I have had the last week off of work.  You’d think I’d find time to blog.  Instead, I took the time to clean and get my house in order.  The worst of it was our playroom.  It’s really more of a toy and junk and storage room, since it has no heat or A/C, it doesn’t get played in all too often.  In NC, it’s more of a 2-season room - spring and fall.  Over the course of the winter, we tend to just chuck things in the door, since it’s cold out there, and when company’s coming and we need a quick clean-up, guess where the junk goes?  Add to that the fact that we have basically NO useable attic space (the Christmas decorations take up the small bit we have!).  Over the course of time it becomes absolutely disgusting.  My house, disgusting?  Well, thanks to FlyLady, we’ve been getting our house and our lives in order.  It’s working fairly well, and 90% of the house (kids’ rooms excluded, of course) are what she would refer to as “no more than 15 minutes dirty”, so that in an all-out whole family effort, we could have the house presentable for company in 15 minutes.  Well, okay, so long as they don’t open any doors that are closed.  But we’re working on it!  Anyway, I spent way way way more than 15 minutes a day doing all of this - Monday and Tuesday, the girls and I spent probably 6-7 hours per day getting the playroom cleaned up.  Exhibit 1 & 2 - playroom before:

Now, after one full vanload to Goodwill, one full vanload to the thrift store, and more than 20 trash bags full of absolute trash, this is our playroom (and it’s going to stay this way if I have to barricade the door!):

Hurray for us!!!

In the meantime, I have been doing a (very) little knitting.  The fair isle hat is finally done, and I think it will go to my stepmom for her birthday, as she is the only person who has expressed interest in it thus far!  This was done using the Philosopher’s Wool fair isle method, which eschews floats and instead uses a funky 4-stitch method that wraps the ends of each stitch under.  Here is the hat (the outside is modeled by Shea, who would not let me take a picture of her face “in the hat”, and the other picture is the inside of the hat, so you can see how cool the stitches look):

I finished up the “popsicle” socks, and when I finish up the 2nd pair, they will go in the mail.  Hopefully before the end of July, which is the current deadline.

The pink socks are Lace Wing socks in Fixation, from Anna’s great blog.  I love them, though people keep asking if I’m working on something for a baby (or worse, if I’m pregnant!) when they see me working with this baby pink.  The other sock on the needles is this great Trekking sock, which I am actually working up in the Austermann Step from my June 6th entry.  It’s beautiful, just not enough to have my full attention right now.  I’m also up to the armholes on my ArtFibers sweater, and ready to divide and knit some more!

Last on the needles (well, ok, the swatch is on the needles) is the Lotus Blossom Tank from the cover of IK’s Summer 2006 issue, for my stepmom for Mother’s Day.  She picked it out, and we got to go yarn shopping (exception #1 for my Summer of Stash!).  She picked out King Tut cotton yarn in a beautiful warm tan color.  I’m going to have to play with it in a big mathematical way, as when I get stitch gauge, my row gauge is WAY off, but I knew it was a little heavy for this pattern when I bought it, but it’s what she wanted.  What can you do?

OK, maybe I did get more knitting done this week than I thought.  Still not as much as I wanted to, but my playroom is clean, my laundry is done, and I’m going back to work tomorrow!

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