Falling in Love

I do believe that I fell in love yesterday afternoon. Now daughters dear, do not panic; I am not running off to Club Med with my waiter! But I did find the first piece of furniture that told me it wants to live in the duplex. And I put it on layaway. I won’t post a picture until it’s paid for, and probably not until it’s in place. It’s a wardrobe from Scotland, and I’m thinking of asking the boys to retrofit it with shelves. Or I may just stack all of my plastic shoe boxes of quilting fabric and notions inside it. There are two small metal rods on either side, for hangers; that will be the perfect place to keep my skirt hanger with the sheaf of art papers that I’ve been collecting and lugging around for the past ten years.

I also found a glass-fronted bookcase with linen-fold panels in the bottom of the doors. That will be next, if nobody else grabs it first. [If they do, it will be because it belongs in their duplex.] And another wardrobe, not as pretty on the outside but very cleverly fitted on the inside. And then possibly a buffet; he also has a small hutch that would look good in the kitchen. Not the huge Welsh dresser that I’ve been coveting for years, but something proportionate to my new home.

I can see myself buying three or four pieces a year, without wrecking my budget. And in a couple of years I will be out of debt, with a houseful of lovely old bookcases and cabinets, and no more of this knock-together stuff from the big box stores.

I picked up a copy of ClothPaperScissors: Studios Monday night and read it while eating my lunch yesterday. It’s an Interweave special publication; Barnes & Noble didn’t have it, but Borders did. Lots of neat ideas for organizing one’s workspace, some of them quite economical. One of the artist biographies was of Charlotte Lyons, whose blog I’ve been reading for a few months.

Every spring I get the urge to tidy and feather my nest. In part because that’s where Sarah Ban Breathnach’s books wander off to, this time of year. And in part because of the home dec blogs that I read. Especially this one. I’m even compiling a list of music that will play when you read the blog; still very much a work in progress, that.

No, I haven’t forgotten the spinning wheel; it's just been pushed back few weeks. And yes, I’m a little distractible. [Not only Oh Look Shiny, but Oh Look Antique! Hey, I married the children’s father, and he’s eleven and a half years older than me!]

Need more proof? Here’s the refurbished heel on Anastasia.



Lots of happy knitting yesterday. And it fits ever so much better than the afterthought heel. My new Addi Lace 00 [birthday gift!!!] is making quick work of the re-knitting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t keep me from dropping the odd stitch now and then.



I had nearly incorporated all the yarn from the afterthought heel and was almost ready to take up the other sock, when I realized that one of the wide bands was noticeably narrower than its neighbors. I found the place where I had worked one too many K2tog’s, and then I found the dropped stitch. Thankfully, this is a yarn that stands up to repeated frogging.

Here’s a beauty shot of the crème brulée that I enjoyed for dessert on Monday, when our office manager took the admin team to lunch for Administrative Professionals Day [she was out of town on business the preceding week].



Today is the end of an era; tomorrow I start riding the train. Balancing the loss of control over my commute is the anticipation of two extra hours of knitting, guilt-free, every day.