I've been out of my studio for about a week but have been busy. i went to my sister's last week and we went to the beast...but not to work. i have decided that i need a house in centralia, too. so when i retire from retirement at the farm...i will already have a place to move to. it may take me a few years to get there...but it will be ready. so we went house hunting. we looked at 6 houses that i liked from the pictures on the internet .... but we know pictures lie....some houses were good....some kind of chopped up in layout....some too "something"...but all had very small to no yards. i need me some grass.
There was a very nice, large (think beast size)...lovely house...but the price tag was $54,500 and i didn't want to go there. plus...the place next door to it was a condemned butt ugly mess that needed to be burnt down.
The real estate agent said she had one more to show me if i wanted to see it but it was in deplorable condition and not livable. so, of course, that got me curious. as soon as i walked into it and roamed through about 3 rooms i said....i like it...i think i want this one. she was astonished. it's a bit over 1200 square feet, sits on a quarter acre, and has a huge 3 bay garage with an office out there. i guess my standards are lower than hers....a bit of shoveling out and some paint and it could be liveable. LOL ok, and new windows and doors. but it has a new roof....that's important.
It has 3 sets of French doors and a pocket door. the pocket door sold my sister. LOL hardwood floors and some cool woodwork. closets are scarce but i can live with that...i can always build closets. needs windows; has new roof. may need furnace; basement seems dry. tradeoffs here and there. it had renters so it is filthy. but once it is shoveled out, ugly paneling taken off walls, and a little love...it will be fine. right now we are calling it The Ugly Duckling. but it will emerge into a swan.....in a few years.
The owner is in California..i'm in Missouri...and the property is in Illinois. such complications. so i've spent 3 days faxing things back and forth. the real estate portion is done and all signed off. i am just waiting for my credit union to ok the loan. i got a really, really, really good price. although he was asking 27,900...he was going around town saying he would take 12-15K for it. LOL that was dumb on his part but good for me.
One strange part....there is an oil well pumping in the yard.....right outside the kitchen. LOL it has a fence around it and it is kind of rusty ugly but sort of out of sight...so that's ok. i don't have to deal with it. there is a wooden fence hiding it from view of the front street and i plan on painting a quilt on that fence to pretty it up.
In quilty news...as i said...i've been out of the studio for a week. but playing at home while talking to real estate people and faxing.
I finished the backing on the Tokyo Subway Map quilt and am ready to quilt it. i really, really like the back. it is just folded over my hanging stand. it is about 85" square. the writing says Tokyo Subway Map...is that not cool?
I finished the last 2 blocks of the North Pole Village set 3. i have 34 blocks now. i wonder if they will make another set. these are just adorable. the last 2 were.....
The photo shop. love the little camera shaped building. great idea.
And the clock shop...isn't that little mouse cute? should have made the hands of the clock a different color...may go over them with some color. they show up a bit better in real life.
My selvage boxes are stuffed. i decided i need to use more of them. so i pulled out the black selvages and separated the ones with the white part on the end. i only used the selvages without the white. and cut 2" red blocks for the middles and simply stitched around and around till i could cut a 7.5" square from it. selvages were different widths, so the red block wasn't centered. i was almost finished before my brain kicked in that i could manipulate where the red square landed but not using some sides. i cut out 80 red squares but ran out of black selvages after 43 blocks. i really didn't want to use the selvages with the white parts on them. so one evening i thought about reversing them ... so now i will make some with black centers and red selvages. have to finish the contest quilt before i continue on these.
In between the selvage blocks i was making crumb blocks...cut at 5" square. i recently got the Leaders and Enders book from Bonnie Hunter so that is how these were assembled. it is quite addictive and goes quickly and saves a TON of thread. i have a couple dozen of these and enough scrap fabric to make hundreds more of them. LOL
Do you use starch when you press? i never used to.... until my friend Brenda brought us all a bottle of starch at our last quilt class. i am now a starch convert. what a difference. and it has a fresh linen scent and completely makes the blocks more manageable. why didn't i do this before? sometimes i just need to be knocked in the head. thanks, Brenda, for the knock. i love it. (and you).
Sheesh...are you still reading...or did i put you to sleep. i'll try not to stay away so long next time. that was a lot of catching up.
Break is long over....back to work.
2 comments:
Congratulations Shirley! Knowing what you and your sister are capable of, it will be a Swan soon. What is a pocket door? Sounds like a bargain you've got there. Is that metal ladder a fire escape? Looking forward to reading "From Duckling to Swan". Cheers, Christine D.
I love your posts, Shirley. The longer, the better. And now I can look forward to your updates about the beastette. Haven't tried this particular starch but am going to now (thanks for the tip!). And am thinking I need to do some crumb blocks ....
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