Knit Geek Life

Oh yes, there was something else I meant to post yesterday in that blog entry but then got so distracted about talking about NYC that I failed to mention it... I actually finished a knitting project!

Using the Dublin Bay Socks pattern (see sidebar for pattern link), and Lime & Violet Mermaid Sock in the Cowboy Up colorway.... It only ended up taking me a year and three months to complete these socks... Granted, part of that time I wasn't really knitting anything... but I'm back to it now!

Last you heard from me (well, unless you follow me on Twitter or Facebook), you heard I was moving to New York City in June and then I suddenly went silent. What's up with that, right?

Well, when I got here... suddenly my dynamic with the Internet changed.

When I was in New Hampshire, I was tethered to the computer most of the time because it was my main social outlet and my connection to work... and my daily surf habits tended to have work and pleasure intermingled.

When I got to New York, work became an actual physical place and my personal Internet usage at work became limited to IM, email and checking my bank account... and when I wasn't at work, I usually wasn't at home so my Internet usage was again mostly IM and email and Twitter with an occasional stray query to Wikipedia... all done on my phone. When I did manage to use my computer when I wasn't at work, it was usually to IM someone. I abandoned most all of my social activities on the web until I moved into my apartment in mid-September.

So, what did I do all summer? Well, it can be summed up pretty succinctly. I worked a lot. I ate a lot of pizza. I drank a lot of bourbon and watched a lot of TV with my friend Jon. I walked aimlessly a lot. I went to Drupal meetups. I made a lot of bus trips between NYC and Boston and Boston and NH.

Now, it's fall and I'm beginning to get settled in.

If you're a follower of mine of Twitter or a friend on Facebook, you already probably have a clue on what I'm about to announce... but I figured it was time for an official blog announcement.

I'm moving to New York City.

Primarily because of employment reasons... I've had a good three year run at doing the work from home thing, but the point has been proven.... I suck at it and I long to be working in an office...

I've occasionally gone down and worked in the office just for a change of pace, and this last time... it just killed me to have to come back to New Hampshire, and considering that my husband hasn't been particularly happy with his job lately, it just seemed to be the right time to make the move.

We have to give 60 days notice to vacate our current place in NH, so the plan is for my husband to stay here and finish tying up loose ends at his job so he can leave and deal with most of the packing and getting rid of stuff...

While he's doing that, I'm moving to NYC to work. I'm subletting a place in Brooklyn starting next Monday until the end of July, at which point we should have enough money to be able to get an apartment in New York.

I'll probably be back to New Hampshire most weekends between now and then... I know every weekend in June (except for perhaps the last) I have things I should be back in NH for and I need to help pack... Going to try and plan a goodbye gathering for one of them, probably in July.

Partly due to a quip on the invitation to the effect of "creepy old man time" on Josh's 30th birthday party invitation and partly due to afternoon tipsiness, Suzi, Matt and I hatched a plan for a gag gift.

A "old man" care package of sorts... Grecian 5 hair dye, a hot/cold pack, Geritol tonic, a package of day and night underpads, bingo markers, an enema, and documentation on male incontinence, Viagra, Cialis, and an AARP membership form.

Don't worry, I made up for the gag by giving him a bottle of 18 year Glenlivet single malt scotch and a mix cd, which has the most awesome cover ever....

Featuring a photo taken of Josh at the code sprint at DrupalconBoston2008 and Studio Flergs - Evilicious.

The rest of the photos are here.

I had a feeling I wouldn't get around to doing these updates every day... but just because I haven't posted doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything. Granted, I've done decidedly less than I wanted to this weekend... but at this point, any progress is progress!

Today I did:

• Two loads of laundry (and I did a load yesterday that spent the night in the dryer) and put them away.
• Put the winter coats into the closet, and organized the closet.
• Picked up random stuff left around the dining area.

Goals for this week:

• Straighten up the living room.
• Straighten up bedroom.
• Clean out and organize bedroom closet.
• To go through my underwear drawer and throw out undies with holes.

And there are photos to prove my progress!

First up, there were some drawers that had a bunch of stuff on them that were randomly sitting in the middle of my office floor... They used to be next to my window, but when we put in the bed, they got moved to the middle of the floor because they no longer had a home... Before the room looked like this:

Then, I moved them which turned the room into this:

There's obviously still a long way to go in the office... but getting those out did free up a lot of room!

The drawers ended up getting moved to next to the bedroom door:

Which unfortunately, has seemed to create a new hot spot for clutter... We'll see what we can do about that in the future.

Next, the kitchen table area... which at the beginning of the week was covered in paper mess and looked like this:

On Thursday, I sorted through it (most of it now in my office next to my shredder to be shredded) and cleaned off the table which brought us to this:

Today, I finished up by cleaning up around the table and this was the end result:

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the art that's leaning up against the wall... We're undecided how long we're going to stay here so I sorta don't want to put in the effort of putting stuff up just to move in a couple of months.

Then there's the closet behind the table... I forgot to take a real before photo, so this was it probably 1/4 into the project:

And here's it finished:

I moved the shoes into the bedroom closet, which is currently a disaster... Since this closet was behind the table, it wasn't too accessible for shoes... I figure I'd probably wear some of my other shoes so long as they were more accessible.

I recently finished reading Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart- A Midwife's Saga by Carol Leonard, an autobiography and pretty much what amounts to the history of modern midwifery in the state of New Hampshire. The contents of the book span from 1975 (the birth of Carol Leonard's son) to 1987 (the death of her husband) and tell the stories of more births than I can count and monumental moments of New Hampshire state history in regard to the legalization of lay midwifery.

It's a book I'd recommend for anyone interested in midwifery and home birth, it's extremely well written. However, I'll admit that I feel somewhat more attached to it considering that this was the story of my own state's history and much of what she describes resonate because this is the culture that I grew up with and these are the places that are near where I grew up.... and I think this perhaps makes me feel a little more intensely proud of what Carol Leonard did in the years she was practicing midwifery in New Hampshire.

I don't feel like I got nearly as much accomplished today as I would have liked, but some days are like that I guess. I did put in a decent amount of hours on the work front so that's a positive.

I did get two major tasks knocked off the list today.

• Bills are paid!
• The kitchen table is cleared of all mess!

Goals for the rest of the week and/or weekend:

• Cleaning out coat closet and moving winter coats off of the accessible coat hangers to the closet.
• Straighten up the living room.
• Straighten up bedroom.
• Clean out bedroom closet.
• To go through my underwear drawer and throw out undies with holes.

We surprisingly got quite a bit accomplished today... Though the vast majority of today's chores don't necessarily greatly alter the clutter in the photos.

• I did a ton of laundry. I started some of it the day before, but finished the job today. Just about everything was washed, dried, folded and put away. Considering that I typically slack off on the putting away part, this was huge! Laundry also included changing the bed sheets.
• The drawers that were sitting in the middle of my office looking like they didn't belong there with a bunch of crap on top of them got moved to a blank wall outside my bedroom door. My office has some floor space again!
• The counters on the stove side of the kitchen got wiped down, the stove top got wiped down (though the burners are still off), and the counter got somewhat organized by Matt. The fronts of the cabinets also got wiped down in the kitchen.
• The trash in all rooms got emptied and put into bags for Matt to bring out tomorrow.
• Straightened up the counters in the bathroom off of our bedroom.
• Cleaned the toilets in both bathrooms.

Goals for the rest of the week:

• Pay the bills.
• Clean off the kitchen table, purging and organizing the paper mess that lives there.
• Cleaning out coat closet and moving winter coats off of the accessible coat hangers to the closet.
• Straighten up the living room.
• Straighten up bedroom.
• Clean out bedroom closet.
• To go through my underwear drawer and throw out undies with holes.

I'm a clutter bug and a pack rat. If you took a look at my parents house, you probably wouldn't be surprised that this is the case... I pretty much was raised by parents that were that way and are probably far worse cases than I am... For the most part, I'm seemingly unbothered by this... I can exist in a messy space without feeling much shame or concern... but every once in awhile, I just snap and feel that things NEED to be organized, clutter needs to be dealt with, and order must be brought to my space. Unfortunately, such attacks of inspiration are usually shortlived and I'm back to clutter again.

For shits and giggles, I've decided to try a new motivational technique... I've decided to take pictures of my space so I have a record of how clean and/or messy things get.... I'm not certain of the increments of time between which I'm going to post photos, but I figure maybe I can inspire myself by having some sort of visual record of progress and regression.

So, to embarrass myself.... here's the current state of my messy home (which is surprisingly better than it was yesterday!)

Dining area:

Kitchen:

Living Room:

Bedroom:

Bedroom:

Bedroom Closet / Bathroom:

Bathroom:

Other Bathroom:

Office:

Office:

Office:

I'm not sure what my official plan is for this at this point... I'll probably start with the FlyLady concept of baby steps, and I may be using my blog as a dumping ground for todo lists and whatnot... but I'm hell bent and determined to figure out what to do with this mess once and for all.

And if anyone else wants to play along on their blog, feel free to take photos of your space and the send me a link... It's more fun if it's more than one person doing it!

Once again, I'm way behind in posting my CT scrapbooking layouts on my blog... but better late than never, right?

For Flutter Expressions, I created a few things...

Using Cocoa Crush (available at Been There Scrapped That, Enchanted Studios Scraps and Natural Designs in Scrapbooking):

Using Snow Crystals (available at Been There Scrapped That and Natural Designs in Scrapbooking):

Using the Girl Talk collab from Flutter Expressions and Scraps by Jenn (available at Sunshine Studio Scraps):

For Kiki Halbert Designs, I had one layout...

Using Springdipity, available at Inspiration Lane:

And finally, the layouts made for Sunshine Studio Scraps:

From Sweet Things by Boutique Cute Dolls:

From Blue Violet by Michelle Batton:

From Romeo and Juliet by ViVa Artistry:

From the Hellraiser Collab and April 2nd Template Challenge:

And finally, from Like Totally Awesome by Ginger Scraps & Janel Scraps: