I Aten't Ded

(Post title borrowed from Terry Pratchett's work.)

In short, we have sold our house in Anaheim, California, and moved our household up to an apartment in Gig Harbor, Washington.  Where we are now camping and hoping the moving company will call us one day soon and tell us they'll be delivering our stuff to us.  Thus, not really much going on beyond varying flavors and degrees of stress....

Stress Bunny!

If all goes well, our escrow will close on this coming Friday.  And then we have 29 days to pack up, find a new place to live up in Washington, and move out.

This is, as you might imagine, a tiny bit stressful.  So much so that I could not get to sleep Thursday night.  I finally gave up at a quarter after one in the morning, and got up.  And started cleaning and tidying what I could without being loud.  Went back to bed at half past four, finally fell asleep some time after five.  Friday night I slept somewhat better, but still not great.

Yesterday we started reaming out the garage, so we can get it organized and retrieve our things from the storage unit, as there is no way a moving van could get into the storage unit area.  A carload of stuff got taken to Goodwill, and our recycling and trash bins are now full.

Quilting-wise, I went through my bag of binding scraps and pulled out all the blue ones, as well as one piece of green to make up the length, pieced them together, and stitched it on to the front of the Spiraling Geese quilt.  I've started hand-stitching it down to the back.

Wednesday, Wednesday...

In escrow for the third time.  Had our house inspected yesterday for the third time.  Blargh.

In happier news, I pushed through and finished the quilting on the Spiraling Geese quilt:

Ginormous feathers in the ginormous geese!

As part of keeping myself busy during the inspection, I trimmed the quilt and pulled out my bag of bindings.  I have enough of the bright bindings already pieced together to do it, but I'm not sure.  I'll look at it all again later.  Right now I need to fill my head with a Pink Floyd song (Learning to Fly) in order to write a climax scene (narrative climax, not sexual) so that I can stop thinking about that one scene and go back to working on the stuff leading UP to that one scene!

monday, monday...

The boys' naptime yesterday was taken up with house stuff (offer #5...) so I didn't get stitching time until the evening, when I did get the second line of quilting on the alternate spiral done.  So now I need to tuck away the Rocketeer and haul the 15 and its table into place for some free-motion quilting on the geese spiral.  I wish I could say I made more progress on the embroidered tablecloth, but Squiddle's speech therapy session is just about the right length of time to do my writing class homework (editing my classmates' submissions).

I am pleased that my boys had their dental check-ups yesterday and have no cavities!  And especially that Jazzy's spacing issues are resolving themselves and his last baby tooth is just coming in, right on schedule.

I'm still keeping up on my Swedish and Japanese practice on Duolingo.  As I'm half Scandinavian, it feels a touch shameful that the Japanese comes so much easier, but then I did get a BA in the language once upon a time.

Oddball thoughts: if this offer on the house does go through, I'll be missing the workshop with Edyta Sitar by something like two weeks.  Alas!  As soon as I know one way or another I need to let the guild know so they can see if someone else wants the space.  On the other hand, it means I'll be up in the Seattle area in plenty of time for the PNW Treadle On Gathering, which is something I've been curious about for a couple years now....

A Tiny Bit of Quilting

Yesterday's two house showings turned into four - two in the morning, two in the afternoon.  So in between I put the walking foot on the Rocketeer, discovered the smaller bobbin tire does indeed make winding bobbins faster (though I still haven't gotten the handwheel clutch loosened), and filled a couple bobbins.  Then I set to the first line of quilting on the alternate (black/white/blue branch fabric) spiral of the Spiraling Geese quilt.

Except that I was quilting in the wrong direction, so that more and more of the bulk of the quilt was getting stuffed under the arm of the sewing machine, it went well.  The tree trunks on the branch fabric are straight, so they made for a wonderful guideline.  And for the second line of quilting on the alternate spiral, I'll be going the "correct" direction, so it should be much easier.  After that I'll switch over the the 15 and do free-motion quilting in amongst the geese.  I'm still debating between feathers and outline quilting.

I've also started going through the old quilting magazines (Traditional Quiltworks, Quilt, Miniature Quilts, and some of the old Aunt Martha's booklets) I got at Road to California.  Swoon!  So many exquisite vintage/traditional designs that you just don't see in today's magazines because they're not easily strip-pieced....

Autumn Colors Quilt!

A new project is under the needle of my sewing machine, getting quilted.  This morning I got Wonderful Husband to help me haul the Singer 15 table over by my sewing desk.  (I usually do it by myself, but he was home and I was feeling worn-down.)  I did a small project (more on that tomorrow), and determined that the machine probably needed cleaning and an oiling.  After taking care of that, I put on the free-motion foot and got to work!

Here's my setup:

I have the table that holds the 15, my go-to quilting machine, positioned in front of the table that holds the 401.  The increased table space holds the weight of the quilt as I work on it, which makes it sooo much easier than trying to do things any other way.  It's not perfect; I'd like to get risers of about three-quarters of an inch so the 15's table would be level with the 401's.  And the arm of the 15's table angles down slightly, so I want to eventually figure out an additional support for that at well.  But it works.

The Autumn Colors quilt that you can see waiting to be quilted started with a stack of 79 three and a half inch four-patches that came into my possession from I do not know where.  I made two more and set them nine-by-nine with alternating half-square triangles, making the stripes you see in the center.  I thought it was going to be a Christmas quilt, given all the red and green, but the beige paisley and brown dots fabric make it rather autumnal instead.

As of right now, I have five of those center nine rows quilted.  I know what I'm doing for the brown borders, but I need to consider what to quilt in the beige areas....

And relating to autumn color, on Saturday we had four groups of people look at our house.  When we got home, we found these on our front steps:

Chestnuts, maybe?  Were they left by a child, or a witch?  If the latter, are they a blessing or a curse?  Just in case, I've left them undisturbed. :)

Argh.

Has it really been a month since I've posted?  I'm going to blame it on house-selling stress (which I am not going to rant about here/now/yet again) and on the cord that lets me transfer photos from camera to computer going walkabout.  (Still haven't found it.)

Let's see... after season 4 of Octonauts dropped on Netflix, we discovered that there is in fact a Gup-S.  But it's based on a narwhal, not on a snake.  I liked Squiddle's design better!  He continues on telling me stories at bedtime, some obviously cribbed from the Golden Books we read him, some less so.  Donald (Duck) and "his three boys, Huey, Dewey, and who's the other one?" are frequent central characters.  Squiddle has also coined the portmanteau term "holication" (holiday + vacation), which I think is a keeper.

Jazzy is very clever but still not speaking.  I'm hopeful that his weekly speech therapy sessions will start bearing fruit eventually, because his four-months-younger cousin is very verbal, and he's nine months behind Squiddle starting to talk.  But he has the loveliest laugh, and I think has impressed his speech therapist with some of his cognitive skills, so it will come when it comes.  He has figured out how to get a cup of iced tea from the fridge when he wants some... which works better when he's not trying to use a juice box as a "cup"!

I've finished sewing two quilt tops and turned one of the two vintage tops I picked up at the guild's garage sale into an actual quilt.  I don't know why I like the uglies as much as I do.  But there's something bohemian in their mismatched make-do charm.  I can't make quilts like that, but I can certainly love them!  I also sewed about half of Squiddle's Halloween costume.  Wonderful Husband took the boys trick-or-treating this year while I handed out candy.  Including them, seventy kids came around this year.  We were definitely among the best-tricked-out houses.  I want to continue that, adding a little more every year.  It's just FUN.

Blocks, Blocks, Blocks

The house-selling saga is a rollercoaster.  After about two weeks of keeping the place spic-and-span and vacating for showings at an hour's notice, we finally got an offer! And went through with escrow and an inspection, etc....

And today the buyer withdrew the offer.

*headdeskheaddeskheaddesk*

Back onto the rollercoaster.

I have in the meantime finished the Christmas wallhanging and given it to my mother (I need to get a picture) and have been powering through three sets of blocks this weekend: the October block of the month (Postage Stamp Baskets) for the Wednesday morning guild, the giant flying geese for the group I'm exchanging them with, and inventing the November block of the month (Beautiful Batik Butterflies) for the Tuesday night guild.  Amidst which my vintage iron died. ;_;  I need to find if the sewing machine repair places would be able to fix it, because I really really like that iron.

Also, Squiddle (age 5) has just invented fanfiction! Tonight as I was rocking in the darkened bedroom with him and his brother for a few minutes, he told me about Octonauts, and how Tweak invented the Gup-X and gave it to Captain Barnacles for Christmas and made him climb the seamount to test it... which is one of the episodes.  Then he told me about Tweak inventing the Gup-S and how it was like a snake.  There is no Gup-S in the show.  Kiddo has told his first fanfic.  Mummy so proud! ^_^

Bright Tumblers, Done!

I just took the last stitches on the binding and finished the Bright Tumblers quilt.  No pics for now - it's dark!  But I made it of three-inch finished tumblers, sized to fit our bed, so I'll take pictures of it on the bed tomorrow.  My wonderful Mother-in-Law asked, so I calculated: at thirty rows of forty-one tumblers in a row, there are 1230 tumblers in this quilt!  And the back is (mostly) made of two lengths of fabric left over from making the boys bedsheets and pillowcases.  When I started the quilt as part of Bonnie Hunter's 2015 Leader and Ender challenge, I showed some of the inspiration photos to Wonderful Husband and he liked one that was mostly brights with some darks, so that's what I did.  This quilt was always intended to be for him, and I finally gave it to him a few days ago, mostly finished, as one of his birthday presents. ^_^

We're keeping the house tidy and showing it to about eight people a week (mostly on weekends).  So far I have managed to not be here when someone is touring it.

And Jazzy has of late been tucking himself under the quilt on Squiddle's bed, or under the sheets on my and Wonderful Husband's bed, so tonight, for the first time, I tucked him under a quilt in his own crib.  He seemed to like it!

Busy busy busy busy / there's so much to do!

So, the house got cleaned within an inch of its life.  (Except, please don't look in the garage.)

And photographed on Tuesday.  Tuesday night was quilt guild.  I had 69 blocks turned in for Block of the Month!  And 29 out of 30 instruction sheets taken for next month's.

Wednesday I took a workshop with my guildmates: My Basket Collection by Sandy Corbin.  It was so much fun!!  I wish I'd taken a workshop with this guild before.  I got a quarter of the project done.  But I was so fried from stress that I skipped writing class that night.

Thursday morning Jazzy had one of his classes.  That afternoon I hauled the Singer 15 over by the sewing desk and started quilting the bright tumblers quilt.  Screw the meandering loops I was pondering - I just went for two straight lines across every row.  Get it done.  I got 35 of the 60 lines done.

Jazzy had another class this morning.  And the house's MLS listing went up today. If you want to see where I live, the house we've lovingly restored from a wreck over the last ten years, it's here.  Anyone want to buy a nice mid-century house three miles from Disneyland?  (You can see the fireworks from our front door.)  And I sat back down and finished quilting those last 25 rows.  And hauled the Singer 15 back by the front door to resume being the entryway table.

Now to trim the batting and backing and invent some binding.  But first, I should invent dinner....

Yard Sard. Yale Sale. Yald Sald.

Two days of yard sale-ing netted us about $400 and we still have a garage full of stuff to categorize, enter into the donation app, and haul over to Goodwill.  I think Wonderful Husband has concluded this was not worth the hassle; despite doing pretty good signage and posting about it on Craigslist, we didn't get anything like the traffic he was expecting.

We were originally scheduled to have our house photographed for listing tomorrow.  Last night I put my foot down and said no.  There was no way in hell we were going to have the house ready.  We cancelled the appointment, to be rescheduled when we are closer to ready.  But emotionally I am burnt out, drained to the point where I almost want to put this off for six months and list come spring or something.

That said, we used the slower stretches of time to clean out the garage quite a bit.  We have two of these sets of shelves in the garage, and managed to tidy/trash the contents to the point where we effectively got one of them completely cleared.  So, progress.

Cute things of the day to leave you with: as I was getting up at 6am, I heard Squiddle (in bed and sound asleep) clearly say "Okay, Google.  Pause."  I wonder what he was dreaming about? ^_^  (And I wonder if the dream paused. ^_^)  And while Wonderful Husband was cleaning up the tool shelves, the power drill ended up on the floor.  Jazzy picked it up and went "Vrr.  Vrrr!" several times.  He clearly knows how it's supposed to work. ^_^

Discrete Goals

You would think cleaning up a house with the goal of photographing/showing it, and cleaning up a house with the goal of holding a yard sale would overlap a great deal.

Spoiler alert: they don't.

Today, I finished planting the bed in front of the garage and watered it in twice.  Yay, all neat and tidy and curb appeal-y with white cora vinca, purple salvia, and red-gold lantana.  I also planted three habenero plants in the side yard, replacing the ones that the 113 degree heatwave fried a month or so back.  They are... charmingly mismatched with the habenero plants that were already there.  I also transplanted the six surviving strawberries from the stackable planter, which is going in the yard sale pile.

Following that burst of morning energy, I worked on my side of the closet (warm clothing packed away, some things I don't wear much to the yard sale pile, and most of the hangers matching now).  Then I took the boys to a thrift store and Costco, getting most of the grocery shopping out of the way.  After lunch, I started in on the deep-dig project of cleaning the laundry room.  It's... half-done?  The shelves have been cleaned and the stuff we actually use placed back on them.  All my gardening hand tools have been put in the bag they're supposed to go in.  Work gloves have been mated, and the 2'x2' tool dungeon has been cleared out and swept and we've taken a look at what was in it.  And this evening, Wonderful Husband mulched the rosebushes out front, which I need to prune back, but the yard waste bin is full, so that gets punted to tomorrow.  Plus we made stir-fry for dinner and I cut up a quarter of a watermelon for dessert.

Tomorrow I have more cora vinca, salvia, and lantanas to plant along the front of the house proper.  I need to prune the roses.  I need to finish the laundry room.  And I need to start pricing stuff for the yard sale!

Kristin Vs... The Kitchen

I've been on-and-off working my way through Secrets of an Organized Mom, by Barbara Reich, for a week or two now.  This evening it inspired me to take all the house finishing stuff (mostly paint and its various accouterments) back out into the tool cabinet and the garage where they belonged.  They had all been hanging out on the kitchen counter.  Then, since I was in the zone, I got the kitchen counters completely cleared of everything but what's actually supposed to be in there.  It's amazing!

And since the hallway closet got its new doors put back on today, the stuff that was in there got organized and put back in.  And the doors (mirrored, because it's a dark hallway without the light on) got Windex'ed and I did the bathroom mirrors too while I was at it.

Guild Today, Guild Tomorrow. Painting Always

I was painting the hallway closet interior literally until five minutes before I had to leave for guild this evening.

But!  I won a door prize of three fat quarters of chicken print fabrics!  *gleeful little dance*

The fishtank is moved back into the living room.  The bathroom trims are finished.  Wonderful Husband has completed the office closet.  What remains to be painted is some trim in the laundry room, and the hallway closet interior.  However much of the latter we decide to do.  And in slightly less than two weeks we're getting this place photographed, listed, and shown.  No panic!  The to-do list flexes, waxing and waning without warning.

Cute moment of the day: as they are getting buckled into their car seats, both boys get an Oreo.  Jazzy takes a bite out of his.  Wonderful Husband compliments him on eating it the right way (like Daddy).  Squiddle separates the top off his and eats that first (like Mummy).  I smirk across the car at Wonderful Husband.

Heatwave, Construction Wave

We finish one phase of getting Greenwood (the house) gussied up, we start moving back in... and the the next phase starts.  Well, at least the back-breaking sofa is back in the living room; the only thing to be relocated back in there now is the fish tank.  But now the hallway closet is being redivided to its original configuration, with half of it a hallway closet and the other half a closet into our office, so it can be a bedroom again.  All of which demolition and construction is very hot, so I took the boys to the aquarium today, and renewed our membership for another year.

I'm also starting to work my way through my Costume College loot fabric.  I've sewn up one pillowcase so far and am working on another two.  It's too hot to contemplate quilting other than maybe some piecing....

Moving Back In

We're still hauling furniture back in from the garage following the whole floor refinishing debacle.  Yesterday saw the return of the coffee table (though not yet the sofa), the boys' bookcase (and its contents) and my grandmother's sewing desk.  We also hauled the 4x4 Ikea Kallax unit back out of the office and into a new location, and I did a sort/purge of some of the toys in it.  Those in the cull pile that haven't been played with by the end of today go in the garage sale pile.  All that remains now is hauling the sofa back in (ugh) and moving the fishtank back to the living room as well.

After running to Office Depot (more packing tape, and some labels for the boxes in the Kallax unit) and picking up a rug for the cat box, I went and picked up my 401.  I'm going to put it back into my grandmother's sewing desk, and it will be so nice to sew again!  (Though, as it's a slant-shank machine, I have neither a walking foot nor a darning foot for it, so quilting is right out.)

Then, this afternoon, I took the boys up to the splash pad area we discovered up in Fullerton.  I'd forgotten the Fullerton farmer's market is Thursday afternoon/evening, and it was all around the splash pad!  So I read and watched them set up while the boys played, and we bought some kettle corn and peaches on the way out. ^_^

Overwhelmed

I'm trying not to curse, and trying not to cry.

You may've noticed I haven't posted here in a few weeks.  That's because we had the shattering tile in our house taken back down to the hardwood underneath and refinished.  (Except for the kitchen, which was retiled in a nicer, non-broken tile.)  Which necessitated us completely vacating the house for a week.  Which, when the contractor found half the underlying hardwood missing and replaced with plywood, ballooned to two weeks and two and a half times his project estimate.  And now we're having to repaint all the baseboards and the sections of crown moulding that we never got to the first time, and we can't move things back in until we do that, and and and...

And this week is Costume College.  I have three classes to teach, and I've just discovered that the slideshow I thought I had for the third is actually a seven-page handout.

And it's a heatwave.

And I can't ask my mother to take the boys for a day to let me create a slideshow because she's out of town until Friday.

And we still have a deadline of trying to get this house cleaned up, a yard sale held, and the house listed for sale by the middle of next month.

My ability to cope is gone.

Packing Panic

My sewing shelves are all packed up.  Most of my sewing stuff is in storage, and the shelves have been moved out to the garage and we're using them to hold stuff we're divesting, with an eye toward holding a yard sale soon.

We're also getting our tile floors taken back down to hardwood next week.  So EVERYTHING needs to go off them.  (Except for the office, bedrooms, and bathroom.)  The most apt descriptive phrase seems to be "AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"  We've spent the day moving some of the smaller pieces of furniture and packing up the bottom half of the china cabinet.  To add joy to this pleasure, there's a heat wave (projected high temperatures of 106!) moving in come Friday.  So we want to get all this moving of heavy things done before then.

I've made reservations for the cat to be boarded, and for the six-day duration of the floor refinishing, we'll be staying with my parents.  Which... is going to be interesting.  I'm debating which couple of projects to try and take with me to work on.  I'll be coming back up here almost daily to check on the work, pick up mail, water the garden, take the boys to classes etc., but I won't be able to access anything we've forgotten.

Wish me luck!

Almost Three Weeks Later...

So I haven't been posting.  This is mostly because the fixing and selling the current house projects and stress have taken over my mind and my life.  Sewing?  Not really happening right now.  About all I've sewn lately is tackling half the mending pile: three pjs, one shirt, and one stuffed toy repaired in a single session.

Today, in fact, I have been boxing up my quilting stash.  Sadness!  I'm not going to see it again for like six months, or whenever we find the house we end up buying.  One more box to go, maybe two.  And then I get to start in on using the good linen napkins to wrap and cushion teacups, etcetera.  We're (finallyfinallyFINALLY!) getting the shattering tile floor taken up and the hardwood underneath refinished.  So everything that's not in a bedroom or office needs to be moved off the floor by the 9th.  I have left out a couple WIPs, my scrap box, and some muslin for me to play with.  I need to figure out where my small collection of vintage sewing machines is going....

Painty Painty Paintingness

Last night, after the boys had been put to bed, Wonderful Husband and I hauled the shower room door out to the garage and I painted one side with base coat.  Tonight I'll go the enamel coat, let that cure for twenty-four hours, then tomorrow night flip it and base coat the other side.  While I was doing that, Wonderful Husband wrangled dishes and laundry and taped off the trim inside the shower room, so then I base-coated that.  I also pulled out the chippy over-the-john I'd bought for $4 at an estate sale several years ago, gave it a quick sand, and base-coated that as well.  It'll look good over the toilet in the shower room.  This all went so quick and easy (two hours, start to bedtime) that other than the massive home improvement burnout after fixing this house when we bought it, I'm left wondering why we haven't tackled these projects years ago.

Ah, inertia.

Since I'm on sort of a roll here, I'm seriously considering also painting the two small bookcases white during this eight-night painting spree....

But for now, I'm going to go wind a couple more bobbins for the orange nine-patch.