Sunday, April 08, 2007

Operation Really Big Sweater: Quagmire Averted

It's a little late for my 1/4 year deadline, but I finally sucked it up and finished the ridiculous, enormous thing.



This is a good lesson on the importance of gauge. The gauge should have been 2.5 stitches per inch. Mine was evidently 2.23 stitches per inch. When I measure it over a few inches it seems to be perfectly accurate, but over 6 inches or more the difference becomes apparent. Being off by a fraction of a stitch resulted in a sweater that is 12% too big by my calculations.

I will always be much more particular about my gauge in the future, but working with 2 strands of a very bulky yarn probably compounded the problem. For example, the more normal sweater I wore to work today has a gauge of 8 stitches per inch, so being off by .27 stitches per inch on a sweater like that couldn't possibly compound itself to such a degree. . .right?

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Not Holding My Breath

As I expect will happen infinity more times, moving into the new house (assuming the purchase goes through) has been delayed by a couple of weeks. The sellers found a house to buy, but they can't move in until the middle of May. Although our closing date is supposed to be April 26, they have requested to rent the house back from us until May 13.

Letting them stay a little longer makes perfect sense for us since we have a lease on our current place until the end of May. There's no reason why we should be paying to have two houses for an entire month. But the impatient, petulant part of me wants to tell them, "No! It's MINE, and you can't have it any more." Of course the kind and reasonable part of me wouldn't dream of putting them out when we have a perfectly good - not to mention paid for - place to stay.

Despite the fact that it's considerate and practical, I'm still disappointed to have to wait a little longer to have the house to ourselves. I've mostly been looking forward to putting in a vegetable garden and doing some landscaping. Maybe they'll let us come play in the yard before they move out if we ask real nice.

Monday, April 02, 2007

A Universal Problem



From Found Magazine.

You should spend some time clicking through the archives. Everything on the website was discarded or lost and found by someone who submitted it - to-do lists, abandoned photographs, love notes crumpled up and left on the sidewalk. It's surprisingly touching and funny.

Almost Home

The sellers of the house agreed to make almost all the repairs we were requesting, including the whole potentially-bursting-into-flame thing. So, the contract is finalized, and closing is set for April 26. This in no way means that we have run out of things that could go wrong.

There could be some claim on the title of the house we are not aware of.

The survey of the lot could reveal that we're on the neighbor's property or they are encroaching on ours.

Our financing could fall through.

Any one of the parties involved could just screw up.

I really want to get excited about this, but I'm walking that fine line between realistic and pessimistic. Until we actually start moving boxes in, I'm going to have a hard time believing that this is actually going to happen.

When we first started looking at houses, the real estate agent gave us a binder with lots of information about the whole process. One of the documents described 110 things that could go wrong. Unfortunately, I figure we can only rule out about half of them at this point.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Pins and Needles

The whole house-buying thing has seemed so far away and hypothetical until yesterday, and now the anxiety is setting in. The option period expires tonight at midnight, so we have to resolve all outstanding issues or cancel the contract and start over from scratch, possibly losing the house if the sellers have a back-up offer.

On Thursday evening we had the home inspection, and considering that this house is almost 50 years old it's in remarkable condition. However, there are a couple of things that need to addressed. The second bathroom, which hadn't been updated like the master bath, is full of leaky pipes and loose fixtures. This isn't a huge deal, and we're fortunate that the whole house isn't full of plumbing like this. Also, the air conditioner isn't cooling as well as it should. It probably just needs some more freon or whatever environmentally correct coolant is being used these days.

The other thing, however, is potentially a big deal. They installed the water heater too close to the floor, which could be a serious fire hazard. Evidently, flammable fumes tend to accumulate not more than 12 inches off the floor, so a gas water heater has to be installed with the flame at least 18 inches high. The home inspector claimed that he knew of a child who was killed in a flash fire because of this exact problem. I feel very strongly that any house I live in should not have a high likelihood of burning me alive.

There is a sticker on the water heater that specifically states that it must be installed 18 inches off the floor. Another one of the minor issues that the inspector found is that the garage door opener switch is also too close to the ground. It also features a sticker explaining that it has to be at least 5 feet high. I'm wondering if the homeowner had a midget contractor make the updates.

We submitted a request to the sellers that they get the AC checked and fix the bad pipes and the lethal water heater, so now we are just waiting for their response. If they tell us they won't make the repairs, we'll have to decide if we're willing to take the house at the current price anyway. At this point I'm almost ready to put up with anything so we can just get this wrapped up. Anything but a fiery death, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Re: FW: A Love Story in 4 Pictures

You may remember the inappropriate-email-sending lady. I'm going to have to forgive her a little bit for forwarding this along.

A Love Story in 4 Pictures







Monday, March 26, 2007

Jinxing It

A couple of weeks ago The Husband and I started house-hunting. I thought this would be great blog-fodder. However, the story has worked out something like this:

We looked at houses.
We picked a house.
We made an offer on a house.
The owners of the house accepted our offer to buy their house.

This house to be exact.



Everything has gone bewilderingly smoothly. Of course now we have a month of suspense to live through, waiting on inspections and financing and whatnot. Let me throw caution to the wind and take you on a tour of our chickens before they hatch.

Here's our soon-to-be front porch.


The front room and formal dining


The den


Also the den


The kitchen


The master bedroom


The best part: the party porch


That brown thing in the lower right? That's the corner of the 8-person hot tub.

In the interest of full disclosure, none of this is our furniture or decor, of course. We don't have nearly enough belongings to furnish this place. The first thing I intend to purchase is a bar for the party porch, unless you count the fancy ice bucket I acquired this weekend in anticipation. It came with a tong caddy!

May you all have many happy hours enjoying the party porch and the tong caddy. (Keep your fingers crossed.)

Saturday, March 17, 2007

What the Hell, Liver?

Last night I went to a pub with the lovely Sealegs Sophie and that charming curmudgeon Traivor. I admit I was fully intending to push my blood alcohol level up past the legal driving limit, but somehow things got out of control. After about a bottle of wine I had to get Sealegs to fill out my credit card receipt for me because I had lost the ability to write the number 5.

Once I got home, I lost consciousness fell asleep on the bathroom floor - the downstairs bathroom. I couldn't make it upstairs. Even on the Night of the Handlebar Mustache I managed to go upstairs and get in bed, and there was a lot of tequila involved that time.

Now, I know a whole bottle is quite a bit to drink in one sitting, but I've had an entire bottle of wine before while just waiting for people to show up to a party. There was no reason for the sloppiness of last night over 5 glasses of wine.

Liver, you let me down.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Operation Hat: Mission Accomplished



I cast on a hattish number of stitches with a super bulky yarn on size 11 20-inch circular needles. Then I knit a tube in K1, P1 ribbing about 20 inches around and 7 inches long and sewed up one end. VoilĂ ! (Which is French for hat.)

Tiny Fists of Fuzzy Rage

I just spent half an hour poorly executing an idea that is probably only amusing to me.



This was the best I could do with Paint. Also, I'm not sure I like the caption any more. I'm leaning more towards, "You want a piece of me?" I am open to suggestions.

I hope Cute Overload doesn't mind that I stole this belligerent little hammy from them.