Because I can...

I'm happy to report that my desktop is not only set back up in its new home, but it is now reconnected to the interwebz, so not only can I edit photos on it, I can upload them without having to play musical files with the flash drive that I can never seem to find when I need it! See!

Yes, I know! You couldn't have lived another day without seeing a picture of the peach I ate for a snack today. But really? It was a good peach! Very juicy!

All right, then...how about this?

This is my faaaavorite corner of my new office/yarn room. Two book cases, largely dedicated to yarn and knitting and spinning related things. The top shelf of the shorter book case holds all of my loose patterns, as well as knitting magazines and pattern booklets. The next two shelves are both full of knitting books. The shelf below them is half full of spinning and dyeing books, and the other half is random papercrafting books. The bottom shelf is all nature, gardening and travel books.

Now the taller book case...ahhh! Here is where I'm FINALLY able to house some yarn out in plain view! I cannot tell you how much I love this! When I was downstairs, I kept all of my yarn housed in plastic bins because it gets pretty dusty down there, especially in the winter when we're burning the wood stove, and I didn't want to risk the yarn getting dirty. But up here, I can put it out without much fear of that. And it is so nice to be able to see it and just wander over and fondle it any time I please. ;) The top shelf is all of my handspun. The next shelf down is all of my Three Irish Girls yarn -- one of my favorite yarns ever.

The next shelf -- the one with the two bins -- is what I'm calling my "inspiration" shelf. If you're a knitter with a stash (who's ever heard of a knitter without a stash, right? Well, they do exist. ;)), you can likely relate to this. Over the years, I've collected a lot of pretty, pretty yarn. Key word there is collected. I will buy one or two or a few balls of a yarn simply because it is beautiful and lovely without having any real purpose in mind for it. I figure some day, the right project will come along for it, but the risk there is that in the interim, the pretty, pretty yarn gets hidden away in the depths of the stash until I forget I have it. And when I periodically stash dive and run across it, it's a pleasant surprise, and again I think, "I'll use this some day."

Well, I decided to go through my stash and pull out my most favorite of all the pretty, pretty yarns I have collected, and I've placed them in plain view where I can see them and pet them and -- hopefully -- be more likely to actually use them. The basket on the left contains balls, the one on the right contains hanks. That one also has a LOT of Malabrigo. Mmmm...Malabrigo. Yum! Somewhat related to the inspiration shelf is the inspiration basket sitting there on the floor. I pulled out one ball from each of a dozen bags of my favorites of large lots of yarn I have, hoping to become inspired to do some big projects.

Ok, moving on...the next shelf is office supplies. The bottom shelf is all of my completed scrapbooks, baby books and other such albums. (Incomplete scrapbooks are on top of the book case. Scrapping is a hobby I used to be so into, but I haven't done it at all in close to four years. I'm determined to get back to it. Some time.)

There's more yarn stashed in the room, but this photo doesn't show it. I'd love to add more photos for you, but in the midst of editing tonight, my computer popped up one of those messages that said something like, "Your hard drive is going to explode soon because you've filled it with too many files." Indeed, my hard drive was nearly maxed out! So, I'm in the long process of transferring a ton of files to the external hard drive. I'm determined to make this computer stay alive as long as possible. A new one isn't in the budget just now!

For now, I'll leave you with this last picture. Any guesses on what the bags are for?

Putting it back together...

This weekend marked the end of this phase of the Great Painting & Flooring Adventure of 2010. It nigh about killed us all by the end. OK, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I can honestly say the thought of wielding a brush or roller again anytime in the near future makes me want to weep, and I'm pretty sure Kevin feels the same with regard to any part of the Pergo installation process.

The dining room and spare bedroom (which is also known as my office/yarn room) are finished, I can start putting the place back together. I feel like we've been living in a warehouse full of random stuff for weeks now. It got so bad this weekend that it was impossible to reach the far end of the living room without channelling our inner ninjas and creating a path over several pieces of furniture.

Most excitedly, I will soon have my desktop hooked back up, which means I can return to the joy of posting high quality photos instead of cell phone shots like this...

While Kevin and the kids fought with the last room of Pergo yesterday, I hid safely away in our bedroom where I'd set up the sewing machine and ironing board and set to creating valances for our bedroom (above) and the dining room. I had a really hard time finding fabric I loved, so I ended up with fabric I mostly liked. Somehow, I ended up making them all a little shorter than they probably should have been, but I was erring on the side of not blocking out any of the precious natural light our dark little house gets. So. At least they're up there. Even small valances look better than bare, naked windows.

My biggest quandary is what to do with the paint in the spare bedroom. The color I used (which I'd purchased three years ago for my office when it was downstairs and then never ended up using) was called Fall Gold. You'd envision a lovely, warm yellow color with that, wouldn't you? Right. What it ended up being was more of a Screaming Atomic Blazing Sun yellow...

You know how when you're knitting and you get that little niggling feeling that something is not quite right, but you ignore it because you're sure you're gauge is really just fine and you've followed the directions correctly, only to knit the whole damn thing and find that not only was your gauge way off, but you only did half of the raglan increases you were supposed to do, so the sweater you just finished would fit a very fat giraffe buy probably no human you know? Well, this yellow room is my fat giraffe sweater of this house project. Above is the first swatch that did not adequately trigger the expected "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger" signal in my mind, thus allowing me to put not one but two coats of it on the walls. Granted, it was midnight when I put the first coat on. I was sure it would be better in the daylight. And it would be less intense with a second coat, right? Darker? At one point, I was lulled into believing it was cheerful and reminded me of sunflowers. Um. Yeah. Attack of the giant sunflowers that want to EAT YOU!

Sigh.

I do not have it in me to repaint this room, or even to apply any of the possible decorative "fixes" I found when I Googled "toning down bright paint" (I am clearly not the only person to contend with this issue, and it also seems that yellow is the number one color people have this trouble with). So, I'm going to remain optimistic and hope that once I have everything IN the room, and have things hung on the walls (lots and lots of things, LOL), maaaaaybe the yellow won't seem so freakishly insane. Denial clearly has a long statute of limitations.