moved in!

Not unpacked yet, but all moved in, and unpacked enough to feel more like being at home than like camping.  There was an issue with a smell of gas, but the gas company people are out front, working on it, and the building’s gas is off now, so I’m content with not being able to use my stove.  (And I’ll just have to wash in cold water in the morning.  Not the end of the world.) All fixed now!  I have a functional stove, and I should have hot water again by now!

This is the living room:

The hallway with the door at the end of it is off to the left of the bookcases.  It’s empty, at least for now.  There may eventually be a hook or something in it, but it’s mostly just the way to get past the bedroom.

This is the other side of the living room:

It occurs to me now that the couch is pretty much invisible in these pictures.  Pretend you can see the couch between the green-topped cabinet thing in the first photo and the wooden blanket box in the bottom right of the second picture.  It doesn’t have armrests, so I’ve developed equivalents.  (This apartment doesn’t have a handy wall or windowsill.)

And this is a bit more of the living room, which extends to include the plastic chair, the plant shelf, and the tall bookcase, and most of the kitchen.

And here’s the rest of the kitchen:

It’s going to take some work to adjust to having less space, but I love that both interior doors (LR to BR, BR to bath) are in a line with each other and with the path between the living room and the kitchen.  Mel likes that, too, since it gives him a good, long, straight run.  And all the stupid little things that were frustrating me about my old apartment are fixed in this one, though it’s got its own set of “why did they do that?”s.  One of the best things about this place is how much light it gets.  I did turn on the living room light, mostly so the first shot wouldn’t be too grainy, but I didn’t open any of the blinds or turn on the lights in the kitchen.  The plants are going to be so much happier!  I think I can even justify getting a couple of new ones to replace the ones that didn’t survive the lack of light in my old apartment.  (I really want a christmas cactus or two and maybe a small hibiscus.)  Plants aside, I’m hoping that the smaller space will help motivate me to get rid of stuff, since I really do have an awful lot of it, and I am intending to move again in the not-too-distant future.  I’m also hoping that the memory of this move will help motivate me to work out more, since I’m still sore from all the box-moving, stair-climbing, and old-apartment-scrubbing.  (If you really want to know, I will rant to you about all the cleaning my previous landlords required, but this post is supposed to be cheerful.)

Okay, I think I’m going to do some more unpacking now, so I can clear enough space in the living room for Amy the Lendrum to come out of the bedroom closet, where she (and Victoria) were hiding from the movers.  (Oh, my goodness, Mambo Movers was especially awesome this time.  They moved all my stuff in less than 2 ½ hours, not counting the things we thought were too awkward for them.  And they remained cheerful even after hearing that I wasn’t going to disassemble my elliptical machine!)

 

may day eye candy

I found this in an old photo album of my grandmother’s.

Happy May, whether as labor day, à JoCo, or by Morris dancing. I’m off to MDSW this afternoon–should be fun, even if it’s wetter than the last couple of years. (Say hi if you see me there!)

 

another travel highlights post

I like lights at midwinter.  And, though I occasionally miss going out to my aunt’s farm to cut a smallish Eastern redcedar (juniper), the table-sized fake tree is much, much more convenient.

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Christmas Day is one of the few times when I watch the sun rise.  (Even if I’m up that early on other days, I’m usually busy and not watching.  For whatever reason, though, I kept waking up early last week.  I suspect it’s the extreme quiet at my grandmother’s house–it’s unsettling.)

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My dad and I only managed one walk along the bike path, but it was a lovely, lovely day.

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We did a bit better as far as cookie-baking–we made oatmeal cookies, chocolate crackups, and an improvised nutella cookie, which we served along with gjetost (my new favorite dessert cheese!), some Earl Grey shortbread that I made here for a cookie swap, and neighbors’ banana bread and hermit cake.  (Speaking of which, if you have a recipe for hermit cake that you know and trust, would you send it to me?)

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I also did a bit of knitting and spinning, but I forgot to get pictures in daylight, so that’ll show up later.

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(The real highlights, of course, were getting to see my parents, grandma, and other family.  And it was also lovely that all of my gifts went over well, including the neckwarmer.)

 

two in a row

For the second evening in a row, I came home out of sorts and hungry. (Today’s complaints: the snow turned into freezing rain, the freezing rain meant that I opted to take the shuttle instead of walking, and the fact that no one wanted to walk home meant that we waited half an hour for the shuttle instead of ten minutes.)

And then, as with yesterday, I got home to find some mail that cheered me up.

My friend H. had a Valentine-making party a couple of Saturdays ago, and she sent me this.  The color’s off in these pictures–it’s pink with white and burgundy.

I really like the quotation she picked.

 

over the weekend

I spent the weekend in New York, with my parents. I had a very good time, despite missing the 7:09am train on Saturday by about two minutes and having to wait an hour for the next one. (The train time turned into a bit of knitting and a bit of napping.)

The scarf, which I’m now thinking of as the Flames Scarf, continues to grow. I am still very happy with it, even though the sides have started curling and I know it’ll need more serious blocking than I’d hoped.

My mom likes her Fetchings, and the Lady Hat has found a happy recipient whom it fits. (Not my mom.)

She also noticed this before I did:

Aside from the amazing detail work throughout the painting, that woman is wearing knitted mitts! (The painting, “Pope Gregory XVI Visiting the Church of San Benedetto at Subiaco” by Montessuy, was one of the many things we saw on our trip to the Met on Saturday. We left after six hours at the museum, because our brains were full and our feet were sore…they do have a lot of wonderful exhibits there.)

One of the other especially fun bits of the weekend was finding my grandmother’s old Scrabble set, complete with a crocheted pouch for the beautiful wooden tiles (two colors of them–we mixed the light and dark sets together, since they were each missing four tiles), and then playing Scrabble with my dad. (If any of you want to play Scrabulous on Facebook, e-mail me. I am somewhat obsessed.)

More later, when I hope to have either a new knitting project or some fresh yarn in a nicely photographable state.

 

eye candy friday: birthday yarn

Due to some addressing mixups, I only got my hands on one of my birthday presents this afternoon, one from my college roommate. (My birthday was November 3rd. The package apparently arrived on Halloween but was stuck in the mailroom.)

A skein of Noro Aurora (shiny!)

And a skein of wool from the farm where my friend worked for a couple of years after graduation (better than shiny).

Any suggestions for the Aurora? I’m going to keep both of these around for a little while as pets, and they’re both going to be things for myself, but I haven’t decided exactly what to do with them.

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I’ve discovered how to get Mel to curl up in my lap: put the Lion Brand Homespun blanket I knit as my second rectangular project in my lap first. The one problem with this is that it’s awfully hard to make myself make him get up.

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I’m off today to visit family, for simple pleasant, holiday socializing. It’s going to be great to be out of the city, and great to have a chance to cook with my dad, but I’m really looking forward to an end to these months of travel. (Note to self: do not apply for any truly travel-intensive jobs.)

Happy Solstice, everyone.  I hope you’re enjoying the lights everywhere.

 

eye candy friday

I love backlit leaves.  And I like the way the thorns glow in this, too.  (This was taken a few blocks from my house, last Sunday.)

I’m still sick.  Not horribly sick, as I was on Monday, but sick enough that walking to work feels like a lot of work in and of itself, and I gave up on actually doing work after about twenty minutes yesterday.  I hate this.  I’m getting bored with sleeping so much, but I haven’t been able to do any of the things I want to do instead, from labwork to fiber night to cooking.  I haven’t even been knitting much, just sleeping and reading (rereading, really) and listening to familiar audiobooks.

I’m feeling better-ish today, so maybe I’ll actually manage to do something useful.  (First useful thing to do: stop whining about being sick.)

I hope everyone else has been having a better week than mine.

 

I don’t know what to call this post, either

My grandmother died today.  The funeral is on Sunday. 

She got to spend her last month in my parents’ house, in relative comfort, which is something.

There are too many different words competing right now, so I’m not going to say anything else (here) until they’ve settled down a bit.

 

i don’t know what to call this post

As I said, I spent last week (Tuesday through early this morning) visiting my parents at their home in Burlington, VT.  Most of the week went more or less as planned–lounging around, running errands with my mom, picking raspberries and grapes and such, jamming (and chutneying) with my dad, generally hanging out with my parents and grandmother…  And then, on Saturday morning, we wound up taking my grandmother to the hospital because she was having trouble breathing.  As I understand it, she’s doing okay, considering, and should be out of the hospital soon (probably with some sort of home hospice arrangement), but that’s not exactly going to stop me from worrying.

I did still go to the Vermont Sheep & Wool for an hour or so–my mom chased my dad and me out of the hospital for a while–and I was very glad to run into a bunch of friends, even if I wasn’t exactly in the best of moods for socializing.  (I know I was trying to act more chipper than I felt, but if I seemed upset or unfriendly, or just spacey, well, now you know why.)

This is the fiber I bought while I was there:

One ounce (more or less) each of Icelandic lamb/angora bunny, Icelandic lamb, and Icelandic lamb/tussah, all from Frelsi Farm.  I’m finding the greys to be soothing (not to mention the soothing properties of all that softness), and I think these’ll go nicely with the grey shetland that I bought last spring.  (I also picked up a couple of colors of dye, but the other yarns & fibers that really caught my eye were either way out of my price range or small enough lots that I wasn’t sure they’d be useful.)

*Sigh*.  Well, I’m home again now, which means I’m back with a snuggly cat (my parents’ cat is not unfriendly, but she doesn’t like contact beyond head-scritching), but also means I don’t have live-in help assembling dinner.  (Mel will only eat dry cat food, which I’m not interested in sharing.)  Time to go work on some real food.

 

home, albeit briefly

Colorado was awesome, especially getting to meet Anne and Marisa.  I had a great time, and took about 300 pictures.  (I’m sure many of them will eventually find their way here.)

I had been looking forward to a weekend of catching up on housework and playing with Mel, but it turns out that I’ll be going to Lynchburg.  My grandfather died while I was away, and there’s a memorial service on Sunday.  This isn’t surprising–he’d been sick for a while, and had been switched to only palliative care about six weeks ago–so while I’m sad, I’m not devastated. 

Anyway, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do today, so I’ll stop trying to come up with a creative way to end this post.

 

life is rough

Although lots of things about my life are incredibly good (a fact of which I have been reminding myself a lot), there are a few major aspects that are not making me happy at all.  I don’t want to get into the details here, but I thought I should mention that things are not great rather than just pretending that life is perfect. 

I have been soothing myself with knitting on the peacock feather shawl (still in chart 3, though) and spinning, so there should be picture-worthy fiber stuff soon. 

 

eye candy friday

Happy Chanukah, or whatever other winter holidays you might celebrate.  I, being ever prepared and strict in my observances (yes, that was sarcasm), wound up using birthday candles in my menorah this year.  (They work, but I’m going to try to find candles designed for my menorah for next year–I burned my thumb while melting the bottom of the shamas so it’d stay in the candle cup.)  I also compressed my candle-lighting a bit, which is why you’re seeing all the candles lit before this evening; travel complicates things.   (Oh, and the funny extra light in the background?  That’s the streetlamp outside my window.)

 

Star

I baked bread on Sunday, for the first time in months and months, maybe a year.  I was really excited about the prospect of a weekend day for just housework, and I went back and forth about whether I wanted to bake fancy bread, like challah, or just honey-whole wheat, and whether to make a braid or a rectangular loaf…  I had been planning to write something about process v. product, and how I’m much more a "process" person when it comes to bread than I am for knitting. 

And then I got a phone call saying that Star had died, completely out of the blue. 

I had met her for lunch the week before, something we’d had scheduled for weeks because we both tend to be extremely busy, and the end of our conversation had included the idea that it would be nice to bake bread together sometime. 

This is the kind of time when I wish I were better at writing and at explaining my emotions.  My analytical bent works better for science, and my non-biology vocabulary has been suffering these last few years…  I didn’t know Star really well, although I would say we were friends.  She was an amazing woman, and she will be missed.  There is more that I would like to say, if I but knew how to verbalize it.  So…go read some of her writings, call a friend you haven’t spoken to in months, and appreciate pirates or vampires or zombies or robots or (other) shiny gadgets or ballroom dancing however you may see fit.