¿Qué pasó?

See?  I'm learning Spanish!

What's happening with Knittergran?, you may ask.

Well, she can't knit and watch Breaking Bad at the same time.  She discovered this after making a few too many mistakes in her knitting.  So now that she is caught up on BB, she has been knitting.

And she should stop referring to herself in the third person.  It's just weird.  She is not royalty.

So I have been catching up on knitting!

I have finished these socks, the first ever knit on size one needles.  (Signature needles, plain vanilla pattern, and Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock Yarn, color grouse)

AND I have been working on the tricky Miss Winkle scarf:

I don't want to think about how many loops I have attached the wrong way and have had to frog.

AND I have finally, finally, with the help of several Ravelers, gotten started on the Currant Cardigan.  It has been the most difficult project I have attempted because of the new cast on and new stitches I have had to learn.  And I was reading the charts wrong because the right side rows are usually odd-numbered (I think) and the wrong side rows even-numbered (I think) and this was backwards to me, but I didn't realize it until I had done parts of a couple of rows um...backwards?  I'm not actually sure.  I was so confused.... A very experienced knitter on Ravelry helped me sort it all out. And then I frogged.

But now I am on my way, I hope.

AND I may have discovered that I am no gardener.  So far, this is the total of my crop of peppers:

Teeny, tiny.  CUTE!!!

We have had something like 16" extra inches of rain this summer, so maybe that's the problem.  I have no idea. 

It tasted great.  So there's that.

Anyway, Breaking Bad is on tonight, but I will record it and watch it later without the ads.  

Sorry, advertisers, but you break up the mood, the color, the ambiance, the sounds, the carnage, the blood, the swearing......... maybe the ads are a good thing.  

Euuuuuuwwwww....No Thanks

So.....

is this a spoiler?  Or just crazy fun at Comic Con?

Day-um

I just watched last night's episode of Breaking Bad, after catching up on all the past episodes.

And day-um is all I can say.


But boy howdee!  Doesn't Jesse have perfect teeth!!!  You know, for a meth-head and all.

My daughters think that this should be my next birthday cake:

Except for the Bobby part.

I truly hope and pray that this cake was for an adult using a childhood nickname and not for a child whose parents are paying NO attention to what their CHILD is watching on tv.  

It's rated PG 35 people!!!

Yo

  

It's Fiction, yo.

You do NOT want to know what they are doing.  Trust me on this.

So now I have watched all of Season 3 and have started watching Season 4.

Warning:

Do NOT watch the first episode of Season 4 if you are alone.  Or don’t watch it at all.  Leave a comment asking what happened and I will tell you.  I didn’t watch it, or rather, I didn’t SEE it.  But I did hear it since I couldn’t cover my closed eyes and my ears at the same time.  And I guarantee you that you don’t want to see it.  OR hear it.

And on to more of Season Four:  

A friend of older daughter’s said that Season 4 would change my life.  There were no specifics mentioned, so I don’t know what to expect.  It is, however, possible that I might become, oh, just a wee bit overly concerned about Jesse, and then become so upset with what Walt has done to WRECK Jesse’s life that I forget that it is fiction and I get on a plane to Albuquerque and I hunt down Walter White like the animal he is and then I do whatever it takes so that I can pound him into the hot New Mexico desert sand.  Where he will stay for-EVER.

Watch this space.

Yo.

YO

So I have been catching up on Breaking Bad, although that might not be the right way to say it since I never watched it to begin with.  But I decided that in order to understand the finale, I needed to see the show.  That’s not logical.  I know.  How could I determine that I want to see the finale if I hadn’t even watched the series? Doesn't make sense.  But that’s what I’m doing.

Observations:

• Don’t do drugs.  Duh.
• I wish Jesse would make better decisions.
• I don’t care what decisions Walter makes.  He is evil.
• I wish Walter's wife and son would stay far, far away from him, just in case the people gunning for him find him. Actually, everyone needs to stay far, far away from him.
• “Camper cooking” means cooking meth in an RV.  It’s mobile yo, harder to find.
• Getting ahold of lots and lots of pseudo ephedrine is really difficult for meth cooks.
• Don’t go into the desert alone. 
• “Bounce” means "to go,” as in “Go bounce, yo,” (Go away NOW) and “We gotta bounce” (We gotta get the h*ll out of here NOW).
• If you close your eyes AND cover them with your hands, you won’t be able to see all the violence.  The series is occasionally INCREDIBLY violent. 
• Bryan Cranston is NOT the star; Aaron Paul is the star.  He is amazing. He is the bomb, yo.
• I think that "yo" is the equivalent of an exclamation mark.  I think it might also mean "Hey."  It might mean other things too, but I haven't figured them out yet.

I read somewhere that one hour spent watching television takes some specific amount of time off of our lives.  I don’t see how whoever studied this can know this, but if it’s true, I’m screwed and it’s all the fault of Breaking Bad.

Also, I’m trying to learn Spanish from the series but this might not be the best way to accomplish it.  They speak really fast, and even though the Spanish is subtitled, I can’t catch the individual words.  I can command "Finish him" though:  Terminado.  Not useful presumably,  but I could say it if I had to.

I'm only at Series 3, so there is a long way to go.

Watch this space.

Gotta bounce, yo.

Success

Why, you might ask, would I call this "success"?

Well, let me tell you. 

It has taken me nearly two weeks to get this far.  The instructions include things like LCI, 2/2 LCI, and RLPI and I had never heard of these stitches.  It took awhile to figure out what they ARE before I could look them up on youtube to find out HOW to do them.  And then I tried doing the stitches. That was fun.

And so I had to rip it all out and start over.

And I made the mistake of starting over at last week's Knit Night.  

I picked it up today to continue on to row THREE and everything was wrong.  Knits were purled; purls were knit.  

So again, I ripped it all out and started over.

And somehow there weren't enough stitches.  I added stitches, and worked row two all over.  

Now comes the increase row, and sweet baby cheeses, I hope I get it right this time.

On the other hand, I am very good now at the Old Norwegian Cast On.  



Update:  I have hit a roadblock already.  I have asked this question on Ravelry, but I wonder if anyone reading here has the answer.  How many stitches does this section require:

RLPI, p2, k1tbl, p2, 2/2 LCI, [p3, RLPI] 2 times, k1tbl, p3

I count 22 but the section set up for this only has 19.

Anyone?  Anyone?  Anyone? 

Bueller?



Update #2:

A wonderful Ravelry knitter answered my call for help and corrected my understanding of the increases I was using.  And it worked!
Onward and upward!

MKAL

A few months ago I joined an MKAL (mystery knit-along for those of you who have not yet discovered the fun of knitting).  It was the first time I had entered such a thing; I have not even done an ordinary KAL and I was excited to finally be taking part in one. However, as of today, I still haven’t taken part in one.

I have learned that my aversion to following rules, following instructions, doing what I am told, has made success in an MKAL an impossibility.

I am just not a games person---except for tennis, which I love with all my heart and soul, and I am heart-broken that two knee surgeries have taken me out of the game. (In my next life I am going to be a professional tennis player AND a back up singer for someone like Tina Turner, so keep an eye out, ok?)  I loved tennis so much that I became a USTA official: chair umpire and linesman for professional tournaments.  And I played lots and lots and lots of tennis, mainly singles. If I am going to lose, I figure, I will lose on my own, and if I am going to win, I will win on my own.  So there.

When I was a child, according to my sister, whose memory I have doubts about, I once threw a Monopoly board off of the table because I was losing.  I really do not think that I would have done such a thing, but I do know that my own family will not play Monopoly with me.  Younger daughter says that the last time I played with her, I cheated.  I doubt that as well. I think she made it up.

When I was pregnant with daughter #2 (the one who lies), my husband and I signed up for Lamaze classes.  We went once or twice.  The LAST time we went, we drove there, and before we got out of the car, I told my husband, “Do NOT tell me what to do.”  

He rightly protested that that was the whole purpose of Lamaze; that he was my coach;  coaches coach.

“No,” I repeated, “Do not tell me what to do.”

After a brief and possibly heated discussion, we went home and that was the end of Lamaze.  As it turns out, the doctors had to induce labor, and, I am told, that at that point, Lamaze is of no use at all because the mother goes into whatever is the last stage of labor.  Drugs, please.

When my husband sang the praises of a par course the county we lived in had installed, I went along once.  Once.  When I saw the first sign that said “Do x # of jumping jacks” or something like that, I started laughing. “You do what the sign says??? Really?”

So I guess this all means that I am childish or something, but apparently I just resist being told what to do, and that tendency played out with the MKAL.  

But I had been game!  I had been ready! I had even wound the yarn.  I waited excitedly for the first clues…...I printed them out and read them...... uh oh. Part of the first week’s instructions stated that a gauge swatch was absolutely essential.  Well, problem #1.  Ain’t no way.  It’s a shawl.  The size simply doesn’t matter.  To me.  Maybe to the designer but not to me.

So I waited for the next clue and was excited when the e-mail came and I could print out the new pages.  And then the next week I printed out the new pages as well.  Then the next week and then the next. Then all of the pages got mixed up and I couldn’t figure out the order.  

And that’s all she wrote.  I decided to wait until the whole pattern was released and then decide if I liked it well enough to knit it.  The complete pattern came out, I looked on Ravelry at the MKAL group’s photos of other people’s finished shawls, and yes, they were pretty enough, just not something I wanted to make.  The yarn and the needles have not yet met.  But since I still have the yarn, which I love, I will make something else from it.  

Lesson learned.  No more KALs, mystery or otherwise.

At least not in this life.  

So

what I was trying to say in my last post, but got distracted by the missing needle, was that using new technologies to make knitting easier shouldn't be so complicated.

And I found my needles in another project, the 100 grammi scarf; I cast it off and today, I WILL conquer the Old Norwegian Cast On.

Is it an old cast on from Norway, or is it a cast on created by an old Norwegian?

What is Wrong With This Picture?

Just about everything.

I finally decided to start work on S's sweater. Yay me!!! (I bought the yarn in March.)

I scanned the paper pattern into an electronic PDF file, imported the file into Dropbox and from there into KnitCompanion on my iPad mini. Then I set up a new project in KC, cropping and pasting as directed. I opened a video on my laptop so that I could follow along with instructions on doing the Old Norwegian Cast On. I pulled out the yarn and the gauge swatch. 

Had I indicated on the swatch which size needles I used for the swatch (and I hardly EVAH make gauge swatches)?  No. Did I leave the needles I used in the bag with the yarn?  No, I did not.

But wait!  My memory says that I had decided that I needed one size larger than the pattern called for.

Woo Hoo!!! So let's get out those size 9 needles and get cracking!!!

Can I find those needles?  

No, I cannot. ANYWHERE.

All these electronic helpers, which kind of took a long time to set up and I'm wondering if they really are all that helpful, and I am defeated by my own lack of organization. 

Off to search for the needles. Again.

Yard Eggs!

Deanna, who is a knitting friend who abandoned us and moved to Houston (but we forgive her), once told us about an ATT store in Louisiana where she couldn't pay her father's ATT bill but where she COULD buy yard eggs.

Yard eggs! we all said.  What the heck are yard eggs?

It turns out that they are exactly what the name says --- just eggs that people who aren't egg factories gather from their own chickens.  So by definition I suppose they are "organic" and "free range" and all those good things.

Well, I had never heard of them, but last week, as I drove down a road near me, I saw this sign.  The man who sells all sorts of farm-fresh produce there said that the eggs he sells are better for us than the ones we get from the grocery store --- no chemicals in their diets and the only feed outside of what they find on the ground is the occasional handful of cracked corn.

I am now the proud owner of yard eggs, and I feel healthier already.

Mystery Meal

I think I need to put the name of the contents on the bags of food that I freeze. This might be stew; it might be chili; it might be rhubarb sauce. I don't know but I am thawing it and one of us will eat it.

Surprise!!!



UPDATE:  I was wrong.  It turned out to be PW's delicious spaghetti sauce!

Puny

I am at home fighting a sinus infection. I'm feeling puny and I thought I would share.

These are photos taken from billions of miles away from earth by Voyager 1.

Feeling puny now?

I just hope that gravity keeps working.

Did She Die?

That is what my older daughter asked me once when I was about to tell her a story about someone I knew, or someone a friend knew, or someone who was someone’s hairdresser who knew the cousin of….

I don’t remember.

But I do know that my daughters accuse me of stockpiling sad, unpleasant tales of Woe.   And Suffering.  And, yes, Death.

I admit that I think I might be guilty of being Debbie Downer on occasion, but I blame my age.  And my friends’ ages.  We are all in the same boat, and I think of the way life works as this:

We are all hoping we are dodging bullets we don't even know are coming our way.

Cases in point:

A friend told me about a friend’s friend who was knocked over by a wave in the ocean and ended up paralyzed from the neck down and who would have to remain on life supports.  No hope for recovery.  His mind, however, was just fine and he made the informed decision to be taken off life supports.

I read or heard someplace that a woman died from inhaling some kind of harmful bacteria when she was turning her compost pile.

And right after we moved here and were still living in Hotel Hell, I was caught in a terrible traffic tie up and was very late to pick up younger daughter from a nature center where she was working as a counsellor.  I later found out that the traffic was stopped because of an accident:  a woman had been killed when a port-o-john fell off of the truck in front of her and crashed through her windshield.  

Think of all the worrying some of us do.  I bet that no matter how many things that woman might have worried about in her life, she never, ever considered the possibility of being killed by a port-o-john.  

And that is my point exactly.  The port-o-john was the bullet she never saw coming.

At last Thursday’s knit night, Sallyknit related what she considered, and we all agreed, to be the most bizarre news story from the week.  A man in Brazil was killed, in his bed, while he was asleep, by a cow that fell through his roof.  

(We might have giggled a little, but then said STOP THAT!  It’s only a little bit funny. No! It’s not funny at all.  It’s tragic.  But it IS a little …..when you say it out loud….No! Stop!)

But again, no matter what this poor man’s worries were, I’ll bet they didn’t include a cow crashing through his roof and crushing him. 

I promise my daughters and whoever  else has the apparent misfortune to talk with me that I will keep the woe, suffering and deaths to a minimum.

In the meantime, Serpentine, Shelly.  Serpentine!

(A big prize to the person who knows that reference.  Immediate family prohibited from entering.)

This Might Be Me....

It's Embarrassin' Bein' from Georgia

says Honey Boo Boo?

$1,000 REWARD!!!!!!

Not really.

But my Chacos, the shoes that I have worn since surgery on my left foot, the shoes that have prevented surgery on my right foot, that have just the perfect sponginess to support my foot, and that along with my Birkenstocks (stylish----c'est moi) have kept me comfortably shod all these years, they have

GONE MISSING !!!!!

Please, please come back...

Now logic is my middle name (not really---it's Louise), and logic tells me that shoes can't possibly disappear in one's own home. But I have looked everywhere (except where they are, obviously), and they are just flat-out missing. I grilled my recent houseguests: two daughters, four grandchildren, and I do mean GRILLED, until they almost r u n n  o f t, and they all denied having any involvement with the disappearance of my shoes.

Yes, I have other shoes.  Yes, I even have other Chacos, but these were my most recent purchase, and my favorite.

I may have to give up and go to the store for another pair, and then, I am sure, the missing shoes will show up.


***************

In other news, we all had a great time, in spite of the nearly constant rain.  It rained, sometimes ALL day, each and every day that they were all here. (It's raining now.) On Monday though, the rain held off  until later in the day, and my husband, daughters and grandchildren had a great time at Six Flags.  I, martyr that I am, stayed out of the heat and sun and off of the scary rides and made the aforementioned Ile Flottante. My husband is out of town every other week, so I rarely have guinea pigs diners I can experiment on cook for.  But in spite of being left behind, I had fun making dessert.

However, I need my grandchildren to answer for this affront:

WHY, oh WHY, are there goldfish left in this container? WHY didn't you eat them all?  Grandpa doesn't like them, so now it's left to me to finish them off.

Martyr, thy name is Knittergran.


UPDATE:  Chacos found!  Yay!

And Yesterday

I made Ile Flottante!

I had always thought that it would be difficult to make but it's not.  It's just three easy things combined into one for serving.

Delicious, if I do say so myself.

My First Clafoutis

Yummmmm

And Ah Hay-ulped

Yes, I did.

Today I finished my Janus shawl (from Araucania Lontue linen/cotton yarn), which was supposed to be easy, easy, easy.

The knitting part was.

The crocheted lace?  No so much.

Knitter/crocheter/master-crafter friend Lucille volunteered to crochet the 74" of lace after she tried to teach me how to do it.  It just didn't take and this shawl would never, ever be finished if she hadn't taken on the most difficult part of the project.  74 inches!!!  Of this:

I tried.  And even though it only uses two (maybe three) different crochet stitches, I just couldn't get my brain/hand coordination to work.  And this lace border MAKES the shawl.  So that's why I say I "helped." Lucille did the most work on it.

I did do this part though and it was relatively easy:

Just a bit of picot along the opposite edge.

I love this scarf/shawl and I owe you big time, Lucille!!!

A couple of years ago I bought two colors of laceweight Miss Babs yarn to make a particular pattern.  However, I think they sold me the wrong weight by mistake because the resulting scarf would have been the proper size for an American Girl Doll.  So I ripped it out and saved the yarn for future use.  Then I learned how to do an advanced search on Ravelry and looked for a two-color project requiring 400 yards of each color of laceweight yarn.  And there it was, the Pink Silk Mimosa, designed by Jennette Cross at Hill Country Weavers in Austin, Texas.

And here it is!!!  All finished and blocked.  I love it!

I ran out of turquoise yarn and could have taken out two rows in order to do the bind-off row, but I decided to use the brown and keep the extra length on the lace. This is the closest I have ever come to running out of yarn!

I had about 12 inches of turquoise left (and Baxter tried to eat it) and about six yards of brown.

Phew!

WARNING!

If you decide to make The Barefoot Contessa's boeuf bourguignon, and you read the part that tells you to stand back when you light the half cup of cognac you have poured into the contents of the dutch oven, she does really mean STAND BACK!!!

However, she forgot to say "Be sure that the flames that will be two feet high will not touch anything above them, say, like the bottom of the microwave." Because that will happen.  You know how I know this.  Right?

I will admit that I briefly considered running to get my camera so that I could take a picture because it was a pretty impressive scene, but then my better judgement kicked in and I put on mitts and pulled the pan out as far as I could on the stovetop so that I wouldn't melt the microwave.  This would not have been the first time I accidentally set something unintended on fire, but I sure didn't want it to be the first time I intentionally let something burst into flames.

What More Could I Ask For?

My kitchen is finished!

My hydrangeas are blooming!

Do You Suppose

that the Pioneer Woman swears when the new flour container she probably has that is probably just like mine (because she is such a copy-cat) dumps flour on the counter and floor when she is making her blueberry muffins?

I bet she does.

And if I were the swearing sort, which of course I am not, I would too.  It was just the crowning end to a day of annoyances, and yes, that is a paint can barely visible in the background because this kitchen project will.never.end.  I swear on all that is holy or holy-ish.

Three cabinet doors had chips in them, so the painter picked them up last Saturday to re-paint them.  I wanted them back today---she said "No problem," and we went to get them.  However, she had only just painted them this morning so they were still wet.  And still needed the spray coat of polyurethane.  Oh, joy. They are in our garage, still drying.

Maybe tomorrow they can go back on the cabinets, but in the meantime, we have been painting the white woodwork that has black splotches on it because I painted the pantry door black and my aim isn't always too precise. Although I do blame the brush.  And we have been touching up the yellow suede paint where other things have gone wrong, but then I have to put more white paint on the woodwork where the yellow paint got by mistake and then paint the yellow where the white, and maybe some black too, but who's looking, made its way from the door to the woodwork to the wall to the......

Oh well.  Someday the kitchen will be finished.

But in the meantime, I'm eating as many mini-blueberry muffins as I want. They're small.

I Got Nothin'

but the universe gives us this on Sunday night:

Perigee

What to Wear....What to Wear

It's a constant problem.  What am I supposed to LOOK like at my slightly advanced age?  I can't use my mother as a role model.  She didn't believe in hair color (it will give you brain cancer) and I do; didn't use makeup (I don't know why) and I do; and was entirely too friendly with Polly and Esther, despite living in Florida.  To my mind, Polly and Esther are entirely intolerable in Florida, and probably pretty much anywhere else.

So off I go to buy clothes.  And every time it is the same.  The staff at J Crew lock the doors when they see me coming.

And Talbots?  My former last resort when I didn't know what to wear?  I don't know what is going on there, but their offerings have been awful for years. Even though their clothes might have been a bit....conservative, boring...they at least were in style, sort of, and I could count on finding something appropriate for whatever occasion I was shopping for.  But now?  I never find anything there.

So there they are:  Chicos and J Jill, home of clothing for senior citizens.  On my most recent shopping trip, I didn't find anything at Chicos. I did at J Jill, but the problem there is that sometimes what they have reminds me of Garanimals---remember the children's clothing all designed to be very obviously matchy/matchy so that children could put together their own outfits? Even the tags were color-coded to give clueless kids a clue. That's what J. Jill clothing sometimes looks like to me.  Too obviously matchy/matchy, just without the color-coded tags.

Last week, I decided that I was not a clueless kid!  NO!  Not ME!  (Not I?) I was a brave, grown-up shopper. I was a REBEL.  I bought this shirt:

Cute, right?

and instead of pairing it with the cropped pants that the saleslady told me were, ahem, supposed to go with it, I bought these:

Pretty clever! Pretty stylish!  Positively BRAVE!!!  Right?

And I picked them out all by myself.

When I asked my husband what he thought, he said that the shirt was ok, but that the jeans didn't go with it.  I told him, and I am pretty sure I am right about this, that jeans go with everything.

But maybe not, maybe he was right, since these aren't your normal jeans. Nope. They are called "boyfriend" jeans. Perhaps that is a clue that they are meant for younger women, the kind with boyfriends, not husbands of 40+ years. And oh, dear, now that I think about it, perhaps the shirt could possibly double as a maternity top.

Hmmmm......

Oh, well.

Out I go, every day, still apparently clueless, hoping that no one makes fun of me, or that if they do, I don't notice.  But if anyone thinks that I am perhaps the world's oldest expectant mother, or that I have a boyfriend in spite of the wedding ring I wear, I might be wrong about all of my choices.

Polly and Esther.  Watch out.  I might have to join you.

And On and On It Goes....

The refrigerator door arrived, unannounced, yesterday when FedEx left a box as tall as I am on the front doorstep.  It was supposed to arrive today (Well, yesterday, originally, but that was re-scheduled.  No one told FedEx I guess.)  Now the repairman is here, and surprise, surprise, the electronics in the current door are not the same as the electronics in the new door, so he is disassembling both doors to switch out the guts.  He called his dispatcher to say that he would be here for "several hours."  Oh, joy.

GE.  We Bring Good Things to Life.  Eventually.

And Ah Hay-elpd

says Baxter.

I am blocking the Color Affection Shawl and as always, Baxter finds the whole process fascinating.  First he dipped a paw in the sudsy water where the shawl was soaking to test the water temperature

and then he checked out my shaping.

 But then he started pulling out the pins to let me know I was doing it wrong.  Since I can read the tape measure and he can't, I told him to stop. He jumped up on his perch (the ironing board) to supervise.

In the end, he approved, so now it is drying.  The yarn is Miss Babs Yummy Superwash Sock and Baby ---wonderful soft yarn and I love her colors.

The shawl seemed to be drying as I pinned it out, so I think I will be able to fondle try it on later today.

Common Sense is Not So Common

so said Voltaire and he is correct.

The new refrigerator arrived Thursday.  My husband and I finished painting the kitchen and breakfast room yesterday.  We cleaned up.  The job is finished!!!

Not so fast.

Do you see the black plastic covers over the edges of the top door and bottom drawer?

Well, look what is missing here:

Yes, there is a piece missing.  Probably a 2- or 3-cent part.

My husband called GE, e-mailed the photos, and yesterday we had a reply. There is no way to order just that little plastic piece.

The GE rep has ordered us an entire new door.  Crazy!!!

Later this week, the kitchen project will be finally finished when the new door arrives. We can't blame China, or the factory in China, or a worker in China. The refrigerator was made in Kentucky.  But I suppose we can't blame Kentucky, or the factory in Kentucky, or the worker in Kentucky either.

Let's blame the designer/engineer!!!  Or the billing department?

(Or me.  You would think I would have noticed this when the refrigerator was delivered.  Nope.)

************************************

My poor cats.  Look at Molly.  She was exhausted yesterday after helping Baxter supervise the kitchen-painting.

Sound asleep.  UNDER a rocking chair.  Never a good idea.

Calling Paul Harvey....

There is a story, which some sources say is apocryphal, about a bet Ernest Hemingway made that he could write an entire story in under ten words:

For Sale
Baby Shoes
Never Worn

There is a world of possibilities in those six words.


I suspect that there is in these six words as well:

Random photo from the interwebs

Wouldn't you love to know the rest of the story?

Finished!

and I love the cabinets!  They look like new furniture, so yes, it was all worth it. Of course, I no longer want to cook in my kitchen; it would be awful to risk damaging the finishes, don't you think?

 Yep, Baxter has to check it out.

 

I still have cleanup and re-organizing to do, but at least the most difficult work (which was done by Juliet Jones Studio) is finished.  Juliet is great and can do everything from finishing out new construction to remodeling to faux painting to trompe l'oeil.

Best of all, from Baxter and Molly's perspectives, they have been released from imprisonment in the basement and can snoop to their hearts' content.  And walk on the counters.  And climb on top of the refrigerator.  And open the cabinets.

In other words, back to normal.  

A Pause for the Philosophical

All of the events of life can be seen as learning experiences if we just stop to think about what we have learned from the bad as well as from the good.

What I have learned from the kitchen cupboard project:

1.  Home improvement projects are not fun.  This one has been a nuisance and an inconvenience.  Everything people do on HGTV looks like so much FUN!!! so I don't understand what is going on here.  hmmmmm... Possibly the police visit and the gas fumes might have something to do with it...

2.  Mission creep is a real phenomenon.  The cabinets get painted; the walls need re-painting.  The cabinet doors need to be re-hung; many of the old hinges are broken-buy new hinges.  For no reason whatsoever, the door on the refrigerator breaks; buy new refrigerator.

3.  Baxter can get on top of the refrigerator.  No problem, says he.  And so there he is, time after time, just lying there.  After some thought, I've realized that he does this for one of two reasons:

     a.  Because he can.
           or
     b.  To taunt me.

I'm going with b.

The doors and drawer front panels go on tomorrow, God willin' and the creek don't rise.

It's been pouring for hours.