this house is clean

Well, maybe not in a strictly literal sense, but...let's just say:  my friends, the occupation is over.

Things have been percolating here the last three (has it only been 3?!) weeks because of our 'house guest'.  I suppose a teeny bit of back story is in order....don't worry I won't go on forever, and since I have no new knitting pictures to post--mostly because I've done no new knitting, a short story may suffice.

Our 'house guest' was actually Cee's brother's wife (notice I don't say sister-in-law)....there's been animosity there, almost completely on her side, by way of the fact that she doesn't like or want to know her husband's family, hasn't spoken to any of us in 8 years (yes, you read that right) and actually moved them two hours away from where we all live and kept her husband from communicating with any of his family for almost 6 of those 8 years.  Well, the rift between Cee's brother and family recently healed, thanks in part ironically to Cee's dad's declining health and eventual passing, and things were starting to go back to normal, but there's been tension between his wife still see, because she still didn't want to know any of us or even try to mend things...all of us decided we could live with that, as long as Cee's brother was still communicating, and it seemed it would go on indefinitely until....out of the blue she took a job here (or close to here) and all of a sudden she didn't want to commute the distance and demanded they sell up down there and move back here, but in the meantime she needed a place to stay.....

Enter yours truly....now, I must preface this by saying this was against our better judgement to begin with, we weren't too keen on having her here--wait, that is a big understatement, we both knew it was a horrible idea--mostly because like I said, she didn't want to know any of us, and but for the fact that she needed a place, she STILL wouldn't want to know any of us, and I knew for a fact that once they got settled into a place here, she again wouldn't want to know any of us....still, some part of Cee and I thought that maybe by doing this, things would be resolved, fences mended, rifts overcome...so we agreed, mostly for Cee's brother, who let's face it, was in a terrible fix..also we figured if we said no, that rift just might start to open up again.....damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So we said yes....and to make a long story short, it's been a nightmare.  I won't bore you with the excruciating minutia of every event, but suffice it to say we felt heartily ill-used and abused, but were accomodating and opened our home, and the first time I asked her not to do one thing (that one thing was do multiple loads of laundry every day....she's one of those people to whom one shirt and a pair of socks is a laundry load) she decided that we were mean horrible people who were making her life intolerable and she moved out without so much as a thank you for letting me stay or a kiss me arse.

Where this leaves Cee's family and Cee's brother I have no idea....I'm hoping that we (with the exception of her, because she's shown her true colours and I wasn't completely surprised by what happened) can all be adults and get this resolved before it turns into another indefinite period of animosity and no communication.

I'm hopeful, because I don't think Cee's brother wants that either, but I also know he's got a poisonous little bug in his ear....stay tuned, it could get ugly.

oops i did it again

Hey all...looks like I missed posting for a while again....sorry.  Our 'house guest' (Cee and I prefer to call it The Occupation--similar to Germany occupying France in WWII) has arrived and things were not as bad as I thought they would be.....they have been much worse.  I'm sure eventually we will iron things out, but both Cee and I are horrible with confrontation, so it's much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth and whispering to eachother about why we agreed to this in the first place...I don't mind helping anyone one out, but I do mind being taken advantage of, and such increasingly seems to be the case...stay tuned.

On more crappy fronts, I have had some more problems with my hip, the other side from the sciatic side...seemingly because I've been favouring my leg and well, to put it delicately, I'm just too damn fat...need to get some pounds off and all will improve...or so the doctor says...I hope so, because being in pain all the time really sucks, and not being able to walk or make your leg move sucks even more...

So dear friends, since I don't want to go on ad-nauseum about all the crappy things going on here, and since I've done very little knitting or crocheting in the past couple weeks (oh yeah, they think I have the beginnings of arthritis in my shoulder, too...yay) I decided I wouldn't be posting too much.

My cardigan had made some good progress though, before all the icky started...did you know that when you knit intarsia your yarns get REALLY tangled?  It's enough to make a control freak like me have a breakdown...

This picture was taken when I was on row 2 of the intarsia charts...I got fed up untangling all the mini-skein/balls and just used yarn lengths around 3 feet or so and let them hang free, a technique of which I'm told Kaffe Fassett is fond...it worked much better and made me less sweary...I am now on the upper fair isle chart, so it's going much better, as I'm used to that....I started with the back of the pattern, so this will be the biggest piece and the most complicated (I hope at least)  I'm nothing if not persistent, so it will be done...just may take a while.