Spring for it

Ready for something new, changes big and small are here.

First, a new camera---and this time, it's right! After lots and lots of research, I discovered compact DSLR cameras, cameras designed to be small and light and fit in my hand, while offering me lots of creative potential and options. I am still getting to know my new friend, but I already feel quite comfortable. It felt right from the start. It helps that it's by Sony, the same as my old friend!

So here's me, playing. Look at that twinkle!

We are getting ready to put our house on the market, this dear sweet house which has been so much for us and that we have given so much to. Thanks to a good family work team, our garden beds are spruced up and ready to go: weeded, mulched, and with sweet pansies. Inside, we have been painting and purging and majorly de-cluttering (yard sale, piles for friends, and just plain old dump).

And taking pictures, getting ready to list it! It looks pretty swell around here! But whew, what a lot of hard work and long days. In line with our external space-clearing, we are also modifying our diets around here and cleaning out the insides too. It's been school vacation week with gorgeous weather for working indoors and out...bonus is that the blackflies only barely awakened before our outdoor chores were mostly done! 

I think I'm ready for a break from vacation. But it's felt really great to do this work.

Novembrish Things

A little sewing, for Ashwood's Yuletide Fair and Artisan Marketplace of last weekend, which in turn benefitted the school. It was a tricky business to be given the parts of this advent calendar and told how to put them together, and then do it without worrying too much about realizing someone else's artistic vision. Would my idea of perfect be perfect enough? It turned out the answer was yes, as the two that I made retailed for $42 each!

Remember those little hand warmers, first pictured in last post? I used local yarn, from Good Karma Farm, the rainbow skein with a little of their green variegated alpaca blend at my oh-so-sensitive wrists. I find that I like them at this length quite a bit: knitted just up to my first pinkie knuckle makes them just a bit warmer than others I have made, but still functional for knitting or typing.

note how that central figure is slightly light in value?

amazed that S thought to convey the notion of distance and perspective that way.

note the bulgy muscles on this fellow

(Babe Ruth)

Here is a good un-blogsworthy photo of what our dining room table usually looks like, just to keep it real:

And for those of you who know our house, you may notice a different view out the window, in relation to the table! We have made a major swap in our downstairs layout. This was a brainflash that I had in the midst of feeling really awful, during a recent nasty cold, when I found myself pulling up a duvet in front of the woodstove and lying on the floor of my dining room.

A few days later, when I was turning the corner towards health again, we swapped the dining for the living room. Hello? Duh? I hear you wondering how come it took us eight years to figure this out... The room with the woodstove should also have the couch in it!

The room with the woodstove and the best nighttime lighting should also have comfortable places to sit for reading and knitting! The room with the woodstove is actually quite hot and annoying in the winter to eat supper in, when we have the stove going.

The former living room was really not much more than a glorified hallway, I never sat there, and now we sit by that big window and eat dinner together. And the slightly longer walk from the kitchen? Not a problem.

It feels like a new house.

And while I grew up with a mom who loved moving furniture a few times a year, this move of ours was a big shock for my boys who have had everything pretty much the same since we moved here. Definitely a creative endeavor and an opportunity for some deep cleaning too!

Housecleaning: 5 Minute Method

Pirate band-aids, on a dining room chair.

I used to have a Thursday morning date with my house, for cleaning. Maybe an hour or so spent straightening, dusting, vacuuming, bathrooms, etc. Just maintenance, general upkeep stuff. Now, in my extra Busy Life, I have 5 minutes about every day or so. The whole house is never clean at once this way, but it's how it is right now. Maybe one room gets vacuumed. One room dusted. Random items scooped up from odd places and put rightfully away. I could spend time nagging or wondering why the 6 year-old has a trail of detritus in his wake, or why no one else seems to pick up socks, but I'd rather just do it.

This morning was a scooping and putting away day.

3 socks, none matched, in three different rooms.
(One doesn't even belong to us.)

2 ATC books to be taken to their owner.
(The bottom one is a Swap Book that
ACTUALLY circulates from the Rockport Library.
You can swap out a card and replace it with your own!
How cool is it to have a book that will never ever be the same twice?)
Sylvan's discarded pants,
about three feet from the dirty clothes hamper.
Sylvan's discarded pajamas,
in the dining room where he got dressed this morning.
Some kind of tiny vehicle with big wheels.
Monster truck, maybe? Also Sylvan's.
Cowboy boots, willy-nilly in the kitchen. Sylvan's.
Two piles of my school readings consolidated into one!

I also put two games away, and threw away a gum wrapper. Are you wondering where all of Jonas's stuff is? Well, it seems in this 5 minutes it was mostly put away (socks and games were his). Actually, he prefers only to change his clothes when hassled into doing it, so not much laundry from him. The man of the house helps on the weekends, to his credit, and I am so grateful that Jonas likes to clean the toilet (with gloves on, who could blame him). Sylvan even changes the toilet paper roll! Now these are enlightened men! I am very lucky.