A Little Yarn On The Side

Less than an hour before the realtor who SWORE his client was serious and motivated was due to show our house on a federal holiday, he TEXTED to cancel because that's so professional when you've interrupted someone's three-day weekend. Guess there was an emergency barbecue or something.  And the best part?  Same real estate company that we don't think actually showed the house on Sunday.  

While I was painting the back door, Andy replaced the vinyl fence panels that had managed to melt under the "crushing" heat of the eastern sun off our tiny living room windows, and then I helped him hang some trellis panels, to hopefully stop it from happening again. It looks much nicer than I thought it would and hopefully is a permanent fix.  I know we're selling the house, but we have loved this house, and I have a built-in fondness for the people who will see it and also love it, so we're trying to fix things as WE would want them fixed.  Yesterday we got up and spent a couple hours cleaning the house (again) to be ready for the showing, then went out for lunch and to a little park I hadn't yet been to,  perhaps for good reason.  This wasn't even the worst of it: Did I mention it's a little wetland/wildlife area?  Lots of people don't know about it, but geese with intestinal issues certainly do.  Occasionally we stopped for a while to w...

It's a three-day weekend, and lots of people are camping or having barbecues or out playing in the park, but after crawling around in our backyard digging more obnoxious little dandelions up by their nasty little roots, I painted our back door while Andy mowed the lawn because we're prepping for a showing tomorrow and an open house next weekend.  We have at least been barbecuing, but to be honest, it's just so we don't make a mess in the house.  Showings are almost like little house-cleaning interventions for us--we HAVE to leave the house and there aren't exactly any chores to take with us.  Or any that I've discovered yet.  For tomorrow, I'm taking my sock.

We have a showing Sunday, but nothing today so I am embroidering!  Okay--first I did the daily "tidy," although as I assume people don't really look at houses on Friday night, maybe not my most thorough tidy, then I planted some plants I picked up yesterday and then I fixed lunch, but I am mostly crafting today.  This is a new design I bought this week, which required a trip to Joann's yesterday to find thread as amazingly they found a color I don't actually have.  This is a free-standing lace w atermelon bunting that my favorite site had on sale for $1.39 this week.  Whenever and wherever the new house is, I bet this will look quite festive. I'm also taking a break from the job-hunt today, but I did want to share an auto-reply I got yesterday after applying for a sales job: Hi Toni, Thank you for pressing “submit"! We just wanted to confirm that we have received your application. We know there are a lot of great companies out there, but we...

Having finished all the paint touch-ups Monday, (doesn't that look better?) and it being almost 90 degrees and too hot to be outside, I worked on the corduroy jacket.  It has more stretch to it than is really good for this pattern, so there was a lot of ripping out and hand-basting yesterday--which is still more enjoyable than house prep, though maybe not by much.  I've made this pattern so many times that the instructions are looking a little thrashed: One more jacket and I'll probably have them memorized, so it's not tragic, but it is sort of funny to try to work with it.  The real low-point was getting some semi-dissolved wash-away stabilizer stuck to it.   This came yesterday: Now this is the second request for money from the American Red Cross since I applied for a job there.  Sure, they can take forever getting back to you, screw around with the interview times and generally waste tons and tons of your time, but they're hot ...

This weekend we decided that the front of the house really was looking faded, AND that since all of the dark green was in front and it all had to be painted anyway, we didn't have to be able to match the paint exactly--which we've never been able to do.  Sunday we got up and did the regular tidying sweep, Andy mowed the lawn while I did some planting, and we were just getting ready to start painting when we got a call for a showing.  Their realtor said she would text us to let us know when the showing was over....or two hours later when she finally remembered as it turned out.  Our realtor has a little tray for realtors to leave cards during showings, so we weren't even sure they had come until we found drawers left open and lights on upstairs.  Charming.  It turned out THIS viewer didn't like the house because he's looking for a "project house," and if his realtor was a professional in any way, she would have done a bit better job selecting a house he mig...

Theo eventually got a bit bored snoozing beside the embroidery machine, or was so overwhelmed by the novelty of a sewing table clear enough to provide a prime spot for a kitty supervisor, that I was able to finish two embroidered towels.   I love this coffee set.  Maybe the new house will need a coffee wall hanging? These bring me to 25 finished projects for the year--out of 100--with our lives in a complete uproar.  What could possibly be problematic about this situation?  As it's only May, I'm not despairing quite yet--I'll save that for October.  But it might be time to revisit the knitted colorwork Christmas ornaments.  Or do a few more of the bowknot scarves with sport weight yarn.  And maybe some chemo caps.  Alright, maybe I'm sounding a wee bit desperate......