Obsession du Jour

Lest anyone think that I am joking about the nesting lunacy that I have exhibited recently, this has been installed and COMPLETELY gigged out with diapers, newborn t-shirts, receiving blankets, etc. in our bathroom (the new pad cover was in the wash, lest you also think that my insanity isn't thorough):

Now, many of you will look at this and think....well, sure....you ARE having a baby, dufus. Of course you have a new changing table with dipers and so forth.  And to those people I feel the need to point out that this has been in my bathroom for almost three weeks.

....that's right, since I was 29 weeks along - and just to put that in perspective for those people keeping up on your insanity scorecards at home, that's 11 WEEKS prior to my due date.

Yes, there is a matching crib.  Also a matching glider w/ottoman.  Everybody say it with me:  All hail the Craig's List.

No, there isn't a nursery, or really anywhere to store these furniture items because of the renovations - so currently the glider is sitting on top of the dining room table in the 'library', and the crib's side rails are currently serving as drying racks in the 'guest room' for the eleventy-million rescued wool sweaters that have just been felted to make wool soakers for the cloth diapering thing. 

What?

You want more?  OK, how about the two bassinets:

Upstairs (our room) - please, please ignore the as yet un-finished floor in our bedroom:

Downstairs (den/living room):

Please note that these sheets were also in the wash, but please do ooh and ahh over the super-adorable blankie from one of WB's favorite aunties on the upstairs bassinet. 

Still not enough for you?  How about a homemade diper?

Because why would any sane person just run out to the store and buy anything that you can instead spend about 30 hours and a lifetime of (im)patience figuring out how to make?  Why, I ask you?

So, yeah...hormones, schmoremones.  I'm only doing what any one of you would do in my shoes, right?  Oh, and speaking of shoes - here's yours truly, barefoot and pregnant:

32-ish weeks and counting.

Stats:

Weight gained: 25 lbs (so far, but there's a brand new cheescake in my fridge, so don't get between me and it if you value you life)
Inches gained around tummy - 13
Inches gained around chest - 1

Does anyone else think I've gotten the short end of the stick on the breast thing?

Some stuff for some people, pt 2.

For Elisa:

See how badly you are kicking my ass?  Not that we're racing or anything, but still.  This is where I was on Tuesday, after a complete rip-out and re-knit last week.  Don't ask, just know that one should not knit lace when one is so tired that one might fall asleep mid-stitch, putting one's entire lace shawl at risk.  Lessons for life.

But just look at the pretty yarn.....

Pattern: Miriam's Icarus shawl.  IK Summer 2006.
Yarn: Misti Alpaca in Maize (Why they are calling this Maize, I'll never understand.  This color looks no more like an ear of corn than does...say...my red hair.  What it SHOULD be called is key lime, but whatever rocks their boat.  The picture on the web page is actually a pretty good color representation.)

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For Juno and Kristen:

Remember these?  Best damned $5 EVAH.  Can't.Stop.Wearing.These.  Even when maybe I shouldn't.  Like, possibly this day - with olive green socks and red pants.  (Hush up Elisa, I can HEAR you rolling your eyes at this.)

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For Kristen:

Leon said to tell you that he misses you and that you should come for a visit the next time you're in the neighborhood.   He would have had me post a picture of the back-flip-belly-exposing-cute-you-to-death pose, but he din't think the rest of us could handle it.

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For Mick:

I can't compete with your giant yard, but I CAN design a cute mini-cottage garden, if I do say so myself.  Now if only I could figure out what to put in the back....

Sadly, no cockle shells.  Just cocoa shells.

Passages

For quite some time I've been itching to yank down our front door and remove a century of paint layers and sloppy glass repairs.  Over the last few weekends I've been able to fit in some quality hours on that project.

All that's left now is a date with some sandpaper & elbow grease and it will be ready for a fresh staining.

Before that though, it will be time to take care of the crappy leftover glazing so that these stained glass panels can be cleaned and repaired.   Hopefully, that will happen next weekend.

Speakng of quality time, I believe that Lucy and I have come to an agreement over the Long Draw drafting thing.  Basically, we both love it.

Patience and good fiber prep.  It's a good mantra, eh?  On the far right end of the bobbin the first layers of inconsistency and frustration can be seen peeking out, but the latter half of this bobbin? Sheer heaven.

Here's another shot, just for fun.

And here are some helpful linky-links:

http://www.interweave.com/spin/spinoff_magazine/files/Spin_Basics_Win04.pdf
http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/spinTech-inchworm.html - video

 

You people scare me a little.

And I mean that in the very best possible way.  Why?

VIOLA!

TWO, count 'em TWO matching chairs.  In our house.  Undamaged. 

Big Knitting Mojo strikes again!

You guys are the BEST.  Thanks!  Thanks also for all the commiseration, concern, and foul language on our behalf. I really didn't at any point get very fired up about any of this because, well, it sounds so stupid, but it just could have come out so much worse that I felt like....I don't know...like it would have been ungrateful to be all whiny about a banged up chair.   Oh, don't get me wrong, there was foul language, but still.

And now a preview of why Valley Fabrics is the greatest store in all the land.

Please note how this matches the new chaise (which i had NOT as yet even seen) as if it had been MADE for it.  This bolt jumped off the shelf and into my arms and made me buy some. Made me, I tell you.  Lets refresh our memory about what the chaise looks like (also, BTW, not in it's final location):

Now TELL me we weren't cosmically destined to buy this chaise.  Or, for that matter, that fabric.  We lead a charmed life around here I tells ya.

I need a favor.

We interrupt today's scheduled post on the magic wonderland that is Valley Fabrics to bring to you a request for a little bit of the BKM (Big Knitting Mojo).  We don't need a full measure or anything, just maybe a moderate application.  Here's why:

See this?

This is one of the new chairs we bought over the tax free weekend here. It's one of a matched pair. You may notice that it doesn't LOOK like a brand new chair, but it is.  Or, at least it was before it fell off the back of the truck in the middle of the highway (on our way home with it last night) and tumbled across a lane or so of I-93.  More on that in a minute.  Here's what I need.  I need you all to focus on SKU#CMDF210193556 while we chat because this is part of a discontinued line of furniture (hence the ginormous clearance savings), and we badly need them to have another one JUST like this one.  See the asymetrical arms?  Yeah, it's important that the short arm of the replacement chair (assuming that there is one) be on the same side.  SO, SKU# CMDF210193556.  Everyone's got their focus?  Ready to go on?    OK, so let's head down to this wacky extended entry thing I've never used before and see the rest of the story.

Oh come on....there's more pictures......but don't forget, concentrate on that SKU.

Take me home, country road.

Sometimes a girl just needs some fresh laundry and a nice patch of freshly turned garden soil to take her back to her roots.

Mint juleps anyone?

TGIF?

In general, I look forward to weekends, but this is what most weekends are like around here these days:

What am I doing?  Much as I'd like to be able to tell you that I am prepping this space for a fireman's pole that leads from the guest room to the living room, I'm not.

I am WASHING the ceiling.  Yes, you heard that right.  Washing it.  With hot water, vinegar, Windex, whatever it takes.  One section at a time. Because even Kilz can't make the decades of ick go away. Thankfully, it's only been ELEVENTY-MILLION DEGREES here over the last couple of weekends, so being up on a ladder in a room without air conditioning has only been something like...I don't know.....the fourth ring of HELL?   

I have learned so many things in the last two years of working on this house.  So many things that I thought I maight make a very brief list of the most current stuff:

1. 'Done' with a room apparently never actually means 'finished working on that damned room' when it comes to renovating.  I know, I know - I always thought the meaning of that word was pretty effing clear too, but I was wrong.
2. I also used to think painting was a pain in the ass.  Again, wrong. Painting is a.walk.in.the.park compared to other things one does when renovating.
3. Electrical work...now THAT'S a pain in the ass. Grade-A, first class PIA.  Go hug your electrician today.  Then maybe knit them something nice.  They deserve it.
4. Ladders can be dangerous when placed on deep-pile rugs.  Don't say I never warned you.
5. People who smoke in their homes should be REQUIRED to remove the sooty-sticky filth that it leaves behind before they sell it.  REQUIRED. Lead paint?  Who cares?  Asbestos? Pshaw! This leftover smokers' grime?  Killing.Me.  Not to be preachy, because I will not ever even BEGIN to say anything at all to anyone about smoking - not my place, it's your body, your choice, don't care (really, I don't, bully on ya), but - and I can't stress this enough - take it outside.  Never make anyone clean this crap up after you're gone.  It's inhumane.  And did I mention disgusting? 
6. It's a sad but true fact, and contrary to some of my deepest held beliefs, that Windex and hot water do NOT clean everything.

Thankfully, the heat has broken, so wish me well on the rest of the ceiling.  I want, with all of my wool-hoarding soul, to be finished with this project by the end of the weekend.

Feast or famine.

So.....yeah....it's definitely feast or famine around here.  I've been given a short lunch break by the Construction-Master in the midst of hanging these:

,
along with painting and installing quarter-round along the living room floor, stripping some of the woodwork in the hallway, running all new wiring for the floor outlets (ha!  you thought the great wiring adventure would be LONG finished by now, didn't you?) on the first floor, washing a month's worth of laundry, and cleaning a month's worth of neglect in the house.  These last two seem especially important to me because we have company coming next weekend, and while I am not what one might call 'anal retentive' regarding housekeeping (thanks to 3 years of living with 6 graduate student males in one house, before that I was a nightmare), I do still feel the need to scrape the Spaghetti-O's off the stove and vaccum the cat hair off the floor from time to time.  Figuratively speaking, of course.  We would never eat Spaghetti-O's in this house, much less leave bits to dry on the stove for days/weeks.  Ahem.   Also, there's been some weeding of the garden, which is settling in nicely for the most part.  I think we're going to lose one of our transplants, a 'Multi-Blue' Clematis, but everyone else seems pretty happy.  Like this Echinacea:

Echinacea 'Sunset' loving this sunshine.

Since my disappearance, some stuff has happened, there's been some traveling (updates to come), and there's even been a teeny bit of actual knitting/spinning/blog-type activity(ditto).  Not much, but some.  We'll start with the newest family member and her adventures with an old friend, Nadine .

Lucy and Nadine.

Oh yeah, she says her name is Lucy.  I'll admit that I tried to talk her into Lucretia, but she's having none of that sort of frilly name stuff, so I guess Lucy it is.   

The three of us have spent some time getting to know one another, because me?  Completely unfamiliar with the world of double-drive spinning, not to mention the speed with which a wheel this size will spin up fiber.  Folks, they don't call this a 'production wheel' for nothing. Fast drafting and good fiber control are key, apparently.  By the end of the bobbin nadine looked like this:

I think Lucy and I have come to a basic understanding of one another.  Next we'll try plying some of this, but before we did that, I decided that I needed a wrist distaff, so I ran a little bit back through to increase the twist even more and made this:

I used the examples in 'A Handspindle Treasury' (thanks again Santa), and oh my, my, how I love this thing!  Lookit!

Stunningly beautiful Hello Yarn hand painted roving from the Maine Fiber Frolic (what? I said there was travelling.) and the newest drop spindle in the stable, a Bosworth in Tulipwood from New Hampshire S&W. 

Can I say? SO MUCH BETTER to have a distaff for the handspindling.  Call me uncoordinated (and I am), but my enjoyment level of the drop spindle, which has always been mitigated by the fiber control issues, has just skyrocketed.  If you think you don't like handspindling, I'd like to suggest trying this before you completely dismiss this particular outlet for your spinning addiction habit hobby.  It bears mentioning here that plenty of folks have said the distaff was important equipment in the past, but I sort of always thought that just wrapping the fiber around my wrist was good enough, especially given that one of the joys of handspindling is the distinct lack of necessary equipment to tote around.  Who me?  'I don't need no stinking crutch'.  Foot?  Meet mouth.  Mouth? Meet foot.  Yeah.  So.Wrong.

Here are some links to other wrist distaff photos, but Urbanspinner's site with instructions for these seems to be down (temporarily?  permanently?):
Woolflowers
Notsoswift
Tessa
Fibernut

Spinoff Summer 2005 also had instructions for making a wrist distaff using an interesting technique.

Ooops...breaktime's over. Hear that whip crackin'?  Gotta go!  More stuff to show you!  Dang! I'll try to sneak away later.....

Pimp my Ride again.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you make what 'feels' like a deliciously spontaneous decision?  A decision that leaves you thinking 'Look out world, I am utterly unpredictable, crazy and free-spirited.  I DEFINE spontaneous.  Wild at heart, baby.  Wild at heart.'  Don't you love those?  I do.  I love 'em.  I even thought for a moment this weekend that I had one of those moments.  Until I stopped and thought about it and realized that what had seemed like it had come out of nowhere was actually the slow stacking of little things - experiences, discussions, experiments, trials, a word here, a spin (or three) there - a slow building of ideas and impressions and desires that finally coalesce in an almost blinding flash around one very simple statement.

.

"You know that's going to look fucking fantastic against your red living room walls, right?"

.

It's a Lucien Paradis antique Canadian production wheel, tricked out for the new generation by Dave at The Merlin Tree.  It's beautifully intact and beautifully (she was right, wasn't she) mine. The Spindicate may be ruthless, but they are never wrong.

(ETA: Thankfully, someone got a photo of the happy event.  You can see it here.  Thanks, Cassie!)

I wish that I had some spinning from her to show you, but I gave up my spinning time for this:

Finally we have actual life in our front yard.  Monday morning, all that lived here were the two Corkscrew Filberts (planted last summer) and a whole mess of mulch.  It was terrible.  Now, after a day of hard work, we have Clematis, Yellow Trumpet Vine, a Lilac, Roses, Peonies, Columbines, Dwarf Day Lilies, a few Dahlias, and some herbs for the front border. Those white stones mark a tiny path that will be filled in with bits of broken slate (from the bathroom project) with Creeping Thyme and Irish Moss planted between them to fill in with greenery.    The area behind the Filberts (now filled with mulch piles to be spread out) was to be planted with a red-stemmed Dogwood, aka cornus sericea, but I think it's too likely to try to take over, so instead I'm considering some Foxgloves and Hollyhocks back there for drama.  Not to mention camouflage for the foundation.

The one where I profess to have a knitting blog.

Knitting content:

That's right, one Jaywalker and second is on the needles (size 2 Addi's - 2.5mm).  Seriously, could I BE later to this party?  Oh, and get this - if you pegged this as Socks That Rock, you'd be absolutely right (it's the Moss Agate colorway). It's like I just showed you 8 inches of black stockinette, isn't it?  It's true, it's all been done before, but I love it anyway.  I can also see now why Cara has about 5 jillion skeins (scroll all the way down, it's the last pic) of this stuff.  It's beautiful and soft and yet somehow seems far denser and stronger than any other sock yarn I've tried.  In short, I love it.  As for this sock pattern?  I could go on and on and on about how much I love this pattern, but so many have done it before me (it's true, just Google Jaywalker sock, I dare you) that it's unlikely that I can add anything new.  Here are the two things I WILL say, though:

1.  This sock WILL NOT fall down. Cara told me, but I didn't believe her. It's true.  It's even magical. I wore it all over the house for HOURS the other night (hot off the needles) and it just stayed put.  No wilting, no slipping, no bunching, not even after a couple of hours puttering around trying desperately trying to hang on to the shreds of an illusion that I live in a home and not a disaster area.
2. That heel flap? HUMONGOUS!  I had to reduce each and every row just to keep this thing even CLOSE to being the right size.  It's a little wierd considering how great the leg fits.  I'm working hard to ignore what that might indicate about the fatness of my calves relative to my feet, which are not, I might add, exactly petite.

I am also, for the moment, going to ignore the fact that I just admitted that I walked around cleaning my house in mis-matched socks purely because I had just finished knitting one of them.  If y'all can't understand, I suspect no one will.

And this concludes what sadly passes for knitting content here at Chez Obsession these days.  Soon there will be some super secret knitting reveals, a progress shot of Rogue (You remember Rogue, right, my Knitting Olympics sweater?  Yeah. It's still not done.), and more fun and hijinks.  What follows is a mostly photo essay of just some of the joy that is home remodeling, because things just get crazier and crazier and crazier around here.  There's lots o' nutty, stressful job stuff, which I don't get to talk about here, yet MORE super secret knitting, which, of course, I can't talk about here, and only occasional electricity in my house, which make it difficult to talk to you at all.   

HA! THAT one got you, didn't it?  It's true, we have begun The Great Rewiring Project 2006.  It's sorta like the Knitting Olympics, only less fun - and maybe fewer people actually care about it.  Lucky for me, it's my blog and I want to show you the rewiring, so I get to show you the rewiring.  I'm selfish like that.  So if you're only here for the knitting, it's safe to go now.  I don't even have a cat shot to placate you.

All the fixtures on the first floor look like this. 

See?  Here's another (there are four of them):

Some of you may recognize the tip end of the wire-fishing-metal-snake-thingie (that's official technical lingo) sticking through this particular hole. Also, don't you just LOVE this texture thing that Rick did on the hallway ceiling?!?  In real life it looks a little like a monochrome tartan weave up there!! How cool is that?

Here's what came off the ceilings in two of the four rooms:

How's that for decades of dust, eh?

And THIS is what lurks under the temporary linoleum in the temporary bathroom (I did mention that we bought a fixer-upper, right?)

It's all quite bothersome, but OH.SO.satisfying when the one of the end results looks like this:

Go Team!