Beginning once again

Here are some preliminary shots of the house, now that most of the unpacking has been done, except for the garage, which is the big dumping ground. O dear. 

The sun just blazes in as the back of our house faces east. We've had a bunch of rain so there is heavy dew on everything, including the windows.

The breakfast nook. We had to get a countertop microwave, since the flipper of this house installed a big exhaust fan/light over the stove. Since we already had this little cabinet, I hoped it would fit, and voila it did. Room enough for the toaster, which keeps the crumbs off the speckled granite counters. We can watch the birds on our neighbors deck, and have seen a bunch of cuties daily. Haven't seen her shih tzus since we moved in. But we did meet her lawn man and hurridly hired him to do our lawn today before it really becomes a jungle. 

I'd be having my coffee on the deck if it weren't so wet. 

 Cannas in bloom and pink roses too, right outside the breakfast nook window.

 The living room for the time being. I already ordered a different rug in black and white (probably ivory...o well) buffalo check. I had this turquoise one and tested it out and thought, nahhhh. The chairs are my old Poangs from Ikea when it first opened up in Illinois, way back when. They  have been living with my sister, and now are baaaaaack! Everything hinges on begin black and white and red, even if that means brick red. I put the couch in front of the fire place which is an unsightly black hole until it is filled with logs or something. Here's the view from another angle:

 The first iteration of the studio. The room is the smallest studio I have had, and I am going to make it work anyway. The table on the left is right up against the closet doors, but is easily moved if need be. Wheels on everything!! The windows face west and the blinds are still down from yesterday afternoon,

 and then this morning I opened them to bring in the morning sun. Lots of greenery outside the window, which faces the street, so I can see when UPS arrives, heehee. Actually, today we will receive the Home Depot truck with our new washer and dryer.  Woowoo!

 The kitchen which is a work in progress. I am getting rid of that faucet and have ordered a new one. I've already had a plumber out here yesterday due to my stupidity. I confess I couldn't make the showers work. No hot water, while all the other faucets had plenty. Turns out that I was moving the handle to the left for hot when in fact they move to the right. Why is this? My sinks all have the hot on the left, so what is that all about. $50 bucks to find out how dumb I am. But one of the handles leaked and he fixed that, so it wasn't all a waste. 

Here's my current faucet and the one I am replacing it with:

Could they be more different? 

Because the walls are covered with penny tiles, I couldn't mount my knife rack and saw this idea on Pinterest (source of all good ideas) and it works for now, or forever, who knows. Already had those vases, and just added beans. In this pic you can see the granite. Not my fave, but I am so happy with EVERYTHING else that it just doesn't bother me at all.

 A few of the figs I just picked, well, half of them. I ate the rest. Two trees, two different varieties. Both yummy.

 I am keeping the table set, because it is so red and white. No curtains in this house, hurray!

Ding dong, the washer dryer has now arrived. Gotta go watch it happen!

Update:

 Already working for me,

And the delivery guys, who could have been a comedy duo, also fixed my fridge issue. The water in the door never came out because the fridge was pushed up against the water hose and it kinked. So now I have icy cold water from the spout. Yay!

Moving Right Along

And now for the next episode in the Peripatetic Life of the Johnsons...

The movers will move us on Sept. 2 but there are lots of things we can bring over ourselves in the meantime.

Closing day: What a great day we had. Wednesday night we loaded the car prior to closing on Thursday and went directly to the new house after an effortless closing where we met the guy, Vadim from Poland, that flipped the house. What a lovely man and so clever with his work. It just goes to show how important immigrants are to creating the American dream for themselves, and then of course for moi.

We entered the house through the garage, and looked about at all the rooms which to me appeared a lot smaller after all my imaginings over the last few weeks. But they are just the right size after all, so not disappointed in the least. I chose the larger of the two bedrooms in the front of the house for my studio, since I have to fit in my newest twin size bed, aka the Nap Bed. For this first trip I just brought the two Janomes and my serger and the light bars that go with, and almost all the canvases I have been storing for lo these many years. With many more blank walls and bright light from the many windows, it is the perfect setting for paintings, collages and of course quilts. I am back!!

And then we returned to the East Ridge home for the second load. Most of what we brought were small appliances, pots and pans, canned goods and paper packaged goods. The cabinets, pantry and cleaning supply closet gave me oodles of choices of where to put the stuff, which I will no doubt move around as I use them.

It took all of 15 minutes to unload and put away things and as I promised Dave, we went to eat lunch. It was 2:30 by then and while we aimed at Hardee's, we ended up trying the El Cortez Mexican restaurant right behind it. We were the only customers and began with a celebratory Negra Modelo beer. It has been so long since we ate out! And the food was excellent, carnitas of course. A great start. 

With a full belly, we headed back and I fell into bed for a deep sleep. 

Friday we will fill the car up again and make two trips, chipping away at the stuff we can move ourselves. Should be cooler than the jungle temps we had today.

We saw our neighbor's doggies today, two little shih tzus. Barkers both, to join with our barkers. Hopefully our neighbor will agree to let our pugs into their fenced yard to play and cut down on the barkathon.

Vadim left us with partial cans of paint ( o NO!) which Dave is all thrilled about. There is one big chip that needs patching over the jacuzzi tub. Other than that, nothing I must attend to. New shower heads have to be purchased since I like a handheld head to rinse out those nooks and crannies, and a shower curtain for the guest bath.

We discovered that the street light is on the pole at the end of the driveway, but luckily on the other side of  bedroom windows, so I will have a dark night for sleeping.

The only utility I haven't taken care of is the gas company (for our new water heater), and will find out who it is and get that changed tomorrow.

Peace reigns supreme for us now and we are thanking God for providing this new place for us. Currently the high school behind us is having a football game, with blaring loudspeakers. Won't miss that! We have no neighbors behind us at the new place, just a long field and then woods. Yay!

The view from the back yard. On the right are Concord grape vines. I can tell you right now I will not be making grape jelly. They gotta go. But the framework they are on might become a setting for climbers like clematis or roses or both. We'll see. 

Dumb, dumber, dumbest

You'd think at my age I would have the good sense not to move furniture in open toed sandals. I dropped a bookcase on these innocent two toes and that cut short my big plans for the day. Arrgghh. Today the big toe is bluish and the second toe is downright purple. But I managed to get back in the moving mode and got one or two bookcases emptied and the contents have arrived in the garage.

This is the culprit. We have 8, yes 8 of these Billy bookcases from IKEA:

I have seven and Dave has one. Over the four previous moves, these have become shabbier and shabbier and will not be allowed in my new studio but will live in our new voluptuously large and dry garage. I'll store my art supplies, finished paintings, mounting boards, garment fabric, and polymer clay tools and findings on them. 

I am paring down as I sort through and condense these items. Seriously decluttering. Purging. Dumping. 

We are bringing the empty cases down to our garage and then I am bringing the contents down and refilling them there. Why? Because we have learned that they can be wrapped with cling film which keeps the contents in place as the shelves are dollied onto the truck.

And we are planning on emptying all the upstairs rooms before moving day, so we can save time and money in this, our LAST MOVE. Movers are coming Sept. 4th. Just thirteen days to go. Woowoo!

Moving Surprise

In preparation for our move (movers coming Sept. 4th!!!) I have been sorting through boxes of stuff from the Way Back machine. Imagine my surprise when I found these patterns intact! I used to sell these to my students and eventually when I retired and put away all my work stuff, I still had some left.

I'd like to make these available to you. Each one makes a small quilt, 18x24" and they are designed to be fused, using Wonder-Under or whatever fusible you like. Originally selling for $10 each, I will offer them for $8, or all 5 for $35. Paypal preferred, using my email fibermania at g  mail dot com.

Summer Floral is a mini version of my award winning Sunflowers #2.

Tulip Party is also a mini version of my winner, Triumph of Tulips.

Yellow Bird (up high in banana tree) or in this case some fancy interpretation of a banana tree. 

Then we have Mi Amiga Laura, which was one of a set of three. I no longer have the other two. But luckily I still have the original quilt from which this pattern was made. Note the ancient copyright date. Where has the time gone?

And last but not least, Fuchsias.

So if you'd like one or more ( and save me having to move them again) then please email me your address and I'll send them off asap. Yay!

Update!!! Tulip Party is all sold out. However I do have the original pattern drawing and can find a printer here to reprint them, so all is not lost. I will post them for sale (same price) when that happens. Keep in mind I am in the middle of moving so it won't be til September. 

Update #2. Only Fuchsias and Yellow Bird remain. $8 each. 

August Garden

This was the yard when we moved in.

Of course the angle of the photo is different, but the change is evident. We have been blessed with lots of gorgeous rain, sun and no terrible storms. The new trees are showing mega-growth and I have more basil than ever.  

I'm taking photos for my memories and to provide examples for the listing. We are now definitely closing on the new house September 4, and then listing this house around September 16.

The landscape crew I hired got rid of all the weeds and the downed limbs which the city came and removed in two days!

What a lot of wood we had in the yard! Lots of mature trees mean lots of branches dying and falling, but it is a trade off, as we so enjoyed the shade and all the birds. 

O my, have I got tomatoes! These cherry tomatoes never got staked but with raised beds they can spread and tumble over the edges without meeting the ground. There is already a big bowl of fruit in the kitchen and I will be sharing the bounty with friends.

I decided to plant flowers instead of a lot of veggies that didn't do well in a spot that gets a little too much shade. The zinnias and cleome are huge and we also have a lot of cosmos plants but not a single bloom. Must be that they are living in the shade of the other two flowers. 

I'm still waiting for the figs to ripen, but judging from last year, it will be October or November before they are bursting and ready to pick. We'll be gone but then the new house has two trees also loaded with fruit, so I won't miss these so much.

May I recommend Profusion Zinnias if you are buying plants or seeds next season. These yellow ones continually bloom and spread out to fill a lot of space. These were grown from only two plants.

Calla lilies, top right, which are thriving but produced no flowers! Wha? But the begonias more than make up for the loss of color.

Note to self, verbena seem to thrive in pots and love the heat. I'll be making a point of planting those again next year. 

Yup, the basil has gone to seed. 

But at this end there are still some big leaves to harvest. That zinnia at the end is a different variety, and is just one plant. Gotta love their enthusiasm.

There was a fleeting desire to uproot all my fave perennials and bring them to the new house, but I am resisting the urge. Except maybe the newest tree, (above) the pink dogwood. O dear. I guess I could always just get another, and leave this for the new owner, which I really hope is a gardener...thirty years younger than me.

Unhung Artwork

I'm cleaning out closets and trying to decide what goes and what gets moved to the new house. I really, really don't want to keep holding on to stuff that is no longer 'sparking joy' or useful or necessary or whatever. I am not very sentimental, and Dave on the other hand is way over-sentimental so I must decide without his influence or nothing would ever get tossed. Early today, before light, I took a carload of stuff to Goodwill. Some of it was artwork, not worth mentioning, and lots of it was clothing that either doesn't fit or doesn't fit my actual lifestyle. Before Covid I would occasionally stay in my pjs while working or creating and then shower and dress. Since Covid I have stayed in nightwear continually unless I have to grocery shop or go to church. And nightwear means short and tees shirts, indistinguishable from regular clothes.

My closet is now greatly condensed, but still jam packed, so there may be another attempt at limiting what i keep. 

In the bottom of the closet, untouched since we moved here, are artworks from mostly 1981. Arrgghhh. Not hung in the last three houses and stored in the garage attic of the first Tennessee house. Dusty and faded in some cases. What do I do with this stuff????

 House in St. Augustine

Watercolor, 18x24, matted and framed. The whites are muddy yellow now, so the whole thing has an antique look. Possibly not archival watercolor paper, but I was a student and this is from student days.

Dave in bed. Pastel, 18x24". The top version is enhanced by the computer but it really looks like the second version, dull and dusty. 

Same with this pastel painting. 18x24" And really, why would I want to hang this in my home?

Nasturtiums, watercolor, 18x24". I was not so careful about making these flowers look right, and it has always bothered me. Calling this impressionistic, is a lie. Lazy drawing is more like it. However it remains fresher looking and may be a more recent piece, like maybe 2005. Can't recall where we lived when I painted it, but it was after school by a long shot.

 Yellow Hat, watercolor, 18x24". It has come loose from the matting and while nicely painted, it is still of a student grade, hastily done for class assignment, not suitable for home hanging.

 Cyclamen, watercolor, 18x24". I still kinda like this one, but only this one detail.

I was not very good with watercolor, mostly because it is immediate and if you fuss with it, you can so easily destroy the spontaneity and kill it. Whereas with oil paint, it is so much more forgiving and goof proof. 

And now that I use so much more acrylic, I really can do things never considered in art school. 

So back to the question...what do I do with this stuff? I am thinking of de-framing them all, and just saving the paper in a big flat box that holds lots of drawings from this era. The frames and mats can go to Goodwill. I won't be using them ever, as I prefer mounting artwork on wood panels now, something I can do myself rather than taking it to a framer.