Getting there, ever getting there

G'day all!

Do you ever wonder if you'll ever get there?  Or where "there" is for that matter?  I'm told "there" is wherever you want it to be, but some days I'm not sure what I want it to be.  There are so many options!

Thank you for the birthday wishes.  I had quite a pleasant day :-)  I met up with a fellow Aussie and we wandered around the market room of a local knitting conference.   We had a good natter.  I may have bought some yarn there.

I started knitting some of it immediately but the idea didn't work out so I have two balls of yarn again.  Knitting is good like that - if it isn't working out, you can pull it out and start over or just leave it to marinate in stash for a while.

Unsuccessful knitting

I thought it might work but nope.

That evening we went out for dinner with some friends, then home for cake.  I found a completely gluten-free and vegan bakery/cafe (not that the vegan part is important for me but the dairy-free part of vegan is!) and bought a double chocolate un-cheesecake.  It was very yummy but I think that eating both a goodly slice of it and half a slice of the pumpkin pie one was a little more than I should've had... also, caffeine in the evening is a bad idea for me so I may have sat up for a while jittering away.  Whoops!

I knitted some socks for me for my birthday.
They deserve more than a pic in passing but
this is all they get for the nonce.

Presents?  What did I get for my birthday?  Well I got taken out to dinner, twice - the following evening we had dinner with a couple of other friends.  (I hope we didn't tip them well - my meal was burnt on the bottom, which meant I couldn't eat a good half of it.  I've heard of caramelised vegies and even partaken of them but when they are black they are pretty horrid.  And no, they didn't take it off the bill and basically ignored my ugh, half of it is burnt.)  MiL and FiL gave me some Australian wildflower-themed fabric.   I got a card or two (PiLs and the chiro!), plus one from a friend with a gift card to Lowe's.   I bought me some nice yarn.  Just as well that I don't expect a lot for birthdays now....

My pink sleeveless cardie thing is awaiting
the buttons but I've already worn it :-)

Oh, the other thing that DH claims he got me for my birthday is that we have been in negotiations for a house.  The sellers agreed to our requests on my birthday!  We are still awaiting the outcome of financing but it seems very likely to go ahead.  If it all goes to plan in just over two weeks (yikes!) we will be in possession of a tiny little house just up the road from where we currently live.

*gulp*

He says it is a birthday house, I say it is just odd timing for it to happen on my birthday.

Fall leaves are almost done.  Shipping canal, Fremont.

Anyway, it is all exciting and we are planning things and trying to work out how much cash we will have left after the deposit and the various things we have to pay for to finance the loan (closing costs are going to be close to $10K!).

We made the usual contingencies on our offer - subject to inspection/sewer scope, finance, that sort of stuff.  The inspection didn't show up a single surprise I don't think - for a house built in 1943 it is in good shape - but there are things that will have to be attended to sooner or later.  The sewer scope - well that was a different matter! (Ahem!)

So many leaves from the liquidambars/sweet gums.

For the sewer scope they stick a little video camera on a hose down into the sewer.  And we did find "material" there - there's what they called a belly in the pipe, which means "material" can gather there and may eventually form a soft plug, depending on what one's habits are...  We were given a DVD of the inspection along with a written report.  The jokers even give you a bag of microwave popcorn for your movie night when you sit down to view the vid.

Still obsessed by leaves...

Can I just say that DH deciding to watch the video just before dinner was instructive but not exactly enjoyable?  Indeed there may have been squeals of "ooh yuck, I can't watch this at the moment, I'm about to serve tea?"  "See those brown l-"  "Dude, you don't need to tell me what those are, I can guess!"  "Hey, look, toilet paper!"  "ARGH!  I want to eat my dinner, not feel sick!"

But can you blame me with leaves like this?

I now know more about an older lady's "habits" than I wish to know... and so do you if you have an active imagination!

So what else has happened recently?  Umm, we went to an art show (really a chance for artists to show off their works and sell some) and DH really liked some of the things by a photographer whose work I like, so that was good.  I felt a little validated.  I have no idea why I like to have my interests validated but I do.

The sun is almost all the way south again - you can barely see the Olympics in right of shot!

I've still been taking heaps of pics of autumn leaves on my phone - you would think I'd lug around the good camera a bit more but nope, just been snapping away on the poor old phone.  It's pink spot is becoming more and more obvious, probably because I'm having to photograph under poor lighting conditions.  However, the pink spot does not account for the redness of the leaf below....

The yellow leaves didn't want to touch the red one.

I've got heaps of work to get done in the next week or so.  It is going slower than I hoped cos I may have left the hard stuff until last.  Ahem.  But it is getting there.

A brave nasturtium still flowering in the gloom.

I trundled down to a craft/quilting show in Puyallup yesterday.  It was sorta interesting.  I learned a couple of things, like how to stop thread from twisting up on itself and knotting when you are hand sewing (use thread conditioner - used to be beeswax but it can stain).  I remembered how predatory the sewing machine salespeople are.  They are always trying to upsell me to an $8,000 (plus tax!) sewing machine that can do everything bar wash the dishes in the kitchen sink and put away the washing....  I just want a machine that I can use for quilting and for the odd bit of dress making.  My current sewing machine is acceptable but slow, heavy and tends to be noisy/thunky, especially when set up on a plastic trestle table as we found out today!

My bulls eye square plus its backing

However, it does do the job.  Vis, the above!  I went to a quilt-in and did a workshop with one Amy Dame, and it was excellent and now I am not so skeered of curves (though I can see a little puckery action in the pale fabric! It is much lighter weight than the other fabric).  Anyway, it will end up being a cushion when I've quilted the bullseye side - the backing is already quilted (this is when we found out how bouncy the table can be!) and has a zipper installed.

Look, a zipper hidden inside!

But before I can finish this little project, I have to get a lot more done on my binary challenge quilt.  The idea of the challenge is that we choose two colours and use them in a modern quilt.  We can use different shades/tones of the colours (so if you are using blue you can go from light to dark blue but you can't go from yellow to orange) and we can use fabrics with more than just that colour in them if the colour reads as one of the chosen colours.  So I finally worked out what I wanted to do and gathered my materials and have started work.  I'll show it off when it's a bit further along the track than a handful of blocks and a pile of cut up fabric.

Anyway, things are going to be pretty hectic over the next while, what with the house and a big deadline for my work and a quilty deadline.  I live in exciting times!

anon!