Showing posts with label neighbors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neighbors. Show all posts

Monday, January 04, 2010

Panicking Much?

Hopeful - 4/365 YIP

Trying not to, but... Hope. That's today's word of the day in Velma's World. We (& by we I mean me, 'cuz Cole is working in Willow Creek for the next few days) are on pins and needles over here. Freaking out, actually. I've kept this under my hat since the week before Thanksgiving, but we got our 60-day notice from the landlords - they're selling the house we rent from them. OUR house! We've been here for four years come February 1st, and although this place ain't perfect, it suits us. And I don't have to tell you how much moving sucks, do I?

Seriously, we DON'T want to move. To say nothing of we can't AFFORD to move. Rents have gone up since we found this place; we'd have to downsize our living space for an upsized price. And moving without a car? We could kiss all our friends with trucks goodbye, I'm sure. (At least yarn isn't heavy.)

BUT. There is a possibility of a reprise. A potential non-solution solution. As in: maybe we won't have to move after all. It all comes down to our next door neighbor.

Today is the day she submits her bid to BUY OUR HOUSE. Yep, Jeanne, the neighbor who brought us wood last month when our heater was broken because she felt bad that we didn't have any heat - she likes the neighbor status quo. Afraid that growers, or a loud & crappy jam band, or a bunch of partying college freshmen, or a developer -- possibilities all -- will move in, she's decided to try to purchase it herself and continue renting to US, with no increase in rent!

So for the past month we've been ushering a host of inspectors, estimators, and appraisers into our house to suss out what all needs to be done. It's a circa-1950s era, standard-issue for the area, approx. ~1000sqft house that hasn't had any real maintenance done on it, EVER, so it has, let's just say, issues. A fair amount of work would need to be done just to get it up to code; we're on fuses here for cripes sakes! No bank will touch the house without an electrical upgrade to circuit breakers, as far as I know.

But Jeanne is prepared to take on all the work that needs to be done, & today she makes an offer to the current owners. Cole & I are counting on this going through; the housing market here is so tight, there are almost no comparable options available to rent locally.

So -- my plea to all my readers this week: send your good housing thoughts this way!! Hopefully the house fairy will tell the landlords to accept Jeanne's offer and we'll still be here in 2011.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Janet Gave Me Felting Fever


Guess what I did yesterday?? I felted! I've got the felting fever, I do. Although these are not the best pictures to show off my efforts, by any means. But at least I *got* some photos. You might recall that my camera, she crapped out on me last week. (Um, you know, when I dropped her. Doh!)

Anyway, I played around with the Husqvarna ER10 needle-felter on loan from Aunt Janet. My idea was to use it to make some felted baubles to spin into my yarns, and these 'flowers' are what came out of the session yesterday afternoon:


What did I learn from my felting foray? Well, this machine isn't really designed to do 3-D felting; I needed to do some hand-felting of each flower after I used the machine, but the Husqy definitely sped up the sculpting process. I think I'll try some fabric embellishment next. This is a fun little machine!

Janet is a very cool chick; she's a member of our local fiber guild, The Humboldt Handweavers & Spinners, which is how I met her last year. She runs a small fiber processing mill in SoHum, Aunt Janet's Fiber Mill, and she has a brand-new shop on Etsy of the same name where she sells her hand-dyed fibers, mostly Romney. AND she's one of the nicest people I know! She's helped me out more times than I can say (Janet, you know you rock.). She's on Ravelry now; you can find her there as AuntJanetsfiber, & she's started a group there - Aunt Janet's Campout - to plan for a summer '09 mill campout & 'unconference'. There'll likely be workshops on dyeing, kumihomo, fiber processing, and various spinning techniques. Since the idea behind an unconference is that it is user-driven & user-supported, the workshop topics are limited only by who steps forward to lead them; sort of a 'put up or shut up' style of gathering. ;) So, if you're gonna be around in Humboldt this summer, check it out, it should be a hoot! (Did I just say that? Must need to jack up my piss-and-vinegar ratio in my coffee.)
Tags: ,
Related Posts with Thumbnails