The arts and crafts house

Pictured: A corner of our living room, featuring a table that traveled down the Erie Canal with Drew's ancestors (early to mid 19th c.) and flowers from our garden.

We are all moved in, and have been for just over a month, which if you've read my other blog, is not exactly news to you. I have only been working on one knitting project since moving, and that would be Paloma from French Girl Knits (shown above). After working on this project on and off for almost a year, I am now nearly finished and am looking forward to wearing it. But Paloma isn't really what's on my mind at the moment. It is a lovely pattern and a fun knit, but it exists now as a project within a project...the house itself is the real work-in-progress. Since closing on March 18th we have torn up most of the carpets, put cork down in three rooms, replaced a broken fridge, built a raised bed and planted seeds and starts, torn out baseboard heaters, dealt with electrics, replaced two-prong with three-prong outlets, painted rooms (the living room got painted three times until we decided it was the right color), etc. We are gearing up to replace the last two non-energy efficient windows and Drew is working on making new 8 inch high baseboards. Meanwhile, 18 yards of linen arrived recently, and when my mom arrives next week, we will work on sewing drapes for the 7 enormous windows in our living and dining rooms.

All of this, along with the job and the boy, throw on top of that the unpacking and making the house homey, and you can see why my attention has strayed from the knitting a bit. But I'm not complaining. Looking into the architectural design and age of our house (craftsman/1916), Drew and I decided that we wanted to renovate and decorate with the Arts and Crafts Movement in mind. While we aren't purists, we have been looking into the sort of colors, elements, shapes, etc. used during this movement. Our future plans include Drew doing some stenciling, and me picking up another fiber-related skill --embroidery, in order to add some Arts and Crafts motifs to our home, such as this one:
I will still be knitting and crocheting of course (I've got a crocheted afghan planned for our couch), but expect more house-related and potentially non-knitting posts in the future as we restore our Arts and Crafts home...

Nothing much to share, except...

...pictures of our new house! We close on March 22nd and so far, everything with the sale has gone smoothly. But it's still a hectic time, and my knitting is suffering as a result. I should have finished Drew's hoodie a while ago, but after completing the sleeves, he said he would like them to be an inch and a half longer. This was a reasonable request and easy enough to execute. I could have fixed them both that very same day. But did I? Nope. Instead, I put the sweater down and didn't knit for a week, which may be the longest I've gone without knitting, well, since I taught myself how to knit in 2002. I am going to attribute this behavior of mine to new house/first-time home buyer jitters and not judge myself too harshly. Today I ripped out the ribbing on one of the sleeves and began to add on that inch and a half. So, all is not lost, and his hoodie will be completed before we change addresses at the end of next month.

But you don't really care about that stinking hoodie do you? You want to see more pictures of the new digs right? Here's the blog post from my family blog relating more info about it. And here's the direct link to the flickr photo stream. Enjoy :)