KateOhKatie blogs

/WW.  <3.

Yesterday I spent the better part of the morning and most of the afternoon hitting up local garage sales–sort of a last hurrah of garage saleing here in Kirksville, before I move next weekend.

I started out with $20 in my pocket.  This is what I came home with:

2 of these:

to hang on the walls of the new place.

and this:

(size 9-12 months, and to be stored for a few years until needed–it didn’t fit Jeff ) )

this for me, which I’m going to re-dye to a color that’s more my liking:

handmade stoneware serving plate:

I think I’ll hang this in the kitchen and put some of my stoneware collection on it:

the perfect “cookies for Santa” plate:

here they are, Dad!:

two carved wooden elephant taper candle holders, just like you always wanted!
(no, I’m not kidding.  He collects elephant stuff.  And now he can cross carved wooden elephant taper candle holders off that list! )

this looks huge, but I promise it’s an XS:

and it fits!  and it’s not as faded and icky as it looks here!  I promise!

I’m going to spray paint this white , and use it to hold our cloth napkins (we don’t use paper napkins ’round here, yo.  Ever.):

assorted kids’ books:

slowly building up the collection, based largely on titles I’ve read and liked at preschool.

a desk letter organizer thingy:

an antique kid-sized toolbox, to hold my knitting notions:

this cute little and completely pointless wall hangy thing, to hang in the new kitchen:

(because it makes me happy, dammit!  That’s why!)

one can never have too much Pyrex, especially when one uses it to store leftovers because one does not like plastic:

I’ve been wanting one of these for ages, but never got around to buying it:

and finally, assorted small miscellany:

$20.

Because I am the garage sale QUEEN! HRAWRRHHH!!!!!

Oh yes, that is what you think it is:  it’s a Clapotis.

I promise, I don’t know what happened…but I like it.  I love it.  I can see why there are nearly 6000 on Ravelry. The yarn (Peter Pan DK) isn’t really ‘me’, though, so into the Christmas gift pile it goes.  I have a recipient in mind, and I think she’ll flip out over it

This is not an accurate representation of the color:

This is:

Modifications:
~Since I worked it in a DK-weight yarn, I did 11 repeats instead of the 8 that the pattern calls for.  I didn’t make each repeat any wider, though.
~Added a few extra inches to the length, since I like my shawls a bit long.

Next time I’m going to change a few things.  I think I’ll mark my dropped stitches with the purl method rather than stitch markers, and I’ll do the twisted stitches on every row, instead of just on the RS rows. This should neaten up those edges just a bit.  I might make each repeat a stitch wider, too.

<3.

PS>More details on Ravelry, coming soon!

…would be 2-story, Craftsman style (arts and crafts) house.

…would have a detached garage out back, with a room above it for Jeff’s study.

…would be in a quiet, established, older neighborhood where none of the houses match, and where the streets are a practical grid–not just a maze of cul-de-sacs.

…would be old and sturdy and authentic and lived-in and loved.

…would have have chairs and a swing and some hanging plants on the big ol’ porch, and grass growing up between the bricks on the front walk.

…would be filled with a collection of furniture accumulated from antique stores and refinished by me, each piece picked out and adored, and the end tables won’t match each other, and the bedframes might be wrought iron.

…would have a warm, comfortable kitchen, sunny and large with a breakfast nook in the corner.

…would have wide-open windows as frequently as possible.

…would have a clothesline in the backyard, and an old picnic table, and maybe a couple chickens and a chicken coop.

…would hold books on built-in shelves in the living areas–kids’ books on the lower shelves, mine on the middle ones, and Jeff’s at the top.

…would have a dining room with a big, loooong table of dark wood–maybe with benches running along either side, and that’s where we’d eat most evenings.

…would hide nooks and crannies and practical storage in unexpected places, with no space wasted.

…wouldn’t bother with massive bathrooms or a master ’suite’ when smaller spaces work just fine.

…would have an attic just like in the movies, with enough space to store baby clothes and Christmas decorations and all that other good stuff.

…would have a girls’ room and a boys’ room and the girls might have a pillow-filled play loft for reading and playing princesses, and the boys’ room would have a super-secret ‘cave’ for playing dragons and having daytime campouts.

…would have a yard filled with old, old trees and some peony bushes and a bench at the back, and a redbud tree and some more nooks and hidden areas for playing, and a vegetable and herb garden right outside the kitchen door.

…would be the kind of place where we could live for 40 years or 50 years and never want to–never have to–move.

…would have a basement with rickety stairs going down, and shelves for holding canned fruits and vegetables, and the washer and dryer in the corner, and might be haunted.

Is that so much to ask?  Guess we’ll find out in a few years…

(If I told you my neighbors had chickens, would you believe me?)

And better still, would you believe that I actually think it’s pretty cool?

I think I’d like to have chickens someday–I really do.

Ba-KAW! (bye!)

Jeff and I just made our second donation to Barack Obama’s campaign.

We can’t afford much, but we give what we can…

Maybe our $XX will be the amount that sends him over the obstacle that is Hillary

Who watched tonight’s speech?

I  was really impressed by it (surprise surprise!)–it was much more of a ‘general election’ speech rather than a ‘primary’ speech.  The message was clear:  It’s time for the Democratic party to move past this divisive time, and unite in the face of ol’ “Four More Years” McCain.  And hopefully Barack will be our man to lead us there

When I was growing up, Mom and Dad’s house–my house–was always cluttered (usually by some activity directly relating to my brother and me).

First it was the plastic toys, dozens of stuffed animals, every Lego and Duplo block imaginable.

As Ryan and I entered elementary school, then it was the invasion of Mom’s PTA stuff. Copy paper boxes full of newsletters and handouts, piles of paperwork.

When we got a bit older, the house started to seem even smaller. Clutter was everywhere.

So when I was 16, we moved. Into a house with THREE WHOLE TIMES the square footage but, somehow, even less storage space.

Next thing you knew, it was the scrapbooking storm of ‘aught two. Mom and I set up work tables. There were scraps of paisley paper (coordinating striped paper on the reverse!), little metal brads and wooden stamps everywhere.

That segued nicely into the wedding event of the century, headquartered in–you guessed it–Mom and Dad’s house. Cobalt glassware rested on every surface. Thanksgiving dinner 2006, we all ate with bolts of tulle on our laps and boxes of personalized napkins and matchbooks under our feet.

~~
Is it any wonder, then, that when Jeff and I established our own household, I have always been militantly anti-clutter? My home is my sanctuary, and though I might not be the best one at dusting or washing the windows, I was always ruthless in my mess prevention policies.

So then this? This? Is not acceptable:

at all.

Folks, meet my garage sale pile. In our small apartment, literally the *only* place for it is the middle of the living room floor.

Last week I started pulling too-short pants from the back of the closet, old shoes from under the bed, and ‘vintage’ appliances out of the kitchen drawers. Tucked away in their hidey holes among our 450 square foot home, it didn’t seem like much. But here, out in the open, it’s a lot. It’s suffocating me.

Coupled with the moving boxes, I can hardly stand to be in my own house–and that’s not a fun feeling. Last night as I stood on a box of wire hangers and surveyed the mess under my feet, I told Jeff, “The garage sale must happen this weekend.”

He gingerly stepped over a box of lava lamps and sci-fi paperbacks, just in time to catch me as I stumbled from my perch. As he opened his mouth to reply, his foot caught in the canvas strap of an old shopping bag and, tripping, he nearly impaled himself on a set of mismatched butter knives. I retrieved Othello from his nest amidst a pile of old turtlenecks, as Jeff looked for Macbeth under a stack of dollar-store picture frames. We were in agreement. This stuff has got to go.

I don’t care how hard it’s raining next week, or even if it’s a tornado–come 7:00 Saturday morning, I’ll be outside trying to sell this crap my valuable possessions to any sucker who thinks they need some barely-worn jeans and a set of metal stacking storage cubes.

Because the clutter? It does not work with my lifestyle. In fact, it stresses me the fuck out. Let the tornado take it.

Who wants to buy some mismatched Tupperware and a plywood bookcase?

Pretend that this post is an awesome 80’s montage.  A “gettin’ stuff done” montage, done to the tune of everybody’s favorite “gettin’ stuff done” montage music:  Takin’ Care of Business.

In this montage, we’re showing Jeff and my preparations for our upcoming move.

• I fill a ginormous box with my hardcover books, making Jeff strain his back as he attempts to lift it.
• Both of us tossing item after item over our shoulders, into the ever-increasing Yard Sale Pile.
• I walk by in the background lugging an armload of winter coats, as Jeff, in the foreground, serenely sits and browses the Internet.
• Jeff affectionately picks a bit of dust out of my hair, acquired at my time in the back of the closet.
• A cat in a box.
• Two cats in a box!
• Two cats in two boxes!
• Empty boxes.
• Good-natured bickering over, “do we really need to save the armchair that has been systematically decimated by tiny cat claws?”
• Jeff driving down to Columbia with boxes full of our possessions (for the purposes of this montage, he’s got sunglasses on, the windows rolled down and moonroof open, and the radio blaring–what else?–Takin’ Care of Business.
• I dig through just-packed boxes in search of my cell phone.
• Jeff walks in the front door, picking and climbing over towers of boxes, only to find me passed out among them, packing tape in one hand and a Sharpie resting on the cat’s nose.

And that, my friends, is why I’m too tired to post any pictures.