is happening.  I still wish that the rain would stop in time for me to walk to the subway station. 

I will admit that I haven't done any knitting in the last week.  I've been doing cross-stitch instead, because in the process of unpacking I found all of the materials I needed for a project for the house.  If I am dedicated then it should only take me about 3 weeks to make, because it is pretty small.  I'm not normally that dedicated to my craft projects (pretty obvious looking at the detritus of half completed stuff in the craft room), so I'm trying my best to make this a 1 month project instead of a 4 year project.

[Editing to add]  I went upstairs this morning after posting to do the second coat of trim paint around the window and saw four little white spots on the windowsill just the right size to be little kitty paw prints.  Poor kitty!  I'm sure she jumped up on the sill and went, "Ewww, this is all sticky and damp." Being a bad blogger, I did not get the camera and take a photo before painting over the spot.  I wonder if I will find more footprints when I get home tonight.

Surrounded by boxen

I'm happily moved in to our new home, and now the unpacking begins (technically we moved in on Friday, but we moved in the last of our stuff today). 

It's funny how you forget things.  I am thrilled that my kitchen is a wonderful open place that looks on the entire living room without the small cut out window I had before.  The kitchen appliances (and the washer and dryer) run quieter, so I can converse when I'm doing most kitchen tasks.  The kitchen technically has more cabinets than my old kitchen, but one of the things that happens when stuff is packed away is you forget.  In our condo, I had about 2 kitchens worth of stuff.  Appliances, cake pans, more cake pans, cookie sheets, etc.  Specialty cake decorating materials, and a ton of spices.  A lot of this stuff wasn't stored in the kitchen, so I'm now trying to remember what I need in the kitchen and what can be accessible but not directly in my space.  It's a bit of a leap, because I've apparently forgotten a lot.

One of the things I've forgotten is a particular pair of shoes that I must have packed more than 5 years ago, and just never noticed the box to unpacked them.  I had a box labeled Sparkle.  Inside were a pair of sparkly 6 inch tall platform shoes that I bought for a costume and because they were obnoxious.  I'll probably use them for Halloween this year, just to relive the memories and silliness of when I bought them.

So, a new kitchen, more sparkly shoes, a huge craft closet (once everything in front of the closet door is moved away), a gaming room, and a library.  Our new home has everything!

aaeeeiii! moving day

Not surprisingly there was no knitting, crochet, beading, cross-stitch or cooking last night (scrambled eggs don't count as cooking).  There were a few panicked moments of acquiring more boxes, followed by filling those boxes.  At this point, everything that doesn't have a home will probably get pitched.  The last thing is the refrigerator, which will happen as soon as I've eaten something.  We have a cooler and two frozen ice cream canisters, so I'm not worried about keeping our food cold.  I just don't know how long we can store it that way.

Hopefully yesterday's panic will melt away into a happy and productive day with house closings, priming, painting and unpacking in the future.  I'd love to say that everything will be unpacked by the end of the weekend, but that is probably a pipe dream.  As long as I manage to get to the post office on Monday to mail the potholders, get some sleep, and a little bit of craft time I probably won't go bonkers.

Probably.

day 3...

I am in the home stretch, but can't do anything but cleaning and laundry until the Office Max opens at 8 (where I'll be going after I click the save button).  I'm out of paper to wrap all of the dishes with, but today is dishes, three cabinets and the random cruft that I'm sure I've missed.   I have 6 boxes or so and I hope I'm not making them too heavy.  We'll see.  The movers will need to be able to cart them tomorrow, and I'm sure that they are stronger than I. 

To pass the time this morning, I have been catching up on Girl Genius, which is always entertaining especially when my hubby comes over and comments on how long she has been in [insert location here].  Serial comics are a bit slow that way, because they take so long to produce along the plot arc.

Last night was a little work on Ishbel, when I realized that the random cross-stitch kit I found was done except for assembly.  Maybe I'll make that one of my relax projects after we move. 

I'm really enjoying Ishbel, but I decided I wanted to bead the lace portion.  Of course, I didn't have the right beads with me, so I'm making the large instead to pass the time.  I only have one skein of the yarn though, so I might have to do some futzing to make it work later.  Maybe not.  Last week I returned 2 skeins of yarn, because the sweater pattern called for 6 and it took me 4.  Sometimes I wonder if I just knit and crochet in a way that uses less yarn than expected.

a spoonful of sugar?

Going to Pittsburgh and seeing the in-laws makes me always horribly aware of how messy I keep house (hint: I don't), so I've been trying to be a little bit better.  Dirty dishes go in the dishwasher.  Clean ones come out sooner, and are put away.  The paper cruft is sorted and filed (some circularly).  And the special case rooms (the rooms I hate when they are dirtied) are actually cleaned.

I started the process of cleaning our tiny bathroom this weekend by spraying the scary mold-defying spray all over the tub.  I even did a little bit of scrubbing in the area.  But I'm hoping that around real life - yes, housekeeping is not part of my real life - I'll be able to wash the floors, clean the windows and mirror, and generally make the porcelain (or fake porcelain) dust free.

I figure that if I do a little bit of this cleaning thing each day then maybe at some point it will become second nature, and the condo will no longer look like I love squallor.

Plunge!

I love my blog.  I don't care that hardly anyone reads it, because it is mostly for me.  I like the opportunity to be geeky and creative, but I don't really like managing my blog site.  F2O was a terrific place for me to host and manage my own blog using Movable Type, but I just got completely frustrated with all of the downtime.  I'm sure somewhere along the line my configuration got busted or something, so I am just going to port my content over and pay for some service instead of trying to get it free. 

Hopefully this will make my life a lot easier and I will be more inclined to post (because trying to publish something 10 times is not my idea of fun).

A huge sigh of relief

I finished entering all of my blog archives today. I only have to fiddle with the side bars, put up my links (and make them look nicer), all of the buttons back, and I will be done with round 1. There are so many more things I can do with Movable Type, that I am pretty sure that the tweaking will continue until far in the future. I love the drop down menu for the categories, because I was getting sick of all of the categories and the placeholders showing up.

I haven't been knitting or stitching or anything much over the last few days. Today at lunch was the first time I had picked up Scoop It since Sunday. I love the feel of the Silky Wool in my hands. It is a soft yarn with slightly tweedy flecks where the dye isn't picked up as strongly. I will have to stop myself from petting the sweater when I get to that stage. I'm seeing myself in this thing at work, oblivious to the stares of my coworkers, petting my arm or belly. It's like knitting velvet (and a small part of me wants to see how it felts).

Moving entries

I am still trying to move my entries from bloger to MT. I have used the instructions in about three or four different instructions, text files from my index page (the 999 entries method) and from the archives. I have tried individually loading files. I have left carriage returns in and removed extra white space.

I would really rather not have to add each entry individually, but that may be the direction I will need to go in. If that is the case, it won't happen until February. The long weekend coming up is a library book raid, and I will be working about 12 hours on Saturday and a few extra on Sunday. Exciting.

Honey, can you comment here so I will know that things are working?

Changing Services

My blog has exploded and it is all my fault. I got out my geek shoes earlier today, and I have reconfigured my blog using Moveable Type. By applying my brains, I can do it for free, and have my old entries and still do stuff and I get to use more of the functionality of the F2O site. I got it to pull the old entries and what not, but I haven't finished finalizing pretty much anything so the site will be raw for a few days. But I hope to get this cleaned up before I go knitting on Saturday at Circles.