Knitting and Stoves

My parents have had this week off so they've been around a lot more and this is kind of cool because they've been out running errands and catching up on things around the house that just weren't getting done. But this is also not cool because my entire Monday was earmarked for catching up on reading and working on a paper but instead I got roped into rearranging the livingroom, a seven hour task that was kind of like one of those puzzles where you shift one tile and then another and then another to put the design in order.

But one good thing is that on Tuesday I came home and there was a stove in the kitchen. I will repeat that: there was a stove in the kitchen.

Now, all of you people who have stoves and take them for granted may not appreciate how earth-shattering this is. When we originally moved into this house we were kind of in the middle of renovating it. We had to move fast and we had too many things for this space so everything got piled all over the place and that slowed the renovation down even more.

I lived on a matress on a concrete floor and my walls had no drywall and in some places no insulation. It was pretty austere and depressing.

The suite didn't have a kitchen at all. We washed dishes and bathed in the laundry sink, cooked on a hot plate on a table and piled the contents of the pantry on the cement floor.

The years since have been a slow march toward civilization with lots of little celebrations: the day we put linoleum on the floor, the day we painted the kitchen walls, the day we got kitchen counters, getting a kitchen sink.

Every room has gone through that process.

So yes, for the first time since December 2004, there is a stove in the kitchen. I'm pleased.

I was good all summer but suddenly it's gotten cold again and that has me changing my priorities and buying yarn. I have a bad habit of underestimating the amount of time it will take me to finish things. In my infinite wisdom I try to pick projects in advance of when I'll need them but it never quite works out the way it should.

I was thinking about fall a couple months ago when I started working on some things that I could layer and wear in the early fall when it's cool in the mornings and warm all day. But then all of a sudden it got freezing cold and I'm looking at these things and thinking that the time that I needed these things has passed. I'm stuck with the dilemma of having to either finish them and have them not be seasonally appropriate when I finish or starting new, colder weather stuff that also won't be finished in time for me to use it this year.

But that has me buying new yarn for new colder weather projects that I may or may not make this year.

Gah, I can't win.

But I can make myself a soft-boiled egg in the morning.