And There Goes the Siding

Will and I are a lot alike. Obviously we're not identical, that would be weird. He, for example, can fall asleep the second his head hits the pillow, where as I will lay there staring at the ceiling for a good 45 minutes before I can nod off. Yeah, I'm jealous.

But we do have a lot in common, and one of those things is that once we get something into our heads, it sticks. And really, it's just a foregone conclusion that it will happen, so it's not worth arguing about. Not that we don't try to talk each other out of things, but, generally, once we're in, we're in. This weekend is a good example.

On my end, it was the bike. Yes, I could probably have fixed up my crummy old bike but I didn't want to. It was horrible and uncomfortable, and yes, ok, ugly. And while we are trying to cut down the budget, the whole idea of not using the car much hinged on both of us being able to ride around town easily, so me getting a new bike was one of those things that Will didn't even try to argue about. He just nodded, and let me pick out my pretty new bike ( I can't help it, my daughter is rubbing off on me, I like pretty!) Which I have named Ms. Bennett, by the way. I mean, I name all my cars, so why not my bike? And yeah, if you know me well, you get the name. She's pretty, but not flashy, and sensible without being stiff. If she were too sensible I'd have to call her Charlotte. But I digress.

So I've got Ms. Bennett, and Will, well he ripped off a chunk of siding, which means, in effect, that it will now all come off.

I admit I was the holdout here. We've ripped siding off of a house before so I know that it's a huge, messy pain in the you know what. And I wasn't looking forward to that. But what was really bugging me was the though t that we would loose a layer of insulation on our already freezing in the winter, baking in the summer house. And worse, I REALLY didn't want to deal with getting rid of all that insulation. The last house was much smaller, but I still feel guilty about all those bags of Styrofoam insulation that we sent to the dump. So I hemmed and hawed. But even still, I knew it would come off, his fingers had been itching to get to work on it for a good few months already. So I gave in. And guess, what? There WAS NO INSULATION! Which, you know, explains a lot, but also makes me feel much better. Not that it wont still be a messy pain in the arse, but since we can recycle the siding, the house will look 100% better AND there wont be any Styrofoam guilt.

Of course there will still be issues, like the big hole that was obviously once a window which we found under the small chunk that we removed. Not sure what we'll do there, maybe some kind of on the house cold frame... but anyway, I'm sure there will be more surprises, but with a test coat of the color and sheen on the unearthed siding and coat number one on the deck surface, I'm starting to see what our house will look like. Which now makes me totally impatient to get it all done, NOW! But what's new? I hate waiting. Not sure I have much of a choice this time however, there are some very tall parts on our house, so this should be interesting.

*This picture makes the paint look oddly green. It's really very dark gray, with a hint of blue in the sunshine. Kind of like this, but with a little more blue to it.

Dimwit knitwit

Sometimes I think I'm nuts. Really, I do. I mean, I like a challenge, sure. And I love to try new things, especially when it comes to all things crafty. But really, Gillian, why do you do this to yourself?

OK, back up. Remember when I decided I was obsessed with making a sweater? Well I haven't gotten over it. It was 103 yesterday and today is going to be "cool" at 91, and I'm hauling around a giant ball of wool to make a sweater. But since the slippers took me ages to finish, I decided that if I really wanted a sweater, well, I better get knitting. And I really want a sweater. Actually, I just really want this sweater. It invaded my mind, I couldn't help myself. Usually it's books that do this to me. I hear about them and then I can think of nothing else till I get my hot little hands on a copy so I can dive in. So this obsession with a sweater is interesting, to say the least.

The sweater in itself is no big deal. I've knit a sweater before, ok, it was for a newborn, but I'm not intimidated by the sweater portion, it's the cabling.

I've been avoiding cable related patterns since I started knitting again. And during my previous knitting stages I just flat out pretended they didn't exist. But they are just so darn pretty, and, although this sweater had instructions for a plain version, what really drew me to it in the first place was the oak leaf pattern up the center of the back. So in I dove.

Now if I had been smart, I would have tried some kind of simple cable first. A basic twist, on a mitten or something. NOT on a garment that requires 72 plain stitches on either side of the cable section. Or I would have gone to our knitting shop and had them get me started. But no, I just started knitting.

A few days later, when I'd worked my way about 6 inches up the sweater, I looked at my knitting, and then got online and looked at the pictures of the sweater (I only printed out the pages of the pattern with the actual instructions to save paper, not smart as it turns out) and realized that something was TERRIBLY wrong. Really, Really wrong. I'd screwed up somewhere, probably amidst the new stitches that I'd had to look up on You Tube (what did we do before You Tube?)

I knew what needed to be done, but I dreaded it. All that work, the long sides, it all had to come out. Drat. So after shoving my sad bundle of yarn and work into my bag in frustration and cursing a little, I pulled it back out and ripped it all out. All of it. Well, except for the inch of ribbing which I knew was right, I mean, I can knit 1 purl 1 at least. So yesterday I started again. And I learned that I am much better at following a chart - which had looked totally unintelligible when I started- than following the by the row written instructions.

I'm about two thirds of the way back to the point at which I stopped to rip everything out, and it's going much faster now that I have a firmer grasp on what I'm doing. You can even just barely see the beginnings of the pattern in my work. And a good thing too because if it had turned out badly again I think I would have chucked the whole thing out the window. As it stands, I might actually have the longed for sweater by the time the cool weather hits again (please cool off, please cool off)

And on another knitting related note, I'm actually using my slippers despite the heat. Our office has only one A/C vent and if it's shut off the room becomes unbearably hot within minutes. But the vent is directly in front of my toes and my feet have been FREEZING. Even while the rest of me bakes. So yay! for cozy warm slippers, even during the hottest July in my memory.

Stalled Resolutions

Well, I'm sorry to say that my new resolution to ride my bike everywhere has not been adhered to very well this week. Although it hasn't really been my fault, so I still have hope. Part of the problem is the triple digit temperatures we've been enduring lately. And for a girl who is Oregon to the core, well, this hot weather is not for me. I heard the weather guy say the other day that we had more 90+ degree days in June than we normally have in A YEAR! So, yeah, it's stupidly hot. And there isn't really an end in sight. Sigh. I miss the rain.

But still, I was determined. Despite the wretched heat, I was going to plow on with the bike riding thing. That's what water bottles are for, right? Plus we could restrict ourselves to relatively short rides - to the library, to the museum downtown. Places we walk to all the time, except biking would give us a little bit of a breeze at least. Tuesday afternoon I loaded up the kids on their bikes, packed my bag, filled up the water bottles, climbed on and pushed off only to have something major fall off in the gear area while at the same time my seat tipped backwards, almost dumping Evie and I into the street. Humm.

Will had taken my bike out for a spin with Evelyn that morning and I was secretly glad he did it because I knew he would come home and tell me I needed a new bike. I've been saying it for ages but I think he thought I was being silly. And I'll admit that sometimes I am, but in this case, nope it's really tim, only 2 gears out of the 15 work, and something on it clicks, ALL THE TIME, and the breaks don't really stop. But you know, saving money and all, I'd kept on with it. So he did, in fact, come home an declare that I needed a new bike, in fact, I think he said something like "Why didn't you tell me it was that bad?" Uhhh.....

But I think he did something to make it worse because the seat was working just fine the day before and the gear thing that fell off, well to be honest, it may have been dangling by a thread for months and I'd never know the difference. But he definitely broke the seat. Or maybe not, I'm not the most technical of persons so who knows.

Because I was already hot and now totally frustrated I took Evie out of her seat, wheeled it over to the office window where he was working and declared "This bike sucks!" with true drama queen flair and threw it down dramatically. Although as it turns out he was in the kitchen when I did this and didn't see. When we came home from (walking) he asked why my bike was in a heap on the grass. All that drama, wasted on an empty room.

So if we want to do this bike thing, we'll be shopping for a new one for me pretty soon. Nothing fancy, all I really want is a comfy, working seat and more than two gears. In fact, I think I found one already that will cost less than replacing the gears, breaks, seat and fixing the clicky thing on my old bike. And this one has shocks on the seat, which is awesome. I don't need shocks on the wheels, but my rear end could certainly use some extra cushioning, so I'm on board. Honestly, tell me that a woman didn't come up with that one! Brilliant!

Tea With Jam, Jam and Bread, Jam and Bread

I had an unconventional college experience. I mean, even setting aside the fact that I went to school at the University of Oregon which is, in itself, just plain unconventional, I still did not have what most people would consider a "normal" time in college.

For starters, I wasn't a party girl. I tried it one weekend and decided that was enough for me. I could see how it would appeal to some people, but it just wasn't my thing. And there was the fact that Will and I have been together since my sophomore year, knowing pretty much right away that this was it and treating our relationship as a permanent thing. We were regularly mistaken for married graduate students even though I wasn't yet 21 because, well, we were doing things like gardening in our back yard and saving up to buy a better car together. Well there was that year where we lived next door to the guy who lived in a dumpster and who shouted at us whenever we threw our garbage away. We were more like normal college students that year. After all, we had a futon, a crappy TV and cast off pots and pans like all good college students did back then. But really, we weren't very good at being "college-y".

And on top of that, my parents lived in the town we went to college in because my dad was getting his PhD in the same department where I was getting my BA. Most people would probably hate that, but as I said, I wasn't the type to show up to class hungover, so I didn't really worry about running into my dad in the halls. Besides, I could store some of my junk in his office now and then. And get him to take me out to lunch.

My parents and I have always been close and when they lived in Eugene, I think it made us more so. We lived our separate but connected lives, eating dinner together on Sundays, borrowing lawnmowers (I still owe you for that lawnmower we broke dad!) and making jam.

The three years that we all lived in the same town together my dad and I got into the habit of making blackberry jam in the summer and apple butter in the fall. Although I watched my grandmother make jam during my childhood summers at her house in California, it was really those blackberry and apple canning days that made me into a canning kind of girl. Blackberries grew like weeds around Eugene, filling up every ditch and field and alley that wasn't regularly plowed under, and even many of those were filled with their brambles. Dad and I used to haul old boards along with us on our expeditions and throw them down over the thorny bushes so we could climb out to the centers of the bushes where the berries grew thick and remained untouched by more causal pickers.

Will and I were spoiled, I realize now. We lived stable lives, we had family there to call on when we needed to be told that yes, we should go to the doctor for that nasty cold or no, you shouldn't paint the trim on your rental house when it's below 35 degrees because the paint wont stick. We had a place to go for real dinners and all sorts of tools for our various projects (we were project people even then) And although we ate our fair share of ramen and Pasta-Roni, we also had a cupboard full of jam to gorge on when there was nothing else in the kitchen. In fact, one of my favorite after class snacks was a slice of bread smeared with butter and a big spoonful of blackberry jam, which is what I'm eating, right at this minute.

My friend Tara has a thicket of blackberries at the end of her road and picked a bucket for me this week despite the horrible heat because shes a lovely lady. So while I washed the dishes I also stewed up a pot of blackberry jam. That sounds very exciting, as if I were whizzing around the kitchen mulit-tasking, but really, jam is that simple folks. Especially berry jam. You mash up the berries, you add sugar and pectin, you boil it for a minute or two and you pour it into hot, clean jars. I was especially tickled to make this jam because the rings for my thrifted wire bale jars arrived in the mail today so I got to use the pretty jars for some very pretty jam.

And funny story, I've been picking up these jars here and there but couldn't find a place to buy the rings. I also didn't really know what the rings were called, or for that matter, the jars either. After some dead end searches online I finally found that these are a type of wire bale jar and the rings are, hilariously, called "wide mouth jar rubbers" now I know this is very 7th grade of me but that name has been cracking me up ever since I ordered them. And much to my potty humor delight, the box they came in does indeed say Wide Mouth Jar Rubbers on the front. I'm keeping it on the window sill, just so I can have a little giggle every time I do the dishes.

The Hideous Deck (Not Quite as Hideous Now)

So you know how you can not notice something has changed until you see it in a picture. Like, say, you gain ten pounds, but you look the same in the mirror, and then you see a photo of yourself and think "Whoa Nelly! What happened there?"

Well that's our deck. Not that it had changed, it's just that I've spent the past year (ack! We've owned the house a year next week!) walking past the deck and just not noticing. It was always ugly, beefy and red and looking a little like a tick on the side of the house. But to make matters worse we've been using it as a staging platform for the past year. We cast the concrete counters out there, we've painted cabinet doors out there, we've stored toilets and wood scraps and bags of drywall that need hauling to the dump. And, over time, a lot of crapola has ended up under the deck to add to it's general ugliness. But it wasn't until Will was taking photos a few weeks ago so we could photoshop some house colors in that I realize what a pit it had become. But NO MORE.

OK, so a little bit more. There is still stuff under it. We still need to sheath the sides and finish painting. But still, there is a plan. And white paint. And dark grey with a tad of blue paint that will also go on the house.

It's been hotter than, well I can't really say without being rude, let's just say really hot, and then quadruple that, and you get the picture, but the evenings haven't been horribly humid so Will and Briton and I have been working on getting the white paint on the upper parts of the deck this week (Evelyn has been adding to her collection of chigger bites while we paint by rolling in the grass) and while it's no where near "good" it's at least starting to look better. It helps that we pulled most of the junk away where it awaits various craigslist/freecycle/Habitat Store/dump destinations. And there are large blotches of different shades of blue gray all over the back of the house where we tried out different colors. But still, better.

Tonight we are hoping to do the floor and the base, and next weekend we'll hit the Habitat store to look for something to sheath the sides in so you can see all the bits of wood Will still wants to keep down there. In time we want to add uprights and beams across the top to create a private outdoor space as the rest of our yard is very, very exposed to the street. We like being out with the crowds, but sometimes, like when I want to drink my morning (decaf still, blah) coffee outside in my pj's, it would be nice to not show off my crappy old yoga pants to the whole town.

The Wheels on the Bike

Last Friday my parents bought Briton a bike for an early birthday present. And not just a bike. A BIKE. A 21 speed, shocks on the wheels, last him for years type of bike. And it's opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us.

He's needed a bike for about a year, struggling along with the little Schwinn that he got for his fourth birthday even though it was too small. But I didn't even realize he was that interested (he does have a scooter after all). When I mentioned the idea of a bike he told me that he didn't need anything else for his birthday if he could just have a bike.Whoops. Guess we should have thought of that before!

Two years ago this fall, we started biking on the weekends, looking for trails that were easy enough for Briton to ride without gears, and for me to ride with my $20 craigslist bike loaded down with Evelyn's ibert bike seat. There wasn't a lot out there, too many hills for his little legs to deal with on a dirt bike. Even riding from our hour to down town was out because of the big hill that lies in between. But now, man oh man, what 21 gears can do. The kid can ride anywhere.

I remember getting my first geared bike, a 10-speed Schwinn for Christmas when I was in 5th grade. My parents hid it in our root cellar and sent me down on Christmas morning "to get the cinnamon rolls". I was so excited that I almost couldn't speak. Almost. But I also sort of thought they had forgotten that it was down there and that I wasn't supposed to see the bike, so up I came with the cinnamon rolls, shaking with excitement.

Later that day I rode on the icy streets of our Northern Idaho town, feeling very high up on my shiny red bike with it's curly handlebars and its tiny seat, nothing like the purple hand me down with the banana seat that I'd learned to ride on. Having a "real" bike gave me an odd feeling of freedom.

This weekend we biked a lot. We rode on the flat, paved trail that winds along the Rivanna River, we rode around the neighborhood. We rode to the farmers market to bring back fresh blackberries, we even rode to the pool and found that, while it's a little bit of a battle to get there, it's all downhill home. Briton, who I thought would take a while to figure out gears, is already a pro. He tells us "I'm switching to seven now, I'm going back to three! Mom? Are you on one? I'm on one!" He also hilariously called out "fore!" when we were coming up on someone as we rode. When I explained that "fore" was for golf, not bikes he concluded that "for biking, it must be "six!""Evelyn, in her little green seat, is, of course, dying to be on a big bike too, but really just wants to come along for the ride so she can hold her hands up in the air when we come down a hill and wave at everyone we pass.

All this bicycling has me dredging up old dreams of car-less living. I hate to drive. I really, really hate it. I do it, but it's a little like scrubbing toilets for me. It has to be done, so it gets done. Except there's a part of me that wonders how much it really has to be done.

When we lived in Dublin we had no car, and it was fine. Will rode his bike to work, Briton and I rode the trains and the buses or just walked where we needed to go. And I loved it, but Dublin is also a different beast than Charlottesville. You can live your whole life in a square mile or less and have access to just about everything you need. American cities aren't like that. They aren't built for compact living. In Portland we considered it, staying car-less, using bikes and public transit, except we were about to have a newborn in the house, and I couldn't wrap my head around trying it with two kids in tow, one of them a teeny little girl who would not be ready for a bike trailer or seat anytime soon. So we became dependent on the car very quickly.

Over the last three days Will and I have had a lot of discussions about the "if's" and "how's" of living car-lite. We've come to the conclusion that car-free wouldn't work at this point in our lives. Mostly because of the ongoing house renovations, as was evidenced by two separate trips to Lowe's this weekend for paint (Exterior! Yay! more on that later) But we could, we have decided, work on our car usage, cut down a lot, ride a whole lot more. Of course we'd have to replace my bike (how terrible) since it only likes three of it's 15 gears, and Evelyn should graduate to a trailer since her legs are bit long for her seat. If we could find the European style of front mounted seats I'd go that way since I've loved having her in front of me. And if I won the lottery, well, there would be this, which is just so pretty I want to hug it. But yeah, I'm thinking that I'm not going to get to go from a $20 bike to a $1300 one. Sigh, such is life. And then there is the fact that it will be 99 degrees almost every day this week, which, well, I don't think I can handle while riding, but we'll see, maybe I'll surprise myself.

Who Needs a Gym When You're a Knitter?

The boots are done. As in DONE! no seaming or trimming or weaving in of the ends to do. Done. They are felted and in the last stages of drying on the table in our office. And let me tell you, the felting was an adventure.

You see, I am impatient. And possibly slightly insane. And I have a front loader washing machine. Which you can't really felt in (well you can, but you can't stop to check on size and since I've been knitting these things for months, I wasn't about to take the chance of over felting them). Now I know what you are thinking, surely I know someone with a top loader. And I do. Except, despite the fact that I've spent almost half a year puttering away at these, and the fact that it is July and next week the temperature will climb into the high nineties with some nasty humidity to go along with it, I suddenly decided at 10 pm last night that I REALLY wanted to get these things done. So I got online and read up on felting by hand.

The first thing I found out was that the boiling water method that I'd used with Evelyn's doll was all wrong. Well, not all wrong, but not the best way. It's notorious for making the colors bleed, which they did. As it turns out, it's not really the hot water part that felts wool, it's the combination of water (you can actually felt in very cold water too, I alternated with hot and cold) agitation and soap. Which makes sense, because you can stand out in the rain all day in a wood sweater and it wont felt on you, but one toss in the wash, no matter what heat the water is, and you're done for. And, you know, it's not like the Mongolians were hauling top loader washing machines around on their ponies, right?

As per the directions I read online, I filled the sink with a few inches of fairly hot water, a few drops of soap and started kneading by slippers. Every 15 min or so I'd drain the water and run cold water on them for 5 min to give my arms a break, because I'm telling you, it's hard work. Like Body Pump hard. Like, I think my biceps are bigger today hard. It took me a little over an hour, or maybe closer to an hour and a half, of swishing, beating, kneading, rinsing and wringing before they got down to the right size, but eventually they did.

I tried them on and shaped them a little, stuffing them with pot holders (by then I was too tired to walk upstairs to get a bunch of towels) and left them to dry. I think they'll be pretty good to go by tonight, I'm thinking of setting them outside to speed the process along a little, although that may be a no-no, I'll have to go check. And then I'm going to crank up the A/C (just for a little bit) and put on my slippers and dream of rainy afternoons and hot mugs of tea. Because, yes, while others dream of tropical islands, I dream of rain, it's the Oregon in me, can't be helped.