I got my yarn all unpacked! I was able to finish getting my kitchen set up, so playing with yarn was indeed my reward. Plus, I needed the plastic tubs the yarn was packed it, so really, it was a necessity. Love it. All this yarn makes me happy. I can’t wait until I have the time to pick out a new project and cast on!

Today was the first day of full band camp for the girl, and she had to be there before 7 am. The plus side is that I get plenty of time in my day, I guess! I spent a while outside with the pups before it gets too darn hot. Jack was feeling frisky. Enjoy your day, readers! Maybe someday soon I’ll have a knitting-related post for you.

It’s done, we’re all moved into the new house, thanks to 11 hours of hard work by the movers. Yes, 11 hours. I can’t believe we even considered doing it ourselves. I will never move again without hiring movers. They put the furniture in the right rooms but we arranged it all, put beds together, and worst of all, carried boxes from the living room to all the other rooms in the house. It was really quite horrible. But exciting too, of course.

Before the movers got there, my SIL and I were ripping out carpet. The previous owner had clearly had pets, and the smell was terrible. We knew we’d want to take out the carpet eventually but I was scared of what was under them. She egged me on, though, and before I knew it we were pulling up nasty blue carpet from my sitting room. You can’t even imagine how bad it felt and smelled. Or if you can, you have my sympathy, because it was truly disgusting. There was one corner that was still kind of moist. So here’s the before: During:  And finally, After:There’s a big section of water damage, probably from a radiator leak, and there are some stains, but we knew we’d have to refinish it so that’s no big deal. But it’s still strong and sturdy and the smell was gone almost immediately. It pleased me so much we had to do the dining room next! Before: After: Again, stained but a good base that will be gorgeous once it’s refinished.

I’d never pulled up carpet before and never want to again. Once we heaved the heavy carpet out, we had to pull up the stained padding, then pull up dozens of staples. My SIL was kind enough to go around and pull up the tacking boards around the edge. I was tired before the movers even got there! Between that and moving boxes around all afternoon/evening, I gave myself a sore back, aching feet, tight muscles and a bit of tendinitis in one elbow, but it got done. Now, three days after the move, we’re maybe halfway unpacked? Hard to tell. We’ve emptied a lot of boxes but there are still a lot hanging around. The worst is the kitchen: the new one is smaller than the old one. So I have a LOT of dishes and pans and mugs that need to go in cupboards I don’t have! Time to do another round of purging, I guess.

We love the house as much as we thought we would. It’s big and airy and roomy even with all our furniture. We have had two AC repair calls already, the second thanks to a leak that sent water down into our office, but I think that’s squared away now. They did say the system was top of the line, just not installed perfectly. The puppies are adjusting to being chained in the backyard, but we’ve gotten a couple of bids for a privacy fence that they can’t jump over. They’ll be so happy once they can run freely around the yard! I bought Grace a new Martingale collar so she couldn’t slip out of it. She outsmarted me, though. The one I bought was a little too loose and instead of exchanging it, I thought it would work. Nope. It might not surprise you that the room with the most progress made is my craft room. My yarn isn’t unpacked yet, but I’m getting close to that point. It will be my reward for getting the kitchen done.  Can’t wait until it’s all done and I have nothing preventing me from sitting and knitting. But for now, this post is long enough and I have unpacking calling my name. I *might* even get to do laundry today, if the husband succeeds in hooking up the washer and dryer. You know you’re in a bad way when you’re excited about doing laundry!

Anybody still out there? Hope so! I’m *this* close to moving day (just three days away) and I’ve got enough packed that I have some free time. What does a knitter do with free time besides knit, right? I pulled out one of two WIPs I hadn’t packed away, my Quadratic shawl, and the endless garter stitch was endlessly comforting. The pattern didn’t come out exactly as I intended–I ran out of gray too soon–but I’m still delighted with it. I think this is my first full-size knitted shawl. Given my lack of patience with knitting large items, I’m pleased that I could complete it. Plus, did I mention this is FINGERING WEIGHT yarn?? The really thin stuff that takes forever to knit? Yep, that’s right! Sure, it took me nine months, but hey, who’s counting? It’s soft and squishy and now I will pack it away for cooler months. If you’re interested, you can see the Ravelry project page here. Or go here and buy the pattern itself; it’s marvelous. Perfect TV knitting.

So what next for me? Well, I wasn’t in the mood to pull out my last WIP, so I stopped at Joann and bought one skein of gray acrylic. I dug through the box with my knitting needles to find the right circs and cast on for another one of AndreSue Knits’ KitKat hats. This is exactly the kind of knitting I need right now, simple and peaceful. It’ll get me through the next few days until I can unpack my craft room and restore some sort of order to my knitting life. It can’t happen soon enough. Moving is horrible. I’m sure it will be worth it in the long run, but after two long, hectic months, we’re all kind of fried. I don’t ever want to move again!

I miss this! I miss blogging and reading other blogs regularly and having those little conversations and connecting with my knitting people! But I’ve been so consumed with the upcoming move that I simply haven’t had the time, energy or material for blogging. I haven’t been knitting or anything really fun. I’ve been packing. And cleaning. And packing some more. That’s not terribly interesting. But a few noteworthy things have happened, so here are the highlights of the last couple of weeks.

I have a new nephew!! He was born at the end of June and he’s perfect! Can’t wait for cold weather so I can make him all the baby hats. The boy turned 12! 12, can you believe it? I can’t! As busy as we are, we squeezed out enough time to have cake and ice cream with some of the family, and David got lots of LEGO/Doctor Who/Hobbit stuff.

The husband tore out our 16-year-old tiled shower and is in the process of re-tiling it. It will be gorgeous and fabulous and I’m jealous that my sister will be the one getting to use it. Thankfully, we do have a bathtub in which to bathe so we are not all stinky.  I watched fireworks on the 4th with my two favorite children. During one of our recent mega-thunderstorms, a branch from the neighbor’s tree fell on my husband’s truck. We’re so lucky: no damage at all! Not so lucky: during *another* mega-thunderstorm, we got water in the basement. The basement that’s been try for the last ten years or so. But the ground is just so saturated and it was raining so heavily that the water soaked through and found a weak spot to pour in. Perfect timing, eh? Prepping to move in 10 days and we get water in the basement. Sigh. Seriously, though, I’m glad it happened before we moved out so we can take steps to prevent it happening again. And there was some luck here too: the sump pump alarm went off, bringing me downstairs before the water flooded too much. I saved the Christmas decorations that were in harm’s way, the husband dug a trench to divert the flow of water, I got buckets put down, and started mopping. With a fan, it was all dry within 24 hours. Could have been so much worse!

I think that’s all. Isn’t that enough? Oh but wait, one more thing!! Yesterday it was raining again and I was tired and achy and discouraged and so frustrated with all the moving stuff that I rebelled. I pulled out my chevron scarf, turned on Wimbledon, and spent the day knitting. It was marvelous. By late afternoon, the knitting was done and it was time to learn Kitchener Stitch to graft the ends together. Guess what?? It wasn’t nearly as hard as I was expecting! I know there are variations, depending on whether you’re grafting knit or purl stitches, but this was just stockinette and I picked it up really quickly. And I LOVE it. It looks fantastic. I can’t wait to do it again; I think this will become by go-to seaming method. I should have done one more row of black before seaming, but I thought the Kitchener would add a row of black, plus I wasn’t sure I had enough yarn. And in the next photo, you can see where the points of the chevrons don’t match exactly all the way around. But in the grand scheme of things, those tiny imperfections don’t matter a bit. Once it’s on, you don’t see either of them. I love it. I can see myself making more of them in different color combinations and widths; I think I’d really like a skinny one next. But as long as this one took, it might be a while before I cast on another.

That’s really all, folks. Today I’m back at the packing. Not much left, really, just some more kitchen stuff. Everything else is essential and will get packed right before moving. With any luck, we’ll close within a week and be moved within 10 days. I can’t wait. I’m so tired of having *this* view everywhere I sit in my house! 

I can finally reveal why I’ve been absent for the last month: we’re buying a new house and moving! I didn’t want to say anything too early in case something fell through, but we’ve had an inspection, the offer has been signed, so I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve spent the last three weeks going through the house and donating/selling/trashing so much stuff, and now I’m packing. Packing, packing and more packing. It’s going quickly; I’ve got the craft room all packed up, but don’t worry, I left out two WIPs in case I needed emergency knitting. The kids are on their own and the girl is doing well. The boy…well, his room was pretty much a pigsty so he’ll probably need some help soon. The husband is doing some fix-it-up stuff around the house so I’m doing all the packing. Except for all his woodworking tools and stuff. He’s on his own for that.

We’re moving about 20 minutes north of where we are, but it’s getting the kids into an amazing school district with advanced classes and bigger, better programs than they’ve had. That’s the reason we’re moving, really. About a month ago, at the end of the school year, we learned that the school district we’re in is changing the gifted program a bit, making the one gifted class an elective and making all kids take a mainstream reading class. Well, my kids were reading at a 12th-grade level by sixth grade, so that class won’t do much for them. The only advanced class they offer in middle school is math, and no advanced English until 10th grade. That just didn’t sit right with me. A few days after we spoke with someone at the school district, we went to a party with a teacher friend who lives in a nearby town, and she told us their district offers THREE gifted classes (math, science, and English) in middle school. I was amazed. I knew our district had some drawbacks, but I hadn’t realized most of the other nearby districts were offering more. By the next day, I was idly browsing through houses for sale, just pipe-dreaming, I thought. But when I mentioned it to my husband, he said he’d been thinking the same thing for a while. Well. That was all we needed, and we started looking in earnest. We stumbled across this house and fell in love with it, and that part was really easy.

It’s really hard to leave, though, because I was born in this town, lived here all my life except for college, and I love it. My family is all here. I wanted to have faith that this city, and this school district, would get better. I wanted to believe in it.

But I also really want to do better for my kids. I took the girl to meet the new band director and see the facilities, and she was so excited she was practically in tears. It’s just such a big change to go from an older school with less funding to a newer one that can afford a huge band room, one that prides itself on the band enough to put a glass case with trophies and awards in the hallway. Her old band director is trying really hard, and we love him. He’s fantastic. But he’s trying to rebuild a band program that’s suffered the last several years, and that’s a hard, slow process. Band is my daughter’s passion, her gift, her future, so if I can do anything to get her into a strong program, I’ll do it.

And I’m excited about the change. I think I needed something different. We really love the house. It’s big but needs some work. But it has hardwood floors, pocket doors, a finished attic with a full bathroom (the girl is SO excited about that) and a nice big backyard for the puppies. My new craft room is bigger and has three big windows. The house is a 5-minute walk to school for the boy, and he’s so excited to not have to ride the bus anymore. So yeah, we’ll be farther away from my family, but it’s not too far. It’s a short, easy drive. I just might have to try harder to schedule time with them. And that’s totally worth it. Now, I have to go pack some more, but here are some pics of the house.

Dining room

Living room

Sitting room

Craft room