Wow!

It is so amazing how much has happened since I last posted. I've moved from Chattanooga to a place in Murfreesboro, to another place in Murfreesboro, and finally to my new home in Nashville/Antioch.

Now the attack-shrubs are gone. They will be replaced and plans are in place for that.

Inside - well let's just say it needed a lot of TLC and some major work. The a/c in the attic overflowed - probably because the drain line got stopped up, flooded onto the ceiling, collapsed part of the ceiling and water spilled on the carpet to be soaked into the walls. Add warm weather and you get... MOLD. Icky stinky black stuff.

The mold is gone now, sheetrock has been replaced. Paint has been applied. DH may regret encouraging me to go for color - boy did I. I chose colors like Tigereye, Basket Beige, Lemongrass and a Lemon something. Flooring will be Carbonized, Stranded Bamboo or tile in the wetrooms. I already have an African Slate floor in the front bathroom and laundry area - both with basket beige walls. The Tigereye is in our bedroom, one wall in a bedroom with the lemongrass for the other 3, the architectural features in the living room/dining room and in the front hallway to the bathroom and 2 bedrooms. The kitchen and 3 walls in the north bedroom are in the light lemony yellow, the 4th wall is in lemongrass. Living room is lemongrass as well as the upper portion (above a chair rail) of the dining room. Lower part is the basket beige. Confusing as all getout but will make sense when I can get photos of the "after" posted. Oh and lemongrass is green, not yellow.

I have some other photos. Maybe you can see why I fell in love with this place.
The neighbor behind us gardens. On the right is her wisteria - redbuds, Bradford Pear, Crepe Myrtle (now blooming)- but our "patio" is great. We've put up a gazebo type structure with mosquito screening that about fills the patio and we love it.
The other photo is the breakfast area. This whole house is filled with lots of windows. The only room short on windows is one bedroom. The other bedroom is behind the shrubs in the photo up top. The master bedroom has 8 feet of windows!

On to spinning and knitting. I did join Tour de Fleece on Ravelry this year. Spun a bit but never posted any photos. That's for next year. I was really inspired by the people who turned out beautiful yarns and plan to do more with my spinning. I do have enough fiber to keep me busy for a while.

I've finished a pair of socks in a pattern from Wendy Knits website. I think it was the freebie from her latest book posted right before publication. Now I'm working on another pair of socks in some Opal yarn from my stash and have picked up Mystic Water Shawl again. I'm determined to finish this thing. I'm on the next to last chart so am making progress.

How time flies by

It's May, it's May, the lovely month of May...

New month, new location. I'm presently commuting about 38 miles each way to work in Nashville and waiting, waiting, waiting to close on my house.

Looks like I get to move next week to a new location and then move to the new house.

The house needs work which is why I got such a good price. It has mold. It's on a slab so only some of the wall studs are needing treatment and to replace some sheetrock. The company owning the house removed the damaged carpet - for which I thank them. Lots of big windows, a fireplace and vaulted ceilings. So our tasks will be to remove the moldy sheet rock, treat the studs, replace the sheet rock, paint and install flooring. Then replace windows and install vinyl siding on the back of the house and chimney.
Along the way we have to remove some badly overgrown shrubbery and trim some other plants. We'll sod the front yard and do some landscaping.

Further down the road is replacing kitchen cabinets with 48" upper cabinets instead of 36" and re-doing the master bathroom.

Knitting time is not abundant right now so nothing new to show there - and my camera is packed and in storage.

Hopefully I'll update a bit more often now. Will have some before and after shots coming too.

Crazy February coming up

Well, it ended up a crazy January and now, a crazy February. 61 days to Nashville so I'm starting to pack and discard stuff. Not much knitting, stitching or anything else. Hubby has painted 4 rooms so far so now I need to buy 3 gallons of paint for the upstairs bedrooms, 2-3 gallons if the living room and stairwell need to be re-done and then buy a new light/fan for the living room. Will probably get smaller light/fan units for the two smaller bedrooms upstairs.

Well, that's wrong. I have been able to meet with fellow knitters a few times in January and hope to do the same in Feb. I am still knitting away on the Murano scarf and now have slightly more or less of 3 feet done. I've only knit about 2 -4 rows of Magic Carpet Ride. I hope, as things get done, there will be more time to knit and stitch.

New entries here will be few for a while but I hope to post at least one time per month and have photos with the next post.

Welcome 2009

Happy New Year to one and all. Welcome to 2009. This year promises to be quite interesting with lots of changes acomin'. May the good changes outweigh the bad.

My goals are numerous - as always and more realistic for a change. I have come to discover that little changes are easier than the giant ones. Little ones are also easier to achieve.

I've made a list for myself of all my knitting works in progress (wips), my stitching wips and a partial list of fibers for spinning. I was surprised - kind of - at the length of the lists. Making my goals as little changes produces the following:

Knitting: Finish Modena scarf - this has been my knit-at-work project. Easily memorized and I've done about 1" a day.
Finish Magic Carpet Ride - this is an adjustment to the Moroccan Days/Arabian Nights kal on Ravelry. Since they mentioned MCR is included, I have decided to finish this as my part of the KAL which begins today.

Stitching:
Dragon Eye - I have to find the box of thread for this - it's in hiding but I only have about 2" x 6" left to finish. This has been going on a long time. Not as long as DH insists (he says it's more years than the child has been alive) but a while.
Blackstone Fantasy Garden - I love this - it's a Celtic Knot filled with blackwork patterns and does look like a garden.

Spinning:
Finish the Winter Jewel fiber. I have about two thirds of the first braid done going into singles and will then make a 3-ply of it. Then on to the second braid.
This is on the wheel right now.
I got two spindles this past year and some georgeous icy blue fiber. I need to finish spindling this and see what it turns into. Maybe some crocheted or knitted ornaments?

Other:
I'd like to make some Christmas ornaments to gift this year. So I want to try to do 2 or 3 per month. Techniques are open but I'd like to use stash to do this.

I'd like to take more pictures and better quality. I'm not really sure how this one will work out - but we'll see. I do want to show photos of the goal items as they are and when complete. As those are done, new wips will take their place.

2009 will see me moving to the Nashville, TN area as my job will be moved there. I'll be sad to leave the friends I've made here in Chattanooga but it's only about a 2 hour drive so maybe we can travel back and forth or meet in the middle somewhere.

Other upcoming events - a family member has surgery next week. Prayers for success and a quick recovery are headed his way - any from readers will be greatly appreciated. A grandchild is due in February. I don't know name plans but Snicklefritz always sounded good - that was my grandmother's name for grandkids who were being kids.

I hope to charge batteries on the camera and pull out these 6 items and take pictures to post with my next entry.

Holly-Daze 2008

All the insanity that is the holiday season - that I insist on calling Holly Daze (maybe I'll explain the story behind that one later) and the other insanity called family get in the way of regular blogging.

Oh, I forgot work too. I've had training, a week of shadowing and reverse shadowing, 2 weeks "pre-live" and another two weeks "live" with a total of 100 phone calls reviewed and graded. Final result: I've been accepted into the department! That's a good thing, a very good thing indeed.

Back and forth to the 'boro to visit hubby and family, phone calls with other family members gives good and bad news and, hopefully, things will settle themselves down with the bad stuff and all will turn out for the good in the long run. December brings Christmas and the new year. January is the time of some cancer surgery for a family member (prayers that this will be the last one and all the stuff will be gone this time would be appreciated by all) and the matriarch's 80th birthday.

February will bring a new family member into the world. Bubba has been voted down as a name for the baby. His next older brother wants him named Baby A with A being the same name as the namer. When told this wouldn't work, he wanted Baby R with R being the other brother's name.

March is a birthday and on goes the year...

What I have done is make a list of all my knitting in progress, stitching in progress, some spinning and my two quilting projects. The knitting and stitching are both in double digits - and if I listed all the spinning fibers I have, it would be too. So lots of things to work on in the time coming up - and I have a knit along starting Jan 1. Also two baby gifts to be made. One is started and I'll have to figure out what to do for the other baby.

I'll make the lists public on another post - or posts?

In the meantime, a wonderful holiday season to all of you, no matter your beliefs. Take time to enjoy each other and the world around you.

All I Can Say is.. WOW

During this political time in the USA, emotions run high and, in some cases, logic and understanding go by the wayside. Everyone has a viewpoint and many feel theirs is the only one.

My viewpoints are my own but I do appreciate those with a wonderful way of expressing themselves with words. Therefore I'm borrowing from My Tangled Life and an essay by Eve Ensler regarding Gov. Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate for Vice President:

by Eve Ensler

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the polar bears. I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not. She does not believe in sex education or birth control. She has stated that she will do everything in her power to overturn Roe v Wade.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. She has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialog and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain. Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

I do not believe 100% in all Ms. Ensler has written but I do admire her way of stating her views. She makes you think - and thinking is a very good thing to do.

To those who are eligible to vote in the US Presidental election: please think and research and make an intelligent choice when you go to vote in November. Please do not allow others to make your choice for you.

Observation and Commentary

In the past few weeks, there have been some events that are disturbing me. At a construction site, two separate incidents of nooses being found have been reported. Also reported is the FBI investigating because of racial overtones.

Friday a bomb threat was called in to the company that will be at the construction site when the buildings are completed. Right now, the company is located in 10 sites around town with the majority being downtown. People were evacuated from all sites and I haven't read any media reports of any device or suspected device being located.

Each day I drive by a hospital. Several times there has been a man standing on the edge of the sidewalk with a sign about his mother's final days at the hospital. If all he reports is accurate, there were some really terrible mistakes made in her care. I'm not medically trained but I would think at least one of those mistakes could have contributed to her death.

I have said for years that there are at least 3 sides to every story. One side, the opposing side and the reality. The above demonstrations are the result of people wanting their side known. One does it in a peaceful manner - standing, holding a sign. One is sneaky and disruptive to many others, not just the one or the few that the complaint is with.

I do not know the hospital's side of the story or any actions being taken by the hospital to investigate. I would hope they are checking what is on the sign. I have respect for the man with the sign. I have sympathy for him and the pain he's going through with the loss of his mother and his feelings of why she died.

I also don't know if the nooses and bomb scare are related but I'm going to assume (dangerous word) they are. The person(s) behind this does not have, nor deserve respect. There are more effective ways to try to resolve a situation which someone feels is unjustified.

I've ranted long enough. I was once told "You are SO 60's!" Yes, I am. I do wish for peace and for people to try to understand each other and their viewpoints. I'd love to live long enough to see that happen.