The house.

The husbeast wanted to visit the house today - he had the day off and tends to get stir-crazy in good circumstances. Trapped in this tiny apartment, counting down the days until we move, is making him totally nuts. So we went.

There it is. It needs some trees. The area all around used to be farm land, so other than the occasional fence row, there were no trees until the houses were put in about twenty years ago. I'm thinking an oak in the front yard, and a catalpa in the back. Maybe a rowan in the side yard. For those of you going "WTF is a catalpa?" it's a tree unique to the eastern part of North America. There was one in the back yard of the house I grew up in, and I've always loved them. It was my 'climbing tree' of choice, so they always say 'best parts of childhood' and 'home' to me. Plus they're beautiful shade trees and look wonderful when they flower. They also grow fast enough that I might get some decent shade in this coming decade.

I intend to plant the catalpa along the slope in the back yard. This is the view off the back porch, which is off the dining room:

...that's a very small maple off to the left, barely visible. If I plant the catalpa at one side or the other, and put terraced, raised beds all along the slope, that will give me well-drained soil to plant anything I want. With the tree, part of it will be shaded and part of it will be in direct sun. Along with planting along the half-wall of the back porch, that will give me a huge range of micro-climates and I should be able to grow just about anything that this area will support.

Which leads me to a question. Other than "Square Foot Gardening", anyone got suggestions for gardening books? I've got hard-core botany books, but nothing much aimed at back yard level things. (On the other hand, I can lay in an irrigation system with no trouble, if I get a wild hair.) I'm mostly wanting to grow dye plants and a few foods. Some flowers. Nothing extreme. Plus composting; I want to put a compost pile back in the back near the blue blob to the right side of the photo above (that's the neighbor's boat covered in a tarp, and about the limit of our property at that corner). For landscaping, I intend to stick with plants native to the area, or as close as I can come. Normally that leads to low maintenance grounds.

So, suggestions? Books, web sites? Composting, raised beds (building and using), organic gardening, low-maintenance landscaping? E-mail or leave it in the comments. Thanks!

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For those of you in the "exotic is where you're not" category, here's a photo I snapped today, of a typical western Pennsylvania village:

They're scattered all through this area. We're moving to the fine line between the end of bedroom communities for Pittsburgh, and the surrounding farms and mountains and mines.

It was hazy today, but you get the idea.

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The story on the house is (some of you were curious), the owners are older, and both beginning to have health problems. They're moving to Ohio (ironically, one county north of where I grew up, practically in my back yard) to be near their children and one parent in their nineties. They don't want to sell the house, but are facing the fact that it's time to get something smaller and with less ground to keep up. Which is why we're trying to be tactful about the whole situation and not do booty-shakes through the house, cheering about scoring such an awesome house. Though we HAVE made all the very polite an admiring comments on what excellent shape the house is in. In fact, that's why they were there for the house inspection: the gentleman of the house was damn well going to be on the spot for anything said to be wrong with his house, because he wanted to know. It gave us the opportunity to politely explain why we need them the hell out by the deadline, so it was all good. I think they feel a little better about the situation, knowing their house is going to a couple of people who will appreciate it and not knock holes in the walls.

So, at this point, it's just a matter of getting through June without killing any of the assholes who are smoking in the laundry room here. Then I get my couch back. I miss my couch.

The Goober post.

Everyone wants to know what the Goober's been doing. Mostly, growing. And eating. And eating some more. This is her combining the two, having lunch a week or so ago:




Last week, we went to the children's museum down town. It was pretty cool. She made paper:


She enjoyed it so much I got a book (of course I got a book) on paper making, and we will get wild and crazy once we're in the house and have room to really make a mess. The laundry room has a drain in the floor. Very handy.


And did a virtual puppet show thing that was neat. Computer controlled marionettes, basically:



And stuck her face into this wall of pegs that left her impression:

This was a huge hit with everyone. Parents all around cheered and laughed and agreed that the glasses made the whole thing super-hilarious. (Which it did.)


The favorite of the day was a sort of do-it-yourself music box:

You'd place wooden balls in the little colored holes, then crank it. The balls would fall onto tuned bars and play a song. You can see that the Goober is blurry; she was busy playing and wouldn't hold still.


This is my artsy-fartsy photo of the rotunda.

Not bad for a cell phone picture.

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Other than the trip to the museum, it's been pretty slow. We got her a fast-food meal a while back and it had an Iron Man necklace in it that lights up.

She immediately turned it on (she loves little switches and levers) and wore it, and we declared her Iron Baby.


Aaaand, when things are slow, she tries her hand at a little architectural engineering:



So, as you see, the Goober is alive and well. She's very excited about moving into the new house and starting school. (There is some issue about her age and starting Kindergarten. If it becomes a Big Issue, there will be rantings around here like you've not seen in quite a while.)

That's about it. The Goober's best statement lately was "Sekhmet doesn't act right because she has a cuckoo kitty brain." Followed up by "Sekhmet doesn't have any manners." Right you are, kid.

It's Geek Pride Day!

And I'm proud. It's taken me decades to make peace with my geeky nature. Or rather, to quit thinking I needed to be 'normal', and to really finally accept that the whole 'normal' concept is, in fact, kinda... dare I say it... weird.

So here are five geeky things I have done. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

-While out house shopping, I noticed a whole region named "Ligonier". Wondering where in hell that name came from, I got on my BlackBerry and looked it up on Wikipedia. The area takes its name from Fort Ligonier, a British fort that was named after some British dude. Not only was I curious enough to look it up, I could connect to the internet from my phone. And I remember the information later.

-My kid demands "Science Channel!" to watch instead of cartoons. Sure, that means SHE is a geek, but how'd she learn the Science Channel is cool in the first place? From her folks, of course. (And I suppose wondering if geek is a genetically inherited trait is geeky, too.)

-As a young kid I took apart the bathroom sink to figure out how it worked. Unfortunately I hadn't thought to turn of the water to the spigot first... I remember my mother shouting and wailing "But I just wanted to know how it WORKS!" When my dad put it back together again, he let me help so I could figure out how it worked, and not do it again.

-I've nearly given up on getting a degree, but I keep returning to the idea of taking college courses for fun and/or to just learn stuff I wanna know.

-I'm of the opinion that EVERY subject is interesting, if it's presented properly. In fact, I don't think there are a lot of different subjects. I think there's one really BIG subject, and everything's part of it. Taking classes got much easier for me after I realized my brain worked that way.

YAY, GEEKS! What's the proper meal to celebrate? Pizza and Jolt cola?

Pictures!

Mostly of what I've been doing, but I'll put up what I've got of the house, too. They're bad photos; I'll explain when I get there.

A lot of the fiber stuff is sorta inter-related. I finished up a couple spinning projects, namely the super-coil yarn and the next-to-next-to-last skein of the orange-to-pink color shift experiment I started like fifty years ago. (Okay, maybe six months ago; it seems like fifty years.)

I confess I threw out half a bobbin of that pastel stuff I made the supercoil yarn with. I was sick of looking at it.

Finishing up those spinning projects then freed up all the bobbins I need to spin up this:

This is the start of the gear yarn. One ply of this with a ply of copper thread and black crochet cotton containing gears as beads. I'm going for three skeins; two with gears and one without.

The orange-to-pink stuff will be used to knit another one of these:

This is a square wrap sort of thing that I'm knitting for the "Every Little Bit" pattern line. Right now I'm using two Zauberballs on size ones. The orange-to-pink is about DK weight, and I'll knit it on size eights or nines. If it works with both yarns (it SHOULD), it will absolutely be a pattern for any yarn. I know I should be finishing that bag I'm supposed to be knitting, but I need low-stress stockinette nothin' to work on, not two-stranded umpty-color crazy.

When I get twitchy from stress (more twitchy?) I make stitch markers just to do something.

I've made about fifty. Those beads on the left were bought with the wire wrap already on; I'm not doing wire wraps as well.

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So, photos of the house. I've only got a few, that were taken with my phone. When we did the house inspection yesterday, the current owners were there. They don't want to sell their house, and I was trying to be polite and not run around snapping photos and gloating over scoring an awesome house that they love and don't want to sell. (I can be tactful when I want to.) So, lousy photos from the phone:

The kitchen and dining room are an open space with a skylight, that have been painted a perfect, sunny yellow that doesn't look like liver disease and doesn't make you reach for sunglasses.


And this is what will become my lair, once I paint the walls, carpet the floor, and put in a shitload of bookshelves:


We're not sure what's going and what's staying in the lair, but it's all good, no matter how it works out. There's plenty of space in there for me to be dyeing fiber and stocking stuff for the shop and shelving books and all kinds of good stuff.

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It has come to my attention that there is a new Vogue Knitting out. I am keeping an eye out, to buy a copy for another review. I'm feeling better than I was for the last review, so I'm hoping it'll be more entertaining. I'll do what I can. Jump up and down and giggle with glee, or mutter "oh dear god", as you see fit.

Inspected house. A-OK.

We had a good inspector. Great, really. He's a former contractor who would just fix little stuff as he went along; he was fixing a shingle on the roof when we got there. Later on he chased down and fixed a small wiring problem that wasn't major but made his gauges read funny.

Our big worries were, you know, big. Stuff like the roof falling in (though it was re-roofed in 2008). Or the foundation leaking the Nile River in a rain (though we'd have seen signs of that ourselves; I grew up in a house with a leaky basement and know the signs very well). Everything is solid. The only problems that turned up, at all, were minor. A fitting in the gas fireplace leaks in a very minor way when the gas is on. A fitting on a plug is cracked and needs replaced. That's it. We could buy the house as-is and repair those two things ourselves for under twenty bucks after a quick trip to the hardware store. The owner said he'd fix them, though, and I believe it. He's a meticulous kind of guy. Well, heck, there's nothing wrong with the house! What's that tell you about the guy who lives there?

The neighbors on both sides introduced themselves. They all seemed nice. I'm sure they put the word out immediately that they were getting a couple who seemed cool, and had a little girl. There are some other little kids up the street and a horde of teenagers roaming around. They seem like the fun kind of teenagers, so that's good.

Otherwise, I am worn totally out from a day of wrestling the Goober. She was horrifically awful during the inspection (though when I apologized that we don't really know anyone for casual babysitting in the area, I got a line on a neighbor who does THAT, so that's cool). Then the in-laws came for the afternoon, mostly to see the new house, and the Goober worked them so as human shields to keep her out of trouble. She doesn't know it yet, but she'll be lucky to see cartoons before Wednesday. If then.

So, I'm gonna keel over. Maybe if I get really motivated I'll knit a little. It's more likely I'll play Plants Vs. Zombies and make smart remarks on Twitter. But I swore I'd get better about this blogging thing, so here we go. Me getting better.

Tomorrow I might even report on what I've been making. There's a thought. Discussing knitting on a knitting blog. I'm real edgy and creative like that.

Ugh. What a day.

All over but the boxes.

We got a house. It wasn't a contemporary like I wanted, but it's big, it's in excellent repair, it's in a good neighborhood in an excellent school district, and it's about ten minutes from where the husbeast works. Plus our mortgage is about what we were paying in rent for the (much smaller) house in Charleston. I love the kitchen/dining room, which is important. Not only do I spend a lot of time cooking, but the dining room is the center of our house. On the occasions we entertain, we always offer food. Which means there's someone in the kitchen. Which means everyone wanders out and sits at the dining room table or bar stools and talks to whoever is making food and drinks. It's a lovely, big, pleasant room with a skylight (love the skylight).

Downstairs, there is a room currently set up as a wood shop, off the laundry room. We're already calling it my lair. I intend to re-start the Etsy shop, now that I can have a dedicated dye studio and use real dyes without the worry of poisoning my family's food.

There's enough room in the garage that, with luck, the husbeast will grudgingly give me a couple square feet of space to keep tools so I can build book shelves and stuff. I intend to do the actual work in the drive.

So, we're psyched. Or rather, we're cautiously psyched, because the house inspection is tomorrow. I don't really expect to tun up anything major; the house is only twenty years old, and the husbeast and I have both toured it. One or the other of us would have noticed anything major before now. But I really hope nothing MINOR turns up.

We don't move until July. Long story. But as usual, the husbeast and I are dealing with this in different ways. The husbeast is pacing and ranting like a caged, well, like a caged husbeast, desperate to get the hell out of this apartment.

Me?

I cope a little differently.

...and the husbeast is price shopping "kegerators" - small refrigerators meant for a keg of beer.

Oooooh, this is gonna be interesting. I'll try to be better about documenting the madness. This'll be fun madness, not the stress madness I've been keeping radio silence on.

Kegerators. Good gods.

An update on the madness.

Long story short, the house I had high hopes for? Not gonna work. This is it:

You can easily see why I loved it. Well. Thursday we finally got inside with the realtor, and it turns out the house has been tenanted by a really bad do-it-yourselfer who should have been shot. There's not a straight line or level surface in the place. There are holes in the walls. Doors are hung wrong so they won't shut or open or stay that way. The carpet in one room is laid horribly. Worst, they lied on the seller's statement; it's not a three-bedroom. It's a two-bedroom with a sort of wide hallway with a closet in it that they're calling a third bedroom. Plus, I'm not an expert, but either the floor in the front ground floor room was laid wrong (entirely possible with that idiot living there) or there's something wrong with the foundation (also entirely possible with the way the house is built into a hill). Bottom line? The fuckhead who lived there has destroyed at least fifty thousand dollars' worth of the value of his house. It was already WAY marked down from the appraised value (we thought due to the housing recession) and there's no way it'll sell without them knocking off at least another twenty grand. At least. It's that bad.

We're definitely not getting involved. Walking the house, I felt like I was channeling Mike Holmes. "Do it right the first time." "You have got to be kidding me." "This is unacceptable."

House I loved, scratched firmly off the list. I'm fairly pissed off about it. The one silver lining is that the realtor saw that not only do I know what I'm looking at/for, but I'm not going to get suckered in because I love a house. So, that's something. A small something, but something.

The same day we toured that house, we toured another that was okay. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either. The kitchen is fairly awesome. There was an addition put on the back of the house, a HUGE family room with cathedral ceiling that I do like a whole lot. The back yard is beautifully landscaped. There's a room the hub and I could use as a workshop between us. And the whole thing could be converted to handicapped access easily, if we needed to. So if we don't find anything else we like better, we do have that as a fallback.

The reason this is such a big deal is, if we do not get our stuff out of storage by July, the Navy officially makes it Not Their Problem. Not only would we have to pay storage fees, we would have to pay to get it from South Carolina to Pennsylvania out of pocket. We'd have to take out a loan to pay for it; we could do that, but who in their right mind wants to go into debt right when they buy a house? Especially debt that you have nothing to show for. Buying furniture, okay, you get FURNITURE for your trouble. Moving? Ugh. Sucks. So we've got a deadline. Our realtor gets it and is positively saintly. I've sent her a series of e-mails using the same style I use around here - without the profanity. I'm so stressed I can't quite manage full business style. She thinks I'm hilarious.

Sunday we tour four more houses, including a repeat of what I'm thinking of as Fallback House so the husbeast can see it.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Starting to stress.

Okay, fine, I'm turning it into an art form.

Last night I had a dream that there was a huge black mark on my credit report from stealing a girl's earrings in grade school (??!!??) and I would never, ever be able to get a home mortgage as long as I lived.

Yeah. Me? Stressed? Ha. I'd be better off worrying about how I defaulted on my student loan. Even though I went back later and paid it in full. Oh, wait. I am obsessing about that. Never mind.

So what's a girl to do? Zombie knitting, that's what. (I swear the term Zombie Knitting goes back FAR longer than the current zombie obsession in this house. It's my term for easy stockinette or garter stitch projects. Don't believe me? Read this. Particularly tip number four.) Today I did a Mother's Day trip to the yarn store and picked up two Crazy Zauberballs in color scheme, uh, navy-cream-forest green. I'm going to use it to knit a prototype wrap for that line of patterns I mentioned ages ago. Remember, the ones designed to use up all the yarn possible? I decided on the name "Every Little Bit" for the patterns. This one is meant to be swatchless and one-size fits all. If this prototype works, I'll offer it for free. Some of the more complicated things I have in mind, I'll charge for. But this one? Free.

I'm this far, and looking forward to some mindless knitting. I know, I know, I've got that bag to knit. Don't remind me, hmmm?

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Sekhmet's latest thing is to crawl up on me in the evenings and smoosh between the arm of the chair and my leg.

The other night she fell so deeply asleep she slithered off the chair onto the floor. And that's why I let this cat live: She makes me laugh.

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After the last net book fiasco I decided perhaps doing some kind of crash-and-kick protection for the new one was a good idea. So I got this.

It's a 'skin' from Eccessories. Sticks right on, and is lightly padded for when I bump it into things, roaming around the house. (And hopefully when I take it and go back to school.)

Otherwise, more of the same: Try and get some spinning, knitting, and flower-building done, while stressing out so hard my eyes jitter. Oh, the fun.

Gonna knit. ::twitch::

Reviews

Some books and things that have been interesting or fun for me lately.

First, a novel, the first in a series.

Soulless, by Gail Carriger. Normally I stay away from books with vampires and werewolves and ghosts and all, because the authors tend to rely on those gimmicks to carry the book and there's nothing under the freaky supernatural window dressing. That is absolutely not the case in this book. There's a real plot, with a mystery. There is character development. The re-imagined Victorian Era is fascinating, fun window dressing but as a proper backdrop to real action. There's also a whole lot of humor and a heroine who doesn't put up with crap from anyone - and really likes treacle tarts. I definitely suggest reading this one.

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The other book I'm reading, well, that's kind of a funny story.

A Splintered History of Wood, by Spike Carlsen. I was at the book store a week or two ago, looped out on this damn medication, and saw a book. I read "A History of WOOL" on the spine, and bought it. A couple days ago I got it out to read and realized it was a history of WOOD. Huh. Silly me. Well, I like trees. I'm a plant freak. And across the cover it said "An NPR Best Book of the Year" and figured, heck, how bad could it be? I'm very glad I went with it, because it's awesome. Goes through how trees evolved, discusses rare and common woods, and uses for it. There are interviews with famous wood artists, belt sander racers (really) and former president Jimmy Carter, who likes to make furniture. Really cool book.

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And then, the obsession of the house.

Plants Vs. Zombies. A wild and crazy game from PopCap. You can play part of it free here, though I suggest paying $20 for a CD ROM copy of the game at your local game store (I got mine at Target). It's addictive, and the Goober LOVES to watch while I play. Then she pretends to fight zombies. The other day when I fired this up, she shouted "Hey, Zombies, Momma is going to rip your heads off your bodies!" and a week or two ago she called the husbeast "Zombie Chum". Lots of hilarity.

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In other news, we finally got our retirement rating from the government for the hubby, and we immediately signed on with a realtor and once we get pre-approval for a loan, we'll be seriously looking into buying a house. The husbeast sounds like he's resigning himself to the house I really like, or something similar (!!!!!) so I might yet get my happy ending. Considering I've worked and sacrificed twenty years for this, living on a shoestring while paying off credit cards and student loans, well, I fear I'm going to put my foot down. It's looking like all that planning might pay off, though. I hover between stressed out (if we don't buy a house by July and get our stuff out of storage, we're going to hemorrhage money) and excited. I'm trying to hang on to the excitement.

Funny moment at the realtor's office last night: First meeting, discussing all sorts of serious stuff about houses and loans. I had my 'bag of tricks' (big canvas bag) full of the hub's document case, general purse stuff, and coloring books and the like to entertain the Goober. In the midst of it, I pulled a ball of black wool yarn out of the bag and said "Hey! I've been looking for that!" and put it back.

So they already know I'm nuts. You know. Saves time later.

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For those of you addicted to Goob photos:

She's watching Mythbusters. When I turn it on, she always says "Oooo I love this show!" When they blow stuff up, she giggles and claps her hands.

That's my girl.

Look out, world!

Or at least western Pennsylvania.

Yesterday, we finally FINALLY got the final paperwork we needed from the government, from the husbeast's retirement. What this means in practical terms is, WE CAN NOW GET A GOVERNMENT HOME LOAN. We've got a meeting with a realtor tonight.

Before now, everything we've been doing was getting the lay of the land; what was where, what we'd get for how much money, that sort of thing. Now we're going to get pre-approved for a loan and pick out a house. Things should move quickly from here, barring nightmare situations with closing and inspections and legalities.

This is a damn good thing. Not only because we're sick of this apartment, but because if we don't get our stuff out of storage by July, we have to start paying for it. AND, WE WILL HAVE TO PAY SHIPPING TO GET IT FROM SOUTH CAROLINA TO HERE. Speaking of nightmare situations.

So, things are gonna get intense around here for the next couple months as the final stage of the year-long moving hell plays out.

Brace yourselves.

Craft stuff!

I'm building another brooch sort of thing. I think it's a dahlia.

It's a gift for a friend. And as a bribe/gift for the Goober, a reward for good behavior, I let her pick a flower and made it for her, to wear in her hair.

She said she wanted a violet. It sort of is; certainly it's close enough to keep her happy. I'd found a bunch of bug buttons at the craft store and let her choose which one to put on the flower. After fifteen minutes of picking through dragon flies, bees, ladybugs, and butterflies, she went for the only bug with glitter. Sheesh. I could have told her THAT.

I'm about half sorry for the photo quality. Thing is, my new phone makes it SO easy: I can take a photo and have it uploaded to Flickr in, literally, five or six button clicks. No downloading from camera to computer, no tedious uploads back to Blogger, nothin'. Awesome. So y'all are gonna be stuck with more blurry closeups unless it REALLY matters.

And speaking of it mattering, I'll try to document the sweater surgery as I graft in the patch in my mother-in-law's sweater. I'm not sure about tutorials on hair pooftas and stuff. I hope to teach classes on it, and, well. We'll see. I'm still deciding.

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In other news. Those glasses we got for the Goob?

They really help with the Wii playing. She spent a couple hours today playing "Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom". It would have been ALL day, but I didn't want her to be the only kid in kindergarten with carpal tunnel. I bribed her away from the TV with cookies.

Motherhood. It's all about bribery. I coulda been a mobster. (But motherhood is more fun, I'll bet.)

Still alive.

Yep. Still here. I'm fighting with this new medication and it makes me fall asleep. Though 'fall asleep' isn't quite the right term, it's more like I pass out for hours at a time. So I'm trying to figure out when to take the damn stuff so that I'm passed out at night like a normal person.

That said, there's not a whole lot of anything going on.

Yesterday I made some hair pooftas and a pin for that baby shower I knit the Baby Surprise Jacket for.


I made two of the smaller peach ones, and put some leaves on the edges to pretend they were flowers.

This was the pin:

It is a gift for the baby's momma. Mommas need presents too, especially when they're eight months pregnant. The momma in question is a subdued dresser, but she likes to wear hats, so I thought this darker flower would look nice on a hat or the lapel of a winter coat. It was the deepest burgundy red I could find, and very similar to the color of her maid of honor's dress at her wedding (I figured she had to like the color if she used it in her wedding). So I hope that pleases her. When building this flower, I found something of a shortcut. Normally people 'build' these one petal at a time: make each petal, then sew each one down individually to a foundation. This time around, I formed the bottom rosette of petals in one go, tacked those down, then added individually made petals on top. Still time-consuming, but it cuts the number of individually made pieces in at least half. Cut at least an hour - probably more - off the construction time. It also saved a lot of tedious knot-tying and finger jabbing.

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Today we made a quick day trip over to Ohio to visit. My mother-in-law had knit herself a tunic and then accidentally damaged a spot on it. So I had her knit a patch, and while I was over there visiting, began the job of cutting out the bad spot and grafting in the patch:

There's still some work to do, but the bad chunk's been cut out. I took a photo in mid-cut, so all of you could swoon a bit. This isn't quite like steeking, but it isn't so different, either.

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The Goober's been mildly sick (nothing to worry about; more a minor thing we needed to medicate, so it didn't turn into a major thing). This meant most of my awake time this week was spent driving back and forth to the doctor's office or the pharmacy. After we came home from one visit, she ran laps of the living room, singing: obviously she is very gravely ill. (Oddly, this is the same thing she did when she swallowed that stupid penny two years back.)

So, all is well. The house hunt continues (things are looking up, sort of, in that regard). We're finding properties we care enough about to argue over, which I suppose is a good thing. Sort of. Mostly, I feel like this:

Which isn't the worst way in the world to feel, all things considered.

Hopefully real blogging will resume shortly. I've had some requests for information on color knitting, so I'm going to dump it here so you guys can suffer, too.

Happy Beltaine.