A little shopping..

I decided to go do a little shopping after all.  I was on the hunt for more bed risers which I bought on the clearance aisle at one of the local Walgreens.  I couldn’t remember if I bought the last set so thought I’d check – none left – but I’ll be able to find them at other stores so not worried about that.

In the mean time, since I had a while before the next bus would arrive, I hopped across the street to TJ Maxx.  The only area I ever shop in at their store is the housewares section where I have found some really great buys in the past or some cute decorative things that I like.  Today was a good day.  I wanted more storage basket type  things to use on the book case when I move it into the bedroom and found a great one on sale.

 Very sturdy and very inexpensive.  Also some little plastic storage containers since mine always seem to disappear and those are some pillowshams that go with a new bedspread I bought. Also got a set of pillowcases for $2.00 so they were a bargain.  I need to go back tho when I’m out shopping with a friend and not riding the bus – they have the most perfect lamps for my bedroom – a great color match for my bedroom furniture and also inexpensive – just not able to drag them home on the bus 🙂

But my favorite find was this huge, and I mean huge, bag.  It’s got to be about 3 feet tall and where the sides are sort  of folded (from hanging on a rack by the handles) it’s about 3 feet across.  It stands up by itself due to something with a bit of heft between the outer layer and lining.   Now I could just fill it up with yarn 😉  but I got it because I think it will be a great clothes hamper in the bedroom closet tho almost too pretty to hide away in the closet.

So I didn’t get much more cleaning done this afternoon except a load of laundry but I’m off to deal with that bookshelf and get it emptied while the onions are carmelizing for my French onion soup.  The soup will be great for dinner since it’s in the mid 20s outside but I didn’t realize how windy it was – chilled to the bone while waiting for the bus so have to get moving and cleaning so I warm up again.

Knitting and Stitching Progress

Last night I finished the back on my sweater.

That tiny little ball of yarn by the right armhole is all that was left of the first hank of yarn.  No ends to weave in mid sweater which is also one of the reasons I like Wollmeise yarn – lots more yardage on a hank of it so fewer ends to bury at the end.  I was too lazy to go get the next hank and wind it at nearly midnight so switched gears.

I pulled the second stocking hat block for A Knitter’s Gifts that  I needed to applique one hat on – the dark blue one – and that is now done and I just need to square the block up to size.  That BOM I’m caught up on now but I need to get some dog blocks made since I haven’t started the March blocks yet.  The blocks being uploaded to the Flickr group are just wonderful and there’s lots of Knitter’s Gifts and DPPAS blocks loaded — so much creativity in fabrics and embellishments.

And early this morning, while I was waiting snug and warm in bed, watching a movie and waiting for the coffee maker to finish – I picked up my sister’s top and knit a few more rows on that so I’ve done the initial armhole bind off stitches on the front now.

I decided this morning to put the bed back on the frame for the time being.  I have no plans to venture out today in search of more bed risers so put it all back together until after the new bed arrives so I can continue with my furniture moving.

The next task is to clear off this bookshelf – tho I haven’t quite decided where some of that stuff that’s on it will end up.  The quilts will stay stored on it and there’s some others to join  them but the rest is either knitting related stuff or giveaway stuff for the BOMS so you know it’s all going to end up on the table in the sewing room and be more stuff I’ll have to deal with when I clean that room – which is definitely going to be a shore since I’ve been moving extra stuff into that room to deal with later.

Fortification is needed – first some brunch/lunch, and I want to start a pot of French onion soup since I finally remembered to pick up some wine so I could make it, and then back to the taming of the dust bunnies.

as predicted….

it does get worse before it gets better — hopefully I don’t run out of steam  before everything gets back to its place tho! 🙂

I ran into a glitch tho.  This is the way the bedroom looks tonight – note the box spring and mattress are not exactly sitting on the bed frame.

I was going to put the bed risers under the bed frame and when I bought them I never even though about the fact that I should have  bought two sets so not just the four corners but the centers of the frame would be supported as well.  (duh – insert forehead whacking motion here).  So I think tomorrow or Monday I may need to go see if I can find another set of them.  So in the meantime, the box spring and mattress will sit on the floor until Tuesday when the new furniture guys come to get them.  Everything except the nightstand has gotten cleaned out.  I decided the closets will wait until the weather actually gets warm enough to pack away some of the warmer clothes which will be at least another month.

So tomorrow I can make a new mess in the living room by emptying the wooden shelves I plan to move into the bedroom — to see if I really want to leave them in there.

Right now the mess has spread to the living room already –   The  chair outside my sewing room door had  been in the bedroom but I don’t think there will be room for it so it needs a new home.  It was a chair that was in my great grandmother’s kitchen.  The two totes are the ones that were under the bed with yarn in them – so they will go back there eventually. And on the left, totally blocking my use of the treadmill … goll darn it isn’t that disappointing! {smirk} is the quilt rack with a bunch of quilts which may or may not go back in the bedroom.  So yep – a nice mess spread through the house now all from cleaning one room.  Yes, cleaning is highly overrated.

But I think it’s time to call it quits to the cleaning for today other than I have a couple of loads of laundry waiting to be folded and put away.

I think it’s knitting time after that.  I hope to get the back of my sweater finished tonight!

Surrounded by Dust Bunnies

  Quick break out the feather dusters and dust mops — I’m being surrounded by dust bunnies — and they are jackalope sized!!!

Well actually, I think I have subdued them into submission  – at least in the bedroom.  When was the last time I ran the little vacuum attachment around the edges of the baseboard where the dust bunnies all line up?   Not anytime I can remember in the recent past.

But it’s time for a soda break.  Good progress has been made – all the dresser drawers cleaned out.  I’ve started three bags – one for donation, one for trash and one for stuff I’ll pass by my mom and sister before donation if they don’t want them.  There’s a lot more room in the dresser for my hand knit socks now that I got rid of all the stuff I don’t wear or stuff that is too worn to wear and I’m living on the edge and washing up some of my most heavy winter sweaters to pack away.  They’re the ones I really only wear when it’s in the teens and below so I HOPE I’m safe packing them away at this point. And that overflowing drawer of scarfs (not the knit kind – the silky or polyester kind) – I love scarfs of all types and wear them a lot but they were mostly just smooshed in a drawer.  Found a container to fold them up in to keep some of the smaller ones tidy.  And we’ll see what happens when I decided to hand wash some of them  – if they survive or not.

Of course that cleaning now means there’s an extra wicker storage sort of sidetable sitting in the middle of the sewing room since I cleaned it all out (okay I dumped everything that was in it’s drawers into a reuseable grocery bag until I get time to sort it and put it where it belongs.  Most of it was stuff that goes in the sewing room anyway.  That wicker unit probably won’t go back in the bedroom so eventually I’ll find it a new home or get rid of it.   But I found where some of my favorite scissors were hiding – in that unit since it was last in my sewing room before it moved to the bedroom.

Enough of a break – couple more things I want to do before I stop for dinner.  Just need to pull the bed away from the wall and do the baseboard there and then decide if I’m moving the bed.  A good day’s work so far.

 

It may not be pretty… but

This is probably the least pretty time of year in the woods outside my door but the beautiful thing about it – notice that hillside is mostly free of snow!    On this side of the fence – that’s not really snow -its nicely frozen hard ice.  There’s one section a little farther up where the ice has formed a waterfall over the side of the wooden retaining wall where it gets higher from the run off of the hill.  So it’s still a nightly refreezing of what melted during the day on the sidewalks making it a fun ice slick to cross each morning and a water hazard to wade through each night.  I’ll be so happy when that stops happening.   But as you can see – no sunshine here, cloudy and gray.  One of these days I really need to take down the icicle lights outside but it’s been too cold to do so.

So today with be spent dealing with other “unpretty” things if I ever get going since I slept in late and wasted several hours of my morning! 🙂  One of the “unpretty” things

  Yeah – the sewing room has turned into a mess again.  But hey – notice how the tope bag and yarn on top seem to coordinate with the quilt on the wall?  LOL  Yes I play my messes carefully.  Hmmm wonder where on the floor that missing quilt block fell to.

Anyway despite the nonspring weather, I think a little spring cleaning is in order but it’s going to get worse before it gets better as all my major cleaning projects do.

I need to straighten up the living room first because I think the big bookcase that is in there will be moved to my bedroom.  Of course since the new bed arrives Tuesday, the bedroom needs cleaning and probably rearranging of the furniture before then to make sure the bookcase will fit where I want.

The bookcase right now mostly gets stacked with “stuff” that really doesn’t need to be there – knitting projects, papers, magazines, knickknacks — that all need other homes.  And it takes up a good bit of space and hampers the furniture rearranging in that room  -especially since the treadmill is in my living room now too.

With storage space in this apartment at a premium, I’ve come up with a plan for the shelving unit in the living room if I move it to the bedroom.

This is where the sheets and bath towels currently are stored.  It’s in my closet and it takes up valuable closet space.  It’s not usually that untidy but I had pulled it out to see if it would fit in another spot I thought of and the sections all fell apart so I just shoved everything back.

Anyway, I have some of those square storage type fabric boxes and some wicker look ones so I think I may stack the sheets and towels in those and put them on the shelves of the bookcase and get them out of my closet.  Some of the bookcase shelves will also store the extra quilts waiting to be donated or sold so it will become my “linen closet” without the “closet” bit. Plus see what I might be able to pull out from under the bathroom sink to maybe make some room there for towels.

Yes, as I said, it’s going to get much worse before it gets better …. but not if I don’t get started soon.  But first some lunch to fortify me while I lay out my plan of attack.

One of the things I did find as I was putting some stuff away is this little Cheerios knitted/beaded necklace kit.   It was one of the Loopy Ewe’s rewards gifts – pattern, yarn needed and matching beads in the little mesh bag.  I’m not usually keen on knitted jewelry but I like the look of this one and the colors they sent me and beads would go really well with an outfit I have.  Will have to stick this one away to give a try some day when I feel like threading 250+ beads on the yarn – there’s three different types of beads but they all need to be threaded on first – sounds like a mindless watching a movie type thing.  Plus I think I need to do some needle shopping for that one so need to add it to my shopping list.

Let the cleaning begin……………

On the Needles Friday, March 21

March 21 – it’s my sister’s birthday!  I need to get back to knitting on her top this weekend.  She’s busy traveling back from a spring break vacation with her family and my parents – they left the snow and cold and hit some warmer weather at the beach in Alabama.  Here – well it got to mid 40s so it was a veritable heat wave and while the sun was shining wasn’t bad at all but about 3:00 it turned cloudy and gray and damp again.

In the meantime I’ve been knitting on my sweater.  Here’s the back so far – the two longer lace panels have just ended with their little flower like design at the top and just the middle one will continue to grow a bit taller.  I need to do some figuring tho so I make sure I have room to end it before the neck edge bind off starts so need to see how many rows before than I need to start it.

EQ Boutique Sale

I’ve got nothing

nothing exciting has been happening here the past few days  – so I’ve got nothing to share but my progress on my Cardipalooza CF KAL/ TLE Wollmeise KAL sweater.

It’s sort of laying there on the quilt a bit weirdly so you can’t really see the pattern clearly.  The row of lace next to the green marker – that one just got the little diamond top added that looks sort of like a flower bud on top of the vee shaped leaves.  There’s a matching one on the other side but you can’t tell the way the sweater is laying and the angle I took the picture at.  There are two shorter ones at the very bottom left and right edges  of the sweater. Anyway the center three “flowers” will continue to grow up the back with the center one being the “tallest” and the other two will be somewhat shorter than that one – just sort of winging it as I go along.  The color in the photo is actually pretty true to life for a change.

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring — today we had more snow and cold winds.  I would say many bad words about that but I’ll just keep it to myself.  LOL  I did give myself a “spring break” even if it won’t feel like spring — a four day weekend next weekend.  I figured if I have to take off Tuesday for a furniture delivery, then why not just take off Monday too.  So at least something to look forward to – I’ve got a quilt I want to get layered and start quilting on but oh dang – sewing room cleaning must take place before I can go in there and have room to work on that project.  I don’t think I can procrastinate on the cleaning much longer.

Just knittin’

That’s what I ended up doing most of yesterday – just knittin.   So what’s on my design wall – the block I never got the applique finished on yesterday. That blue stocking cap still needs to be appliqued.  And there’s still the music quilt to hand stitch the binding on – later this week they will get done.

 

But in the meantime – knitting progress.   I got sucked into the sweater I started yesterday and never got to the quilting.  Okay a little nap interfered with it all too. 😉

  So here’s my Cardipalooza (for the CustomFit KAL) and it’s also out of Wollmeise (for the Wollmeise KAL on the Loopy Ewe Rav group).  I made good progress on the back.  It took a while for me to figure out how to space the lacy design across the back since I had to move the shaping out to the sides and after knitting and ripping back the first pattern row twice, I finally realized I made this lace repeat a couple stitches wider than the original pattern was – which is fine but that accounted for why I couldn’t get it counted out and spaced properly the first two times. Duh!

This is just a small portion.  There are an odd number of repeats so the two outermost ones are just about ready to get the “flower top” put on them.  They will get longer (taller flowers) the closer to the center of the sweater back they are.  This all looks great in my mind’s eye so I hope it actually turns out that way.

Sunday Planning

It has been a lazy day so far but I’ve been planning the rest of my day and I’m thinking it will not contain any thing other than fun. LOL I did open the front door earlier thinking if it was as nice as yesterday (it was in the upper 40’s so wasn’t bad at all) I might go out for a walk.  But no…. that was too much to ask. It’s really windy and 15 degrees so I’ll stay inside and play.

So far I haven’t bothered to get out of my jammies and at the moment I see no reason to.   This morning I’ve been planning my next knitting project  – yes another one to start. 🙂   The Loopy Groupies Ravelry group has a Wollmeise KAL going on  – any project as long as it is Wollmeise yarn –  which I wanted to join in on  and the Customfit Ravelry group is just starting Cardipalooza – a Customfit KAL making any kind of cardi.  So I generated my Customfit pattern and I’m all set – one project which covers both groups.  The cardigan will be a scooped neck, elbow length sleeve cardigan for springish type weather.  And I plan to use the lacey flower looking design that is in the top I’m knitting for my sister on my cardigan but make the “flowers” different heights.

It will be in this color – which is called Oh Tannenbaum but is more bluey green than like a Christmas green.  I’ll be winding yarn later today to start on this.

Speaking of my sister’s top – I’m just starting the underarm decreases on the front so it won’t be long before the front is done too.  I’ll  work on that a bit today also.

 

And I just have one stocking cap left to stitch down on last month’s Head to Toe blocks.  The dark blue one is just pinned in place and needs to be stitched down.  I’ll work on that a bit today too.

Any my nephew’s quilt binding needs to be pinned and stitched – I may work on that a bit today too.

I picked up a BBC DVD series yesterday at the book store so I’ve got that to keep me entertained as I knew and stitch.  Now doesn’t that sound like a great way to spend a cold, dreay Sunday?!  First, brunch time and I really want Raisin Bran muffins so have to go see if there’s any cereal left in the cupboard to make them.