Floors

I am, at my core, a glutton for punishment. This would explain why I get into projects like my floor project (started over a year ago). This weekend and last were both spent moving furniture. First, everything from the bedrooms into the living room and dining room so that the floors in the bedrooms could be done, and currently everything from the living and dining into the bedrooms. 

Amazingly, most of it fit into Boy-child's room:

The books, while time consuming, were not the hardest part.  The sofa was among the most difficult pieces. 

Now the rooms are empty and ready for the cement guys to return.

I'm calling the finished, polished concrete "rustic, urban chic" :-D

I am knitting, albeit not much, and with many, many, stupid mistakes.  These socks, for Girl-child this Christmas, are passable, but not without their issues.  Other socks have had to be ripped out.

Note the difference between the dull, stained concrete above and the high-gloss rustic, urban chic below ...

Last weekend I went to Open Streets with The Girls and The Babies for a break.

  It was entertaining, but very hot.

We had a good time, and it was a break from moving furniture.

Girl-child has special talents with tubes, both horizontally,

and vertically.

Nothing like street food whilst sitting in the street.

This weekend The Girls took me (and The Babies) to Sunday Assembly, which definitely has potential.

One Thing Leads to Another

The knitting table has found its place of honor in the corner with a cozy basket of yarn beneath. In order to accommodate this I had to take down some photos which catapulted me into another project, started long ago but not finished until now ...

... behold the Family Photo Wall:

I guess it's all because I just never have enough to do, given that the Rip-Out-The-Carpet project turned into ...

... the Rip-Out-The-Vinyl-Too-Because-It's-Too-Ugly-And-Doesn't-Deserve-To-Live-Here project ... 

The carpet-pulling was a picnic compared with the vinyl-ripping, but so goes one thing leading to another.

I will never be bored because I can never stop.  

Hopefully there will be time this summer to get the concrete floors painted and polished.

Perfect Morning at Cemetery Way

Sunday morning was one of those picture-perfect mornings at the cemetery.

I actually turned around and hopped out of the car to snap a few photos.

A magical place.

I have to remind myself that there are people resting everywhere here.

There aren't many markers because the place was neglected for a long time.

I hope those folks realize that I know they are there and I appreciate having them for neighbors.

I Do Still Knit

Methinks I have not posted much about knitting for a while.

I still knit and I still have a yarn addiction.

After several false starts I think I have finally found a "significant piece of lace" to knit (that was one of my goals for 2014 - to knit a significant piece of lace).

I'm also back to knitting black hats for Boy-child.  Even though he is currently in Chile he will be needing woolies when he gets back to the US.

I also accidentally knit another pair of socks.  They are conveniently my size, but that is also Girl-child's size, so who knows where they may end up?

I also knit four pair of felted clog slippers.  This is the only pair remaining - I took no photos of the previous three pairs.  Girl-child got orange tops with heather green soles, DIL got red tops with purple soles and Boy-child's landlady in DC got green and blue (I don't remember which was which). These are for Boy-child - forest green with black souls soles.

No, I do not generally weave in the ends until I absolutely have to.

In decorating news, I am thinking I will probably paint the floors.  Right now I'm leaning toward the purply-gray one (second in from the right, top).  I've been looking at gray and off-gray.  If it turns out that concrete floors are too cold this winter I may change my mind.  Painting is pretty thrifty though, I can do it myself and I could get new countertops in the kitchen sooner rather than later if I paint the floors.  

Plus I can alway get cork floors later, when Auntie wins the lottery (she swears she's going to win and says I shouldn't scoff since she plans to share with me).

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The colors have been truly spectacular this fall, and the weather has been beautiful too.

This is a shot of my favorite tree in the cemetery at the moment:

Here are my regular buddies across the way - more easily visible now that the trees are going bare:

I found this while walking around Lake of the Isles on Saturday.  I always love the way they change depending upon the tree and its exposure.

The ducks are still around.

Some autumn I will go to the Northeastern U.S. to see all the maples.

They really are special.

I popped into Walktoberfest after volunteering today.  They had a room for selfies but I prefer to stick with my mirror approach.  I love the sculpture garden but inside I can pass on a lot of the pieces.  I did enjoy seeing the portrait of T. B. Walker and the screens that let you see how the original museum looked.

Found this sticker on a post outside - does anyone know who is behind these?

Also, I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but in the old Eleanor Pound house I had a gallery of kid art in the laundry room.  Today I updated my laundry "room" (it's a closet) with kid art:

Also, I thought I was done ripping out the carpet a month ago and then realized that half the walk-in closet was still carpeted.  It was a sad moment but I'm over it now that I got rid of that last piece.

To celebrate I picked up some paint chips so I can see if I might want to paint the floors.  The sky's the limit as far as color and there are some special effects you can add into the paint.  It's an option I am considering.

Nothing New to Report

The Girls went with me to the Guild meeting last week. It was fun to have them along. There were lots of beautiful things to see at the meeting but in general there were fewer knitted items that inspire a knitter like myself - most were much more complicated than I would make. Lots of color work and few (reasonably sized) shawls.

I finally worked in the ends so that Girl-child can wear her new mitts. The children at school think she is just that much more awesome now that she has superpower mitts.

I don't know if I mentioned I am ripping the carpet out of my condo.  It was my summer project.  Getting the bookshelves moved was the hardest part since all the books had to be taken off the shelves.  It was kind of hard to walk through the place until I had it done.

And speaking of books, I think I instagram-ed this but never posted.  I found the most amazing card-catalog bag at The Rack this summer.  I absolutely love it.

At some point this summer I noticed that there were pianos out on Grand Ave in various spots (I think I saw three).  I don't know what the story is behind it but I found it delightful.  Wish I knew how to play.

I have not walked around the lake lately but at some point I did snap this shot of a drinking fountain for human adults and children with an additional doggie-height option.  Because I saw someone at a different fountain without the doggie height addition letting their pooch drink from the human fountain I don't think I will ever use a public fountain again.

Amazing shoe season is almost over.  Such a pity - it can be so entertaining.

This shot of the old courthouse is taken from inside the government center, basement level, through a waterfall.  It's a lovely spot.

Next weekend is Minnesota Knitters' Days.  The Gypsy will be in town for the event.  I can't wait.

Waiting for Spring in Minneapolis

This is from last Thursday night/Friday morning. We are expecting more tonight. A friend mentioned that she's expecting to hear of an Annie Proulx-style weather related homicide soon. I couldn't agree more; just hope you aren't reading about me in the papers.

My only consolation is that I don't have to shovel.

This is the latest addition to my home decorating color therapy (found it on eBay, went to MOA to see what else may be available before taking the plunge, found it there for 1/3 the price!):

Purgatory goes on and on, doesn't it?  One of my mother's sisters stopped by with her husband when I was there.  I want people to visit her, but I don't want them to see her the way she is.

It's easy to understand why family members quit visiting people in nursing homes.

Found this at the Morgan Library in New York - first edition!  Every woman should read it at least once in her life (I was going to say every woman who's ever felt moments of insanity, but what woman hasn't?):

Cool columns from The Cloisters:

I found this very funny.  Kind of reminded me of John Waters' story of going to a Care Bear movie by himself.  Everyone in the theater moved away from him.  Funny and sad, I guess, that they have to post notice in the parks.

This is apparently the new approach to waiting areas in airports.  People watching isn't nearly as fun as it used to be, partly because there is no interaction between humans, only humans with their machines.