Spring is finally starting to show up around here! We're actually seeing a few things growing, and even a break in the rain every once in a while. I'm hoping the good weather stays for the next couple of days while we move, it's no fun to move all your worldly possesions in the rain.

We put off packing and took a much needed break tonight. I started to look through a cookbook I borrowed from my mom (the amazing America's Test Kitchen) but started to nod off, so I decided to take a power nap. I woke up six hours later. Guess I needed the sleep.

I'm really sad to be leaving our old place, but I'm excited to be in the new one. It's two sides of the same coin really-- everything is changing and I'm feeling both the good and bad all at once. Overall, I guess I'm just excited about everything-- the new house that we've been working so hard on, spring, and in the slightly distant future-- Victoria Fibre Fest!

We live a pretty short drive from the US/Canadian border, so Victoria isn't that far to travel, and I've been itching to go to some sort of yarn/fiber/knitting festival. I just have to make sure to start applying for my passport very soon, now that the rules have changed. I'm hoping that, despite the fact that I hang out with mostly crocheters, I might be able to get a friend to join me on the excursion. Lord knows E doesn't want to go (and be surrounded by more crazy knitters? Frankly, I think just one is enough for him), and I definetely wouldn't make him.

Either way, there's time to flesh out plans. Right now I'm too busy staring down a living room full of boxes.

I got a much-needed respite tonight. I went and touched up the paint in the kitchen, but after that we went and had some beers (or double rum and cokes as it were) with some friends.

For what it's worth, I finished the kitchen tonight (but only after OCD E went through it. He is very......um.....meticulous.)

(And by that I mean obsessive. He finally started to admit his crazy behavior last night. I think it's progress.)


Tomorrow, I start packing. We have one week to move. And my mantra remains-- "whatever shit happens, it's all worth it."

I'm so full of it.

I vowed to sit down and work out the two patterns I'm working on, but no dice. I have managed to squeeze in about one hour of knitting in the last two weeks. Most of the time that I'm not working lately I've been spending at my second job-- our new house.

So far we've redone the floors, repainted the entire downstairs and the stairwell, made a trip to Ikea for a dining table and other odds and ends, built our new barbeque, and wired outlets so that we can wall-mount our TV. Still on the to do list is finishing painting the kitchen, repainting the entire upstairs, installing some new kitchen fixtures (shelves and racks and such) and closet rods*, building our new Ikea dining table and chairs, cutting our desk down so it can fit into the closet in the 2nd bedroom, and oh yeah, moving into the damn place!

One of the main ways I've been getting through all of it without checking myself into the sanitarium is to look at it as my biggest craft project ever. That seems to help....sorta. Either way, I keep telling myself it will all be worth it when it's done and E and I can plop down on our couch, look around and say, "look at what we did!". Heck, some of it has even been fun, but I'm not sure how much more fun I can take without doing myself or someone else an injury.

"It will all be worth it." The six words that get my through the sixteen-hour day.

*the guys that did the remodel for the seller stupidly textured over every closet rod in our condo. They also install a half a dozen doors and about a mile of trim without sealing any of it. We see them working across the way, and by working I mean "chain-smoking and getting into arguments every 10 minutes."

My summer girl....

We just came back from the monthly AHS adopt-a-thon, and although the dogs we want to adopt weren't there, I'm still pretty stoked that we're getting the ball rolling. We've talked with the humane society folks and are probably going to wait until we've finished working on the condo and are fully moved before going any further, but I can't wait. I'm already envisioning trips to the dog park, summer camping, and afternoons at Toad Lake!

We'll have to see how our new dog(s) get along with Tim and Amber's pets, but I think it will be alright. (Tim and Amber have about a dozen animals, but typically only bring their two dogs, Reno and Vegas, Beaker the duck, and Honeydew the goose when we go camping. They have playpens for them and everything. They're crazy-but-in-the-cool-way pet people.)

All around, I'm really excited by how this spring/summer is shaping up. We are 4 days away from closing on our new house. It's like Christmas, only you make all your presents yourself. In two weeks, I'm going to have more closet space than I can wrap my head around and a whole room in which to put yarn. My job, minus one nagging thing that's been stressing me out, is exactly where I want to be right now. E and I are doing amazingly well, even with all the stress of starting this new chapter in our lives. My friends are wonderful. My family's been great. What more could a girl ask for?

I think I'll go work on the fuzzy sweater and my new pattern project. I'm finally settled enough to sit down and math these things out.

The Random Wrap came out a little bigger than expected, so wrapping it doesn't really work. Instead I basically have a scarf with no ends. Since it wwas a random project, with a random cast-on and a random pattern knitted into it, I suppose I could really only expect a random result. On the bright side, I'm finding that looping it twice around my neck makes it all nice and cozy. Frankly, I love the colors so much I probably would have worn it no matter how it came out.

As an added bonus, it seems making the Random Wrap has renewed my waning creative energy. I went back to the fingerless mittens, and as a result am actually writing my first-ever pattern! I finished the first one while at work today, now to do the second one and see if everything jives the way I'm hoping it will. I also thought of a couple of variations on my initial idea, so I may use some of that "stash-busting, what's that?" yarn I bought a while back to work up those. It's a good thing my friends are as big of fans of topless mittens as I am, because I'm going to be up to my neck in these things by the time I'm done.

I feel like I should be slowly moving from cold-weather gear to something more springy, but Spring seems to have not gotten the memo, atleast in the Northwest anyway. We woke up to a snowstorm the other morning-- about four inches downtown, with a little bit more in the surrounding areas. To a lot of places, like Canada and the Northeast, four inches isn't even worth mentioning, but this town practically shuts down when even a few flakes start to fall.The snow eventually started to melt off that afternoon, and most of the roads were dry by the time nightfall hit, but come on.

As previously mentioned, I LOVE snow. I love snow so much I write it letters asking if it wants to go steady, and even I'm pretty sick of it. So although I am trying to gear myself up for spring, I just don't feel it. Hopefully I'll find my spring-time muse and start making springy things.