...MonkeyKnits... A Knitting Blog

sunrise at our new home

First of all... Happy Birthday, Baby! Hope the coming year is all you wish for and more! Here's to celebrating many more of your birthdays right by your side... Cheers!

sunrise, originally uploaded by monkeyknits.

I promised photos, and here they are! The first one (above) is the view from the end of our yard, looking out over Lake Superior. This lake is amazing -- every day it's a new view, I swear!

This little guy (below) lives in our backyard. I try to feed him peanuts, but sometimes the crows get them before he can. I know that squirrels are basically fancy-tailed rats, but I can't help finding this guy cute. He looks like a little old man pulling up his pants. It makes me giggle.

Here are a few more "outside" photos...
looking to the southwest we see the Aerial Lift Bridge

looking to the northeast we see fall colors

this is the view from our back porch

I make it a point to take in the lake at least once a day. It's just amazing to me. Okay, anyway... so here's the house...

the house has a nickname: "Little Vic"

can you say "guh-zee-bow?"

the ladder is the fire escape from our third floor loft - hope we never have to use it!
and the round part is our master bedroom - the head of our bed is in the tower*

I'll have some interior photos later this week. We're finally unpacked. Well, *almost* unpacked. And I shouldn't really say "finally" because there was a point where I thought we'd be living out of boxes until Christmas. My parents helped us out a lot -- not just with the hard labor part of unpacking, but also with the interior design part as well. I was really at a loss for how to arrange the furniture in this amazing house. The first floor has three large rooms that are separate yet open, if that makes sense. I'm sure one of them is supposed to be a formal dining area, but as we are not formal diners, we made it into a sitting area.

So those photos will be up later this week. I just have to say a very sincere "thank you" to Greta and Tyler for allowing us to rent their lovely house on the Lake. We are so happy here and it truly feels like home. So, thank you!

There has been a little knitting going on here, too. I currently have two pair of socks on the needles -- one is intended for my Sock Monkey Swap pal. They'll be going out in the mail next week. The other pair is for an unnamed male -- unnamed because they are quite possibly going to be a Christmas gift, so no photos to share yet. In the middle of all this unpacking, I've also unearthed a handful of UFOs that I had forgotten about. So I'm working on a couple of them and contemplating what comes next for a few others... I see some ripping in my future!

*so I just learned the difference between a tower and a turret. I had thought that we had a turret, but it turns out we have a tower. Who knew?

Home

We're here! We're in Duluth, in our new home. We just found the box with the camera in it, so I'll post photos soon. This house we're renting is amazing. I don't think we'll ever want to leave!

The move went amazingly well. The ladies who packed our belongings could not have been nicer. They packed each item as if it were their own. And they were so pleasant. We were very impressed.

The guys who loaded and unloaded the truck were great, too. 99.9% of our items arrived safe and sound. They worked so hard to make us happy. And they did an awesome job.

Now I'm packing my bags to hit the road this afternoon. My mom/new boss and I are heading to Des Moines for an Aveda business course. This will be my introduction to the salon world of business. I hope I'm hip enough to hang with the beautiful people. The good news is that I saw my stylist yesterday and I'm having a good hair day, so I should be alright. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

From this:

To this:

Sorry for the long, unexplained absence. It has been a crazy few weeks. The long and short of it is...

John and I are moving!

We're moving to the town where I grew up -- the town where my family still lives. We've talked about moving to Duluth in a "oh, someday... maybe" kinda way. And I guess "someday, maybe" is now. John accepted a position at the big hospital in Duluth. We're wrapping things up at work. We're packing up our house -- it goes on the market on Thursday. Everything is happening really quickly and it's exciting and stressful and crazy and fun.

Needless to say, not much is happening on the knitting front. I plan to go through my studio this weekend and pack and purge. There may be a little destashing sale (yarn and fabric) if I can get organized enough. I'm not sure that I can part with any of it. And you know, it really is light and easy to move, right?!?

And now, to sleep so that I can rise and shine early tomorrow morning and get back to packing, purging and preparing for house showings. I'm thinking I may preemptively order one of those St. Joseph statues... any believers out there?

couch + pillow

couch + pillow, originally uploaded by monkeyknits.

Two of the delivery guys came to our house on Monday to take measurements. Would it fit? John was skeptical. I was cautiously optimistic. The delivery guys were outright confident.

So, we made the purchase and scheduled the delivery for Tuesday.

The truck pulled up and the delivery crew came in to check out the situation. The boss of the crew took one look at the hallway/stair situation and just shook his head. He said something to the effect of, "how in the world did you guys think this would fit??!" My optimism flew out the window.

After an hour and a half of trying every imaginable angle and taking the couch apart, they finally got all of the pieces downstairs. It was an ugly process to witness. I probably should not have watched. Apparently, we got the record for most difficult delivery in the history of the store.

The good news is that they were able to get it downstairs. The bad news is that it is never coming back up. But, it's here now and I love it. It's so nice to be able to use that room instead of just storing stuff in it.

Thank you, delivery crew.

chair + pillow

chair + pillow, originally uploaded by monkeyknits.

chair + couch + chair + TV = family room

We've been in our house two years now, and for two years we've had an unfurnished family room. It wasn't for lack of trying. We became frustrated with trying to find something that would fit through the hallway and make the sharp turn into the stairs leading down to the lower level. When we found something that might work, we had trouble agreeing on a style. Or we worried about buying something and finding out too late that it wouldn't fit.

On a whim, I took an afternoon off of work and visited a relatively new furniture store in our city. I'd never been there before and really had no idea what they would have. I was pleasantly surprised. I found several things that I really liked, and the saleswoman who helped me was so very helpful. She spent about 45 minutes with me explaining options and helping me put together fabric possibilities.

The downside (of course there's a downside, right?) -- price. Everything in the store is custom made-to-order. That means pricey. Or downright expensive.

I left the store excited to tell John, but also kinda bummed because I knew we didn't want to drop $20,000 in one room. Somehow I convinced him to come to the store, "just to look."

We ended up really liking one of the floor samples -- a couch, a chair and an ottoman. Long story short, we ended up getting a really great deal on the set.

The next challenge was making sure we could get it downstairs...

Little Dudes

These three little Japanese guys live on the newly installed Ikea shelves in our living room. I don't know their whole story. They came from John's grandma's house. John's grandma and grandpa were amazing people. They spent time in Japan teaching English in the 60's. I'm sure that these were a gift from someone whose lives they touched along the way. I wish I knew more about them. They sure are cute.

It's beginning to look...

...a lot like Christmas!

Living Room

John and I have been living in our house for over a year now. We purchased the house in August 2005. I guess it's about time we moved in. I had been waiting patiently for Oprah to send over Nate Berkus. That man can work some magic. I finally got impatient though, and so I took things into my own hands.

John finally got his fancy speakers set up, and I finally dressed up the naked walls.

I bought some canvas-like fabric at Ikea last time I was in the Twin Cities. I covered three inexpensive canvases and hung them over the couch.

The black frames were a gift from John's mom. I found some scrapbooking paper at Hobby Lobby and made a little arrangement.

I'm already thinking about switching the prints out for something festive for the holidays.

So now John's happy because he has surround sound in a major way. And I'm happy because I now have three rooms in my house that no longer look like we just moved in. The other two are the kitchen and my studio. I'll post photos of those rooms soon.

Don't worry, Oprah... When Nate gets here, he can get busy on our family room.