Happy New Year!

To welcome the new year, I present my first project, knitted entirely this year. ☺

The pattern is Twisted Tambini by my dear friend Andrea.  I used Paton's Decor wool blend in "chocolate", and US8 needles.  I'm considering making another one with smaller needles, because this is kinda enormous on my head.  But it'll keep me warm, and that's what matters!  I love this design.  The reversible cables on the brim were a bit tricky, since I'd never used that technique before.  The result is terrific, and I love how the brim cables transition seamlessly to the main body cables.  You can't see the crown of the hat in this pic, but that's okay, because I messed up somewhere in there, and couldn't figure out where, so I just faked it.  I don't think anyone will know unless I tell them.  Keep my secret, okay?

In other news, we have our stuff, and it's in our house!  There's still some organizing to be done, and lots of painting.  I started the painting yesterday, with Princess and Kitty's room; pink, of course.  Angel and I will do her room this morning; turquoise.  I'll do the bathroom and laundry room in the same turquoise, and then I'll have to calculate how much beige to buy for the rest of the rooms.  I'm thinking a five-gallon bucket of satin finish, and two gallons of semi-gloss...but I'm not going to just go with my guess.  Made that mistake before...

Anyway, we're still staying at my father-in-law's house, since we won't have tv service until the 12th, or internet until heaven-knows-when, and Hubby has forgotten how to live without those things.  But FIL has gone to his winter home in Arizona, so we have the house to ourselves, and we can take our time moving all of our stuff to our new place.

Hmmm...what else did I forget to post about while I was busy in December?  I turned 31, and Princess turned 7...Merry Christmas...we celebrated Christmas with Hubby's family, but at least I got to call my family.  The girls and I are planning on driving down to Kansas at the end of January to visit them. ☺

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: I started working on a new baby blanket design; it's about halfway done.  I'll post a pic in my next post.  I've got to run now; time for paint!

Exhausted...

I am worn out.  Beyond exhausted.  Seriously.

♥

I stayed up late, getting all kinds of stuff out of our bedroom; it's all in boxes, bins and baskets in the family room.  As soon as I find a little energy, I have to sort through all that.  Blah.  Anyway, I got it all out last night, so I could start painting early this morning.  The bedroom was the same dark green as the bathroom, and now it's the same light neutral beige as the bathroom. ☺ I'm glad these projects are done.  And that I got the pics while they look great.  Haha.  I'm not very good at keeping ahead of the messes; I need to work on that.

And now I need to go find some Advil, and soak in a hot salt bath for an hour or two...

Painting...

I'm organizing and painting and cleaning...all in preparation to move.  Hubby got a new job, near his family.  So we will be moving to North Dakota in a few months.  I'm not thrilled about it, to be honest.  But I will probably be more excited as it gets closer.

We are going on vacation in a week and a half, and Hubby wants to try to get the house on the market by then.  So I've got my work cut out for me.  He'll help with what he can, when he can...which means not much, and after work.  Oh, well.  I'm used to doing everything around the house.  So anyway, I started with the master bathroom, since it's a small room.  Got it organized and cleaned up, and painted.  It was a dark green before.  Now it's a light, almost flesh-toned beige.  It really brightened up the room a lot.  I took these pictures this morning, right after I finished painting.  Now that there's not as much light coming in the window, the color looks a little pinkish, but I don't really care.  We won't be here much longer anyway.  I just wanted it to be a better color for selling.

Now I'm sorting and organizing books.  We have a lot of books, some that we haven't read in years.  I'm planning on donating a bunch to the thrift shop.

Back to work!

I am frustrated.

My hands have been hurting, a lot. I think I have tendonitis in my fingers. It's from too much knitting, but (of course) I still want to knit. Time is getting away from me. I have Christmas gifts and other things to knit. I want to knit, just for the serenity, the calmness, the joy it gives me. Yesterday I didn't knit a stitch. I did not like that, at all. My hands still hurt today. But I'll take at least the morning off, since it's library day anyway.

♥

Another reason I'm frustrated is that people are having difficulties downloading my patterns from my pattern blog. I didn't consider the fact that not everybody is using Microsoft Windows Vista when I saved my patterns as "xps" files (whatever the heck that means). So some people are able to access the files (I assume they are Vista users) while others are not. I need to save the files as another file type and see if that makes them accessible. If you are one of the people having trouble accessing the files, please bear with me as I attempt to solve this problem. I'm just relieved at this point that the mistake was mine, and I don't need to find another file storage site. I apologize for my shortsightedness. I just wanted to let you know that I am, in fact, working on it.

♥

Here's a sneak peek at what I'm working on...or at least what I want to be working on...

It's a top-down in-the-round poncho for Princess. I've only spent one evening and one full day working on it (which is partly why my hands hurt so much) to get it to this point. It's very easy...I started with my new favorite cast-on: the tubular cast-on(I love it because it's much stretchier than the traditional long-tail cast-on...did about an inch of ribbing, then began increasing, just like I would for a raglan sweater, with basic rope cables between the increases. I haven't decided yet whether I will continue increasing, because if I do, this thing is going to be huge; it will be a square if I lay it flat. But then, Princess is a very active little girl, and I think she might need that extra space to be able to play as hard as she'd like. So at this point I'm undecided. Anybody want to offer an opinion on the issue?

Home projects...

I'm not ready to post any pictures yet, because the camera is upstairs, and my muscles hurt too much right now to walk back up there. So here's an update. I painted the former playroom/new studio on Saturday. Then I spent yesterday afternoon arranging furniture. Had to get Hubby to help me take apart, move and put back together the desk. Today I'm planning on painting the new playroom. This one will probably take two days, because the girls want stripes. So I'll paint the base coat, then wait for the paint to dry overnight before taping off stripes and painting them tomorrow.

Also on the schedule for today: cleaning, laundry, and a trip to the eye-doctor to pick up Angel's glasses. My to-do list grows by the minute. Better get to it.

Getting ready to do a few projects at home...

We currently have a very large, very open, very very messy playroom. We also have a very small, cramped home office/schoolroom; we call it the "Studio". And in the studio, we have an enormous desk; it literally takes up the entire room. So we are going to switch the two rooms. The huge desk is going in the big room, and the kids toys are going to be pared down and organized and put into the smaller room. I actually had this idea a long time ago, but never mentioned it because the desk is huge and heavy, and a real pain to take apart and put together. I figured it would never happen, so I just put the idea out of my head. The other day, Hubby had the same idea. And since it was his idea, it will happen. I'm moving forward on it quickly, before he changes his mind.
So I'm picking out paint colors. Might as well paint the rooms since we're moving furniture anyway. I'm a little tired of the lavender that is in the current playroom/future studio. So that room will get painted a lovely light blue, and will have navy blue accents. That way, it will be obvious to the girls that it's not their playroom anymore. I'm thinking the current studio/future playroom will go pink, but they might insist on lavender again. We'll see. I'm taking all three girls with me to the store today to get the paint, so they'll have at least some input regarding their playroom color. I should also go ahead and get paint for Princess and Dolly's room; it's still green from when Angel and Princess shared it. And Princess has informed me that she does NOT like green. So that room will go light purple, with dark purple accents. Princess would like it to be all dark purple, but I've vetoed that idea; I don't want it to look like a cave. I'll try to remember to get some before/after pictures taken and posted.