the view within

would you like to have a look at how the renovation is going? now that the demo is behind us, the framing is progressing at a rate that to us seems rapid, though to the builders, it’s slow going in an old hose where nothing is square or even.

this is our mud room, the very, VERY first room we fixed up when we moved in. no matter how many years go by, i will never forget how disgusting it was when we first saw it. to give you an idea of just how awful, picture that this is basically an enclosed outdoor space with the handiest access to the yard and garden (and mud). now picture that someone had the great wisdom to put down a rust colored shag carpet on the floor. you know—something that the dirt would just bounce off of. and this was probably done in the 1970s when shag was popular. which meant that by the time we inherited it, it was absolutely crusted with thirty-odd years of worked in grime (my apologies if you’ve just eaten breakfast or are having your lunch now).

uh, yeah. it needed something when we moved in. this is the entrance we use about ninety percent of the time, because it’s closest to the garage and yard.

we did it up in cantaloupe, tangerine, and gray and i’ve loved it ever since. i can’t look at it without smiling. we are keeping it and hopefully (now that’s it empty for the moment) adding the storage benches to the left wall that we’d originally planned. the right wall has floor to ceiling pantry cupboards that we use for nonperishables.

from the mudroom, you enter our living space here. it was all open when this photo was taken but now the wall straight ahead is boxed in so that you must move to the left to continue. you land inside the dining room and if you look to your left, you see the new framing for the kitchen area.

the wall that separated it form the dining area has been removed and is not coming back. the stairs to the basement have also been removed to the center hall which i’ll show you in a minute. it looks twice as big as it used to look. (well, it might BE twice as big now, without those stairs)

from inside the kitchen there will be a view out through the mud room via a new window which will be set in the old doorway (previously blocked off and unused behind the stove). click to see what this wall used to look like. with two windows on that wall, the room will now be filled with light—so much more pleasant for working there.

across the room, where the stair to the basement used to be, we will have a wall of new cabinets; this one wall will have more cabinet space than we previously had in our entire kitchen. the sink will be on the back wall, under the big window. nice, right?

swing left to see across the dining room, which remains a big box, but now it opens up into the room beyond—what used to be our office and will now be a cozy living room instead.

(it since been framed out as well)

swing to the right and you get a peek into the center hall, where a tiny warming gas fireplace was hiding inside the wall. we suspected this was the case, since the floor had a hearth-shaped rectangle of inset floorboards and on the other side of the wall, a very large fireplace faces into what ought to be the living room (but will now be our office)

keep turning left around the corner and you’ll find the relocated basement stairs along the back wall, under the windows that look out into the garden.

these are such good stairs!! we lived with the most treacherous set for all these years and now we have nice ones; i could cry.

it’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? every day the whole job moves forward. today we blocked out the cabinets and now we can go to the home store with a precise list to make an actual order (instead of conjecturing as we were on our previous visits).

it hasn’t even been exhausting, the way you think it would be.

haha, david captured this photo a couple of weeks ago. dang squirrel has been sharpening its teeth on our black metal railings. you know the ones david installed several years ago up on the porches? well, now many of them are covered in silver scratches where he dug right through the paint. david said he saw this guy showing a little squirrel how to do it too!

seems though, that fate has intervened—the squirrel’s exhaustion turned to complete confusion, stumbling around, lethargy, and eventually a slow death on the side lawn last week. i’m thinking those metal filings did not do good things to his digestive system . . .

time to talk about something else maybe? me thinks so too.

i blocked my mini pea vines and it turned out so cute.

i do think that my friend susan’s idea of making this into a pattern is a very good one; maybe i’ll put it together with the mini fringe tree and the mini twig and leaf i designed for my interweave shoot and offer them as a trio.

something to do over the summer . . .

i also dug out my completed jazz strings sock and pulled it on for a photo. it’s much to big for my foot but you can get a pretty good idea of what it looks like. it needs to be blocked of course, at which time it will bloom and soften nicely.

sock two is on the needles and the test knitters, helen and carol, each have completed one as well and are working on the second. with any luck, this pattern will be ready for release some time next week, yay.

my somewhat slouchy tam  is almost done—i’m ready to begin the top decreases and you know how fast those go.

blockhead modeled it for me; i think it looks good. i don’t want too much slouch, just a little on this one (if you want to add more length you can; just keep knitting straight, no biggie).

i’ve been putting off looking for buttons but this evening i finally got out the button boxes to dig around. i came up with two possibilities

the first are these red glass buttons, which are a great match for the red, but i think they might get a little lost. plus they are a bit busy. they would work great if i didn’t have another choice. they also require a bit more care when washing, so i hesitate; i want this hat to be easily washed by machine if desired.

and i sorta love these dark mock leather ones a lot—they are lighter weight and easy to clean and i think the contrast with the fabric does the whole piece a favor, giving the hat the flavor of a kilt.

i still have to name this piece; i’m hoping that ron and kim at indigodragonfly might offer some ideas. i’m playing with the idea of a name that includes scotty or tammy (bean me up scotty?), but i’m open to other ideas.

do you have any? let me know in comments.

ok, i’m done now for today; i’ve got to get to my knitting. david says we can release the stonewall in chèvre kits on friday. yay.

have a wonderful holiday; see you later this week.