Update

Here's what's been going on -

Home remodeling:
This is where my time has been spent of late, besides going to work of course. And sleeping. We started working on redoing the living room shortly before Christmas and we're still plugging along. I'll have pictures of the whole thing once it's done, or at least mostly done. Rooms in our house are never completely done.

The lighting is done - 4 recessed lights and a lighted ceiling fan. That took more work than expected because there were a few "while we're at it" projects related to electricity.

The walls have been either re-sheetrocked or skim-coated. We replaced the insulation in the exterior wall and added some to an interior wall. After two coats of primer and two coats of paint, they're done...well, there is some touch up to do.

The floor is sanded and just needs some touch up sanding along the walls and in a few low spots where the rented sander didn't do a great job. Next step is to vacuum thoroughly, run a tack cloth along it and then stain and apply multiple coats of polyurethane - and keep the cats off it. We hope to get that done this week so I can call the furniture stores and schedule delivery of the couch and bookcase.

We picked up some of the trim we need. We purchased the oak window sill and trim piece for the step (the living room is lower than the hallway by one step that runs the entire width of the room). Ka-ching. Those pieces run $5/foot, so we took advantage of a 15% moulding sale at the expensive lumber yard. We still need moulding for the baseboards and ceiling, which we'll get at HD, where they're cheaper than at the expensive lumber yard, even with the sale. All the trim will need to be stained, cut, and installed.

Drapes and wall decoration will take a while. I will probably make drapes and pillows, which means expect them sometime in 2010. Well, let's hope not. I'd also like to make picture ledges. I like these ledges sold by Pottery Barn



and Target

But I'm not buying them from Pottery Barn or Target. When you knit, sew, or cut wood, it's hard to buy something that you know you can make. Target's price was much better than Pottery Barn but they're only available in black. Ours will be in oak, stained to match the rest of the woodwork and furniture in the room.

Sewing:
I haven't been doing any personal sewing since before Christmas, but I did help out with some charity sewing with my sewing guild. We made pillows for mastectomy patients. At my last neighborhood group meeting, we cut the heart-shaped pillows out of yards and yards of pink, purple and yellow fleece and flannel. I donated some pink flannel to the cause that had been in my stash for ages. I was glad to put it to use. At our chapter meeting on Saturday we made the pillows in assembly line fashion. There were 23 of us, so a few sewed a pink ribbon to one side, a few sewed on a small American Sewing Guild patch, and some sewed the pillow seams (I helped with that). Then there also were women stuffing pillows and doing the final hand stitching, which I also helped doing. We completed 142 pillows.

I hope to get back to more sewing once my sewing machine cabinet is back in service. The new lift I ordered arrived last week. I really hope the lift fits my existing cabinet without any modifications to the cabinet. I think it should but we haven't checked it out yet because we've been preoccupied with the living room right now.

I've been doing really well (I think) at not buying more fabric. I've written in this blog before about my monumental stash. Someday I may dare to post pictures of the tower of fabric-filled, plastic storage boxes in our cargo trailer. I have bought some quilting fabrics and just bought four fat quarters of Valentines Day prints last Saturday, but at least I haven't bought any fashion fabric since November. Well, I had to buy the fleece panel from Hancocks because it was the Penn State logo...and the Christmas craft fabric panels were a moment of weakness too. But I have withstood the temptations of luscious fabric at Emmaonesock, VogueFabrics, and Textile Studios and the always present good deals at Fabric.com. I look but I don't click.

Knitting:
I've been doing knitting whenever and wherever I can. My main project right now is a gift for a friend. It's rather large and I chose to use the seed stitch on it, so it seems like it will never end. I've been working on it while we watch TV and during my morning commute (don't worry, I carpool with my husband and he drives). I'm happy to report that I think the end is in sight on this project. Probably another week or two, depending on how much TV watching we do.

Since I had a business trip last week, I started a small project that was more portable. It's a felted handbag that uses one skein of Noro Kureyon. I'm nearly finished with it. Small projects are good!

And just like I have to find willpower not to by sewing fabric, I now have to find the strength not to create a huge stash of yarn. I came close to buying a sweater's worth of Rowan at a LYS sale a few weeks ago but managed to only leave with the Noro for the purse. Stitches is just a few weeks away and I'm saving my buying for then. Oh no, Stitches is a few weeks away!! I have homework to do for my classes! I better get to it.