Woohooo!

I finally have something to post that isn't about the house!  I finished my Frost Cowl.  It took forever, because my knitting mojo decided to take a vacation.  But I think it's back now.  I'm thinking of starting another baby blanket pattern; I have an idea already, and I'd started a swatch ages ago, but I think it's in storage with the rest of my life.  So I need to start over.  Or maybe a good sketch will work for submitting the design to Knit Picks, so that I don't have to make it twice...

And I'm also going to teach Angel to knit socks.  She picked out some sock yarn, and I got her her own set of DPNs.  She was a little disappointed when I told her she needed to learn with DPNs first.  She thought she'd be able to use a circular, not understanding that they don't make circulars short enough for child-size socks.  I told her that once she has a good grasp of knitting with DPNs, I'll teach her to do Magic Loop.  First I need to teach her to do ribbing.  She still doesn't understand purling, but that's because she gets tired of it too quickly.  Maybe she'll be able to tolerate it as ribbing.  We're going to use Silver's Sock Class, but adjust the numbers to fit a child-size foot.

A little update on the house: we're getting very close to being able to move in.  We have electricity, and water, and heat.  So now we need to get the finish work done, and the kitchen floor in, and the carpet in.  And the appliances in.  And...I think that'll be it.  Then we can finally get all our stuff out of storage and into our new place.  It's been a long four months.  I am so ready to be in our own place.

Still here

I realized that I haven't blogged in quite a while.  Which is probably due to the fact that I've discovered Netflix streaming.  I've been rewatching some of my old favorites, including the entire series of "24", and really enjoying it.  Just last night I watched Die Hard With A Vengeance.  Gotta love a good shoot-em-up movie.

Anyway, we're still here.  In my father-in-law's house.  I'd hoped to be moved into our own place by now, but no such luck.  We've been waiting on the electrician.  The builders can't finish the inside work until there's heat, and the heating guy can't get the heat going until there's electricity.  Oh, the plumber is also waiting on electricity. And the electrician has been out of town for two weeks.  He's back now, and the plan is to meet out at the house this afternoon.  I'll call him in a little while just to be sure that that plan is still good.

I had been looking forward to possibly spending Thanksgiving in our new house, but even if we're moved in by then(which I doubt) we won't be there for the holiday.  Hubby's dad has a vacation house in Spearfish, SD, and it's been decided(not by me or the kids, but oh well) that the whole family will spend Thanksgiving there.  It's a great house, and there's plenty of room...but when you get our family (5 people) together with Hubby's dad, his sister, his brother, his aunt(and maybe uncle)...it's going to be crowded.  Yippee.  So I'll have to spend my favorite holiday in a crowded house, with people who love to gossip(always makes me wonder what they're saying about me when I'm not there), and no chance of escape.  Oh, and all the adults will probably get wasted too; this family consumes copious amounts of alcohol anytime they're all together.  Hooray and happy Thanksgiving.

Sorry, I'm being all sarcastic and complain-y.  Better go find another good shoot-em-up to cheer me up.

We have a house!

The house is here!  It's finally here!

It arrived on Tuesday, but they didn't get it set on the basement until today.  Looks pretty good so far, doesn't it?  There's still a bunch of work to be done.  The builders need to finish the roof and siding, and build temporary steps to the front door.  It seems there was a misunderstanding about the master bathroom; there's no shower, and there was supposed to be one.  So they'll take care of that too.  I have a bunch of light fixtures to wire up; pendants for the kitchen island, chandelier for the dining room, bathroom lights, and ceiling fans for the living room, library and all the bedrooms.  I'm going to do that myself, no matter what anyone else says.  We need to put in the kitchen and dining room flooring; I might not do that all by myself, though.  Hubby is being a butt.  He thinks we need everything done "professionally".  And of course, there's a lot of painting to do, which I can definitely do on my own.  Anyway, we also have to have a plumber hook up the plumbing, and an electrician to get electricity into the house.  And then there's the septic system and the geothermal heating/cooling system.  And after all that, we need a garage.  I'm hoping the carpenter will let me help with that.

So...it might be a couple more weeks before we are able to move in.  But it's getting so close!  I'm so ready to be in our own place and using our own stuff.  Being a guest in someone else's house for this long is exhausting.  Even if it's family.  Or maybe because it is family...

State of the House

Our house was supposed to be on its way here by now.  But it's not.  The builder called today while I was out and told my father-in-law that the house isn't done yet, and that it will be at least next Monday before it arrives.  Oh, well.  I'm disappointed and annoyed that we didn't know this sooner, but whatever.  It's really a good thing I'm such a patient person.

Anyway, the site is basically ready.  The basement walls have been poured, and the basement plumbing has been roughed-in.  The basement floor is still not poured.  Because of the oil boom happening in this area, concrete is a hot commodity, and is a little hard to come by.  But now that we have this delay, I'm going to call the basement guy and see if he might be able to do it this week or weekend, before the house comes.  I'd much rather have the  basement completed than have to get the floor poured through a window.  Anyway... the dirt has been backfilled around the basement, except the areas right around the windows; we're waiting on the windows and window-wells.  There's still a huge pile of dirt in front of the house(or rather, where the house will be when it arrives).  I'm going to talk to the basement guy about getting that moved also, since we have the delay.

The local building center tells me our kitchen flooring is in, so I'll pick that up once the house is here.  We picked DuraCeramic, but the builders wouldn't put it in; they don't do tilework.  The reason for that is simple; bringing a house cross-country on trucks.  You don't want to have to worry about whether the tiles, grout, or thinset under it all might crack on the journey.  So even though DuraCeramic is not a traditional kind of tile, it was not on their list of options.  The nice lady at the building center said that it's so much simpler to put in than ceramic or porcelain tiles, so it shouldn't be a problem for me, since I helped with the ceramic tile at our old house earlier this year.

The light fixtures arrived last week, and they all look terrific.  I had ordered ceiling fans for all the bedrooms, the living room, and the library; a chandelier for the dining room, and pendants for the kitchen.  Fortunately, I've had some experience changing light fixtures, so wiring them up will be a cinch for me.

We're going to have to find someone to build the floor-to-ceiling shelves for our library.  I had thought of doing that myself, but I know enough to admit I'd be a bit out of my depth in that project.  I'll settle for helping with it, if they'll let me.

I've got a recommendation for a carpenter to build the garage, so hopefully he'll be able to do that quickly once the house is in place.  And hopefully he'll let me help.

So anyway, there's the State of the House report, such as it is.  I can hardly wait for the house to be in place so I can get all these big projects done, so I can do the little projects like painting walls and making curtains.  I think it'll keep me busy most of the winter.

Good things.

The leaves are beginning to turn!  I love fall.  It's the prettiest season, along with being the beginning of cooler weather.

And look!  We have power lines on our land!

And here's the cement truck on its way to pour the basement walls!

Angel's tenth birthday is tomorrow.  We spent the weekend celebrating it, as Hubby would be out of town for the actual birthday.  Tomorrow, she gets to make muffins for breakfast, and take the day off of school.  Because birthdays are holidays in our school. ☻  

Progress...

The footings for the basement have been poured.  They'll pour the walls next, then the plumber can come in and get everything roughed in.  The floor will be poured after that.

 Over Labor Day weekend, we went to South Dakota for some family time.  Which meant lots of driving time...also known as knitting time!  I made a lot of progress on my BBSweKniMo project(no picture, sorry); the raglan increases are done, and I've separated for the sleeves, and done several inches on the body.  When my hands were tired of working with bulky yarn, I switched to sock yarn.  I finished this sock:

I haven't cast on the second yet.  I need to do that today.  These will be some of my favorite socks this winter!  I'm using Malabrigo, which is going to make my feet very happy.

Oh, and by the way....Knit Picks likes both my "Little Sweetheart Socks" and my "Frost Cowl"!  Still need to make adjustments to the cowl pattern; the yarn support should be arriving any day now.  And I need to hunt up my notes from the socks!  I think they're in my old computer, which is in the process of dying.

We have a basement!

Well, almost.

The basement for our new house was dug yesterday.  Here's a picture of the girls checking out the huge hole in the ground. ☺ When it's all said and done, the spot where they're standing in the pic will be part of the garage.

The girls are very excited about this basement, because I've told them they'll be allowed to ride scooters and skates down there, until we get around to building rooms in it.  I think they'll spend a lot of time doing that this winter, whenever it's too cold to play outside.

Speaking of cold weather, the girls and I drove up to the "Bigger Town" about 40 miles away yesterday(while the above digging was taking place) and hit Walmart, McDonalds and two thrift shops.  It was nice to feel like we were part of civilization again, if only for a few hours.  What was I saying....oh, yes.  At the thrift shops, we found snowpants for each of them, and ice skates for Angel, Kitty and me.  We'll have to look again for some skates for Princess; they didn't have any that would fit her wide feet.  All of the ice skates will, of course, need to be sharpened; I've had butter knives that were sharper.  It's going to be fun to get back out on the ice this winter.  I used to skate a lot when I was a teenager, and I did it a few times last winter, but now we'll have more opportunities for it.  I'm thinking I maybe should have bought some snowpants for myself as well; maybe I'll even get out and play in the snow with them.  Oh, well.  I'm sure we'll visit more thrift shops between now and winter.  Anyway, I still need to find snow boots for Angel and Princess, and for me just in case.  They each have several coats, but I'm not sure which ones will work for the extreme cold here.  I haven't sorted through them since we got here.  The girls wanted to look for cold weather gear for Daddy too, but I pointed out that he'd have to be with us to try the stuff on.  I didn't mention that he probably won't have any time to play in the snow.

We have a road!

Yesterday my brother-in-law made us a road. ☺ Hubby posted pictures on Facebook, so I was able to grab a few.  Here's one of the road itself.  We'll be about half a mile back from the existing road that runs along the east side of the property.  This road heads west from there to the house location.  It still needs scoria (and I'm not sure I'm spelling that right), which is a red gravel they use in this part of the country for the roads.

 And here's a shot from the house location, looking east down the road. 

I know it isn't a big thing, but it's a first tangible step towards our new house.

And Hubby gave the builder (hereafter known as Royd) the down payment, so they can get started on the building...once the blueprints are complete.

We've got the floorplan!

I got the floorplan today!  There might be a few small adjustments, but since I drew the original myself and they just interpreted it, it's pretty much how I want it! ☺

I got the samples for the house!

The samples arrived yesterday!  So many choices.....

 Fortunately, we already had a good idea of what we wanted.  First, here are the siding, shingles and trim...

 And the front door...

 And the carpet, linoleum for the bathrooms and inside trim...

 Here's the style of kitchen cabinets...

 ...which will be this color...

We haven't picked the kitchen floor yet; we want to use Dura-Ceramic, which looks like ceramic tile, and is installed in a similar manner.  Since it's installed that way, it won't be in place when the house arrives.  We'll have to either do it ourselves or hire someone to do it.  I'm leaning toward doing it ourselves...which means myself. ☺  I helped the contractor with installing the ceramic tile at our house here, so I have a little experience, and the Dura-Ceramic seems like it'll be simpler because it doesn't have to be cut with a wet saw.

More updates to come!  We're still waiting on the blueprints...

I'm back from vacation!

Hello, dear readers!  I've missed you while I was on vacation.☺  But I'm back now, and I have an update!  This is the land where our new house will be built:

 It's a "quarter-section", which is farm-speak for roughly 160 acres.  It has tree-rows; you can see one of the rows there to the left.  I took the picture while standing precisely where the house will be.  So this will be the view out the back windows.  I designed the house myself.  I drew a rectangle, representing 28 feet by 60 feet, and filled it in with rooms.  When I showed it to the builder and asked if they might have any plans similar to what I'd drawn, he pointed to the drawing and said, "We can do that." ☺

♥

I intend to update with pictures as the project progresses, although since it will be a modular home, built in two pieces and trucked to the location, there won't be a lot of in-progress pictures.  And yes, I'm aware the the picture shows a planted wheat field.  Some of that wheat will be sacrificed, but there will still be plenty throughout the rest of the field.  There are seven or eight tree-rows, and we're building between the second and third to the south.

♥

This next picture shows the "treehouse tree", which is part of the row on the other side of the house site.

It's a big, old cottonwood with several trunks.  It has a few dead branches, and will need to be trimmed up, but the girls are very excited about the prospect of a treehouse, and swings.

♥

Last week, I had two more patterns published on Knit Picks.  Visit http://knitpicks.com/ to see them. ☺

I'm in Kansas!

I haven't been online much in the past few days, because we're visiting my family in Kansas.  It's been a pretty quiet visit.  The only one of my siblings that I've spent much time with is my sister Sara.  She has three daughters also, and our girls love to play together.  So we all went to the pool yesterday, and had a lot of fun.  Then I took Sara out for dinner, and on the way home we realized the sky was swirling ominously, so we grabbed her kiddos and headed back to our parents' house.  Turns out her oldest girl(same age as Princess) had "prayed to Jesus that there would be a tornado so we could have a sleepover at Grandma's house." Haha.  Little stinker.  There wasn't actually a tornado, but it definitely looked possible!  Since Sara and her family live in a trailer, they always go to Mom and Dad's when the weather is bad.  So now we're just keeping the kids busy until Sara comes back to get them.  I think we might be going to the zoo later.

And tomorrow we're getting back in the van and heading north...to North Dakota.  We'll be up there almost two weeks, and hopefully we'll be able to get the process of building our house started while we're there.  We have to go look at the land and decide where on it we want the house, and which way we want it to face, and what shape we want it to be.  There are a lot of options as far as the shape.  I've been looking online at one specific builder that is based in Minnesota, but has an office a few miles from where we'll be.  I'm hoping we can get a design we like, in a price range that we like.  Originally, Hubby had said to me "plan your dream home"...but when I showed him what I liked(which wasn't outrageous) he was aghast.  I'm thinking, either tell me to plan our dream home, or tell me to keep it economical.  They are pretty much mutually exclusive.  Oh well.  A smaller house should be easier to keep clean...in theory.