Red, orange, and yellow

I am really enjoying this journey of creating a Jayne Cobb hat for T. If you haven't been following, and are interested in the process , you can read the series of posts:

Yarn for the Jayne Cobb Hat:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/11/red-orange-and-yellow.html
Jayne Hat started:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/10/jayne-hat-started.html
Jayne Hat earflaps:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/10/jayne-hat-earflaps.html
Jayne Hat earflaps continued:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/11/jayne-hat-earflap-shaping-continued.html
Pom-Pom minor update (scroll down):
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/11/zara.html
Pom-Pom completed:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/11/jayne-cobb-pompom.html
Jayne Cobb Hat completed:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/11/jayne-cobb-hat.html

These are the Highland Wool colors I've chosen for T's Jayne Cobb hat (ruby, burnt orange, & freesia). I know I've mentioned this before. I only just got around to taking a photo of the yarns I will use. They seemed to be the closest matching colors I could get from the Highland Wool collection. This yarn is a great stash staple to have on hand and it comes in a gazillion colors. Make sure you get one of their Shade Cards, it's a necessity for project planning. I think my casual goal is to collect most of the colors offered. You just can't go wrong having this in your stash. The problem is where would you put it all?

Now I just need to find a second circular needle so I can start the hat. I've got a missing needle somewhere, I just need to figure out which box or bag it is in. Needles are such elusive things, they slither away when you're not looking.

I'm thinking about trying the Long-Tail Cast-On (video here and here, photo instructions here) for this hat. This should give me a pretty bottom edge and I wonder if that will make it easier to pick up stitches for the ear flaps. My usual cast-on is the Cable Cast-On (video instructions here and here, photo instructions here). Can't say why I use this, it's just what I learned to do when I started knitting so it sorta stuck with me.

I have an idea for how to do the ear flaps. What worries me is the pompom on top. I've never made a pompom before. I've looked at instructions for making a pompom, and still can't visualize how it is supposed to work.

Pacific College Mom left a comment on this post asking whether I was, "going to make all the holes and dangly bits like the original one." Well, I had planned on adding the dangling yarn to the ends of the ear flaps. I wasn't sure what she meant by the holes. I've seen that episode a few times and don't remember seeing any holes. I'll have to pop that DVD in again and try for a better look. I'll also ask T for his thoughts on the holes.

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I've been thinking about knitting a hat top-down instead of the usual bottom-up fashion. All of the hats I've worked have been knit bottom-up, with the exception of this one I did a long time back. I am thinking of adapting this idea and knitting from the crown down to the brim. I remember V once told me that crocheted hats were made top-down. That made so much sense. It's easier to know when to stop when you make it top-down, you can just try on the hat and see! I already have some ideas for a few basic top-down design, I just need to scribble them down on paper when I get a chance and then knit them up (or would that be down?). I've got the general idea in mind, I just need to work out the details. Of course it won't have Yarn Overs in it. I'll do my initial increases as Kx, Inc1. Haven't yet decided which type of Inc1 I want to do. Bar increase? K1-fb? I usually prefer K1-fb into a stitch over any type of increase involving lifting the strands between stitches.

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This is the replacement Terminal Adapter for my digital camera. We lost the original one when we moved to the new house. I was thrilled when the FedEx guy came by with the box, I had to plug it in immediately to download photos. Now I have quite a lot of photos to sort through. The camera plus into the "tail" on the left side. The white cable is the USB cable that connects to the computer. And I have a separate AC adapter cord that plugs into the Terminal Adapter on the right side next to the white USB cable.

This came in a large box for such a tiny part. I had to dig through peanuts to find it. I was surprised to see peanuts in the box, but it was a godsend as it provided Miss M with hours of entertainment along with her sand toys ... scooping peanuts into a bucket or other vessel, then pouring the peanuts into another vessel or onto the floor. Ah, the joys of being a toddler...

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I mentioned missing out on an eBay auction a short while back. Well, I saw something else I wanted (an old Latin language book), waited until within the last 5 minutes to place my bid, re-bidded several times, and got outbid before time ran out. I think my computer blinked. Sigh. I don't think shopping on eBay is my thing.

I would like to get back into learning Latin. When I think of Latin, the first word that comes to mind is always frumentum (which means "grain"). It was probably one of the early words I learned a few years back.

I've got a handful of Latin books, I really don't need another one. So I guess it is just as well that I did not win that eBay auction. With the M&F Latin: An Intensive Course book, plus two Lingua Latina books and two Cambridge Latin Course books, surely that should be enough to learn a little bit of Latin if I actually found the time to study! Oh, I also have a copy of D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners, another great resource for learning the language.

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The "wildlife" at the new house is really getting to me. Bugs bugs bugs everywhere. I'm not used to being surrounded by so much of this. It must be a suburbs thing. I didn't have this problem at the old house in the city. Or it might be a living on the ground floor thing, since we were on the 2nd floor at the old house.

I mentioned the tiny jumping bugs in this earlier post. It's gotten better, most stay outside now. We only get a handful inside the bathroom now and then. It's not as bad as before. Adding the door seal thing I mentioned before plus sweeping the fall leaves away from the exterior bathroom door has helped. I think these tiny critters like the dried, dead, dying leaves outside. I was sweeping up the leaves the day after it rained and a bunch of them were visible when I disturbed the pile of leaves.

The pantry moths are annoying, however tolerable compared to the pinpoint bugs, ants, and spiders. I have a moth trap, no chemicals, just some attractant and a sticky surface on a tent shaped paper trap. I love this trap as it is safe to keep around the kitchen and Miss M (not that she can reach up to the kitchen counter top yet).

We have ants outside. I'm fine with them being outside. However they sometimes find their way inside. I think I disturbed the balance of nature one day when I disrupted their path outside the house. Shortly afterwards I found a couple dozen ants marching in through a corner of the family room. Eeks! I sprayed. Not my preferred method, but I had to stop them quickly. Fortunately the corner was behind the large TV where Miss M doesn't go. Ever since that day, I only find a couple of stragglers in the family room once in a while. I try to leave the ants outside alone, but sometimes they're not too happy when I sweep over the brick patio out there.

Now the spiders really get to me, mostly because I have a phobia. I don't mind if they're outside. I don't mind the daddy long legs inside the house because they pretty much keep to themselves and don't move around much. It's the quick moving big thick short legged crunchy ones that I fear.

Last week while sweeping up dried leaves outside, I almost ran into a nearly invisible spider web that was extending outwards from a post holding up the patio cover. I only noticed the web after spotting this BIG orange spider. You can see a blur of it in the photo above. Sorry I couldn't get a clearer picture due to a wimpy 3x optical zoom and my fear of getting too close to the bugger. Oh, I forgot to mention that the spider was moving about on its web so he's a bit fuzzy in the photo. This was not your average ugly black or brown spider. This one was a bright orange with stripes at the end of its legs. It was actually quite pretty if you can call a spider pretty. I was just so glad I did not walk into him though.

Today while walking down the hallway in my house, I spotted a crumpled up spider on the wall near the floor. It was medium sized. That was not good. Miss M walks up and down the hallway and could easily bump into it or try to play with it. I wasn't sure if it was alive so I spritzed it from a safe distance with Windex (I attack from a distance due to my fear of spiders), it moved. Oh no! And it looked so much bigger as it walked, with it's legs stretched out. It kinda looked like a robotic spider thing you might see in a really bad SciFi film. I didn't know what to do so I grabbed the ant/roach spray. Spray, spray, spray. Why is it still moving? Spray some more. Ok, it stopped moving away, but it's still alive. Run to the recycle pile to grab a newspaper. Whack! Spider taken care of. Unfortunately I sprayed the bug spray on the wall and hardwood floor. That was bad of me. I tried to wipe the area to remove the stuff. I didn't want Miss M picking up all that chemically stuff as she walked up and down the hallway afterwards. I also opened the front door and windows to ventilate the area.

Shortly afterwards (same day), Miss M and I were getting ready to go out. We're sitting on the step near the door leading to the garage so we can put her shoes on. I pick up the diaper bag which was on the floor and spotted a big spider with a bulbous derrière. Instant reaction was to pick up Miss M and move her away. Then I was off to get another newspaper. Whack! Little resistance from this guy. Ok, 2 big spiders in one day is just way too much excitement for me.

Then later (same day) after we have returned from our errand, I notice another big spider in the hallway. This one is is sitting in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. Way too high for me to get to. Haven't figured out what to do for this one. :-( I have this irrational fear of taking a napkin and using my hand to squish them. I have a fear of missing, and Mr. Angry spider jumping up onto my hand and walking up my arm. This probably doesn't really happen, I mean, they're probably as scared of me as I am of them. Anyhow, I really don't want to feel them squish or crunch in my hands either.

The last thing that bugs me about the new house is the odd droppings I've found outside in front on the driveway. I've only seen it twice. Worm shaped poop of some sort, of course covered in curious ants. I don't know what creature leaves this type of poop, but it is an annoyance.

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I keep thinking it's Friday because I'm expecting a little white box. I picked up some Filati merino and Cuzco. The Blackberry Wine Filati flew out the door. It was a deep purple. I was good. I didn't order any. I made a point of not ordering any purple Filati. I have way too much purple in my stash. Although I think I did pick up Cuzco in a purple shade. I can't remember, I think one was red and the other was purple. Yes, I know I only ordered it two days ago and should remember what I ordered. I suffer from CRS...

OK, time to go get Miss M from her nap...

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We've moved!

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We've been busy lately but have finally moved into our new house. Yay!! But the fun isn't over yet. We still have to some cleaning up, fixing up, and unpacking to do. Unfortunately, there will be no photos for a while. We lost or misplaced the camera somewhere between houses. We're still hoping it will turn up as we unpack more boxes.

The Good:
-- I like the layout of the house.
-- I like being on a cul-de-sac. It doesn't feel like a cul-de-sac because it's a longish one, and we're halfway down the block before you get to the end. So you get a regular block feel without the heavy through traffic.
-- Living on one level. It is so nice to be able to do laundry without having to go up or down any stairs. This is a very refreshing change for me and it makes doing laundry less of a chore. Oh my, did I actually say that?
-- Miss M can't be woken up by any lights in our bedroom. In the old house, she could see the light from our bedroom because both rooms had frosted glass doors that led to a shared "sunroom".
-- I like having a dishwasher, although I don't actually use it to wash dishes. It's pretty much an oversize dish rack. I've never had a dishwasher before, so I'm used to hand washing. However is is nice to have plenty of space to place clean dishes after hand washing.

The Bad:
-- Bugs, bugs, bugs!!! Bugs everywhere! The few daddy long legs hanging around don't bother me anymore. The pantry moths don't bother me as much anymore, although they are a minor annoyance; we didn't have these at the old house. What really bugs me are the itty bitty "pinpoint" bugs (sorry, don't know what they're called) that show up primarily in the hall bath, but a few have also found their way into the master bath. We suspect they're coming in from outside through the exterior door that leads from the hall bath to the back yard. We've added some stripping to the bottom of the door to seal the big gap there and it seemed to help some. Plus, I really hate to admit this, I sprayed some ant/roach spray in the bathroom cuz it was just bugging me that there were so many of these bugs crawling on the floor! I try to keep Miss M out of the hall bath since I don't want her exposed to all that toxic chemically stuff.
-- The raking. OMG, there is so much raking. I lived in the city before, didn't have big trees, so this is a new thing for me. We moved into the house 3 months after getting the keys, so the yard had been neglected all this time. I guess not watering the lawn/tree might have contributed to our poor looking tree outside the house. It is a BIG tree, with branches overhanging our house.
-- We don't have internet access yet, so am using a borrowed connection.



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Grace's Blogiversary

Grace is having a contest to celebrate her one-year blog anniversary and is giving away lace shawls! So go and sign up and tell her I sent you so I can get a few more entries tossed in the hat.

Her contest made me think about how long I have been blogging. My first blog post was on 6/25/2005. Have I really been blogging for over 2 years? Of course, it hasn't been continuous. There were some off periods when I was just too busy with baby. My knitting time has improved as DD got older, however, I'm currently experiencing another hiatus due to the whole house move business. However I am pleased to announce that we finally have an official move date! It'll be this coming Monday, so I'll be busy between now and then to pack up the rest of the stuff that needs packing, and getting everything ready before the movers arrive. I will be offline for a while, from the time the computer gets packed until whenever we get internet access at the new house.

This will be my first time with professional movers. Do you tip them? If so, how much?



Yay! We finally got shutters at the new house, so we're not going to live in a fishbowl. This is the dining room. Due to the lack of space on the right side, the shutter doesn't open up flat against the wall.



This is the living room. I love how they managed to get shutters in that corner window. I was afraid it couldn't be done.



There is one little problem with the screws at each end of the living room shutters. There wasn't enough room for the screw, so it sticks out. It's normally not a big deal, but with a 2 yr old running around, I am worried about her getting close to the screw and getting a nasty scratch. I need to find some way to cover it up so she doesn't get hurt.

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Sorry, no real knitting content lately. It's mostly been about the new house and other things. I do have knitting to blog about, I have a few scarves to show, but haven't got photos of them all. Side effect of having packed them into boxes and moved them to the new house. I'm sure they'll resurface before the next Ice Age.

I do have to figure something out with the itty bitty baby spiders in the house. I've seen them in the closets. Yes, the same closet where I've moved some of my knitting boxes. When I was at the house last weekend, I went to a box in the closet and opened it... eeks! I see two little spiders crawling on the box. These are itty bitty spiders, smaller than a nail head, but they're still spiders and I have an aversion to spiders. I'm worried about spiders crawling through my yarn, but most of all, my clothes!!!

We finally got carpets installed. It feels so much more like a home now. It's slowly coming together...

We were wondering why we didn't get carpeting in the hallway too. I guess if we got hallway carpeting, then we might as well have gotten carpeting in the living room, dining room, and family room too. But I do like having hard wood floors, even if they're not very nice hardwood floors (they need refinishing, especially in that middle bedroom in the photo above). And I figure I can better see M's food droppings on hardwood floors.

This is our family room full of boxes, photo taken last weekend. And that doesn't even show you all the stuff we already unpacked (mostly in the kitchen), or the stuff we put in the dining room and living room. Now that we've got carpeting in the bedrooms, we've started to move boxes to the bedrooms and bedroom closets.

I found this during my last Costco run. They're foam mats, kinda like the colorful ones you find at Toys R Us. These are boring grey, and have a slightly bumpy surface, but I think they'll still work out OK for blocking scarves and shawls. There are 8 mats in this package, 2 ft square. I think that should cover any size shawl I might make in the future. I think this was under $12, sorry don't recall exactly, but it was definitely cheaper than the $20-40 mats at Toys R Us. If this doesn't work out, then I'll use these mats for some other purpose around the house. I haven't even opened the package yet. I figure it'll be easier to move to the new house if I don't open them now.

DH gets tennis balls at Costco. They used to come in this plastic box, but the last time I went to Costco I noticed that they're packaged in cardboard boxes again. Boo hoo. After DH goes through all those tennis balls, the empty plastic box is mine! What do you think I'll use it for? Hmmm...

(Did you guess yarn?)




You've seen my Swiffer Mop in all my Swiffer Mop posts. My mom gave me her Swiffer mop clone and it is quite a bit different from the real Swiffer I have. It's great to have two of these mops now, since I will have so much more floor to clean at the new house. And M is always trying to "help", so there'll be a mop for her and a mop for me, and we can both Swiffer at the same time. Won't that be nice?

There are no brand markings on this yellow mop, so I have no idea who made it. Does anybody know? This Clone less flat than the Swiffer I have, and maybe smidgen narrower? Anyhowz, what this really means is that I have to figure out which swiffer mop cover fits this Clone best. I think I took the photo above with my first modified mop cover; it couldn't be my second modified mop cover because it isn't green. Good thing I made them different colors, lol. It looks like the first one will fit this Clone best, and the second one will fit the real Swiffer best.

I still have to show you photos of that second modified mop cover after washing....

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Eeew... what's that?!

This is the cabinet underneath the master bath sink at the new house. What's that dark stuff way in the back? Let's take a closer look...

This is the left side. It kinda looks like some sort of dried plant matter?

There's more of the same stuff on the right side...

And it runs across the back edge too....

Is that gross or what? I have no idea what this stuff is. Why is it growing out the back edge of the bathroom cabinet?

One bedroom closet is on the other side of this bathroom wall, and the closet side looks fine...

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Rockin Girl Blogger again

Thanks Cat for nominating me for the Rockin Girl Blogger. This is actually my 3rd nomination, however this time I am not going to wait over a month to mention it, lol. I've already tagged five people here.

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Click on pictures to enlarge.

Bets mentioned something about rubber stamps for her HUGe project, then I stumbled upon some of my old rubber stamping stuff while packing for our house move, so I thought I'd share some of the rubber stamp mail art I've received in the past. These people are way more creative than I am. I'm not actively rubber stamping these days. Knitting keeps me busy enough, lol. While going through old stuff and packing, I found two boxes of rubber stamps, plus extra stuff like paper, envelopes, sponges, colored markers & ink pads, & embossing powders. I think I'll save the rubber stamps for M to play with when she's a bit older.



There are some people who do incredible rubber stamp art, April W (Woodbridge, VA) being one of them. Another name that pops up in my mind is Audrey F in Jacksonville, FL. And there's someone in Van Nuys, CA, what's her name? V, maybe you can remember?

I'll share more pics of rubber stamp mail art in future posts. I don't want to overwhelm my readers with them all in one post.

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Well, we were supposed to get carpets on Monday but the carpet installer was a no show during the 9 am to 11 am window. So carpet installation has been rescheduled for tomorrow (Thurs 8/16). I think this place will start to look like a home after we get carpets in the bedrooms. I'm so excited!

The FixIt guys came by on Tuesday (yesterday) to finish painting the master bathroom door and the trim around that door.

I've been spending a lot of time driving to the new house. We get very little done on the weekends when we drive there with M. Last Saturday was a good example of that. We expected her to nap during the hour long drive to the new house, but she was resilient, staying awake the entire time. We moved more stuff into the new house. Went to get lunch. Stopped by two places to get house stuff, and dropped off the items at the new house. M was clearly in need of a nap, and it was obvious we would not be able to get any more work done at the house, so we headed home instead. Not a very productive day...

So last Sunday, DH stayed home with M, while I drove to the new house to move more stuff and get stuff done. It was quite productive.

And on Monday, my Mom came over to take care of M while I drove to the new house to get more stuff done and move more crap to the new house. I cleaned the bathroom medicine cabinets, counter tops, and the cabinets beneath the counter tops. The cabinets were very filthy, and I saw something strange in the master bathroom cabinet under the sink. There was some sort of plant-like/mossy growth at the back along the bottom & side edges. I didn't have the camera with me so I couldn't take a photo of it. I steered clear of the stuff, didn't even want to touch it. Maybe I'll just place a big shelf liner sheet over the back so I don't have to look at it. If I don't see it, it doesn't exist...

Since I've been driving to the new house every weekend (and more), I am getting quite acquainted with lane changes on the freeway, and the odd thing about Wolfe Avenue in Cupertino/Sunnyvale. Are you familiar with this street? If you drive between Ranch 99 (near the Wolfe Ave exit on 280; I think the street name is Homestead?) and El Camino Real, the street on the whole is pretty straight... however, the lanes swerve so much that you feel like you're doing a slalom!

Oh, we're planning to move in a week and a half. I guess we better find some movers for the big furniture. And I need to get cracking on emptying bookshelves and cabinets before the move.

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I recently saw the movie "Batman Begins". It was a good movie. It was definitely darker than the previous Batman movies. Next movies queued up are "Elizabeth I" (Helen Mirren) and "The Good Shepherd" (Matt Damon).

I've started Laurie R King's "The Art of Detection" (audio book).

M is going to wake up from her nap any minute now. So I better finish up my ghetto chocolate (100 Grand fun size bars) and my tea (Yamamotoyama green). Since my tea pots are packed up and moved to the new house, I am drinking from tea bags until we move...

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Yup, I'm moving to Suburbia

I discovered Walk Score from Bets. The site rates a neighborhood's accessiblity for people on foot. The site lists some restaurants by type (with drop down arrow to expand). However the info is a little outdated as it lists an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood which has changed into a Mexican restaurant within the past year. And it seems to think Tully's coffee is the closest at .72 miles distance, when I can name a few others within 4 city blocks from my house.

Old house in San Francisco: 83/100. (I live out in the "boonies" of SF)

New house in Sunnyvale: 60/100.

Moving to our new house will be a culture shock for me, even though I'm still living in the San Francisco Bay Area and not even as far as the "outer" Bay Area either. I've lived in San Francisco for so many decades, it would just feel weird to not be able to walk to places or easily take public transportation a short distance to places. What do you mean I will have to drive somewhere if I want to go get coffee, pick up groceries, or visit the library?!

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Update on our move. We thought we would move during the week of July 4th. Well, that week came and went. Then we thought the weekend of July 28th. Nope. Still not ready. Now that carpets are coming in on Monday 8/13, DH asked what I thought about moving in a week or two after that. Eeeks! I'd love to move but are we ready? I still have more stuff to pack! Stuff to throw out!

We still haven't gotten our shutters yet, so our living room and dining room (both facing the street) are fishbowls. I'm not sure I would want to live in the house before the shutters get installed.

I still haven't decided what to do with our large dining room table. It is about 8 ft long (~100 inches or 2.5 m). Even at 5 ft (~60 inches or 1.5 m), with the 2 center panels removed, it is too large to fit in the dining room at the new house. :-( Well, it'd fit, but we'd never get chairs around it. What to do? I've entertained the idea of placing it in our living room. Of course this would look pretty weird...


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Old Stuff

While going through old stuff to figure out what to throw out and what to pack & move to the new house, I stumbled upon this old knitting pattern booklet. Can't remember when I got it. It must be old. Dated MCMLXXX. When was that? 1980? I flipped through it and there isn't much I'm interested in. Lots of big oversize style sweaters, etc, made with "fluffy" yarn, which must have been popular back then. The only thing I could imagine possibly making is this blue cardigan.



And while rummaging through a drawer, I found two old coins wrapped in paper. From the size I could tell they weren't quarters, so I thought they might be half dollar coins or something.

The coin you see above was in better condition. It was clean shiny silver. Thicker than a quarter. And heavy. From the markings, it looks like most of it is made of silver. So I will have to assume it wasn't a coin in circulation.



The second coin showed its age. It was dull, dingy, and lacked the "bling" of the first coin. Still pretty though.

Not sure what I'll do with these. I tucked them into one of my storage boxes to be moved to the new house. I probably won't see them again for a few years (or more!) when I slowly unpack... lol. No clue where these coins came from. I've never been a coin collector. I guess they were from my mom...



M's latest thing is listening to a CD/book my MIL received from (I'm sorry to say) I forget who in Taiwan... her mom? her sister? ... and M loves listening to these songs. She can usually tell which page going with the song she is hearing. That was really surprising. The page you see above is about 2 tigers from what I can gather (I neither understand Mandarin nor read Chinese) but the tune is familiar, it's sung to the "where is thumbkin" tune.

I've been meaning to blog about this. Better late than never, right?

It was such a surprise when I discovered that two people nominated me for this! CeElle and Kenyetta. You can read more about this award here.

Not sure how many people I should nominate for this award. There are MANY, and I can't possibly enumerate them all. And I know that some I would nominate have already been nominated, so I will try to choose people I think haven't been nominated yet -- so that rules out Barbara, Benne, Bets,Grace, Jennifer, Lisa, and Trish, all people who are in my Google Reader. Benne would have been one of my top picks because I love how she writes. Go check out these ladies, it'll be worth it!

So now I have to find other people to nominate. I guess I brought this challenge upon myself for being such a slowpoke, since CeElle nominated me on July 5th, and Kenyetta nominated me on July 13th. But I have a great excuse... I've been busy with life, M, etc... but mostly with the whole HOUSE MOVE thing...

So here are my nominations, in no particular order:

Jayne - She's a dyeing fool, she transforms yarn into breathtakingly gorgeous colors.

Kim - She cranks out a gazillion socks in her sleep.

Libby - Check out the latest addition to her family, Sydney, she's such a cutie. Libby is quite the designer, she has a few shawl & hat patterns linked in her sidebar.

Suzann - Lots of beautiful socks.

Svetlana - Omigosh, it is amazing how fast she cranks out FOs. And she knits all these fitted garments that look awesome on her.

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Oh, here are pics of our new water heater. It looks sooooo much better than our old one. At least there's no asbestos on the pipes!

The FixIt Team are almost done with the electrical outlet in the new house. Yay! And they're going to do the painting of our wall/door from the pocket door removal, cuz we're never going to get around to it (especially with M around) and it looks unsightly.

We might get our fridge this Friday 8/10. We purchased the fridge on 7/4. They were supposed to deliver it on 7/20, but had to postpone delivery because it hadn't shipped yet.

YAY! Our carpets will be installed on Monday 8/13.

Now we're waiting on the shutters for the living room and dining room.

So this is our master bedroom. And this is the wall we would like to place the head of our bed. But do you see a problem? The heater vent is on the floor within a foot from the wall. I don't think we can put our bed there and have the heater vent underneath our bed. And it would be strange to have the bed one feet away from the wall. Besides, our room isn't very large so that is not a good use of space.

The problem with this bedroom, besides being on the small side, is that there aren't many ways you can configure our furniture due to doors on the other 3 walls. There is a closet door on the left, close to the window wall. Behind you, on the left side, is the door to the hallway. And there are 2 doors on the wall to the right, one to another closet and one to the master bath.

So the only logical place we can place the bed is with the headboard on the wall to the left. Which means one person will have to walk around 3 sides of the bed to get to their side of the bed. That just doesn't make sense, but that's the way it will have to be.

There is barely enough room for a very small nightstand on one side of the bed (which the door leading to the hallway will bump into), and absolutely no room for one on the other side due to the closet door being there.


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Burning down the house

... well almost!

We have this microwave/hood combo unit in our new house which sits above the stove. We wanted to remove it and thought it shouldn't be too difficult. It's not rocket science, right? Ha! Boy were we wrong. We couldn't figure it out after wrestling with it for a while. There were 3 long screws holding it from the top. When we removed these 3 screws, the microwave/hood did not seem to want to budge much. What was holding it up? We removed several screws from the bottom to see what would be revealed by doing that. The metal plate on the bottom just swivels downwards, it's still attached at the back end. It looks like it hooks onto the metal backing that's stuck on the wall. Still not sure how the thing is held up. So we had to admit defeat. We'll let the experts remove the microwave/hood and install the new hood sans microwave.

The microwave/hood is really gross. There's thick sticky grease all over the thing. It's on the inside and outside. And it's way beyond trying to clean it. The inside of the bottom metal plate was completely covered in grease, and so was the fan directly above it. It was just gross gross gross. There's grease stuck on the insides of that cabinet just above the microwave/hood. Yuck...

We have discovered that we ARE capable of burning down the house though. We nearly started a fire while attempting to remove this microwave/hood combo. We had a plastic sheet and a big cardboard box on top of our electric stove at the time and we somehow accidentally turned on the front right burner. We thought it smelled like something was burning while we were futzing with the microwave/hood. We were puzzled, until we discovered that one of the stove burners was ON! We had melted plastic on the stove top and there was a huge black spot on the cardboard box. We set aside the cardboard box, removed the unmelted portion of plastic, and continued futzing with the microwave/hood. A while later, I decided to take a look at the cardboard box which had the black spot facing the wall (away from us) and I noticed that there was now a BIG hole where the black spot used to be. And the edges around the hole was still smoldering!!! There was just the faintest bit of redness around the edges, and the hole was slowing growing. Eeeks! It's a good thing we looked at the box before leaving the house. It would have been a bad thing to come back to the house on Sunday to find it burned down.

The photo above shows the damage on the stove top. This was not exactly the way I imagined breaking in the new stove...

Here's what the burnt box looks like.

We came back to the house on Sunday thinking we'd paint the wall where we had our pocket door removed. You can see what the wall looks like here. The only difference now is that there is some white stuff covering up the seams and where the nails were put in. But by the time we got to the house, we decided that we didn't have enough time to do everything (sand, clean, mask area, primer, wait for it to dry, paint the wall, wait for it to dry, mask area, primer/paint trim around the door) before we had to go back and pick up M from the inlaws.

So I spent some time scraping off the melted plastic on the stove top. Fortunately I had a straight edge razor blade. I have never had one of these glass top stoves and was worried about scratching or breaking the surface. It turned out to be a pretty tough surface, however I couldn't avoid some scratches on the surface from my attempt to remove all that plastic. And there's also discoloration in some areas too. It's kinda hard to see the scratches and discoloration in the photo below. Sigh... this wasn't exactly the way I envisioned cleaning my stove top for the very first time.

I'm starting to wonder if I could ever learn how to cook on an electric stove like this. I mean, it looks like I can't spill anything on the surface. What if something bubbles over? Then I'll have a sizzling mess?? I've always had a gas stove where I didn't have to worry too much about spillovers, they weren't that difficult to clean afterwards. I'm not sure how that works on an electric stove while you're trying to cook something. It's not like you can stop what you're cooking, wait for the surface to cool before cleaning the mess, and then try to resume cooking. Hmm...

DH spent some time removing old caulk on 3 sides around the kitchen sink, and then putting in new caulk. I took a few photos, but they're not very interesting to look at. You can see the color of my kitchen counter top. I hate it. It's so blah...

Of course we moved more boxes to the new house on both Saturday and Sunday. I managed to line more shelves in the kitchen and closets which meant I could unpack a few more boxes. So I felt good about getting that done. Some of M's things went into her closet shelf. Some of my things went into my closet shelf. And misc stuff went into the other bedroom/hallway closet shelves in an attempt to make space in the family room. It was getting crowded in there, and we needed to make space for the FixIt Team to come in and do the electrical upgrade on Monday. I still need to line a few more shelves in the kitchen. Need to get more shelf liner...

Well, that was my weekend in a nutshell. Where did my personal time go? Very little knitting this weekend. I only managed to knit a few rows of this purple scarf while in the car. I couldn't knit while trying to talk and keep DH awake while driving.

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Wine Labels

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A couple months ago in this post, Trina left a comment about what I can do with my old empty wine bottles. I thought about it and then decided I didn't have the time or patience to do all that right now, so I did something else instead. I took photos! So much faster than trying to soak labels off.

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I'm still packing for our move to the new house. I stumbled upon this little saucer while I was going through a cabinet with a lot of old dishware. There was just this one, and no matching cup. Like many of the items in the cabinet, my Mom probably picked it up from a five and dime store in the 70s. What am I going to do with this odd piece?

It got more interesting when I happened to turn this saucer over and noticed what was printed on the bottom. Made in occupied Japan. Huh? I had never seen anything labeled like that before!

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Speaking of "made in" items, my Mom called me to let me know of a recent Fisher Price toy recall she heard on the news. Click here for list of toys recalled. The list is pretty long; it would have been helpful if there was also visual list too cuz sometimes you just don't remember what a toy is called but can recognize it by sight. Toys were recalled due to possible lead paint used on toys which were made in China. Mom called me because she must have seen Elmo being one of the characters, and she confused Elmo with Ojo, M's stuffed bear who is also bright orange colored. Ojo isn't from Fisher Price, he's from the Disney Store, and he's a stuffed bear, not a painted toy. So no worries there. I took a quick look at the recall list and it doesn't look like M has any of those toys. She has a Dora Lego set, but that isn't from Fisher Price I don't think. The scary thing is that I was considering getting M an Elmo Guitar, an item which might have been the on the recall list.

Anyhow, I was curious as to where Ojo was made. Made in China. Many of her stuffed "friends" are made in China (Koda bear, Stitch, Thumper, Pooh Bear, Roo). Then I thought about other items M has. Her hair clips are made in China. She has a large purple ball she likes to sit on, made in China. Her favorite Dora backpack is made in China. Her favorite purple shorts are made in Kenya. Ah ha! Her LEGO Quatro set is made in USA! Not everything is made in China.

Then I thought about some of my favorite items. Where were they made? Hmm... My favorite fountain pen is made in France. My favorite tea pot is made in England. My laptop is made in China. The circular knitting needles I am using to knit the Persephone Scarf you see below is made in Germany. Do I use anything that is made in USA? Hmm...

I've knitted a little over a foot here. I'm using Highland Silk yarn in Dusky Lavender color; it's spun in Peru. I love this yarn, and working with it now is so much better than in the winter because I don't have as many dry spots on my fingers for the yarn to catch on. I still haven't memorized the pattern, but it comes easy and I am getting better at spotting my cable crossing mistakes.

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Well, I finally finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yay! Now I can get back to sleeping at a more "regular" time. I loved how this book didn't spend too much time getting warmed up at the beginning. You just jump right in. And it keeps going! And then it speeds up and it's sooooo hard to put the book down! I am happy with the ending. I thought the preantepenultimate chapter (not counting the epilogue) was the most interesting as everything is revealed there. However I thought some explanations (viz. the silver doe) was rushed. Loved what Mrs. Weasley did at the end, don't mess with Mom, lol.

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We have ambitious plans this weekend with regards to our new house. My MIL, who works at the post office, has tomorrow off (Saturday), so we are thinking of dropping M off early in the morning to spend the night with her grandparents. That way we can get loads of house stuff done on Saturday and Sunday before we go back to pick her up. Among the things we need to do:

- Shop for outlet cover plates. The FixIt Team is coming by to upgrade the electrical system in the entire house on Monday (and add a few new outlets in the kitchen & garage).

- Shop for shelf liner. I still need to line the rest of the shelves/drawers in the kitchen. I haven't even started thinking about the drawers in both our bathrooms, but they'll need shelf liner too.

- Shop for primer and paint stuff. We already have the paint prushes, trays, and painter's tape. We do need to remember to get some sort of plastic sheet for the floor. We need to do some painting in the master bedroom where we had a pocket door removed. The photo above shows what they've done. We need to do some "texturizing" to match the textured wall in the room, and then paint over it. Fun fun fun...

- Pick up more plastic storage bins.

- Pick up a vacuum.

- Remove the microwave/hood that is above the stove. This one will be a doozy. Plus it deosn't help that the whole thing is really gross with grease crud. Then we can install the new hood, sans microwave. I really don't like above-the-stove microwaves.

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I'm a little disappointed at having missed out on the Filatura di Crosa 501 offering on Elann. I've been so busy that I totally forgot about it. I've used this yarn before (for Marisa's blanket) and love it!!! Elann still has some 501 left, but not in the color I wanted to get. Boo hoo. Oh well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

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Love cats? V stumbled upon this great site containing cat photos with captions. Very amusing. Go check it out.
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