The Domino Effect

Home Improvement News: My DH and I have already done everything in this house that was possible to do without setting off the Domino Effect. You know, where you can't do one thing without doing another thing - but then really if you do that thing you should by all rights do a whole other thing as well. And so on and so on and so on....multiplying like that scary hydra of a woman on that old shampoo commercial! This is also known as the Snowball Effect. Well - the dominoes are falling and the snowball is well and truly rolling! We knew this would happen - but what can you do? We had to paint the stairwell - walls and trim. We started taping to paint the walls but then we took a good look at the trim on the stairs and decided that IF we were going to do the trim right we REALLY should just go ahead and pull off the nasty old carpet which needs to be replaced anyway. So we dropped the taping and started pulling. Actually my DH did all the pulling because removing carpet is really dusty work and I have asthma. (To be fair I did the basement stairs all by myself so I guess that makes us even.) Once the carpet was off and tack strips and staples removed we realized that the baseboards really looked like crap. Someone super sloppy and lazy painted this house before us and we have been paying the price. Also, baseboards tend to get a bit of wear and dings in a house with two kids and three dogs! Sooooo - to be done right, the baseboards REALLY needed to be scraped and sanded and repaired. Another job for DH because sanding and scraping are really dusty jobs and I have asthma. (To be fair I spent my time knitting a sweater for him: see YORK.) We also realized that this was a good time to tighten up the stairs to stop the serious creaking that drove us all crazy! So DH spent an evening hammering in wood shims and now we have quiet stairs! Hooray! Then I went out and picked out carpet samples and - thankfully - we easily reached a decision. Sagey green for the upper stairs and sandy for the basement stairs. That brings us to today - I primed trim on the stairs (and a bunch of doors for some cabinets we are also painting - but that's a whole other story!). Hopefully we will have new carpet on all the stairs in two weeks. This is a huge thing to me because the nasty carpet on the creaking stairs was one of the last bits of the "old house" that was left. When the new carpet is installed it will be the last of the DIY fix-it jobs. Everything else is cosmetic - painting and decorating. Except of course the master bath and kitchen which both need a total remodel overhaul and which we can't do ourselves - so that is a save up money type of thing. *Sigh * It never ends....But I am REALLY proud of us and how much we have been able to do in this house ourselves on a super tight budget and make it look really great. My Dad recently said that the house had changed beyond all recognition from what it had been before. That was really the best compliment ever and made our two years worth of hard work feel like it was paying off. :)

In knitting news: I am on the last sleeve for the York sweater! Hooray! I was trying to get it finished by this weekend so that my Mom could show me how to do the seams but at this point that probably won't happen. So after all the knitting is finished York might sit in pieces for awhile before I muster up the courage to start the finishing process.

For fun I thought I would post a photo of a wrap I finished about a month and a half ago. I still need to weave in the ends though. It is don in Gedifra Byzanz which is so soft and fleecy and fun to work with. HOWEVER, there were so many knots in the skeins that I nearly went crazy! I just don't think that this type of yarn should be knotted in order to make up a skein. I think that I lost probably an entire skein of yarn because I would get halfway through a row, find a knot, have to back track, cut out the knot and tie on the new yarn at the beginning of a row. This wastes tons of yarn which is something that drives me CRAZY. Especially when you only have 50 meter skeins in the first place so you already feel like you are endlessly tying on. And especially when the skeins normally cost about $13 - although I did get this on sale. I am using a different color of bygones for the MIL scarf I am making and for some reason that batch of yarn has far fewer knots. Thank goodness! :) Anyhow - here's the photo.