Drambuie

I think I've knit 3 or 4 sweaters so far which I haven't shown you.  And I've been working on several quilts.  I think I need 32 hours in the day....and I have 1 more sweater that is almost done, plus the coolest pair of gloves that I just have to figure out fingers on.

This one was a quick knit.  And different.  And it is so totally comfortable and perfect.

It was a test knit for Thea at Baby Cocktails....the cable is cool, the fit is perfect.  It's knit in 2 pieces (front and back) and then seamed together.

I used yarn out of my stash - Cascade 220 Heathers.  I've had this yarn for a few years now and didn't know what to make with it.

Pattern - Drambuie by Baby Cocktails
Yarn - Cascade 220 Heathers
Size - 38 on the bottom, 36 on the top (with this yarn, I should have gone with 36 the whole way through, but it's all good)


I'm also madly working on cleaning up the house - 1/2 of my sewing room is cleaned, the basement stairwell has been cleaned, painted and decorated, and the laundry room is half painted and organized...oh!  and we've also been working on the new barn and pastures every weekend that we can - but I'm ready to revolt on that as the house is really suffering.....  I'll show you those projects shortly, as I have to wait for Todd to hang shelves - the stud finder and I could not get along the one day.....


Have a blessed weekend!!!

Cleaning out the basement

One of the things the insurance adjuster mentioned to me when we found the water damage was that we needed to go through the basement and our insurance company would reimburse us for anything water damaged.  I didn't tell him that in my opinion, 99% of the stuff in the basement was junk anyhow, but I realized that I did need to clean it up in case the contractor had to work down there.  It is January in Ohio after all.....and it would be easy access to that corner of the house if he wanted to set up a table saw in there rather than stand out in the cold.

Todd went hunting in PA January 1 - 3, so the kids and I started cleaning the basement out.  Well, rather, I cleaned and the kids fought disagreed over which of their old toys they were keeping.  I finally sent them upstairs to clean their rooms.  Some things are better NOT done with them around:)  We did make a deal with the kids - they could pick some of their favorite toys to keep, the rest will either be sold on Ebay or donated to Goodwill (Tyler elected to keep his tractors and sell his Geo Trax Train set - which takes up the 4 totes on the left hand side of the picture below).

5 hours later (yes, it took a long, long time), I had a small pile of stuff to keep:

See that chest off to the right hand side?  That was a Christmas present of Jessie's from her grandmother - and it was packed full of dress up clothes (fancy dresses, pretty hats, high heeled shoes).  I'm afraid the chest may be too water damaged to be repaired, but we were able to salvage some of the clothes inside it.

I had a small pile to go to Goodwill.

And I had a rather large pile of things to pitch:

I had 3 rubbermaid totes of  kids clothing and blankets I wanted to keep to pass down, which I have just finished washing it all and repacking it into the totes to make sure it was still good. 

Todd got home the Tuesday night after New Year's, and we spent a little bit of time down there sorting through the trash pile - just making sure there was nothing in there we REALLY wanted that had been thrown away by accident.  We flattened the boxes to be burned, bagged up the trash and will haul it to the end of our driveway next week. 

Funny though, as Todd and I were finishing up down here, it led to a discussion about my sewing/computer/crafting room and how to organize it and make it more useful (which started off with a bookshelf that is down in the basement that Todd said I should move up there - but I can't move it up there if I can't get through the door right now, can I?).  I'm at a standstill with finishing our bedroom until the water damage gets fixed, and my sewing room is truly a disaster.  But we have a plan for moving some furniture, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks it will be done.....

A baby quilt....

I didn't mean to go silent....but it's been hectic here (and truthfully, I don't think it will slow down anytime soon - maybe when the kids are grown and gone?)

My cousin is having a baby....we lost touch with that side of the family until last summer...and the shower was last Sunday.  I wanted to make her a quilt, but first, I had to FIND my sewing machine (and a place to sit and sew).

This is a small portion of my sewing/computer room - looks frightening, doesn't it?

Of course, me being the procrastinator thinker that I am...I started organizing it the Wednesday before the baby shower.  I have 1/2 of the room cleaned out to where i can sew and function, sort of.  I got up at 5 a.m. on Saturday to finish moving some furniture around (I've set myself a $100 budget to buy whatever I need to make this work for me).

So that I could be cutting and sewing by 8:30 a.m. on Saturday.  Jessie had a basketball game at 3 p.m., and we had a birthday party to go to in the evening, but I did manage to get the quilt cut, pieced, quilted and bound by 11 p.m. on Saturday.

I got up early on Sunday morning and washed and dried it.  Sorry I don't have a good picture of the whole quilt, but the light wasn't quite right when I had free moments on Saturday to take pictures, and Jessie and I had to get on the road by 11:15 on Sunday to pick up my mom and sister and drive to Westlake.

Hopefully after this weekend, I'll be back with pictures of my clean, organized sewing/computer room!!!  Because I have 2 Christmas quilts to finish and a fundraiser auction quilt to get done by March 10th! (and I am determined to not wait until March 8th to start a bed size quilt for the fundraiser!!!!)

Re-decorating

I love re-decorating our home....changing things up....moving things around.

However, on a budget, this is challenging to do - especially with my love of useful junk and antiques!

I was picking Jessie up from a friends house last week after a sleepover - this mom has the coolest house - lots of primitive decor but very sparse and not cluttered at all, but one thing I saw that I loved was in her entryway, she had an old bench with about 10 crocks on it.  And she had a buffet with crocks underneath it.

Now I don't have an "entryway" or a buffet, but I think I have the next best thing!

Our TV stand is actually an old desk that I brought off of my SIL many years ago - I think for around $25.00.  And for the longest time (since we moved into this house in 1998, I've had my Longaberger basket on the shelf....

But I just happened to have 3 large crocks scattered throughout the house.  They don't match in the least, but I'm thinking that is the charm here....

I'm thinking I need to find some sort of berry garland to place around them, and maybe some white lights?

But....I know I have several strands (if that is what you call them) of berry garland somewhere in this house, and I believe one of them is battery operated with lights, so I just might wait until I find them....

And in the meantime, I have something just a little bit different!  That also didn't cost me a dime......

Goings on.....

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!  We had a wonderful weekend full of family and friends.  AND, unlike last year, I was not up until 3 am making and wrapping presents!  Actually, a good friend and I got togegther on Thursday, and while the kids ran wild played nicely at her house, we wrapped all of our presents.  We will definitely do that one again! 

See my pretty new bedroom in progress?  It's hard to get a true picture of the color - it's a lovely blue/gray color.  I painted it the week after Thanksgiving.  I had grand intentions of going to get laminate wood flooring to replace the icky pink carpeting that was in this house when we brought it.

Well, it's going to be torn up again real soon. Christmas Day night Todd was walking between the bed and that wall getting ready for bed, and right up against the wall the floor gave way under him.  Monday we pulled the carpeting away from the wall and found this hole:

Apparently, were the addition meets the original house, there is a gap under the shingles.  And there has been water leaking in here for who knows how long.  It probably didn't help that this year has been the wettest year on record for Ohio!

On the other side of that corner is our living room - and when I moved the stuff out of the corner, I found this:

See that nice gap between the floor and the baseboard?  Yeah, the floor is  rotting away under there...

I KNOW it wasn't like that last spring, because I wanted to re-arrange that end of the room where the TV and stero sits, but Todd wanted it back the way it was after I pulled everything out, cleaned back there and moved it all.  And I'm very certain I would have noticed that!!!

And this is what we found in the basement (the sub floor under the living room).....

So the contractor who put the addition on came out yesterday and poked around.  That whole corner will need torn apart and the end truss fixed, new shingles, siding, 2x4 walls, insulation, drywall, subfloor and floor joists put in along with who all knows what else.  An adjuster from our insurance company should be coming out in the next couple of days to give us the go ahead to get started. 

But....the good part?  I did NOT put new flooring down in our bedroom which would have to be ripped out (although if I had we might have noticed it a litte bit sooner)....small good part yes, but still good.

We (Todd, the contractor and I) are really hoping we can get this fixed soon...before more damage happends.  The weather here has been just horrible (lots of rain) so that might be tough....but our contractor says 2-3 days and he can have the outside all ripped out and rebuilt.

So...I'm off this week and going to clean out the basement.  Some stuff that we had to move to get back into that corner is water damaged, so I'm planning on getting rid of LOTS of things.....

12

In all the excitement of the past few weeks (wonderful Thanksgiving), getting ready for Christmas, going to a steer show this past weekend with about 30 of our friends, I totally forgot this......

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSIE!!!

Wow...12....I cannot believe it.

She turned 12 on Sunday.  For her birthday, she requested that we go to a steer show in Columbus.  And she has asked that we go to the same show for the past 3 years - that is what she wanted for her birthday.  We try to go every year - there are worse things she could be asking for, right? 

So we went - along with 6 other families from our county and neighboring county - 15 calves, 10 kids, and 19 adults.  It was fun, it was long and in Jessie words - this was absolutely the best birthday ever!!!  The cupcakes survived the trip down there (but not the food fight between 2 adults - fortunately I took 4 dozen with us so they were able to destroy the extras)....no pictures of her with the kids - they are all at the age where they don't WANT their picture taken but hey.....it's all good!

Now I'm off to finish my Christmas shopping.....

Have a great day!!!
Kris

Francis

I don't know why I dragged my feet on knitting this sweater...I've had the pattern printed for several years, and I brought this yummy Malabrigo yarn over a year ago with no particular pattern in mind.



But I'm glad I finally decided to knit this. And once I decided, I think I had it done in under a week. Yes, it was that fast!

And it's so comfortable, I think I've worn it at least once a week to work since I finished it. And I've worn it probably once each weekend as we are doing this and that. Great with jeans, great with dress pants for work....


In fact, I was wearing it so much, I never got it blocked after knitting it. And I needed it just a tiny bit longer (and looser). I forced myself to not wear it to work one day (I wanted to wear it on the weekend) and blocked it before going to work.

Watch the Malabrigo people! I did block it in cold water, but there are a couple spots that look like it might have felted - 2 or 3 rows of 3 or 4 stitches under each arm....it was either the wet block or the fact that I've worn it so much...not sure which but it's not bad, you can't see it very clearly, so I'm going to solve this problem the easy way.....

Knit myself another one so I'm not wearing this one all the time:)

Details:
Francis Revisited
Size: 36/38
Mods: Knit a hem for the bottom rather than the seed stitch edging and did some waist shaping
Yarn: Malabrigo worsted, color - Nostalgia

I did have a little bit of trouble with pooling, but I think with the colors on this yarn it's ok.....