Decorating

Well. An update. Still no new house. Maybe by December 4th. It is hard to keep waiting but i am glad we got out of town this weekend to visit family and relax. 

Today we help my mother in law decorate for Christmas. This involves removing the thanksgiving/fall decorations. This year they have a new kitten and I will not be surprised if she tries to climb the tree. She is so active and playful. Anyway, I have been looking forward to helping with the decorations. It is always fun to arrange items and try to remember where things go. We are talking about like 6 or so giant tubs of stuff and other items too. 

They also are sending us home with some things for our new house. (Feels like early Christmas). I got a ton of vintage crocheted doilies and some pillows and picture frames and mirrors and some curtains and fabric. A main hobby of theirs is garage saleing. We also got a few rugs. So grateful to get stuff for our new house! It makes it seem more real. 

About the vintage doilies. I plan on using some around the house, and maybe some for an art project. I have seen curtains and and adding them to lampshades etc. There are lots of cool ideas online. 

I brought some knitting on this trip. A cowl for me. I barely had any bandwidth yesterday because of my cold. Feeling a little better today and hoping to get more done. I do have more Christmas presents to make but could not bring them because then family here might get an idea of what they are getting. 

Here is the cowl. It is called Vortex Cowl. The original pattern is for 4 colors but I am only doing two. I think I like how it is working out. I already have so much blue in my wardrobe but I hope it will go with lots of things. The colors are a little off. Navy stripe and variegated blue & purples. 

Stitch by stitch

So. The secret Christmas Present making continues. I got a lot of knitting done on a project when we went to see a movie and only had a few mistakes to fix the next morning. Since the pattern was simple it was easy to drop down 10 rows and fix the stitches. I love not wasting time and often knit in the car too, if I am not the driver.

I have finished 3 projects (sewing, sewing & knitting), and am in the middle of 4. (They involve knitting, knitting, embroidery, and painting/glitter). Trying to keep a list so I keep everything straight.

One of the projects I finished used up some stash fabric and was pretty quick to make once I had all the pieces cut to the same shape. It felt great to be able to use stash as I have not been sewing much this summer, and a lot of my stash is smaller pieces. I am looking forward to my new craft room so much!

I love vintage sewing rooms: Here is a 60s/70s one. Main things I need: Lots of light, Storage ( I already have one big piece of storage furniture.) Ironing board (My husband is hoping to build one that comes down from the wall. I will need to locate a good chair I guess too.
I do hope someday to fix a few of my machines. I guess I have 4. Only one that works well. There is one I do not have cords for, one I'm not sure if I have cords for. One my dad got me at a yard sale that probably just needs a tune up. Hopefully someday I can take them in to a repair shop and see what we can do. I may not need 4 machines, but two might be good in case I need to lend one, or have a friend over sewing. I would love to get a surger someday too, I really don't know a whole lot about other machines.

Here is a West African beans and rice recipe we like. I made curry lentil soup last night because it is cold outside.

Next time I blog we may have our new house and be painting furiously!

Daylight or lack there of.

Started this post on 11/3/15 and realized tonight that I had not published it yet...

 My Pumpkin this year...


Daylight savings time was halloween night. Ever since then I seem to be tired at 9pm and wake up at 6:30? And once I am awake I start thinking about our move and the new house. We looked at carpet and paint colors last night. Everything seems so relative, color wise, and of course hard to tell in small rectangles. The carpet that is there does need to be replaced, since the previous owner smoked and it is 1970s carpet (that textured brown stuff so many houses had). We think we are going with a speckled style of carpet which we hope will wear well over the years. It is a neutral with flecks of red brown an gray green. We are planning on painting all the walls too. Trying to keep the house feeling light but also add some interest.

Anyway lots to think about. 

I am knitting a lot this week for Christmas. It is annoying because one of my thumbs is cracked and dry so I try to not do too much, but I really want to be knitting as much as I can. I bought some new yarn for two projects and already started one of them (it will be perfect lunchtime/keep in my purse knitting). I also started a different project that requires a little more attention to the pattern so I am making progress when I have light to see my work. It is a completely different style of project than I have done before and so it is fun to try something new. Today I am hoping to finish up a sewing project I was working on last week, and maybe finish up mike's big present which involves painting and stuff drying so I can hide it again. 

I need to be taking photos as I go to get everything documented for Ravelry etc. I generally handmake things for Christmas. Often it is just ornaments. This year I tried to start early and I am also doing some sewing projects which can be a little faster. So hopefully I will be able to finish things, since I know once we get the house we will be painting!!!! 

It is so so crazy to be getting our first house. I am really excited yet nervous and it will mean a lot of hard work. The good thing is besides painting and flooring the house doesn't need much else. We do need to reinvent the two garages to be a recording studio though! And budget it all, of course... 

More later. I will try to share photos of what I can so it doesn't become too boring.