I wouldn’t want you to think I’m not keeping busy.

My sweater is coming along, which can only be a good thing. I just finished my first skein of yarn tonight. As a pre-emptive thing, I put all the rest of the yarn for this sweater in my knitting bag, just to make sure that none of it gets misplaced during the packing/moving process. Even if it’s not yet wound into balls, at least I know where it is! (And, really, I think I’m going to wind it all into balls now, while I know for sure where my ball-winder is.)

Because that’s one of the other things I’m doing–getting ready to move. We got mover estimates this week, picked a company (through friends of my sister’s), and our moving date is set at November 2nd. They’ll be moving the furniture, the books, and whatever other boxes we’ve got for them … in fact, they’re going to come a couple days ahead of time and PACK MY BOOKS FOR ME. I need to get everything organized so that they can be labelled appropriately so they end up in the right place, but I have to admit, not having to pack thousands of books is a relief.

We’ll be moving some of the other stuff ourselves, though. Like, the clothing, the yarn, the craft supplies. The dog. Actually, moving the dog is going to be stressful for the dog, and we’re trying to figure out the logistics of that. Something that will make him feel safe and loved, but hopefully not feeling the need to bark every time someone walks in the house with boxes, or carrying furniture. I said I think he should be one of the first “things” we move–when we’ve been on vacation, he stresses when we start carrying LUGGAGE out to the car. We always put him in the car first thing, now, so he knows that he is absolutely not going to be left behind. I can only imagine what he would do if we started moving out everything in the HOUSE without him. So, he’ll be riding over to the new house pretty early.

Here’s a little mystery. I just glanced over to my boxes of CDs … I put all my CDs in boxes to get them out of my dresser. You’ll be fascinated to know that my cd collection takes four boxes to pack–the kind of boxes you get 5 reams of paper in. (Some of the handiest-sized boxes around. Not too bulky to lift and carry, and even when filled with things like, oh, say, BOOKS, they’re still not too heavy.)

Anyway, I looked and saw this silver thing on the floor. Now, having assembled any number of bookcases from IKEA, I know that this is one of the connectors used for holding pieces of wood together–there’s usually a screw of some kind, and then this sits in the hole and rotates, securing everything in place.

Now, if only I knew what it came from.

Normally, there’s not actually ANYTHING sitting in that spot, but I had pulled out a lot of things from my fiber-closet today and had them scattered about the room. Wool. Yarn. Craft supplies. (In fact, I wish I could remember off-hand who I sold my Lendrum Woolee Winder to, because I just found another bobbin for it.) I planned on weeding out a lot of stuff, but really only got rid of a one garbage-bag full of odds and ends … but what’s left is at least a little better organized.

But … still. Even with wool and boxes strewn about the room, I didn’t have anything just there that would have had one of those connectors…

Let’s see, what else? Mom and I went out for coffee together for the first Saturday in over a month. We kept joking that we weren’t sure we remembered how, where did you go, again? How did it work? Did you sit and drink it? Then we went to Home Depot where I bought a medicine chest to go in my soon-to-be-new bathroom (since I can’t take the ones my current bathroom HAS, darn it). But the man from the leasing company said he was more than happy to take down the mirror on the wall and hang up a medicine chest, which is a relief because I couldn’t quite imagine not having one. (Where do you keep the toothpaste? The Advil? The eye drops?)

So, we bought one … and with the help of a very nice man who was on his way INTO Home Depot (since the “parking lot staff” was no help whatsoever), we got it into the trunk of my car. It just fits, with the seats folded forward. Now I just need to coordinate a meeting with Ed to drop it off at the townhouse for him to install between now and November first.

I’ve also spent a couple hours doing some editing on an ebook, which is remarkably fun. It’s an ebook that a friend wrote for a client, and she hired me to check the spelling and punctuation kind of thing. It’s a pleasure because, while it requires concentration, it doesn’t require creative thought. It’s not something I wrote, so I’m not editing it and thinking about rewrites; I’m just fixing the punctuation. Very handy indeed because it will bring in some extra money (should almost pay for my medicine chest, after taxes), but it’s not as taxing as writing something for myself.

Oh! I just realized what that connector was from. I moved my “editor’s desk” from off one of the boxes of CDs so I could label it, and I rested it just in that spot. I just checked the bottom and, sure enough … that’s where it came from. One mystery solved!

A couple links for you before I go:

• What do you think of these nifty Bale-of-Hay Chair backs?
• You know that favorite TV show of mine, Chuck? The one not due to return until after the Olympics in March? Rumor has it it might be coming back earlier. Like, by the end of October. The idea of it coming back early thrills me to bits, of course, but the fact that its return would be so SOON is worrying because that leaves almost no time to promote it and get people WATCHING.
• Maybe I’ll have a “Watch Chuck’s Season 3 Premiere” contest, huh? And give away yarn to anybody who watches it–and gets other people to watch, too? With bonus points if they’re Nielson families?
• Check out this great subway staircase experiment in Sweden … and be sure to watch the accompanying video. Got to love the Fun Theory!
• Nifty little highly-coordinated music video that Mom sent me.

Tags: General, Knitting/Spinning // 4 Comments »