insane demands

i am obsessed with buying a house. every aspect of buying the house. the house we live in is/was lovely, albeit slightly rundown in that way that all rental properties have the freedom to become. the landlord people know that they don't have to maintain the houses terribly well, and it shows. our house really isn't that bad, but sometimes when i am walking around i just think what a terrible shame it is that these beautiful older homes are in such disrepair and what a huge difference a new paintjob and a lawnmower could make. the house we live in is on a corner and has a big porch with a slapdash railing and some lovely stained glass. in it there are seven apartments, of varying shapes and sizes with occupants of various levels of annoying. there used to be two RIT students, girls, who lives across the hall, that treated the place as a dormitory. they were terribly rude (the tall one was, the short one i have no real issue with, but the tall one i would like to throw sand in her face) and now that they have moved out i steal their magazines from their mailbox and i know it's not legal but they have been out the house for over a month. i would never buy in style or glamour or shop etc but if i can get it for free with a karmic payback, then hell yeah, it's good to know which 1.5k$ bags are hot for fall i suppose. i wish they had subscribed to domino (i am obsessed with domino also) and lucky, but no. i want our own house. i have been the checkbook nazi for the past month. my dear husband is a sweet man and he works very hard and loves animals but for someone who worries about money as much as i know he does he has a very blase attitude towards the checkbook. before we got our joint account, before i finished school and was blowing all my loan money on yarn (very few regrets in that respect, but oh lord i dread the day i have to start paying it back), when he'd get his checking account balence or statement and go WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT 18 HUNDRED DOLLARS IT'S GONE. that's a bad thing. that't not for me. so now i am receipt nazi. i get a bit irritated when he puts gas in the car without telling me. i highlight all the purchases and withdrawls (pink for erin spending, blue for aaron spending, yellow for the completely unavoidable things like rent gas and food, and orange for the occasional nice things for us like the drive-in or a bottle of wine) and i have figured out what costs what and how much is left over, to be either saved or applied to the repayment of debts. honestly i was just happy to find there was something left over. we are not living totally from miserable paycheck to miserable paycheck. thank the stars or something. i want our own house. i dream of color schemes ( this weeek it's robin's egg blue, cherry red, eggshell, and dark chocolate. do you love it?!!) and of bedding (a quilt, big squares, cherry print on a black background, with red and green and white and eyelet). i want to be able to use the lovely wedding gifts (simply calphalon from my parents, an empire red kitchenaid from his mom and step-dad) that still sit in their boxes because there is no where for them to live in our galley kitchen. a few times i have said "i wish i were thirty". and people say no no no you don't. i just mean that i wish it was seven and a half years from now, when hopefully we will know what we are doing, will be doing things we like, career-wise, will be living somewhere better than a two-room studio apartment with the world's tiniest kitchen, hopefully with stairs for the cats to run up and down. i just like to think that by that time, 20freakin13, that we will be there, or at the very least, much closer, to the list of insane demands with regard to our future lifestyle i have growing in my head. i want a garden and a baby (yeah i know that came out of nowhere but i won't bring it up again) and a normal grown-up life. not that i don't like my little job but i have no interest in doing it forever. i feel good about it because at least i am doing something, but i am more interested in the next phase, whatever that may be. i love our clawfoot tub but i need a kitchen sink larger than one square foot, where if i don't do the dishes every day, it looks like we live in complete squalor the tiny pile stacks up so quickly. i think i am whining entirely too much here, but i can't help believing that a lot of people must be feeling this same way. i know aaron feels the same way, and he is older than me and so has been stuck in this in-between phase for much longer and must hate it even more. oh i am being such a weenie. perhaps i will look back on my ridiculous rants when we do buy the house, and it turns out to be a pain, and i will laugh at how grossly naive i am being right now. i kind of know what i want. i just don't have the patience or fiscal resources right now to go out and get it. i am not unsatisfied with our little life! we have each other and that is so wonderful and i don't mean to sound ungrateful. i live with my very best friend and two little furballs, and i am the luckiest girl in the world. i just want to house our relationship somewhere else. somewhere with our own washer and dryer, and neighbors that we don't have to share any walls or backdoors with. figure something out, i will i will we will we will. enough already, my goodness. wasn't this post more fun when it was about snatching fashion ragazines from the ex-neighbors?

anyways. after a knitting funk, i am trying to re-work the written pattern for the secret underpants, which was, upon draft one, riddled with Big Errors, in Dale of Norway's Svale. poor d.stoller has been ill and needs more time to select patterns for the book. she can take all the time she needs, i was just happy that the email brought news that i have not yet been rejected. but anyways. i bought two balls of blue skys cotton in honeydew last night from the lovely lovely lucinda at wild wools who so graciously invited our little knit club to her store, where she offered us wine (hi if there are two things i have noticed that darn near all knitters seem to have in common besides fiberlust is cats and wine) and a discount and some really really good cheese. but after knitting one inch of my swatch, it became quite apparent that the guage is never gonna happen. no bother, i guess i will have to design some new shorts to utilize the yum that is this yarn. i am not discouraged. i am reading a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers and it is very good. i figured i better put my brain to some kind of use beyond crushing on sandals and dinnerware and organizing solutions that stare up at me from the glossy glossy pages of my usual reading material. oh poor erin and her post-BFA blues.

what's COOKIN, y'all!

kyrie rules. she made me the most darling apron (which i am so close to safety pinning in one or two key points and wearing as a skirt) that totally matches my red kitchen gear and sent delish-sounding recipes with respect for my vegetarian ways and has a lovely child and one on the way. thank you kyrie e-hug from west NY you are a love.

it's been a weekend of erin getting spoiled, actually, as pointy, my much <3ed secret pal, sent me ysolda's matilda jane pattern and some fun socks and post-its and gum. she clearly has got my number. sometimes i love the internet so much. i must be off because knitter nichole and i are going to bed bath and beyond and to see a terrible movie and eat ice cream to contend with the nastyass 90some-odd degree weather. ugh! stay classy, dears.

much ado.

so this is a finished "BLOUSE", built by me, with the aid of a pattern from lovely built by wendy. the collar nearly killed me (i scorched collar #1 applying the interfacing and had to quickly cut out a new one. oops.) and the 3/8" seam allowances and narrow hems struck me as wonky but i survived it. next time i think i will use something with better drape than calico (damned floof sleeves have no floof), but keepsake was a dollar off per yard and i was hesitant to ruin something more precious. i don't hate it. ta-da.

meanwhile i haven't hardly knit a a stitch in ages and i still haven't figured out what the serger's problem is. you fix it.