June 28, 2007
Busy busy busy
Quite a lot has happened since my last post. Most notably my husband and I bought plane tickets to Italy! We’re leaving in late August and staying for two weeks. I can’t wait! I’m very ready for a vacation, and I’m really excited to travel internationally for the first time. I’m attempting to learn (a little bit of) Italian, I found a really great podcast that I’ve been listening to while I’m on the bus. We’ve been roughing out our itinerary and soon we’ll be making reservations at hostels and museums and buying train passes. I’ve already made a little countdown gadget for my Google homepage so that I can keep track of exactly how many more days until we leave.
Our house has improved greatly in the past couple of weeks. We now have insulation! We hired some pros to install blown-in cellulose insulation. Our house was previously insulated with a few sheets of newspaper stapled to the exterior walls. Newspaper! In Minnesota! We also started drywalling our basement. We started with the ceiling, which is the worst and hardest part. But the good news is that after only one Saturday afternoon we are half done with the ceiling. The walls will be much, MUCH easier to do since we will not have to hold the giant pieces of sheetrock above our heads as we attempt to secure them in place.
I’ve harvested some things from my garden. Mostly salad greens, garlic and rhubarb, but also some herbs, 3 currants and 8 strawberries. I’m hoping that soon we’ll have tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, broccoli, cucumbers, green beans, grapes and assorted gourds. The chipmunks, birds and rabbits have also harvested a lot of things from the garden… about 47 strawberries, a gazillion currants and a brand new asparagus plant.
As for crafty things, I’ve been knitting a lot. I worked on a swap package for Sarah the past few weeks, which I’ll post pictures of later. I’m working on a third wrap skirt from Fitz Patterns. I’ve worked quite a bit on the Wheel of Mystery quilt, I’m probably two hours away from finishing the piecing of the top. I’ve been slacking off on taking pictures of works-in-progress, the only picture I have is for my Anastasia socks.
It’s a rather sad picture. You’ll notice that they look… different. I’m really not sure what could’ve caused the difference in striping. My gauge is the same, they’re the same number of stitches, they’re from the same ball of yarn. The yarn is hand-dyed (by me) so that could have something to do with it. Maybe it’s the fact that the eyelets spiral in different directions? I think I’ll have to do some math next time I dye yarn and either make it purposefully self striping or do a better job of making an un-pooling variegated yarn.
March 11, 2007
Completed project: Electricity!
I’m enormously proud of this… I installed a light in our entryway this weekend! All by myself! It’s my first electrical project yet. Well, I should clarify that – it was my first electrical project in our house. I took two electrical engineering labs in college where I attempted many projects, some of which ended in failure and one ended in flames. Granted, the flames where actually my lab partner’s fault, and the circuits we were building were quite a bit more complicated than the two-switch-two-light circuit I wanted to build in our house.
The project was a little nerve-wracking. I’m embarrassed to say how long I spent drawing diagrams of the existing wiring and my options for the new wiring, and how long I spent staring at those diagrams… but everything went smoothly. I connected everything correctly on the first try. Didn’t get electrocuted. No fires were started. It’s hard to believe. It’s ridiculous how happy I was when I first flipped the switch for the new light and the light came on. The project took about 3 hours of work, including cutting all the holes in the wall, running wires, testing the circuits and all the cleanup.
March 7, 2007
Bathroom renovation
My bathroom renovation project got featured on Apartment Therapy yesterday!
March 3, 2007
Snow
Look at all this snow!
We actually had to pile snow on one car to get the other car out of the garage.
March 1, 2007
WIP: house
We’re having a huge snow storm today in the midwest. I took a picture of our house last night around 11pm, and the sky was so bright I was able to take picture without a flash. Wierd, huh? Another foot of snow is predicted before the storm ends.
My husband has been working on finishing the basement of our house. I’ve really had nothing to do with this, other than snapping a few chalk lines. I’ll be responsible for the painting after the drywall is up, and maybe some of the electrical work. Maybe. I’m currently working on installing a light in our entryway, where there is already an exterior light. I’m estimating the time-to-completion for that project to be about May. So for now, enjoy the pictures of the basement in progress:
January 21, 2007
Completed project: roman shade
I have finally, after 8 months, completed the second (and last) roman shade for our dining room. As mentioned before, I am really, really horrible about finishing projects. This project was especially bad because the construction of the first shade did not go smoothly. I bought the wrong amount of fabric so the construction of the second shade went even worse – I had to buy more fabric and piece it together to make the second shade. Ugh! I don’t think I will ever learn the measure twice, cut once rule. Somewhere between finishing the two shades I spent time scouring the web and every hardware/window treatment/craft store in town to find a cord anchor that 1)was small enough to fit in the window frame and 2)wasn’t plastic. I finally found them at The Brass Handle in Edina for something like $2.
November 26, 2006
Pincushion challenge swap
I came home from my trip to Iowa for Thanksgiving to find that the package from my pincushion swap partner had arrived. I love it!!! The pincushion is so cute! Thanks Em!
I had a great Thanksgiving and I hope all of you did, too! My husband and I went to Iowa and visited both his family and mine. We had a great, although exhausting, trip. We came home with a very nice antique drop leaf table and a set of 6 chairs from my grandma. It looks beautiful in our dining room. There is one small piece of the veneer that needs to be glued back in place and a few tiny spots where the shiny finish have worn off but otherwise it is in excellent shape. It is so sturdy!
We got 4 of these bent plywood chairs, which I LOVE but my husband wants to pitch. They do need a little TLC and perhaps a coat of polyeurathane. Anyone have any advice about touching up chairs? Or perhaps some advice on how to get my flickr picture to not be sideways?!? (Yes, I did rotate it, but when I go to the “all sizes” link the picture is sideways.)
And we got one of each of these chairs:
My family tells me that these two were the “original” chairs… but since they are both different I’m betting that only one is original and the other is a replacement. My husband’s family tells me that the table is a Duncan Fife… I’ll have to do some research on that.
Our old dining room table (also from my grandma – how can one person have so many tables?!) is now the sewing table in our office. I FINALLY have my own little work area. yay! As you can see, right now it is super cluttered and not yet set up but I’ll be fixing that soon. Note the new pincushion 
I’ve got to sign off now, but I’ll be posting a lot more this week. Stay tuned!!!
July 26, 2006
Completed projects: entryway and pincushion
I had a busy, busy weekend. First off, I finished painting our side entryway. This is the first home improvement project I’ve finished in a long, long time… I have so many projects in progress that it’s nice to finally be able to finish one and cross it off the list. The color is called “baby duck” by Benjamin Moore. I was going to paint the entryway orange or mustard-colored until two good friends chose this color instead. I think they made the right choice! Our cat, Luna, snuck into the picture. She is begging to go outside.
I also finished a pin cushion for the June/July pincushion challenge. Unfortunately my sewing machine is in the shop so I had to sew the whole thing by hand… it doesn’t look the greatest, but I plan on re-doing it when I get my machine back.
And last but not least, I spent a ton of time working on the yard. The grandpa ott’s morning glories I planted are finally starting to bloom! The yellow flower in front of them is a calendula, and behind them are our grapes.
April 21, 2006
Completed project: ribbon curtain
I finally finished the ribbon curtain I’ve been s-l-o-w-l-y working on for months! I’ve reached my goal of removing every set of mini-blinds in the house!!! Well, except for the ones on the doors… but I’m going to pretend like those don’t count. At least they don’t bother me as much. I always leave them closed and I never have to futz with their stupid strings and crummy plastic twirly-stick. Ugh. It makes me mad just thinking about mini-blinds.
April 17, 2006
Completed project: Roman shade
Here’s the one (out of two) Roman shades that I finished for our new windows:
It was a huge pain to make, and it took twice as long as it needed to because I botched it every step of the way. But, it looks nice so it was worth it. Now I just have to get some sort of a cord cleat or anchor… because without that we can’t keep the shade open.
Here’s a good example of why we got new windows:
Check out that peeling paint! We could only afford 4 new windows this year. We have 20 more left to replace, about 10 of which are going to need repainting this year to keep from rotting. Ick!
