Law of Gravity

Oh my! What a week I've had. You may have noticed that I wasn't around much last week. I got slammed. With everything. And next week doesn't look to be too much better. Apologies in advance. Things should settle in another week or two, but until then, I'm just trying to keep my feet under me. First things first. I went from this... ...to this... ...to this... ...to this... ...last week. They started on Tuesday and finished on Saturday. And so, now it's finally done. Whew. (You may remember this all started in January .) But, as all of this is right above my bed, I spent most of last week displaced in one way or another. The first night I slept on the couch in the living room. The rest of the week I could sleep in my bed, but I had to strip it first thing in the morning and remake it when I got home from work, so the contractor could flip it up towards the wall and out of the way during the day. All the while, half of my bedroom was in the living room and out of the ...

The windmill bag was moving along a lot quicker than I anticipated. Right after taking the pictures I used in last weeks blog post , I started on the assembly. Stitching together the bottom went quickly. Before I knew it, I was stitching up the sides. I thought about what sort of border I wanted for the top. I started one round, and then decided that that was enough. I threw it in the wash. I was doing laundry, and I'd get to the straps/handles soon enough. And then school started. *insert screeching brake noise here* So, yeah, I expected to have a finished bag to post today. It's mostly finished, as you can see. The straps/handles won't take terribly long. But I just have a whole lot less time at the moment to work on them. The bag turned out bigger than I expected. Here's a view of the inside... So, overall, I'm pleased. (I didn't really block the thing, that's why the pictures appear lumpy. I'm not going to bother blocking it as it's just for me, ...

...in small claims court. As I promised last Friday , here are a few things I learned going to small claims court two weeks ago. In no particular order... Being a small claims court judge must be much like being a teacher. He gave us instructions that some ignored. He explained things clearly, but some still could not answer him. I kind of felt sorry for him. If you find yourself having to take someone to court, document everything. And have all the documentation in a logical order. If serving court papers, make sure to submit proof of having done so at least five days before your court date.  Be on time, but expect a long wait. It is illegal to charge more than 10% interest on a loan. (Not our case. A case prior to ours.)  Cases were heard by quickest to resolve first. (Of course if we could have come to a compromise, we wouldn't have sued...)  When your case is done, leave. (Papers were mailed out after.)  And then don't return, wailing how the defendant "thre...

Last week we had our day in court. In case you missed it, in late January, on a Saturday morning at 1:15, I was awoken by water pouring through my ceiling and onto my bed . (I explained it pretty well in that blog post.) Drying out the ceiling and putting the room back together has taken a while. (I gave periodic updates here , here , and here .) What we have been waiting on is figuring out who's going to pay for it. Landlady has been fighting with the upstairs neighbors since it happened. The people upstairs rent the place from the woman who used to live upstairs, but had recently moved to an assisted living facility. The woman's daughter hired a management company to oversee the rental stuff. When the water incident happened, landlady contacted the management company immediately after the plumber left. (The plumber determined that the upstairs neighbors had to have overflowed something as he couldn't replicate the issue. He checked for a burst pipe and then if any of the ...

Last Thursday I went full evil. It kind of just happened. I'm rather ashamed, but here I am, putting it on blast on my blog. First, I served papers on a sweet old lady. I have mentioned the deluge that happened in my bedroom. Yes, there is still a hole in my ceiling. Getting the neighbors to pay for the damage, well, isn't happening. We've had to take them to court. The sweet old lady is still the owner of record. (She's moved to an assisted living facility.) Her daughter, well, if her daughter had taken care of business, we wouldn't be going to court. Shortly thereafter, I called 911 on a black man. I don't know if you've been aware of all t he "Beckys" calling 911 on people of color who were minding their own business. It's a thing. However, this man was lying in the street, twitching. It was a busy street. Traffic... Well, it was 6-ish. And while he was in the crosswalk, he was far enough out in the street that he could have been hit. I don...

I finally got the soles sewn onto the ugly slippers. Finally. It wasn't all that difficult, but as with all new things, it took me a while to get the hang of it. I'm not sure how well this works at keeping the slippers non-slip. I'll have to get back to you on that, after the recipients get their long-overdue Christmas presents and try them out. In case you'd like to try this yourself, the tutorial for this method is found here . I googled "soles on knitted slippers" and this site came up. As you can see, her soles look much, much better than mine. I used a faux leather fabric. Ah well. It's done now. Would I use this same method again? I don't know. It depends on how well the slippers work out. And with that, my Christmas 2018 knitting is done. Christmas 2017 knitting is still ongoing. Bedroom deluge update: I still have a big ol' hole in my ceiling.  It's pretty much the entire ceiling. It will not get repaired until the restoration company ...

If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen my knitting photo for this week... Aaaaand, that's about all I got accomplished. About five rounds of the infinity scarf that I've been working on since... * checks Ravelry * ...since June. I pulled out my knitting. Looked at it. And didn't do a whole lot with it. I am back in my room . There's a big hole in my ceiling that'll get patched up in the next week or so. Progress. But my stuff is still living in the dining room until the guys come to replaster the ceiling, so I'm not wholly back in my room. It's great to sleep in my own bed. I have access to all my belongings. But I still feel a bit displaced. That's probably why I've gotten out the ugly slippers and the walking purse but have been unable to do anything with them. They're at the sewing up stage, and all I want to do is sit and knit. I even have new pictures of my seasonal earrings to post. I was going to get that listing ready f...